Diogenes, a word about your behavior..

The BBQ Pit
1

In this thread, Diogenes steps in to make the following remark:

[QUOTE=Diogenes]
The mere loss of a pregnancy, while sad and disappointing, is not even close to the devastation of the loss of an actual child. To equate those things is an insult to everyone who’s ever lost a child. Condolences to the OP but he needs to man up a little bit. He’s coming off as a little self-absorbed to me and I think his thread title is misleading.
[/QUOTE]

Now, I am not going to comment on your line of thinking. In actuality, I agree with its principle. As do others, no doubt, including The Swan, who made similar but much kinder remarks in that thread.

I am going to comment on your behavior. As we see, The Swan had the good grace to recognize that he’d crossed the line, as evidenced by this perfectly reasonable retraction:

[QUOTE=The Swan]
I’m a jerk. Please disregard my posts, as I think they are just inappropriate given the OP.
[/QUOTE]

Bravo, Swan.

Diogenes, however, remains a prig of the highest order. Clearly you missed out on the basic introductory session of “When it’s not a good time to share my opinion.” That thread was neither the time nor the place to give someone an introduction to your bizarro-world version of Grief Heirarchy 101. I would like to think that perhaps you came into that thread intending to express condolences, not with the specific intent to shit all over someone’s already painful experience, and simply had a collosal brain fart, but I suppose it’s more likely that I’m giving you too much credit.

You are entitled to your opinion. You are entitled to spew that opinion out of every oriface as you please. But there are limits, even in this barely-polite society, and you not only crossed them, but danced across doing handsprings and yodeling at the top of your lungs. You, sir, are a jerk.

2

Add me to this Pitting. Jeez, Diogenes. How rude can you get?

I work in an organization where I deal every day with bereft women in this situation and similar situations. Telling them “your grief is miniscule and grow up” is not going to help them at all. We’re told to not minimize their grief, and to listen.

Why didn’t you just keep your mouth shut and stay out of the thread? Like a turd you drop your little post in there and then refuse to apologize or even acknowledge how rude you were.

Grief is a strange emotion and everyone deals with it differently. Stop lecturing people on how to deal with it. You sure as hell come off as sanctimonious.

3

Wow.

Normally, I tend to like DoggyKnees more than most posters do, but this was indeed over the line. He really needs to learn when to shut up and let people have their grief.

4

Diogenes is a troll.

And DNFTT.

5

As I said there, I understand where you are coming from (I think) given your opinions about abortion and the status of personhood. But I think he is entitled to call his baby a baby if he wants.

My brother had a heart attack in June and had a not insignificant chance of dying. Would my parents be more or less entitled to grieve than if he had died of the cancer he had in his 20s? He’s a more developed person now than he was then. But as mom said at the time, he’ll always be her “baby”.

6

I agree wholeheartedly with this pitting, and I applaud the finer distinctions bobkitty made.

There is, however, one inadvertent advantage to a post like** Diogenes** made. Arwin and I miscarried two weeks ago. Normally I keep a stiff upper lip, because that is how I personally prefer to deal with grief. But Dio’s post made me so angry, I actually allowed myself to grieve more then I otherwise would. In a kind of “I’ll grieve when and how I want to, thank-you-very-much”-kind of way, if that makes sense.

7

[QUOTE=Bosda Di’Chi of Tricor]
Diogenes is a troll.
[/QUOTE]
Nah, just a jerk. But a big one.

8

I think what **Diogones **is failing to acknowledge is the hopes and dreams that are lost when a pregnancy fails. They are the same exact hopes and dreams you have for a born child. They are what is hardest about losing anyone - born, unborn, or 50 years old. The actual physical absence isn’t so hard - after all, my son out of the room right now and I don’t mourn him - it’s the dreams that die.

I certainly had those hopes and dreams when I was 12 weeks pregnant. 12 weeks is a long time to plan and hope and dream, and your child becomes very real to you in that time.

And I agree that this “hierarchy of pain” is ridiculous. Who suffers more, a woman who looses a 10 year old to prolonged cancer or a 14 year old to a gun shot wound? A woman who gives birth to 5 children who all predecease her as adults, or a woman who looses 1 child in infancy? Why does acknowledging the pain of any of them “insult” the loss of the others? It’s not like there’s a finite amount of pain in the world.

It’s certainly not up to me to judge whether a person’s circumstances are “worthy” of pain. As a compassionate human being, I simply recognize when pain exists and offer what sympathy and aid I can.

And I am as pro-choice as pro-choice gets. I wouldn’t call SadDad’s loss a baby in a medical context or in an abortion debate, but that doesn’t mean he’s not in pain.

9

[QUOTE=WhyNot]
And I am as pro-choice as pro-choice gets. I wouldn’t call SadDad’s loss a baby in a medical context or in an abortion debate, but that doesn’t mean he’s not in pain.
[/QUOTE]
This is the part that keeps me from calling him a troll. Desiring to be consistent about how “fetuses” are referred to, and about their personhood is not a bad thing, and if you were approaching this intellectually it might be appropriate. He did choose not to continue in that thread so I assume he knows the difference!

10

[QUOTE=WhyNot]
I think what **Diogones **is failing to acknowledge is the hopes and dreams that are lost when a pregnancy fails.

[/QUOTE]

No, Diogenes just sucks.

He sucks so bad that Geordi couldn’t get rid of him by channeling the Warp Drive’s Flux Capacitor through the Deflector Shield grid.

11

Shame on you, Diogenes. Your behavior in that thread was just low.

12

DtC, AFAIK, I never had formed an opionion of you one way or another (due to my tendency to skip usernames) but that’s pretty shitty.

13

Y’know, I’m sure that when Diogenes comes in to defend himself, he’s going to turn everyone around. Yeah, that’s going to work out real well.

14

I have to agree. While I was thinking much as DtC I recognized that it was better left to another thread. At least the first part of his statement anyway; the second half however went from non-thinking jerkiness into outright jerkiness, and that aint cool.

15

I should have known better than to try to inject a little truthfulness or perspective into a trolling-for-sympathy thread. My bad.

I didn’t say he didn’t have a right to grieve. I said that miscarriages are sad and disappointing and I offered my condolences, but I also object to equating it with the loss of an actual child. It’s not the same thing at all. They just lost a pregnancy. Nobody died. It sucks but it doesn’t come close to equalling the tragedy of losing a real child. I felt kind of jerked around by the thread title. If he’s just said he felt bad about a miscarriage without equating it to the death of a child I probably never would have posted. I also admit to feeling some irritation at other posters who I felt were humoring that kind of hyperbole.

When I said he needed to “man up” and that I thought he was coming off as “self-absorbed” I was referring to the way he said he’d treated his wife.

I probably never should have posted anyway. I won’t apologize for my opinion because I wouldn’t mean and no one would believe it anyway but I will admit that I should have kept it to myself. It was a moment of pique and impulse.

16

[QUOTE=gigi]
Desiring to be consistent about how “fetuses” are referred to, and about their personhood is not a bad thing, and if you were approaching this intellectually it might be appropriate.
[/QUOTE]

I have no problem, as I’ve stated, with wanting to be consistent with privately held beliefs, or with beliefs period. My issue comes from Diogenes forcing his own opinion on someone in an inappropriate setting*. It would be okay for Diogenes to bitch-slap SadDad in a Great Debates thread on abortion, for example. Waltzing into what amounted to an emotional breakdown and announcing that the OP needs to suck it up because Diogenes doesn’t agree with the presented definition of babyhood is fuckwittery on a scale that transcends pitting.

[sub]* Before Dio comes in and attempts to hijack the thread by insisting he did no such thing, I shall clarify: While he did not “force his opinion” by attempting to turn SadDad’s opinion over to his own line of thinking, he did force his opinion by presenting it inappropriately and callously to someone who is not in a frame of mind to adequately defend himself.[/sub]

17

This is a BBS spun off a newspaper column, not a support group. Diogenes has no place telling anyone how much they are hurting, but I agree with his label of “trolling for sympathy,” for this kind of thread. It’s kind of like when someone on an elevator starts talking about their pancreas. Hey, I’m sorry for your pain, but I’m not sure why it’s any of my business.

18

You know with this

[QUOTE=Diogenes the Cynic]
My bad. <snip>
[/quote]

and

and

in the other thread, you might have avoided a pitting. Just sayng.

19

[QUOTE=Walter Windchill]
This is a BBS spun off a newspaper column, not a support group. Diogenes has no place telling anyone how much they are hurting, but I agree with his label of “trolling for sympathy,” for this kind of thread. It’s kind of like when someone on an elevator starts talking about their pancreas. Hey, I’m sorry for your pain, but I’m not sure why it’s any of my business.
[/QUOTE]

Gotta disagree with you there. If it had been in GD, or IMHO I might have sympathy for your position. But MPSI whatever the rest, has long been used for stories about what’s going in in the lives of Dopers. Unlike your elevator analogy, no ones’ making you read it.

20

[QUOTE=Diogenes the Cynic]
I felt kind of jerked around by the thread title.
[/QUOTE]

Then you should have Pitted him.