Use of child death as an analogy for sense of loss should be punishable by wearing a dimwit hat for ever more

[wibblies]

Fucking Liz Fraser in the weekend guardian is the latest in a long line of journalists and writers who seem to think this is ok.

Here's a sample of what she has to say in her article about her sense of loss in watching her children grow from primary age into teenagers:

"When the joy goes - and it does, because life moves on and you can’t play peek-a-boo with a 12-year-old who wants to play Minecraft with his similarly zit-infested mates – it feels like bereavement."

"Those young children are dead now. They are gone."

"The bereavement is long, slow and refreshed every day."

Just so you know, Liz Fraser, watching a child grow up as it gets older is really not anything like not watching a child grow up because the child is dead. I know this, because I've tried them both.

Please tell me I'm not the only one who notices this shit? Please tell me you recognise that it's not the fucking same at all? That it's not even a tiny bit similar and that it's crass in the extreme to suggest it?

Hearts - Think, from what a PP pointed out, that there was no "I'm" in it at the start either, very much like reluctant to own the non-apology apology anyway - like a sulky teenager as PP so rightly said!
Just "Sorry if ...."

"Sorry if it offended anyone."

^^the "apology", in full.

Mackerel I like the way you have put it above (about the scrap analogy).

Personally, stupid comments like the columnist's make me want to cry and kick their shins repeatedly. My beloved DS would be 5 on Christmas Eve. He died on the day he was born and suffered.

Anyone who makes these comments comparing normal, healthy development of their children to death is totally self-absorbed and bonkers. Death means holding on to the few memories you have because you'll never get to make any more. It means an end to hoping the doctors are wrong or that's it's all just a horrible mistake. I'll never have another DS and would give anything for a few more minutes of life to cuddle him.

Holding my dead son, in hospital, on Christmas day, alone is NOTHING, NOTHING like waving your child off to school or uni.
There is another thread in a similar vein by MrsDeVere. She writes about it better than I can.

thanks confused and kacie

I have not lost a child - I cannot compare anything I have experienced to that. That loss is my greatest fear and the greatest fear of any parent which is why the article has 'caused offence' - it is the height of arrogance to think you can relate a natural process of growing up to the horrible unnatural experience of outliving your child.

That she has compounded her insult with self pity is just demonstrating the lack of empathy and self absorption required to write such an article.

I am not a bereaved parent, but I read the article and thought the analogy was off at the time. After reading this thread, and MrsDeVere's thread in chat, I tweeted Liz Fraser to say that I had liked her article apart from the insensitive references to death and bereavement, and that "Sorry if I offended anyone" is not a genuine apology to bereaved parents. I suggested that she try again, which would probably end further tweets to her (this is slightly expanded obviously - had to fit it into 140 characters!). No response but I don't think she's blocked me.

Just wanted to emphasise (as have others on this thread) that although I have no idea what it is like to lose a child (and I hope I never find out), I can see why so many of you have been upset by the use of this analogy, and more so by Liz Fraser's response to your reasonably expressed criticism.

Is this article in the print edition of the Grauniad or is it just part of the online Comment Is Free section?

Does the Grauniad still have an old-fashioned Letters section? (I know the Telegraph does).

Because I think that an old-fashioned letter, preferably under the aegis of a charity that helps bereaved parents, might be less likely to be dismissed and minimised. Maybe we could show this thread, and Mrs DV's, to someone at (say) SANDS, or the Teenage Cancer Trust, or another more appropriate organisation, and they can contact the Guardian on behalf of bereaved parents, and explain exactly why the article caused such offence. (Not that it should need explaining - head, bang, wall - but some people, as my DGF used to say, can only be talked to with a brick, and individually, we can't lift any bricks big enough to break this particular window.)

I wondered how long it would take her to reference Jon Ronson's "So You've Been Publicly Shamed".

The Ego really has Landed.

Every idiot who receives more than five tweets they don't like mentions Jon Ronson's book in a martyred tone of tweet.

wol1968: "Is this article in the print edition of the Grauniad or is it just part of the online Comment Is Free section?

Does the Grauniad still have an old-fashioned Letters section?"

The article didn't appear in Comment is Free, which is a section for opinion articles. It appeared in the Family section of the print edition and the Life and Style section of the website.

Yes, the Guardian does still have an old-fashioned letters section.

Your questions, though, illustrate why I feel uncomfortable about the way this thread has gone and the attacks on Fraser. She wrote an article that used a rather crass analogy. In the old days, readers of the Guardian might have written a letter to the paper expressing their feelings, the paper would have published the letter(s), they may have apologised, and that would have been the end of it.

Now instead people who have read the article take to Mumsnet to express their outrage. People who never read the Guardian, and who certainly wouldn't fork out money for a print edition, then follow the link purely so they can read the article and be outraged, and tell everyone else how outraged they are. Then other people read it and they get outraged about it too. And then they get other people reading it too so that lots and lots of people can feel angry and go on Twitter and tell Liz Fraser what a terrible person she is.

Am I the only person who doesn't think this is a particularly desirable way of going about things?

Good grief, I've just noticed that I'm another she blocked on Twitter presumably because I, too, dared to call her to task for using such a poor analogy. My language was perfectly polite, but I dared to comment and criticize her so I presume she considers I am a troll, when in fact she was far more offensive in her replies to me than I was to her (I wasn't at all rude to her). It's the first and last time I've read any of her work and my opinion of the Grauniad has gone down as a result of this. I don't know where Mumsnet Towers is in all this, but I am left with a very unpleasant taste in my mouth.

This really has shocked me, I wasn't too sure who she was at first - my phone has decapitated her on twitter.
She seems nice on tv, really compassionate. I am surprised her pr people (if she has any) haven't told her to apologise properly - like hearts uptrend or at the very least to stop twisting the truth and to shut up.

Well hack that may be your opinion but you don't really get to say how bereaved parents should react. It's easy to react in the way you have suggested when you have not personally experienced the loss of a child but unfortunately for those of us who have it is much more difficult and I think people have been far more restrained than I would have been. There is absolutely no justification at all for her appalling behaviour on Twitter and it just shows her up for the narcissist she is. I also don't think it is fair to criticise people for having a opinion but not reading the Guardian. That would include me and I will be outraged about it because unlike the person who wrote the article I do know what itfeels like to lose a child so that more than qualifies me to judge and be "outraged".

In the old days, readers of the Guardian might have written a letter to the paper expressing their feelings, the paper would have published the letter(s), they may have apologised, and that would have been the end of it.

yes, I see- but in the old days, the Graun wouldn't've published shoddy clickbait like this

they do it nearly every week, too

Also that's just the way things are in today's world of social media hackmum ? - she seems quite happy to embrace this world with her blog style article, blog, webchats, and endless twitter tweets - along with "blocking" those from others. So I don't think there's much of a case for saying we should play by the old rules? I heard about it here so I responded here. I don't do twitter ATM

hackmum
You are very obviously not a bereaved parent and neither is the person who wrote that blog/article/ offensive claptrap
I do not have twitter so have not tweeted insults, I read a lot of newspapers as they are provided at my place of employment and when I read the family article I just cried. Yes cried, cried out loud because I was having a fairly good day and then read a really insensitive idiotic article which brought memories flooding back
Memories of holding my dead daughter in my arms, memories of her father taking her casket into church and memories of her life.
My bereavement never ever goes away

Please read MrsDeVeres thread and look at the photos of her daughter who also died.
Then ask yourself why we are annoyed!

Hi all,

Very glad to be able to tell you that we've reproduced MrsDeVere's OP from her thread on her experience of being a bereaved parent as a guest post (with her help and permission, obviously), which we'll share over all our social channels and on the home page. Please do pop over and have a look, and if you'd like to, share your thoughts there. Justine has been in touch with the Guardian to ask if they'd like to republish it.

Thanks again to MrsDeVere for writing it.

MNHQ

hackmum - The thing is, in the past, she wouldn't have had the platform to mock those who tried to respond to her article either. It has changed communication, definitely.

But yes, she wrote an article with a crass and hurtful analogy. She was contacted about it. The only reason this is still ongoing is because she didn't come out with a considered apology, she fired off tweets left, right and centre calling people trolls, saying they didn't understand metaphors, the Miller joke.

She has fanned the flames of this herself. A considered 'letters page' style apology would have probably ended it before it began:

"I am really sorry. I meant it to be a nice piece, but reading back I can see the analogy was hurtful. Lesson learned"

Is that 144 characters. Something like that could just have been retweeted if more people contacted her.

Thanks, SarahMumsnet.

How can you be so certain that so many of the people who tweeted LF don't ever read the guardian, Hackmum

I'll admit to never buying a paper copy, even for free, in Waitrose, but I don't buy any newspaper at all because, besides them being a waste of paper, I'm allergic to the print, so can't read them, anyhow.

If anyone wants to tweet the equivalent "look at this amazing, incisive thing wot I wrote" then they need to expect people to have an opinion about it, positive or otherwise. More to the point, if someone is paid to write something, then they need to be less off a delicate flower when that something is criticised, via any avenue.

Chucking in a missing one of these ?

hackmum ... You're missing the point and frankly she's part of the new media world so she should be better at handling this stuff anyway.

No one attacked her brutally. No one even criticised her - although they questioned her writing - until she was unreasonably aggressive in her response to very mild comments. Then people got cross. And rightly bloody so.

Liz and co should not get away with airily bullying people because they can.

I do see your point hack, and I've questioned myself whether it was unwise to post here about it. However, it. Wasn't meant to incite personal attacks on Ms Fraser. It truly was just to see if it was a reasonable thing to feel was unacceptable.

If it helps, I've also contacted the guardian itself, and have finally cancelled my guardian weekend order because I've reached the end of the road with the banal tripe that seems to fill it each week.

And hack, let's not forget that mnhq (briefly!) bigged up this very article on Twitter, making it very much mn business.

I really really don't feel like this is vigilante justice.

It's just parents trying to be heard.

Hack, I'm also a hack.

You know that when something is published, it's fair game and varied responses are to be expected - or why publish?

Free press and all that...