Pro Health, Ban Pro-Ana/Buli

Uuum, this sounds like paranoia to me, actually.

Care to point out which bits?
All of the non-opinion is pretty easily verifiable fact.
The opinion is, well, my opinion which I can verify is my opinion .

Regardless of whether it's paranoia or not, these are sites where teenaged kids are supporting each other in a slow suicide! It is completely different. I have spoken to a mother who lost a daughter to this disease & said that there was pro-ana material on her laptop. Didn't cause it but didn't help either.

I tried to post a topic similar to this...purely neutral but wondering if there were these pro people disguised on this site and everyone about lynched me...obviously didn't read just saw the "term" be careful this topic is a fire storm that will get well meaning people banned from this site.

"Should they also ban people who promote binge drinking, sex with multiple partners, reckless living, and things of that nature?
Those are also disgustingly unhealthy lifestyles that can lead to illness or death. Really, what's the difference?"

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Absolutely. Everyone has their struggles, all different. Anessa, have you ever stopped to think that maybe MFP can help those who are battling eating disorders (anorexia and etc.)?

It's a tough call sometimes. Does someone who shares their story - their struggle with bulemia, with substance abuse, etc. - and describes some unsafe behavior encourage that behavior by describing it? You could say it's the context or tone. But that's hard to govern. I think you can try to ban the most egregious examples of "undesired" behavior, but it's never going to be clear cut.

Trying to distinguish how reckless a behavior is won't produce a standard we can all agree on. Some behaviors are more dangerous than others for sure. But how they are talked about it has multiple factors to consider too.

Even with the relatively clear guidelines here (no pro-ana posts), I would imagine there are some gray areas. Does talking about something encourage behavior? This is a similar argument some groups use to keep sex education out of schools.

I think you have to weigh the cost of banning discussion of topic X with the possible benefit of people getting help by talking about topic X. Of course, a privately-owned entity can do almost anything it wants, set its own rules. The idea of "free speech" really doesn't apply to MFP forum threads.

If I hear someone say its a ''phase'' again I swear... :mad:

Anorexia (or any EDs) CANNOT be solved by eating more!!! That's like saying depression can be solved by smiling. As has been said here already, EDs are complex, psychological disorders that come from the mind, not an appetite issue.

I like this example. It's a good reminder that we're dealing with a mental health issue, not simply eating more food. Similar to the idea that alcohol consumption is a symptom of alcoholism. It's not the booze itself that makes someone alcoholic. You can remove the alcohol and someone is still an alcoholic.

I don't understand how anyone can support this (it's out of ignorance).

Hopefully I can help educate you out of your ignorance, then .

It's not a case of supporting the sites in question for me and I suspect a hell of a lot of others.

It's about freedom and lack of government intervention.
About how authoritarianism to my mind causes more problems for more people than it solves with those it's targeting.

Remember 'wikileaks'?
If you googled for 'wikileaks' just after the big controversy, google didn't return the site. Despite that it should have reasonably been the first result. This sort of thing is exactly what "the west" criticises various countries in "the east" for doing. Information is power and people do like to control it.
If you try and find information about what sites some countries censor, you'll find that information is also censored by said countries.
It's only a rather small step from that to censoring people discussing censoring. Then people discussing other anti-establishment ideas and so on.

Uuum, this sounds like paranoia to me, actually.

I don't know what the solution is. I don't support censorship or government control, but I do support thinking through solutions instead of allowing paranoia to stop people from thinking.

"This sounds like paranoia," lol, okay. Pretty sure this poster was pointing out that they ARE thinking. Saying "it's paranoia" to criticize the large measures of control different governments have been executing in the last decade (really, you think it's paranoia when we just dealt with SOPA, PIPA, and now ACTA? Those are all specifically the internet, and not limited to America) sounds like someone doesn't WANT to think or question, not the other way around.

In regards to the topic at hand: I actually just posted something along these lines in this forum...but about MFP. I, too, am against censorship and government control. I'm not for some crazy "ALL OF THESE SITES SHOULD BE BANNED" or prosecution... however, I have a problem when that stuff comes on MFP--a site that specifically has "fitness" in the title. And it does. Frequently. That's not a matter of, "Well don't look then," because it filters through. A person with a weightloss ticker aiming for 75 lbs, with a skeletal avatar, posting in the main forum about something else...? That's a trigger, that's something I wasn't purposely looking for, and that's something that shouldn't be on this site.

I always say, once you have an eating disorder, you always have at. I'm a "recovering anorexic," because I never feel fully recovered; even after three or four years of relatively healthy eating, other hormonal conditions I had put weight on. Well, here I am on MFP trying to lose weight... and the counting calories instantly brought relapses. I've worked on getting over that, found lifting really focuses my "FITNESS" mindset instead of "THIN" mindset, and I've recovered fairly well from the last six months of up and down on here. But that doesn't mean I'm steel against incredible triggers that find their way on this site.

Also, to the person who said EDs are about "showing despair/wanting to die to the outside world," unfortunately that's not always true. MANY, MANY cases of anorexia and bulimia are rooted in issues of control.

EDIT: Also, to the person who said there should be ED sections of personal communities on here... unfortunately, there are a few. I was a member of many, and found that threads like, "POST YOUR GOAL WEIGHT" or "PICS" were frequent threads. Many of the forums would say, "We're just trying to be here for each other; no pressure to recover or to relapse." Well, not urging people to recover was triggering enough for me to have to leave the groups and take a break from MFP.