Diogenes, a word about your behavior..

The BBQ Pit
241

[QUOTE=Struan]
Walter it isn’t at all about you, and I’m sorry if you feel that way. It’s just that some things spring strong feelings and I guess that this is a thread where I have felt much.
[/QUOTE]

Where did I say it was all about me? If I ask to be dismissed, it is to overcome this incessant urge to merely stand before you as a human being with a slightly different opinion and not some unfeeling monster in possession of outrageous opinions I never expressed. I’ve faced an increasingly profane and abusive rhetoric, the like of which I have not remotely approached.

Now, I don’t suppose anything about anyone here except that they participated in a disastrously un-friendly internet discussion. I don’t suppose anyone is callous, mean spirited, stupid, a bad parent, any more self righteous than anyone else with a point of view.

I do want to be exiled, though. It’s not anything but a drunk dumping a bottle of vodka down the sink.

242

[QUOTE=holmes]
Wait, you’re telling me that Dio and I guess he can answer, would consider the miscarriage of a fetus the same as the death of full-term delivered baby? I don’t get that from what he posted in this thread, but I may be mistaken.
[/QUOTE]

I’m telling you nothing. How did you get that from my post? All I’m saying is that the level of nasty in this thread has made me more sympathetic to Dio’s “side” of things.

It’s a message board. People sometimes forget that there are real people behind the words posted here; real people who hurt and feel–and that would include Dio and all those who are condemning him with profanity and other nastiness. Easy to diss someone here, no?

I highly doubt (although I am speculating here) that Dio or any of us would say something like Dio did in that thread in RL to someone’s face–although, people DO say shit like that to grieving people all the time. “You’ll have another” is very commonly said to women who have miscarried. Another wonderful line is “there was probably something really wrong with it. This way is better.” Nice. Never underestimate the tactlessness of others when it comes to grief. Those remarks can really hurt–but I don’t see a posse coming after those inept jerks in RL.

I agree that all grief is personal and cannot be measured by another’s loss–that’s common sense. But that deals in perception–and everyone’s perception differs. Again, Dio’s error, which he has admitted to, is that he shared that difference with the OP.

I happen to agree with him that a blighted ovum is not the same as losing a child–TO ME. I didn’t share that in that thread-I saw no reason to do so.

My beef here is that we all make mistakes here and in RL that we regret. I’ve stuck my foot in my mouth many times. I don’t see the need for a 5 page dissing; I think that many of you are just lurking, waiting for blood in the water–and maybe it doesn’t matter who messes up? Or is this special for Dio?

excal --seems to me that you have “issues” with Dio. How would you like to read that someone just wants you off this board? Christ-how lame is it that someone else’s presence here pushes all your buttons or whatever? Don’t like his posts? Don’t read them! There is shit here every day that could offend me if I worked at it. Take a deep breath and move on.

And now WalterWindchill is getting heat for what exactly? The irony that those braying reWW’s inhumanity are being just as un-empathic to him is lost, apparently.
I pity the mods, truly. They end up having to police jr high shit like this. I hope they are well paid to put up with this nonsense.

I’m still wondering just what a 12 YEAR old fetus is, mr jp . Jeebus. :rolleyes: We got posters here that say that an anembryonic pregnancy had an embryo (John Mace) at one point. Um, no.

This is just such a trainwreck of thread, all I can think is that the ones most incensed are either brain damaged or have a hidden agenda. Then again, Dio might have pissed off enough people that this is his comeuppance–I don’t know. All I’m saying is that the tone of this thread and the insults etc reflect as poorly on the posters as Dio’s original comments do on him. IOW, there is no moral superiority here, folks. Call it a draw.

Just some thoughts.

243

[QUOTE=Diogenes the Cynic]
Bascically, yes. It existed as a “child” only in the imaginations of the parents. It would have eventually become a child but it wasn’t there yet.
[/QUOTE]

SadDad posted his OP in a time of dire pain and grief. His wife was away, he was trying to put on a good front for his son, and obviously suffering from depression after the miscarriage. He postes to the SDMB, probably not in that rational state of mind where he thinks, “Oh, I’m opening myself up to criticisms from people who don’t consider a 12 week old fetus a child… maybe I should be more careful with my terminology.”

Give the guy a break. He was not trying to start a debate with anyone. He wanted to unload, and yeah, maybe get some sympathy because he was miserable. Diplomacy and good graces would dictate that any disputation of his word choice would not be compassionate in that thread. If you found his post distasteful, maybe just suck it up and be quiet for once?

Let me say the word again, for emphasis: compassion.

244

[QUOTE=Maureen]
Right. And they all react in varying degrees, from relief to depression. So what’s your point?
[/QUOTE]

Well, here’s a little story: Not long after my wife and I went through a pretty troubling experience whilst trying to start a family, my best friend and his wife, who have a three year old daughter, went through a miscarriage. My friend’s wife took it especially hard. In fact, she was bedridden with grief for a week, and has been a bundle of stress since then. We’ve had them over a lot since then, and we’ve been another shoulder to cry on many times.

One day my wife was sitting in the living room, staring very pensively out the window, and when I asked her what was on her mind, she confided in me that she was finding it difficult to feel the level of sympathy for her she thought was appropriate. She felt terribly guilty about it, but she just couldn’t understand why our friend didn’t feel lucky that she had a child at all, and seemed so unable, even after all these months, to fully grasp the reality that these things just happen. A lot. If half of us knew how wasteful and error-prone the process of human reproduction really is we’d be too scared to try it. And so on. She wasn’t speaking just in terms of her own experience, but the terrible struggles of other friends we’ve made over time next to who our own misfortunes pale. I know I’m biased, but I really don’t think my wife’s a terrible person for being occasionally perplexed by the grief of others. She knows exactly why, and she knows how naive she once was too. She knows how violently grief-striken she was herself, so she still can empathize. It becomes a bit difficult, after a while, however, not to view the pitched cultural battle about reproductive issues, and our society’s almost infantile need to sanitize and buffer ourselves from the messy realities of life and death, as something rather dangerously pathetic. My mother died after a long bout with cancer when I was eight, so that’s been another source of unwanted, but grimly illuminating, perspective. We lucky ones don’t really know death until falls on us like a bomb, and we fall apart completely the moment we’re hit; but for others in other places or circumstances, it’s a daily reality, and they live with it. We’re often unnaturally sheltered from it, perhaps even spoiled, and we should admit it to ourselves sometimes.

People do need to grieve in their own way, and I can only agree that it’s especially inappropriate sometimes to criticize another for how they go about it. I’m not trying to give a full defense of anyone, but again, I wonder if we all couldn’t use a bit of an attitude adjustment about death, and I couldn’t help wondering if some of the most indignant here weren’t perhaps the least familiar with some aspects of it. If I’m wrong I’m sincerely sorry, really. I judge others myself too harshly at times, and then realise too late my own ability to appreciate what they’re saying is inadequate.

245

Here’s a thought for those on the same side of the issue as Dio… if you feel that, for whatever reason, someone uses the term “baby” when they shouldn’t and it really sticks in your craw, pit them (the attitude or the specific individual). That’s what it’s here for after all and it covers many, many circumstances that I’m sure you think, in this situation, apply. If it’s the general misuse you take acception to, then have at it in GD. That way, your opinions are made clear and those wishing to hash out the definition with you (and others), cand do so with impugnity. Also anyone seeking support in a forum like MPSIMS can also do so, but without apprehension or fear. Furthermore, you can even link to postings in the original thread that inspired your ‘answering’ shot and tie the whole thing up nicely.

Really, it seems as simple as that to me.

And to all the posters, covering all the circumstances we’ve discussed here, who have experienced losses like this, you have my utmost sympathies. I can’t imagine anything worse than that. I’m so sorry.

246

[QUOTE=Walter Windchill]

I do want to be exiled, though. It’s not anything but a drunk dumping a bottle of vodka down the sink.
[/QUOTE]

Shit man, what a waste! Don’t be a self-imposed martyr though. This whole rubbish has given me a lot of thought, though. Hadn’t really realised how people who have many thousands of posts over many years really interact. I’m just used to something a bit less rigorous.

247

Oh, it’s half my wife and daughter begging me to get off the computer. I have a relentless need to win arguments myself, and it’s not a good habit.

248

[QUOTE=eleanorigby]
We got posters here that say that an anembryonic pregnancy had an embryo (John Mace) at one point. Um, no.
[/QUOTE]

Um, yes. Once the fertilzed egg begins to divide, it’s an embryo. An anembryonic pregnancy doesn’t mean “no embryo ever”, it just means that the embryo is rejected not long after fertilization, often before implantation. But the truth is, in this particular case we don’t know exactly when the embryo stopped developing. You’ll sometimes see “embryo” defined as the stage after a blastocyst, but that’s not technically correct.

249

[QUOTE=Walter Windchill]
Yeah, like nobody else has ever gotten into the spiral of trying to defend oneself here and explain oneself there and clarify this and correct that. It’s only me, right?
[/QUOTE]

As I said, all you need is a modicum of self-control to shut your computer off. If you don’t have it, don’t blame us.

E-mail a mod and ask to suspend your posting privileges temporarily. You’re not the first person who dove right in and found it was hard to swim back out. Just spare us the “somebody stop me!” rhetoric. It’s not a drink to an alcoholic; it’s a freakin’ message board.

250

[QUOTE=Jodi]
As I said, all you need is a modicum of self-control to shut your computer off. If you don’t have it, don’t blame us.

E-mail a mod and ask to suspend your posting privileges temporarily. You’re not the first person who dove right in and found it was hard to swim back out. Just spare us the “somebody stop me!” rhetoric. It’s not a drink to an alcoholic; it’s a freakin’ message board.
[/QUOTE]

Relax, OK? I posted that at a moment of extreme frustration.

251

[QUOTE=Walter Windchill]
Relax, OK? I posted that at a moment of extreme frustration.
[/QUOTE]

I need to relax? ::Snort:: :rolleyes: Look, you are responsible for what you post and how you post it. If you don’t like who you are when you’re here – a not uncommon feeling – then walk away. Don’t stand around begging for someone to pry your computer from your convulsive grip (“I’m a troll! I’m a sock! Ban me!”) and then tell me to relax.

252

Loopydude -you have restored my faith in this board. Truer words and a saner POV have not been seen, at least in this thread. Thank you for that.
faithfool --what are you talking about? This is not a thread about abortion, the definition of a fetus etc. What agenda are you espousing? This thread is about a rude remark made by one poster and the pile on that resulted…

Ok, John Mace.

WW -don’t go anywhere. Well, do go somewhere–any room that doesn’t contain a computer in your house. I am off to bed soon, since I have to get up at odarkhundred.

This too (the thread), shall pass.

253

[QUOTE=Jodi]
I need to relax? ::Snort:: :rolleyes: Look, you are responsible for what you post and how you post it. If you don’t like who you are when you’re here – a not uncommon feeling – then walk away. Don’t stand around begging for someone to pry your computer from your convulsive grip (“I’m a troll! I’m a sock! Ban me!”) and then tell me to relax.
[/QUOTE]

Your point is made. You win, I lose. What else do you want?

254

[QUOTE=Walter Windchill]
Relax, OK? I posted that at a moment of extreme frustration.
[/QUOTE]

Good night Walter Windchill. I wonder if anyone has thought about SadDad recently?

255

[QUOTE=Walter Windchill]
Your point is made. You win, I lose. What else do you want?
[/QUOTE]

A pint of your blood, the ritual sacrifice of a live chicken (Rhode Island Red), two boxes of Girl Scout cookies (one Thin Mints, one Samoas), the Maltese Falcon, and world peace.

256

You can have everything but the Samoas. There’s no way I’m giving those up.

257

[QUOTE=John Mace]
Um, yes. Once the fertilzed egg begins to divide, it’s an embryo. An anembryonic pregnancy doesn’t mean “no embryo ever”, it just means that the embryo is rejected not long after fertilization, often before implantation. But the truth is, in this particular case we don’t know exactly when the embryo stopped developing. You’ll sometimes see “embryo” defined as the stage after a blastocyst, but that’s not technically correct.
[/QUOTE]

I think in anembryonic pregnancies, there’s typically no “rejection” of anything in any technical sense of the word. Trophoblastic cells can develop, but the embryoblastic portion barely, or never really does, and those cells die very early because they’re simply too screwed up genetically. What’s left is a more-or-less purely trophblastic cyst that can implant and look somewhat normal for a short time, but, again, it becomes amply clear very soon that there’s no “embryo” in there, and there never really was beyond perhaps the very earliest stages of the production of the inner cell mass, which, again, degrades.

It’s confusing because the earliest stages past the zygote, the morula, the blastula, and so on, are indeed correctly referred to as an “embryo”, but in the anembryonic pregnancy, as the name implies, there’s paradoxically no “embryo”, and that’s also technically correct. The cells which are present are indeed the product of the fusion of egg and sperm (though almost certainly not euploid), would have been identifiable as the bulk of the cells that made up the lining of the blastocoel at the earliest blastocyst stage, and anyone would have referred to them at that time as the embryo. But the tiny embryoblastic portion yields the cells that will soon become solely identified as “embryo”, and what was the trophoblast goes on to invade the uterine lining and form part of the placenta. Other cells from the inner cell mass in a normal pregnancy come to yield the amnion, umbillical cord, and so forth, but again, in the anembryonic pregnancy, these structures never materialize. It’s all of the embryo, but technically not the embryo once the embryoblastic portion begins its rapid differentiation.

258

[QUOTE=eleanorigby]
…

faithfool --what are you talking about? This is not a thread about abortion, the definition of a fetus etc. What agenda are you espousing? This thread is about a rude remark made by one poster and the pile on that resulted…

[/QUOTE]

I’m not espousing any agenda. I was simply trying to make a suggestion to those who were fighting ardently for Dio’s right to post as he wished, but in perhaps a place where it would have been A.) appreciated, B.) appropriate and C.) had less potential to be construed as something other than what it apparently was; an opposing opinion. As it happened, it obviously didn’t go over well where it was a placed, hence a moderator’s warning and this pit thread. The voices that have backed it up (saying that he was correct in his estimation or that, by default, posting personal information on a public message board means such comments are possible, nay inevitable), would be much better suited, in my humble opinion, to encouraging the proper placement (as noted) of such ideas in the first place.

Now, continuing to argue on here is the norm and I understand that. However, it seems those theories aren’t being heard like the participants would like. If that is indeed the case, recommending more of the same might be better received versus, in essence, butting one’s head against a wall. Or that’s how it appears to me, both for DtC (in the first instance) and everyone else who has attempted an explanation on his (their?) behalf.

259

[QUOTE=eleanorigby]
faithfool --what are you talking about? This is not a thread about abortion, the definition of a fetus etc. What agenda are you espousing? This thread is about a rude remark made by one poster and the pile on that resulted…
[/QUOTE]

But is this really a pile-on? Seems like Diogenes has plenty of supporters in this thread, and the discussion has gone rather far afield from the simple question of rudeness. It has become more about DtC’s personality issues than it is about SadDad’s poor treatment.

What’s really astounding to me is that people came in here and tried to debunk **SadDad’**s claims that his wife was even pregnant, as if that mattered WRT the rudeness displayed in the thread. I hope SadDad didn’t read this stuff too closely, because if it were me that would piss me off to no fucking end. It adds insult to injury, IMO.

When you make an inappropriate comment and hurt someone’s feelings, esp. someone already in so much pain, no matter how “correct” you are, you apologize, and that’s it. Why that isn’t it in this case, I don’t know.

BTW, I have no agenda and I have no opinion on DtC per se.

260

Ruby - I agree with you.

That to me was the essence of the whole thing: poster put his foot in it, was called on it, and apologized. Then tried to explain his reasoning behind his rudeness and penis ensued.

My “issue” has been with the er, penis part of it all. I thought the reaction of those outraged by his tactlessness outweighed his tactlessness, but YMMV.
faithfool -it’s late for me and I’m tired. I still don’t get what you are saying. No one is arguing what is a embryo vs fetus–or rather, I wouldn’t call it arguing. There’s been some ignorance addressed on both sides is all. All Dio said was that he didn’t consider a blighted ovum to be on par with the loss of a child. Not the same topic, to my mind then what you are talking about (I think?).

The vitriol and pile on came from those who wanted to show Dio how rude he was–and thereby showed some unintentional irony their own selves as well.
So, what was your point?

I am working all weekend-no Dope at work and too tired once home, so I won’t be back until Monday. This will by then be like yesterday’s newspaper, I’m sure, but I’ll check back.