You mean a detailed story, or just the news of a miscarriage?
I haven’t seen SadDad’s medical files either, but a yolk sac does not develop in a vacuum. I find it highly unlikely that there was not a fertilized egg somewhere in the process.
When did I say it wasn’t mean-spirited? It’s an accurate description of my feelings, but it’s also obvious that I wouldn’t normally share a thought like that. In this case, I think it’s warranted. See, I don’t feel whatever urge you do to bite my tongue and be nice to someone who’s just pissed all over someone’s grief. Call me crazy, but I’m not thinking Diogenes needs a waaaaaaaaaambulance yet.
I also hope that wasn’t going through his head when he wrote what he did, but it’s certainly the first thing that came to my mind when I read it. I agree that I don’t think a fetus really is the same as a child - but I’m willing to acknowledge that that’s not a logically-defensible view, any moreso than the other perspective. Diogenes really is so fixed in his view on that issue that he gets upset when people even raise the idea that other people disagree. If you’ve ever read one of the abortion threads he participates in, he either literally cannot understand that other people honestly differ in their views, or he’s so invested in his ideology that he refuses to acknowledge that the other viewpoint is also reasonable because he sees that as a tactical weakness. It doesn’t seem like a huge leap to imagine that he had his ultra-orthodox pro-choice politics in mind when he made his utterly, bizarrely inappropriate post in that thread.
I dunno. Maybe his obsessively rigid politics didn’t enter into what he said, but I wouldn’t bet the farm on it.
Yeah, calling someone out on his own behavior is just unconscionable!
Frankly, my secret hope is always that maybe, just maybe, the next pitting will have its desired effect, and Diogenes will leave the boards, and we’ll be able to have a reasonable discussion about abortion. But it’s been like fifteen times and it still hasn’t worked.
At any rate, I think he’ll recover from the emotional damage we’re inflicting on him.
Your self-righteousness is really puzzling to me. Diogenes said something really unnecessary and frankly cruel to someone in the midst of grief. A bunch of people got mad at him and told him why. Is that really the injustice you’re making it out to be? Is it really that unfair for Diogenes to be held to account for what he said? Is that really, honestly equivalent to witch-burning?
I mean, if this pit thread lasted for weeks on end, you might have a point. But it’s gone on for about three hours or so at this point. Is it really that unfair for him to experience other people being angry at him for three hours after he says something like what he did?
Thus far, he has refused to address that.
Which doesn’t earn him any extra points in my book.
I would agree with that, except that it depends on where you are, of course. If youare in a hospital waiting room it would not be so inappropriate. If you were at the carnival it would be pretty inappropriate to bring it up. There is no real good analogy except to say that it is not at all unusual to find these kind of threads in MPSIMS.
Send a donation to Diogenes the Cynic, MN. His newsletter will be forthcoming.
I share the same political beliefs, too. But I’ve been in enough abortion threads with **Dio **to see that he is unwilling to consider any point of view other than his own. I doubt that his obstinance on the issue is conscious, but he pretty much takes that position on all political matters. Just look at the other threads in which he’s been pitted. It’s always the same thing-- his worldview is “correct” and everyone else’s is wrong.
Dio: I’ve said before that I like you, and I’ve defended you in Pit threads before. But honestly, if you don’t see that you come across as dismissive of any view not aligned with your own, then you’re out of touch with your own postings.
And so is losing a very young infant. What’s your point? And losing a six-month-old infant is losing diaper changes and sleepless nights.
You and Diogenes keep trying to pretend there’s some distinction to be drawn between “real” grief and grieving over your lost hopes for a baby. So prove that the distinction lies where you guys are claiming it does. Prove that it’s a valid distinction in the first place. Start putting your money where your mouth is. When my mother lost a newborn, was that not a real loss? When she described it to me, what she described was mostly lost dreams for a child. Does that mean that losing a one-day old baby isn’t a “loss”, because one-day old babies aren’t very interesting and you haven’t truly “bonded” with it yet? Or does it mean my mother was grieving wrong, and she should have felt more like she lost something, because that death met Diogenes’ personal standards for what actually constitutes loss?
Hey, if you guys are going to play the grief police, do it right. Explain exactly how you can legitimately feel about each different level of loss. And offer up some evidence. Show your work. Demonstrate that when a parent loses a young child, it’s about “loss” and not “disappointment”. Otherwise, you’re just throwing out rationalizations.
SadDad has addressed a few things in his most recent post.
I would think the Monty Python quote would make it clear that I’m not seriously calling you witch burners, although I do think at this point every single participant in this thread has lost claim to calling anyone else “self righteous.” Of course it’s a problematic term anyway, since it’s use implies a meta-self-righteousness anyway. Like many pit threads, it’s merely a measuring of moral pricks to see whose is the longest. (I’m here, so I’m not excusing myself from that description.)
Furthermore, you yourself, having judged the happiness of the Diogenes family, have lost the credibility to call anyone else’s comments “unnecessary,” and “frankly cruel.” It’s unsporting to accuse anyone of being a bad husband and father, absent evidence OTHER than “he said something that was kinda true but kinda rude to a stranger on a BBS.” Even if he did it more than once. Even if the stranger was you.
Ah, it was anembryonic. Which means there was an embryo at some point. The distinction between an embryo and a fetus is somewhat arbitrary, but no more so than the distinction between an almost full term fetus and a “real” baby. Trying to force rigid categories onto an organism going thru the process of becoming human is ffutile. There is no instant when an embryo becomes a fetus or a fetus becomes a baby, other than whatever convention we happen to pick. For legal purposes we have to pick a definition, but our emotions aren’t governed by the details of the legal code.
In an anembryonic pregnancy, also known as a “blighted ovum”, there is a fertilized egg, and it implants in the uterine wall, but no embryo develops. It’s usually discovered at around 8-12 weeks, as this one was. The amniotic sac, the placenta and the yolk sac develop, but there’s no embryo.
SadDad just explained some of this in the other thread, though his terminology is a little off (the embryo wouldn’t develop in the yolk sac, but in the amniotic sac). The yolk sac is a little bit of something that doctors aren’t sure why is there at all, though it’s suspected that it has something to do with gonad development. It disappears not far into the pregnancy. But in early pregnancy, it grows at about the same rate as the embryo - so seeing a yolk sac but no embryo tells the doctor that no embryo is present, or it’s really, really stunted and not growing.
I love how you continue to offer the rest of us moral guidance (gosh! I insulted Diogenes! In the pit! What an unthinkably wicked thing to do!), all the while refusing to actually step up and address the basic logical problems with what Diogenes has been saying. Because what he said wasn’t even “kinda true”; it doesn’t hold up to even the most shallow logical scrutiny.
Or, for that matter, when a sperm fertilizes an egg.
Well, OK, all tragedies can be characterized as “disappointments,” but I was trying to make a distinction between disappointment over something that never really was and the loss of an actual person. I would never take this into that thread, so it’s not about decorum anymore.
I do know from experience that people who have miscarriages do not grieve as long as people who lose children. Neither is easy, but there is a difference. That being said, saying “we lost the baby,” is very normal language to use, so I’d never jump on anyone for saying it.
I think you’ve got so bent on proving Diogenes wrong – and anyone who might remotely be seen in his company – that you now expect people to either commit toe the dogma that there’s no difference between losing a 2-week-old nonembryonic cluster of heartless, brainless cells and losing a living, breathing, nursing 6-month old OR they must sign up to be grief nazis.
If a 2-week old is the same as a 1-year old, because both are “disappointments,” then what difference do the two weeks make? A non-prgenancy is the same. Indeed, non-intercourse is the same. If it’s all about someone being “disappointed,” then getting turned down for a first date and never having the chance to reproduce with someone is exactly the same as having married, bred, and lost a child of 10. Remember, you don’t want to be on the grief police! You are against the grief hierarchy, and refuse to make distinctions. Someone lost my dreams, and you are not one to tell them they are grieving wrong, right?
Obviously this is a straw man, and it’s meant to be, to show that we DO have different levels of loss, that we don’t PRESCRIBE these for people, but merely understand those difference to exist from our experience.
I know people, dear friends, who have miscarried, and we know that although it is tough, they do not carry that grief with them as deeply or as long as people unfortunate enough to lose a child. It’s just the truth. Sorry if it doesn’t help you win this argument, and sorry if it doesn’t help you shame Diogenes and prove you’re a better person, but it’s the truth.
[/QUOTE]
My sincere condolences.
He said if something isn’t A, it isn’t A. To me, that’s the most shallow logical scrutiny, and his position holds up. Your position is that it isn’t NICE to speak the truth in that case, and I agree.
Wouldn’t you consider your entire participation in this thread an attempt at moral guidance? Given that it’s spawned by an ethical question, anyone taking a side is taking an ethical side. It’s easy to consider anyone else to be “self righteous,” and one’s own position merely, “right,” but it’s kind of a weak position to defend.
Technically there’s no “embryo” per se in an anembryonic pregnancy (a.k.a. “blighted ovum”). The egg is fertilized, it divides, but it’s grossly abnormal from the outset (the vast majority of the time it’s the product of an aneuploid gamete). It will implant and cells corresponding to the trophoblast go about the production of the gestational sac. There is no inner cell mass, however, and eventually growth of this trophoblastic cyst can no longer be sustained.
Chemically, it looks like a normal pregnancy, as the cells secrete hCG, and on a relatively early ultrasound (like around 4 weeks), one might spot a gestational sac in which it is difficult to find the embryo and not be sure. However, even by 6 weeks, it’s easily possible to tell, and by 8 weeks it’s most certainly incontrovertably obvious there’s no embryo in there. I guess they didn’t get an ultrasound until 12 weeks. That struck me as a bit odd, but I’m used to having every step micromanaged at this point.
Ahh! But I’m not. You see, my attitude is that it’s not up to me to criticize other people’s grief at all, so I don’t take it upon myself to even consider whether I think their loss is “real” or not. I’m not suggesting that we imagine all losses to be equal - I’m saying that that line of thought is in itself unproductive and foolish. I think if someone feels as though they’ve lost a child when they miscarry, it’s not inappropriate for them to say so - particularly given that many people feel that way. Perhaps even they would feel it was a lesser grief than losing an actual child if they experienced both (though I hope not too many people have that basis for comparison) - but so what? One maxim that more people should learn is that one person’s pain is not diminished by the presence of greater pain in the universe. To whoever is grieving, that pain is very real, and very immediate, and deserving of respect.
I don’t find it offensive if someone is not precise enough for my standards in characterizing their grief, because the thought of analyzing whether they should be grieving or not, and how hard to do it, is so utterly foreign to me.
It’s not reasonable to grieve getting turned down for a date. It’s reasonable to grieve a miscarriage. That’s about as much of a distinction you can reasonably make.
Oh, there’s so much evidence that I’m a better person than Diogenes that searching for more of it would be like Captain Nemo trying to find some extra sea-water.
The point - and it’s a point that apparently completely eludes you, too, and so it’s no wonder that you’ve decided that the mild rebuke Diogenes has received is unfair - is that it’s not appropriate to critique someone’s grief, whether or not you think it’s less than someone else’s. It is tough to miscarry a child, and even if it’s not the worst pain in the universe, it’s still valid and real. It’s completely irrelevant if other people feel worse, because that doesn’t make your own pain go away.
I don’t know how you’ve managed to convince yourself that the subject of this thread is how bad it is to miscarry, but that’s not, and you’re still engaging in exactly the same thing Diogenes was doing - offering up your opinions on how people are supposed to feel when they’re grieving. All your attempts at cold-blooded rational analysis are going to fail here, because it’s simply inappropriate to critique someone else’s grief over something like this, even when you think they’re doing it wrong! Saying, “There, there, at least it wasn’t a real child, right?” is not going to comfort anyone, no matter how justified you feel by your flimsy logic and enormous ego. Diogenes obviously felt pretty justified; you don’t need to feel the same way.
Bzzt, sorry. You’ve failed. You’ll have to join Diogenes in Remedial “Not everybody feels that a fetus is not a human being like you” 101.
Not even vaguely. Where did I suggest any such thing?
I hope you reread that and realize its implications for what you’ve been saying here.
My girlfriend (fifteen years ago) had a 12-week miscarriage. We were so looking forward to a baby, but it didn’t happen. Ancient history now, but I can relate to the emotions SadDad posted. We split up eventually, but the thing that put the loss into perspective totally was two close friends of ours lost a five-year-old in utterly utterly horrible circumstances. To this day whenever I meet my ex we still have a bond of some sort over a lost life and potential future, but our two friends were and are devastated by what happened to their daughter - it’s been ten years and they’ve both moved on but it is still a dark shadow on both their lives.
Anyhow, can I just add to the “Diogenes was an insensitive jerk in that thread” party. I didn’t realise when I signed up here that there are such undercurrents of hostility. Doesn’t look too good from an outsiders viewpoint. Fighting Ignorance? Fighting Egos…
To my knowledge, nobody once in either thread has told anyone how much grieve they should feel, do feel, or ought to feel. You’re arguing against a position with no backers, Excalibre.