Episode 140: The Killing of Noelia Castillo

Noelia Castillo, a 25-year-old Spanish woman, was killed by euthanasia on March 26th in Barcelona. Her case gained worldwide prominence due to Noelia’s status as the first person granted to die of euthanasia in Spain due to mental health issues.

We discuss the case, euthanasia’s knock on effects on other services, the UK’s defeat of proposed assisted suicide laws, and how euthanasia laws are an acceptance of institutional failure. 

Plus,  Anna Khachiyan’s dehumanisation of Noelia in the final hours of her life, pre-Christian Europe’s relationship with death, the book Do Not Go Gentle, and why Noelia’s life need not have been one tragedy after another.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:18

Hi, welcome to Red Femme. A bit of a sad episode today. Today we're going to be talking about Noelia Castillo, a young woman in Spain who was euthanized for quote-unquote mental health reasons. People have may have seen this case being spoken about in the media. It's blown up on Twitter. But Noelia was a young woman, 25 years old, who was placed into foster care. She was in a kind of group home setting where she was gang raped. She then attempted suicide, and in attempting suicide by jumping out of a building, she sustained a spinal cord injury and became paraplegic. She then applied for euthanasia. There was a court battle with her father trying to stop it. There is a sort of her mother's role in this is kind of ambiguous. Sometimes she made comments in favor of the euthanasia, other times not. But as we know, Noelia was put into foster care, so there was a failure on their end somewhere along the line. And she is now dead after being euthanized in a Spanish hospital. An incredibly sad case. And I find it interesting that this has been going on in the Netherlands, the this euthanasia for mental health reasons. But this is the it's the very first case in Spain. And I think the media coverage uh on Twitter, on like right-wing Twitter in particular, really focused on her being uh raped by migrant men in this group home setting. But there's so much to this case where it really is so demonstrative of the problem, the problems with euthanasia that there are unacceptable situations, a set of a set of a state of affairs that is totally unacceptable and shouldn't have been allowed to happen in the first place. And the state, rather than trying to rectify that state of affairs or help the victims, kills the victims, makes them a non-factor in their own suffering. And what it I mean, it's so unbelievably horrifyingly tragic that this was allowed to happen at all. But of course, this is the end point of euthanasia. Everyone is suffering and everyone is dying. And where you draw that line is incredibly ambiguous. When people say, like pro-euthanasia activists say, oh, well, there is there really a difference between mental and physical suffering, they're correct to say that there isn't much of a meaningful difference. And so much of so many of us, it's so it's so different to the idea of euthanasia we have, which is that you know, it's these terminally ill old people. If we're all suffering, then anybody anyone can have be justifiably killed. And um this was an active killing of a human being, this was not a suicide, this was someone being killed by somebody else. So, so much to say. Anyway, to you, Jen.

SPEAKER_01 4:00

Noelo Castillo Ramos, full name, I think. Uh yeah, I mean, ending up in a children's home by 15, we all know this is probably the worst lot that a child in the Western Hemisphere can have, and being gang raped by migrants, by the way, who never, these teenage boys, apparently nothing ever happened to them. And then after that, apparently she had boyfriends who she had a boyfriend that sexually assaulted her after taking some sleeping pills, and she was also sexually assaulted in a nightclub. So this is something that on the one hand, like you know, most young women I would say get sexually harassed or sexually assaulted, but this was such an extreme case of a of a woman um or a girl being sexually abused whilst under care of the state, and there's such a travesty in that sh there's never any accountability for that, whether it's the perpetrators or whether it's the fact that that state care therefore didn't provide any kind of safeguarding and and genuine oversight of care. And then the way that the state handles it is they provide this option of, well, if you can't bear your suffering, we can just help you kill yourself. Even the way that uh a lawyer was interviewed and she said that the hospital had already um like organized Noella's organs for donation, and that this was one of the reasons that the hospital was not gonna kind of um tolerate any kind of backing out, or they were very, very intent on it, as if this is just a sort of process like any other, as if taking away someone's life is just the same as uh even just the same as donating a kidney or going in for a particular procedure. And they were really moving scenes when people went outside the hospital in Barcelona and were praying for her, and it does seem like her mother in the end was unsupportive. And Noella's best friend from childhood turned up and she wasn't allowed to see her. It's just such a tragic ending after such a combination of tragic tragic events, and of course, being in a wheelchair though, there was footage of her walking with a walker, and of course, advances in medical science are happening all the time regarding that. But when she tried to kill herself because of her already immense suffering, it's it's like it's incredible to me that, but clearly she had, let's be honest, she must have had pretty terrible parents, um, given that they didn't look after her well as a child, enough to the point the state took her away. That the she never felt a sense of hope. And there was no one there to say, you know, you can actually still have a good life, there is still something to live for, there are disabled people that live um active lives. And the idea that state resources wouldn't go in that direction, but they would go in the direction of, well, we can assist your your suicide if you want, instead. And I think it was when she was 22, she first applied for it, and then there were very I think her father tried to put in a legal injunction, something like that. So it had been about three, um, just over three years of um of basically trying to get through the courts in various ways to allow it to be sanctioned. And for me, it's also kind of like the precedent that is set has a knock-on effect then for other services. So I can't really imagine if one of the options to suffering, uh whether physical or mental, certainly in terms of mental health services, when there is that option of assisted dying and we're gonna pretend that it's all, you know, an option like any other. What is the incentive then for mental health services to improve, say? What what what is there to not just say, well, we can just downgrade a lot of the support we have for disabled people because actually a lot of them choose suicide. This is very much, I think, the future if these laws are passed. Now, in the UK, we have seems basically defeated our assisted dying laws. And I think that's in part, in large part due to how shoddy and ambitious the actual bill was. Like that the doctor didn't need to ask you, why is it you want to kill yourself? Which, if you went to the doctors and said, I really want to kill myself, if you meant by your own hand, they would almost certainly say, Why, before going on to potentially diagnose you with depression and giving you some help with that with pills or therapy or whatever. But because of all of that wasn't in there, it it just I think a lot of people saw that this um, even those that agree with assisted suicide, which I don't in in any circumstance, but those that even thought in some circumstances it can be fine, it was so broad that I think that was why it it seems to have failed. And I think that these tragic cases are not also not gonna be, you know, some skeptical people may say, oh, well, you know, that's just an extraordinary set of circumstances. Yes, it's very tragic, but that won't be the norm. I don't believe that's the case. I mean, it doesn't matter anyway, because I think one human life is worth, you know, everything. But I don't see that these cases are outliers at all. And if you have a child that is gang raped in a children's home, nothing is done. Then she's sexually abused by a boyfriend and then assaulted by a man in a nightclub, nothing is done. It's almost as if we've accepted institutional failure, the institutions can't do what they say they do, which is protect children, or that the police protect women. And then we go, okay, well, we'll change our medical institutions so that if um our institutions fail so badly that you've already tried to kill yourself and now you're in a wheelchair and you just really want to die, we'll provide the option for you. It's just like a race to the bottom of standards and a race into evil, basically.

SPEAKER_00 10:34

Yeah, and you and you raise such a good point. What is the point? And and this is um even in the cases where people find euthanasia acceptable, Lugaric's disease, um Alzheimer's dementia, whatever, what is the point in uh advancing medical science in these cases if people can just choose to kill themselves? I mean, if the majority of people, if it gets to the point where it's normalized and the majority of people diagnosed with Lugarics disease opt for euthanasia, then what incentive is there to improve the care of people or try to cure something like Lugaric's disease? And then spinal cord injury is a really interesting case. There's been huge advances in medical science and spinal cord injury in some cases. Um, if the injury happens and this particular like procedure happens shortly after, it could be reversed. You know, huge, huge, huge advances in um helping people with who are paraplegic, quadriplegic, live very high quality lives. What is the point? Why would we go ahead and do something like that if if we've just decided your life is not valuable? And that's ultimately the message of euthanasia. If you are in a doctor's office and you're a quadriplegic or a paraplegic and the doctor offers you euthanasia, he or she is telling you your life is not worth living. That's ultimately what is being said. And it's just you're right in this, in this um to draw on institutional failure, it's true. We used to have an idea at some point, I know it might be hard to believe, but if you were a child who was unlucky enough to have terrible parents, the state would provide for you a reasonably good childhood anyway. That used to be the case. People used to have positive experiences with the foster care system, people used to have um positive experiences getting treated for depression, people used to have these positive experiences, you used to be able to trust institutions to a certain extent. And what it is is this total cynicism. It's it's staring down, it's a nihilistic dark black hole, which is you think that you can live a full life after you were gang raped. You think that you can be happy while you can't. And you know, it listen to the darkest, worst thoughts in your mind. Those are valid, that's okay. And we, in fact, we'll endorse them. Um it's honestly truly, truly, truly horrifying. And I I've seen there was also a case of a young woman in the Netherlands, and in Noelia's case as well, there've been people saying, well, this is borderline personality disorder. She is diagnosed with borderline personality disorder. Both women were, you know, putting aside the controversies of that um diagnosis in and of itself, which is obviously a very controversial diagnosis. But even if you were to accept it at face value, one of the one of the symptoms of borderline personality disorder is persistent chronic suicidal ideation. And then when people are treated for borderline personality disorder, they no longer have chronic, persistent suicidal ideation. And again, because of advances in psychology and medical science, it's a very treatable thing these days. But what would be the point in trying to treat anything if we just accept this total cynicism, this total nihilism, this total lack of value in human life? And I think it really does, you know, European society not perfect, not a perfect place for women, you know. It's not like we have solved male violence against women in Europe or European history is not rife with examples of women being treated very badly or whatever. But for we had the first wave of feminism, the second wave of feminism, stranger attacks were, you know, relatively unrelatively uncommon in the West. You know, this is not something that happens very often. Um tragically, most rapes and sexual assault happened in the context of intimate partner relationships. Um stranger attacks, stranger attacks were very rare. And we, yeah, we had these advances in the first and second wave of feminism, women were entering the professions, um women were really, we had maternity leave, particularly in continental Europe, really excellent provision for all of that. And now cases like this and and and the ways in which we are importing rape, basically, to Europe, it just in it it every single advance that we've had in the rights of women just are seeming to be destroyed. This case is a perfect example of it. I mean, can you imagine um the reactions of like second-wave feminists to such a to such a um such a case? I mean, it's it's horrifying. There was an expectation at one point that if you were raped, the rapist would go to prison. And this was something, and we made it so that, you know, when you when you um prosecuted a rapist, you weren't allowed to ask about a woman's sexual history. We had all of these advances that said, you know, we want our institutions to deal with these things. What this is, is a total concession. It's saying rape is normal. Rape is now a normal part of life, and you should accept it. And the consequences of rape should be felt by the victims. It's ex is exactly what's being said.

SPEAKER_01 16:48

Yeah, I think the reason that this, because it's the first euthanasia in Spain for mental health reasons, it did manage to get global coverage. I saw lots of earnest Americans saying, I'm gonna get a plane there, I'm gonna stop this, because they just couldn't believe it. And I think for societies that have not introduced these laws, that principle that life has inherent worth, and that this is just the opposite of everything that that medicine and healthcare is tilted towards, right? It's it's all designed to stop your death and uh your um illnesses proceeding rather than concluding them with your demise. I think that for a lot of people it was really shocking that this could possibly happen. And I feel like it is shocking, but that I also think that exactly what you say in terms of when you then start to take it to its other logical conclusions, like, yeah, if you're disabled, this is now an option, and this is even presented as a not just neutral but a positive choice that some people have made. Then you get to, well, what about disabled children? Really severely disabled children. And at that point, people will at first say, Oh, you know, they will need to wait till they're 18 to make that decision. Like if you are getting a tattoo or an ear piercing, as if this is in some way similar. But then people say, Well, as you know, if they're children, they can't consent. We just need the parents' consent. Like this is such a dangerous road to travel down. And I feel like as soon as you step away from that universal principle that if you are alive, if you are a human being that has life, you have inherent value and inherent worth, and your life is inherently inherently valuable, and we cannot stray away from that. And as soon as we do, we start to eventually enter just this realm of like monsters and horror that the people that even started this years before would never would never have envisioned. And I saw it overwhelmingly, people were shocked, outraged, there was a lot of outpouring of sympathy. And then I came across this tweet by Anna Katchian, who does the Red Scare podcast. It's a very good podcast, it's very popular. I've listened to some clips that are very good. I can't listen to it all just because of the accents. Though you know, she stopped doing the vocal fry, actually. So maybe, maybe I can. Anyway, I follow her on X. I think she often has very sharp um takes and insights. However, in this case, I saw this quote tweet that said, Well, this woman has BPD, and so what she's really doing this for is attention. And then, you know, the the rest of it after that was just basically um dehumanizing Noelle. It's not just pathologization, it's pure dehumanization. And my thoughts were well, first of all, you've got the wrong personality disorder because people with BPD don't want attention, they like maybe one-to-one attention with somebody that they're very close with, this concept of the special person, they're not actually particularly attention-seeking. That's histrionic personality disorder. So, first of all, you're you're factually wrong, you don't know your personality disorders, but secondly, I just thought even if you thought for a second that that were true, why in this moment would you seek to kind of stick the knife into a woman who is dying? And even if you believe it's for this uh, oh well, she just wants attention, she's gonna die anyway. Like, what would this even mean? And also, I just thought I had the thought that uh, because me and Hannah were discussing this, I think, beyond the day when we first saw it, and Hannah's initial reaction was, oh, she's doing what she always does, she always has to downplay the suffering of women when they've been um sexually assaulted or sexually abused. And you said, you know, it seems like maybe this is Anna Katchin is someone who has been raped and is wants to deny its significance or that it's really as harmful. And you said that something that she tweeted, because other people had had this particular um speculation, and she said, uh, oh, I've never been raped, and you said, Well, I just don't know if I believe that, I don't have another explanation. And I said, Oh, I do believe her, I fully believe her that she's not been raped. But I think that given that she is a very disturbed woman, which I'm sorry about anyone who's anorexic, over 30, let alone over 40, there is a distinction within psychiatry, which is that they're Most disturbed anorexia patients, and I think that she actually has all kinds of masochistic fantasies that she plays through her head and that finds pleasurable. And it is like I she would like the attention of the whole world being like, Don't kill yourself, don't do it, blah. And that my perspective is if she ever had been raped herself, she would know you don't get any fucking attention. At best, you get ignored. And at worst, people demonize you for it, which was exactly what Hannah King was fucking doing to this woman. So I think I convinced you that that is actually her perspective, is that she had attention-seeking behaviors and attention-seeking fantasies, probably when younger, perhaps now, never actually had a very sheltered life, never did trial any kind of outrageous or impulsive behavior, blah, blah, that then leads to some kind of destruction. Um, and hasn't been raped, and therefore thinks that you do get lots of sympathy and attention, and the world is your audience, and and this is all uh just a kind of beg. And I and I just, yeah, it was so disgusting. And I was like, God, I always try and appreciate this woman because she seems relatively high IQ and has some good takes, but why would you do this, even if that was your true opinion? Like, why would you seek to um sully this individual in such a tragic um situation? But it's that thing where people identify with someone, but really they're identifying with a part of themselves that they have contempt for and they disavow. Because that that was really what was kind of pouring from the tweet was just sheer contempt. And I just thought, no, it's not her that wants attention, it's part of you, part of you that you hate that you disavow, and you're the BPD art ho, quote unquote, actually. Uh, and it's this is just a full projection going on where you're like beating part of yourself in public, but and but then it cut it started a cascade of then like men underneath going like, oh yeah, that's true. Oh yeah, that makes total sense. Oh yeah, did you know that after getting gang raped, she also claims to have been sexually assaulted by a boyfriend and by a man in a nightclub. As if, as if this isn't quite a common occurrence. Like, that's the thing that people like to point at things and go, oh, that's just so extraordinary. A woman being gang raped, then raped by a boyfriend, then sexually assaulted in a nightclub. And I'm like, Yeah, I mean, that's uh probably more on the uncommon end, but it's not out of the bounds of unusualness. It's the same attitude I find when similar, like if a woman will say to me, like, oh, but you know I was sexually assaulted, I'm like, Do you know I don't have a single friend that's been not been sexually assaulted? I barely have a friend that's not been raped, and I don't go around like choosing them according to that. It's that this is much more common than you fucking think, and it's more common because it's it's like a taboo, and people don't want to even use the word rape and they don't want to talk about sex in public. And then when women are open and honest about it, people like fucking Anna Catchion seek to dehumanize them, and then there's a world of men on the internet, so yeah, you probably are surprised, but you shouldn't be. But so it's it's like also just this thing with it. It means that yet again, like women should keep a lid on this stuff so that we all somehow think it's um not just unique or novel, but that it mustn't be true that a woman's had those particular experiences, if that makes sense.

SPEAKER_00 25:54

Yeah, and I think the attention-seeking thing is really about something that does happen in BPD, which is suicidal gesturing. And I think that there potentially is a way to see this as like the ultimate suicidal gesture, to kind of like do it in public, and then you, you know, and it's a way of signaling the distress you have inside to the outside to do these kinds of very often very public um suicidal gestures, basically, that is common in BPD. But what people don't understand, that's part of the disease. When people leave that state, this is also quite characteristic of BPD, is rapid mood swings. So they'll be throwing themselves in front of a train and 10 minutes later going, hi everyone, you want to go for a drink? Like, like as if that just incredibly dramatic attempt to kill themselves didn't happen. This is a thing that people joke about. It's characteristic of the disease. And people who, you know, like take care of people with BPD, you just learn how to manage these things. And guess what? Those people's lives, those mostly women, but some men, are worth living anyway. They're being alive is better than them being dead. And often the other thing that's sick about this is that they are suicidal gestures, they're not suicidal attempts because they're not, they're not, uh, they're not clinical depressives who have these long states of depression that go on for months or years and want to kill themselves. It's part of this rapid cycling thing. Um, so it's if it is a this was an orchestrated suicidal gesture, it makes the whole thing more tragic, not less tragic. But you're right in that it's a dehumanization. It's saying this is the kind of woman that you shouldn't have sympathy for. This is the kind of woman. And just to say, she did a follow-up tweet and said, you know, the the hero of sensitive young men that she is. This young man was killed by euthanasia in Canada and no one cared. First of all, Anna, people who are active on the euthanasia question absolutely did care. I tweeted about that case when it was happening before I knew who Noelia Castillo was. So was everyone else who cares about euthanasia. The idea, and and the cases that get the most headlines in Canada generally are these young men with usually type 1 diabetes or um blindness or yeah, paraplegia. The idea that people don't care about these young men is not the case. And the reason that right-wing Twitter cared about it was because of the raped by migrants thing. Duh. It's not because that she was a woman. And even this, I think she used the term doe-eyed young woman, it's just dripping in contempt. And it is insane, it doesn't matter. It's the one thing that she's incredibly consistent on, even if it's a rape victim that has the sympathy of the right, um, the kind of the audience that she does have, she still manages to find an angle with which to have contempt. It's almost funny. Like the other one was Neil Gaiman, Neil Gaiman's victim. She had a very complex sort of mental gymnastics kind of way. I think the angle there was she took pictures of herself while crying. So therefore, it's good she was raped. I don't know, or therefore she's not a sympathetic person. And that's basically what it is. It's this idea that these women are really bad, actually. Did you consider that these women are really bad? And you might, and it's like, Anna, I don't care if she was really, really bad. I probably would find Noelia Castillo incredibly annoying. I'm sure she had BPD and did all like I know this is a horrible thing today. I'm just to say, I'm sure she did all kinds of really annoying shit all the time. Guess what? This is the consequences of being gang raped. But it's just, it's it's so consistent in her thought and so she so has such an allegiance to it. Like she's so devoted to these kinds of like, let me find a way in which to demonize and dehumanize this rape victim. You're right, it can only be that she doesn't like what it represents in about her, something within herself. Because it's not political, it's it doesn't follow political, like like Anna Katchin is against mass migration. I'm sure Anna Catchin is against euthanasia, she's on the right, but it is something in particular about women who get sympathetic attention for being raped that she does not like.

SPEAKER_01 30:55

Well, in large part, it's envy. She doesn't make these claims about old women older than her who've been raped or sexually abused. It's only young women. And I think that it's a it's a weird thing of like I would actually somewhere I would like that attention, even though the attention is often negative, when she sees attention which is not negative, it's suddenly like and yeah, I remember the is it Niall or Neil? I don't remember the the the author, that gaiman guy, and she just was calling that woman a BPD art ho. And I was just like, have you have you uh like are you writing these tweets in the mirror? Like, you're the BPD art ho! Like I know that this is a bit of a meme, and men will be like, oh, I love them. And it's like this idea that this kind of category of women is actually very exciting and sexy or whatever. Um, but even that, like to try and turn that into some like deogatory, really deogatory thing. And yeah, no, I I think it's honestly this is more just to do with like worries about youth and envy and contempt for a part of yourself and whatever, because it is odd. That's how you know it's like it's super seething, it's super libidinally invested, it's just very odd. I just thought, like, how could you not have the grace to not do even if you have that thought, why would you at the time on the day this woman is gonna die, think I'll keep that kind of decrepit, sinister thought to myself, or I'll talk to a friend about it and like try and work out why I have these horrible thoughts. Anyway, yeah, I uh that was a weird dimension, and I feel like I don't really know what the knock-on effects will be because I do think that a lot of people are clearly very shocked. Certainly, that interview with the lawyer that talked about how her organs had already been assigned and therefore she was kind of being pressured by the hospital. I that went viral. But I feel like it's so hard to kind of put the cat back in the bag, you know, like what will it take? And Spain, as we've seen, right, in during Holy Week, as it is at the moment, like is such a Catholic country. The fact that it's happened in Spain, I would I I was very surprised that they had euthanasia there. I mean, Switzerland and the Netherlands, like the home of Protestantism and therefore a kind of relativism. Like, okay, uh, this was understandable to me, but it happening in in Spain, I was uh yeah, very, very surprised that that it's the law there. And I feel like it would, I think it takes more to get rid of these laws once they've been done, because it creates a certain collateral. If you go back to classing a doctor injecting a patient with a poison that kills them um as murder, you then have this kind of you know, a period of time whereby doctors have all done what is now considered murder again. So I do I do wonder if any of it go on.

SPEAKER_00 34:23

Yeah, just to say on it being such a Catholic country, such a Christian country, listened to a homily recently. Um, and the priest was saying, he was talking about this, the value of human life. And in Roman society, so the society in which Christianity spread, in in pagan Europe, basically what would happen is a woman would give birth and then she would present the baby to the father. And if the father didn't look like the look of the baby, thought maybe, maybe the baby's not mine, or the baby's disabled, or I just he doesn't look like he's gonna be a you know, a decathlon winner, or whatever, or I don't like that she's a girl, or whatever, they would leave the baby on a hillside to die. That was the common practice. It was the father got to decide who lived and who died, and if the baby had a deformity or whatever. And it was very common in in pagan Europe to kill the elderly, to kill the disabled. And I don't remember who he quoted, but he said if if a hundred years from now, Christians are these weird people that don't kill the disabled and don't kill the elderly, that will be a success. But actually, that a hundred years is now. That a hundred years is now. The idea that human, that all human life, whether disabled, um, you know, whether the based on race or based on sex or based on whether or not they're annoying women with BPD who do weird suicidal gesturing and piss everyone off all the time. And God, how are we gonna manage this? The idea that all human beings have life is a very novel idea in the span of human history that often that and it comes from Christianity. It does. Um, and so for this to be happening in Christian Europe is um very sad. And just about the Anakcha thing, Anakatchan thing, because it did really upset me, actually, that tweet. It's like finish the sentence, Anna, like that. So she's an annoying, and then she said there's something fishy about this situation. Yeah, I would say there's several fucking things fishy about it. Like I would say that there's a few things fishy about it. So annoying women who, you know, try and do who do suicidal gesturing and look sympathetically into the camera and have dull eyes, what deserve to die. Like, what is the what finish the sentence? Finish the sentence. The the the sentiment is as you were saying, it's just don't have sympathy for this person. Um, and it's kind of the subject the this we're talking about the objective nature of the objective value of human life. And there are people with severe BPD who do have to be followed around by caseworkers and go, oh, they've thrown themselves in front of the train again. What are we gonna do this time? I guess the plan didn't work that we put in place last time. We did do a case plan and a behavior management thing, and that didn't work. Oh goodness, what are we gonna do? That woman, probably a woman, let's be honest, doesn't deserve to die. Her life still has value, and it's worth paying those very soft, caring ladies who sit and make case plans and behavior management plans because every human life has value. That's it.

SPEAKER_01 37:58

Yeah, well, it's all very unconvincing. It's like if I went around saying, Oh, you know, boyish lesbians that are from the north of England but haven't totally retained their accent yet. I just hate them. I just have total contempt for them, you know? And I don't know why it'd be like, yeah, well, I uh I understand why the 40-year-old anorexic might be particularly sensitive about uh calling other women attention seeking. Like, I mean, I hate to say it, but she was just so horrible. So it's like I'm willing to go out on a limb here. Like, hmm, I wonder why that is that you can uh you recognize other women that are disturbed and want to say that well, they deserve it anyway, and I'm totally not in that category.

SPEAKER_00 38:50

Oh, completely, completely. It's the only explanation because it is psychotic, like it is, it's nuts. Like, and I I wonder how many other I'm sure the majority of people clock it, and she's incredibly high IQ. So I imagine she knows that people clock it on some level. It all sounds really sad, and like um it's very good to have compassion for yourself, and maybe just have a bit of a sense of humor about these kinds of things, and maybe she wouldn't be struggling so much with it and feeling the need to um, I don't know, manage all this aggression outwards to other people if she was in a healthier place about it. But anyway, I usually hate this kind of like psychologizing of people that you don't know, but like I just I there isn't another explanation for this craziness.

SPEAKER_01 39:48

No, and I think that yeah, I don't usually apply psychological explanations until it's the only, until it's like there's no other explanation. And I'm like, okay, well, then there's usually a very obvious one. And it's just, yeah, as I said, like envy, rivalry, contempt, those are mixed. It's like, yeah, who would I feel rivalrous towards? A woman that was very similar to me, but was maybe getting some kind of attention that I desire. Like, yeah, rivalry, contempt, and then it lacks the way you get over envy is identification, but you to have identification and get over the envy, um, sorry, to manage to get over the envy through identification, you would have to humanize yourself and the other person and have some sort of sympathy and understand that they're not actually you, you're not really in the same category, even if in some, even if you share certain traits, such as being attention seeking. Oh, I'm not saying that Noella is, I'm saying that this is the the way that clearly Anna Catchin viewed her and how she expressed it. Um, attention-seeking, disturbed, almost like disabled, to be honest. Like there's there's so much there. Um, but Noella was still in her 20s, and there are a lot of older women that regard young women as having committed the crime of still being young, particularly those who are very concerned with how they look and are disturbed, and all the other things that we know are true about anorexia, the heart of which is not wanting to be an adult in an adult's body. So, yeah, we we can also include strange things going on with the body there. But I mean, I also just think that it's not possible to view it really as a attention-seeking gesture because she actually did it. Like she fought for years to do it and unfortunately wasn't stopped. And it's just, yeah, it's just so fucking tragic. Gone.

SPEAKER_00 41:57

Yeah, and and let's just say the things that I'm saying about Noelia being annoying or doing suicidal gesturing. I'm I'm only um saying that insofar as to say, like, if that were the case, it still wouldn't be acceptable. You're right, and that the fact that she actually committed suicide is a very strong indication that she does not have BPD. Um, and uh I mean, it also the thing about this kind of um abnormal suicidality is that it doesn't match the circumstances in her case. Um, it very much matched the circumstances. She truly was victimized, she was paraplegic, she didn't have use of her legs. Um, this is a thing that makes both of those things make people suicidal. And the answer to that is to go, your life has value, and how can we make it that you can live independently and well and whatever? And if we disincentivize that, then we will go back to you know how people, paraplegics and the mentally ill were treated before. It's it's um truly horrifying.

SPEAKER_01 43:05

It has a thing that's incredible, really, because it is only due to Christianity that there is this novel original idea in history that life has inherent value, and so it's Christian societies that of course have that um as a cultural value and a norm and a principle. But euthanasia, thanks to progressivism, as far as I'm aware, is only really happening in the West. So it's like a backlash, it's kind of like can we take the moral relativism at the heart of liberalism and extend that into these nightmares? And it really, for me, whilst I think liberalism probably was a product in some way of Christianity, at least it's yeah, it's fruition.

unknown 43:59

Um

SPEAKER_01 44:00

Even if it was in reaction and the stuff to do with the enlightenment there. But it's like, it does seem like now they are at loggerheads. And it is really becoming this like traditionalism versus liberalism thing. And there's just people on the liberal side that seem to be increasingly um fomenting forms of death and therefore destruction and decay in our society. And then on the other side, there are generally more socially conservative traditionalist that are like, no, no, no, this isn't our history, like, this isn't what our society you know has been. What yeah, and it's just, I think um, that clash is happening. I do think it will be resolved quite soon. And I do think that the social conservatives will win. That seems to be the picture across across the West, because it's kind of like we have ran the experiment of liberalism on steroids and progressivism, and we found out that the progress is not going towards things being better and better, but actually being far worse than 50 years or 100 years ago in some ways. And so you you kind of just it's like you look around you and like it's like the proof is in the pudding. Um so like we've ran we've ran the experiment, and there are horrors awaiting and currently happening, even.

SPEAKER_00 45:28

Yeah, I don't know. I don't know if it and I think euthanasia is a is a tricky one because people go, oh, and Lugarics, oh, in whatever, you know, there are these acceptable cases, but unfortunately, when you accept one case, it it it it truly is a slippery slope in a way that gay marriage is not, because not everyone is gay, but everyone dies and everyone suffers. It's a real, real, actual um slippery slope. So we'll see. I mean, I was really encouraged by the reactions online, the people praying outside the hospital. It seems like the whole Spanish-speaking world really lit up about it, lots of like Latin American celebrities talking about it and this kind of thing. So we'll see. We'll see what happens.

SPEAKER_01 46:18

Okay, well, thank you for listening, everyone. I should mention, by coincidence, there is a book out today on East Asia, which goes through the arguments against it called Do Not Go Gentle by Kathleen Stock. I think it arrived in my Kindle. I pre-ordered it and it arrived uh in my Kindle at midnight last night. So I've only read a few pages, but it's not like I can give a review. But from what I can tell uh of the first, actually a few dozen pages, is that it goes through in a very clear, straightforward way um the arguments surrounding the issue. So if you're interested in that topic, you should check it out. I should say actually that during Lent, because I haven't been posting on social media, I have read about two books a week. So this is also saying to people, if you do decide to do social media fasting, you do find other ways to fill your time that are maybe more productive. So that's my pitch for reading more generally. Anyway, all right. Well, if you've enjoyed this episode, check us out on Patreon where we have bonus episodes every weekend. And otherwise, we will see you next week, likely for a transgender related topic. We just go through the liberal tenants euthanasia, transgenderism. We just cycled through them.

SPEAKER_00 47:49

Thank you for listening, everyone, and we'll catch you next time. Bye bye, everyone. Bye.