To think that if you are secure in your choices

[Cat98]

you won't take offence when others make different choices to you? And even say how great their choices are?

I am not thinking of one particular thing here, lots of things really. The free range thread started it off - people getting very defensive because others are questioning their choices to eat meat/not to eat meat/to eat organic meat. I understand that sometimes it isn't a choice (for example in the case of one poor poster on that thread) but then, there's no need to get angry at people stating their thoughts - because you are doing the best (only?) thing you can do for your family.

Also I was thinking about it with regards to breastfeeding - if people are posting facts, figures, statements about breastfeeding and formula feeders get upset - why? I can understand feeling sad if you really wanted to breastfeeed and it didn't work out. But that's not the person's fault who is posting facts about gastroenteritis is it? Feel sad, yes - don't read if it's going to upset you. But don't get angry and say people are "making" you feel guilty.

Debate is a good thing, but I know there are things I do that might not be the "best" for any particular reason. but I know they wer either the best thing for my family at the time, or that they were compromised because I chose to focus on other things, or even that gasp I made a mistake/error of judgement! But hey, I'm human - I make mistakes, move on form them, maybe learn from them.

Do I make any sense?! And no, I'm not drunk.. just a pondering. Aibu?

It is the preachiness that gets to me and the total lack of understanding of others situations that annoys me, hence why I have hidden the free range thread.

Everyone can BF with the right support
EVeryone can eat free range eggs/chicken/meat if you cut back in other areas
Everyone could and should be veggie with a bit of effort
No one should spend their money on extras while they have debt
Everyone could grow their own veg/keep chickens with a bit of effort

These are just the examples I can think of from recent threads of assumptions and lectures made about other peoples lives and it leads to accusations of the posters living in ivory towers etc which I think can be justified in many cases.

Opinions are one thing, insisting that ones own way of life is the only way of life, perhaps because of a total lack of experience of the harsher things in life, is something else. Its THAT that gets peoples backs up!

They want to win.

That's what it's about. Winning.

I am right and you are wrong. Admit it. Say I am right.

Also a bit of - if you don't agree with me you are criticising me, how dare you.

If people could only accept that other people have different opinions, the world would be such a peaceful place. Think of all the trouble people cause in the name of religion? That's basically a big fight over people who have different opinions.

Seems to me that people generally are not good at all at accepting that not everyone feels the way they do. They can't handle it because they take the very existance of a different opinion as an attack on them.

What you need is my attitude.

I don't give a crap what you think.

Duplicitous has it Btw, Duplicitous, I think I love you

good post bogey.

I am still going on the egg thread (why, why!) because I'd like some of those people who believe that everyone can and should do things there way to understand that they don't have the answer to everything.

I am pretty laid back about most things, but yes I am upset and I am angry that people can be so ignorant as to freely wander around giving out advice - which could be really dangerous for some people to follow - and won't acknowledge that their opinion isn't the answer to everything.

I think anyone who posts in a small-minded way about their way being the "right" way is likely to put other people's backs up. Especially if they continue along the lines of "well I've never heard of/experienced/known that to happen", as though that invalidates anyone else's experience - that really pisses me off.

Sometimes I sit and think "but why would you choose to do that?" but I rarely post that, I nearly always try and post a considered response that attempts to see more than one side of things (learnt from my time on MN) - posting stuff like "I do THIS and THIS is the only way that things SHOULD be done" is really fucking annoying to so many people, so I don't do it and wish others wouldn't either.

OTOH if someone posted in this day and age that they gave their baby a bottle of Guinness every night, I'd probably post something a little more one-sided!

You summed it up very well Hecate. It is all about winning and a complete lack of tolerance for anyone who dares have a contradictory opinion.

It's clearly about winning for some people since the vegans posted that they'd won!

But for me on this occasion I am arguing because I can't bear to have bad advice stand and have people read it and think "no one has challenged this, all MN must agree that yes xyz is the appropriate answer" because it is really bad advice.

I know this particular advice is bad, because I have lived by the principle of it for 18mths and now my family has all dangerous lost weight.

And that is why I am so upset today.

I would really like to win - I would love to have the people who said xyz was a good idea to say, "okay, that's not a great idea for everyone in all circumstances, but probably okay for most people short term, or you can do xyz, but you have to remember to do abc too" (which I didn't know and is why we got in trouble!)

But I know that's not going to happen. I would settle for the explanations of why xyz is not a good idea to be there after everytime it is said xyz is the right thing to do, just so lurkers aren't being really badly misinformed.

In theory you are right: if you are comfortable with your choices you shouldn't get upset if someone else has made different ones. But if its an emotive or political issue this goes by the wayside. Breastfeeding is a good example: as someone who tried and couldn't breastfeed and has been made to feel bad about it I think there is something about the way breastfeeders preach to formula feeders which is uniquely problematic. My issue with it is this: yes, breastfeeding is obviously the optimum from a health point of view and yes people are right to lobby for it. But a lot of people (including the NHS lactation consultants and midwives) have quite disproportionate reactions if people can't or won't breastfeed which effectively pathologize formula feeders and I think the damage done to the self esteem of a new mother who can't breastfeed by browbeating her exceeds the health risks from not breastfeeding. I've read quite extensively about the scientific evidence around breastfeeding and while it is undoubtably better than formula feeding, the degree to which it is better isn't significant enough IMHO to justify the guilt which non breastfeeders are made to feel. Its clear that it gives babies better protection against gastro disorders, but the jury is still out on a lot of the purported health benefits of breastfeeding, yet one is made to feel that failing to breastfeed is tantamount to smoking 40 a day throughout your pregnancy or drinking strong lager in the morning. For example: when I had my baby one of the midwives literally refused to discharge me after three days because the baby wasn't yet breastfeeding, although she was walloping her way through the formula at a rate of knots and everything else was going well. This seems to me an excessive, ideologically led position which isn't in the best interests of anyone and for a fairly marginal nutritional advantage, and when I was clearly trying, rather than just not making any effort. This is why I get slightly upset when people come on MN and elsewhere and rant about how dysfunctional and selfish formula feeders are.

There are some really angry people on Mumsnet. I don't take a lot of notice of usernames, mainly because people change them so often and I can't keep up, but I swear the ones shouting that a woman should spend her half-term on holiday with her mother in law are those who shout that a mother in law has no right to see her new grandchild.

"you won't take offence when others make different choices to you? And even say how great their choices are?"

I'm not offended that others make a different choice to me or when they say how great their choices are. But I am sometimes offended if they then have to make themselves feel secure all over again by going on to run down anybody else that makes a different one.

It is possible to say "I'm doing this and it's not always easy but it's working out just great for me" without then going on to say "so the rest of you are all doing it wrong and your childrens lives are now blighted, plus you are ruining the planet and are a waste of space and oxygen."

I think you can be secure in your choices and feel angry that someone else feels the need to preach at, sneer at, name call or browbeat you just because they made a different one, particularly if they seem to feel they have the moral high ground and that you are obviously stupid or ignorant and just need a lesson from them in order to put your life right and be like them.

Yes, you've made a choice you think is for the best, yes you might have done research into it beforehand and come armed with facts and figures.

But don't assume that you are the only one that knows them, that people who make a different choice are unaware of them or that you have somehow been appointed to the role of Teacher of the Whole World and must pass on your knowledge to the uneducated masses too stupid to make the same decisions you have.

Hecate has summed it up perfectly.

or that you have somehow been appointed to the role of Teacher of the Whole World and must pass on your knowledge to the uneducated masses too stupid to make the same decisions you have.

Also very true!

Hairfullofsnakes I'm not advocating that people shouldn't be allowed to say how they feel and at no point in my previous post did I say that.

Problems do arise when people become totally convinced that theirs is the ONLY way and that everyone else is wrong, they are going to PROVE it by haranguing others, and refusing to listen to what people have to say. It's about 'winning' and feeling good because you've 'won' an argument, whether it's in real life or on a random message board.

In the darkest depths of the night when I am awake with dd I sometimes wonder if I'm doing things right. Then the morning comes and I remember that on the whole there is only one right, and that's our right. Other people may disagree, but we don't really give a toss, we just do what feels natural to us...and have a lovely, chilled lifestyle as a result. We do some stuff quite differently to our friends and family, and have some different priorities...but where would the fun be if we were all the same.

I also find it hard to get too het up about others' choices, obviously I have my opinion (that my/our way is the right one) but I try to keep it to myself.

I suspect most people are the same, the anonymity of t'internet just brings out the troublemaker in some.