empowerment

I went to a lecture yesterday that talked about pro-anorexia web sites. The speaker, who is an English professor, talked about the rhetoric of the sites. What she was seeing was the authors of the sites claiming the right to define themselves and control their own bodies. But she couldn't bring herself to say that was a good thing, as feminist as it is.

I have followed web pages by people with multiple personality who choose not to integrate (an example), which also goes against standard medical/psychological advice. As I have followed some of these pages, such as Magdalen, I have been struck that a number of them have come to integration after all. They just went by the route of empowering themselves rather than following the guidance of therapists. I did ask a question about that and the author of the paper said that she has seen that happen with pro-an web sites too.

I don't feel comfortable drawing a conclusion either.