Re this recent child abuse case, can we have just *ONE* thread for competitive sadding please?

[solidgoldbrass]

Yes it's awful
Etc.
But we don't need a McCann-esque thread frenzy all saying the same thing.

"Appropriating the grief of others" - so true. When I was a child another child at my school died. Girls in my year - 4 years above - who had never met the child were in hysterical little groups, in floods of tears and queing to see the school counsellor.

Those girls felt themselves to be morally superior to those who, whilst acknowledging the sadness of the event, were not joining in the 'outpourings of grief'. I can see a lot of that schoolgirl hysteria on the threads about this murdered baby. I find it is often similar people who cried over Princess Di and who hang around outside paediatrician's offices with placards about paedophiles.

well... if, as sgb requested, all the threads were in one place i'd be able to hide it and then read mn without having my stomach turned by morons hoping that the parents of this poor child are tortured to death in prison...

i'd like that, i really would.

What's the objection to just one thread?

There surely aren't millions of different aspects to this case that it merits several threads so what's the issue with it?

it's a people's right to blub, innit?

and now dd2 seems to have stopped bfing thank FUCK so i am offski. [growth spurt]

I think people need to respect that different people show their feelings & reactions in different ways.You might not choose to show empathy or you might find it impossible not to. Every one is different

I am not remotely convinced that people who spend their time posting on an internet internet forum to insult other people are morally superior, or that they are somehow achieving more than those who remark that this is sad and wonder how it could happen.
I think the real issue here is a feeling that saying 'this is horrible. I feel so sad and upset' is just terribly, terribly vulgar.

What dittany said

of course it's vulgar. that's the whole point. it's horribly crass to reduce what happened to that little boy to how it made YOU feel.

ffs have been bfing all afternoon, need to make dinner.

I haven't seen any competitive sadding on here - I am genuinely confused at what you mean by this. I have seen shock, sadness and anger towards the perpetrators but surely that is a totally normal reaction in a horrific case like this.

Yes, that's it, isn't it. People who say they feel sad are just common, which is the real underlying criticism.
Of course this baby's death affects people's emotions! There is nothing wrong or bad in feeling sad because a baby has been tortured to death right under the noses of those who were supposed to save him. It's normal. It's also normal to feel angry that his torment happened under the noses of those charged by society to protect and save him. And not only did Haringay social services not protect him, but they went to great lengths to destroy and silence anyone who dared speak out about their failures. This makes people angry - well, it makes me angry.
Have you never cried on seeing something sad? The holocaust happened to other people, is it wrong to feel sad about it? Are you really saying that feeling sad is not a permissable emotion in the face of someone else's suffering but only your own? And that it is it really sounds like it.
Of course some reactions are extreme. But to be honest I think the reaction of turning on people to carp at them for feeling sad is also extreme in its own way.

Have one thread for everyone to say how sad, i'm crying and lots of and another to discuss the failings of SS and the NHS and leave it there

I saw the news and said that's sad then I carried on. I have attended 3 funerals this month (all under 25) and next week I have 2 more (both children) I KNOW these people, they will have my tears, not a baby I have only read about in the papers

I'm very aware that it is not at all the done thing to say that you find something sad. It is considered common. People never say that out loud, it's a bit of a taboo. But that's what they mean, and that's why there was a lot of picking over a spelling mistake in another poster's name on another thread. It's not cool or middle-class to say that you feel sad about his case.
I also don't feel that empathy/compassion/sadness has to be rationed. It's not as if feeling sad about this baby will take anything away from you, or deplete your stock of sadness so you are unable to grieve about something else.

Or people might feel that this is a good place to talk about their feelings about something in the news, rather than raise a very upsetting subject with people in real life for fear, perhaps, of upsetting them. I have been very quiet about this, except with dh, because a/I know people think it is common to say anything and b/I don't want to raise a subject that other people might find distressing to talk about. On Mumnset you can choose to click and read or....not. I have no real desire to talk about vengeance, so I don't.

does no ne want to discuss this rationally then?
This is not about displays of normal human emotion.

It is not about being upset - it is about people who take that emotion to a level which personalises it to them via the victim and is mawkish....

what about the numerous so sad-so-and-so has gone and out pourings not like ole days.they lasted ages

and it isn't about class.
Unless you ascribe dignity and moderation to middle/upper classes and irrationality and maudlin uselessness to the working classes. Which I personally wouldn't.

My dad could not have been more working class and was the most dignified man I have ever known.

but expressing sadness over a brutalised child is not undignified

quite lapin.