Simulated pregnancy and induced lactation

[GingerAndTheBiscuits]

Should possibly come with all sorts of trigger/content warnings.

DH just sent me this:

twitter.com/godblesstoto/status/1311050509072113664?s=20

TW simulating pregnancy and birth (in a house where their STBEx-wife and children live), already “planning” that the baby will be stillborn, and then wondering aloud if someone will lend them a baby to breastfeed.

All in a group for mothers taking medication so they can produce milk for their babies. Given how poor breastfeeding support is for many mothers in all parts of the world I can’t work out whether I’m more offended, disgusted, or terrified that this person has centred themselves and has people cheering them on.

DH questioned why women were commenting in support - I said it was part of the socialisation to “be nice”. His response was that it’s not being nice, it’s dangerous. And he’s right, but why can so many women not see it? Does it go beyond socialisation? According to other posts in the thread women were removed from the group for saying the person’s post was offensive/triggering to those who had experienced the loss of a child.

I don’t even know why I’m posting it really, other than I was so agog and this is one of the few places open to comment on things since I abandoned twitter

Thanks molly sorry to have made you spell that out. I can't imagine working with him... I really cannot fathom it!

@CharlieParley

I have been known to reach for my belly while watching a TV show or a movie as I feel for where I believe a baby should be inside my body. Sometimes, writers take the story in a darker direction and include topics such as miscarriage or stillbirth, which are doubly damaging to me. In these situations, not only do I feel the loss of not being pregnant but the additional loss of feeling what it might feel like to lose a baby

I've cradled my empty belly, crying crying crying in the shower so no one would hear me. I fell into the deepest darkest abyss. Never to see light again. Other women, who had fallen before me, and had found the way out, reached out with understanding and patience and love, so much love, that I would know it wasn't the end, that first a glimmer, then a ray, then a shaft of light would reach me down there and one day I would stand in the warm light of the sun again.

None of us craved this experience. It did not gratify us, fulfill us, arouse us. We were profoundly changed by it, yes, but the instinct to help those who came after us did not come from a wanton desire for gorging on another human beings pain. It was borne out of our own pain and the certainty that alone this was too heavy a burden to carry for most of us.

We would have, gladly, emphatically, gifted that harrowing experience to any man, however disturbed, in exchange for the babies we lost.

The resurgent grief I feel right now, 19 years later, the visceral recall of that desolate, forsaken void at my core, has finally defeated my socialisation. I feel no sympathy for the suffering of this person. I do not wish happiness, peace or fulfilment upon such a putrid, festering cesspit of a brain. I wish I could have stopped such hateful bile spewing out of this narcissistic, depraved mind ever being inflicted on the women in that group.

I'm sending love to them, to all of us who are sickened by these foul fantasies of a perverted soul. To the suffering, soon-to-be-ex-wife trying so hard to protect her children from their narcissistic father. And I especially hold all of you in my heart who have felt that loss.

And let this rage fuel our resistance to the ideology that enables such depravity.

Beautifully said, raw and honest. I struggle to talk about our challenges, all the failures, and the fact that I largely blame myself for our household being childless.

Empathy tears a fallin', thank you Charlie.

"Sometimes, writers take the story in a darker direction and include topics such as miscarriage or stillbirth, which are doubly damaging to me. In these situations, not only do I feel the loss of not being pregnant but the additional loss of feeling what it might feel like to lose a baby"

Who, in their right mind, feels that NOT being able to experience this is a trauma. I'm going through the trauma of TTC at the moment and the aching fear that I've left it too late and it won't happen for me. But it's ok, I had an early miscarriage at Easter so that's alright then. I've had my pregnancy experience. Lucky me.

This is the paragraph that disturbed me the most. This is not a normal reaction to the grief and loss of others. It's so far detached from reality.

dudsville. I'm so sorry.

FireUnderTheHand and bitheby.

*already planning that the baby will be stillborn". This made me cry. There is nothing that can prepare a mother (of either gender) for the torture of stillbirth

This is the paragraph that disturbed me the most. This is not a normal reaction to the grief and loss of others. It's so far detached from reality.

He doesn't really want the grief and loss. He wants to play act it. He's not really depriving himself of anything, is he?

Many men fetishise women's period pains, sore lactating breasts, contractions, all of it.

It's not about reality, at all.

That's the whole point. They are sexualising something that's not sexual.

Fetish.

noun
1.
a form of sexual desire in which gratification is linked to an abnormal degree to a particular object, item of clothing, part of the body, etc.
"a man with a fetish for surgical masks"

The fact that he is oblivious, or may be dependent upon, the suffering of women who actually go through this, is obviously sick.

As are women supporting it.

I'm very sorry to those of you who are finding this so personally awful. So, so sorry.

And I'm reminded of a man on here who claimed he was exactly the same as an infertile woman, because he couldn't get pregnant.

I'm sure these people existed before. But now they can all gather together and mobilise. And they have found a mechanism, in trans ideology, to get them, at least superficially, some kind of awful legitimacy.

I feel absolutely furious about this. They are going to see how long they can handle the pain?! Yes, because real women in labour get to choose how long and how painful it is. They want to nurse someone's baby?! I feel like I'm living in a nightmare.

@Datun it shows a whole new level of something if the only reaction you have to grief and loss is that it's doubly damaging to me because I can never experience that. Massive empathy bypass.

I would suggest it's not quite an empathy bypass. I suspect they know damn well how upsetting it is for women. I suspect that is quite likely part of the whole fucking circus for them.

The latest update is his friends have refused to help him with his birth, so there are actually women offering to drive round to his house to assist him! No matter how I try, I just can't work this one out. Nope, not a chance.

to you good women giving your support to those in need and to those in need

The poor fucking wife. This beggars belief.

Imagine if a woman did this who couldn't have children?? Infertility is devastating

She would be referred to psychiatric help

I have no sympathy for this freak. His poor, poor wife and children

Hmm twitters gone private and the blog is gone?

@iswhois

Imagine if a woman did this who couldn't have children?? Infertility is devastating

She would be referred to psychiatric help

I have no sympathy for this freak. His poor, poor wife and children

This has been on my mind all day. The blog too is really something else, casting the wife as a villain for not letting this person splash pictures of their children across the New York Times to validate this nonsense tells you everything you need to know. The poor family. This is one of the most perplexing, horrible and narcissistic things I’ve ever read. This person needs help, and my thoughts are with everyone who has shared their stories on here today.

There is nothing of our suffering that they will not fetishise.

Charley and others who have been through miscarriage and still birth. I am so sorry for your losses.

I'm sure I read in the blog that the wife was adamant that she should be the only one referred to as mother and was called Mom, while the father was called Amma (or something) but then she was working with the children, to call the father Mom and she became called Mama.
I wonder if that's really how it went down.

I’m actually in the Facebook group where all this has been taking place. He has treated it almost as his personal blog from the very start, with his “a lot of you have been asking for updates” and “New to my journey? Search my posts to catch up!”

The level of handmaiding is beyond belief. Most of the women are just tripping over themselves to encourage this person. Anyone who isn’t 100% supportive gets shouted down- on his most recent post, one woman simply commented “Wait, huh?” and another replied that responses like that should get that person automatically kicked from the group. And as you know, one woman who has actually suffered stillbirth was in fact booted out after pointing out how extremely offensive and upsetting this is. I don’t know why I haven’t left the group myself to be honest.

I can only conclude that the women supporting this cruel man have been brainwashed, or have some kind of trauma history that leads them to collude in men's cruelty.

The whole thing is sickening. To support it is foul.

I am so sorry to all the women here who have suffered pregnancy loss and stillbirth.

I utterly condemn this man's attempted colonisation of your pain.

@AngeloMysterioso

I’m actually in the Facebook group where all this has been taking place. He has treated it almost as his personal blog from the very start, with his “a lot of you have been asking for updates” and “New to my journey? Search my posts to catch up!”

The level of handmaiding is beyond belief. Most of the women are just tripping over themselves to encourage this person. Anyone who isn’t 100% supportive gets shouted down- on his most recent post, one woman simply commented “Wait, huh?” and another replied that responses like that should get that person automatically kicked from the group. And as you know, one woman who has actually suffered stillbirth was in fact booted out after pointing out how extremely offensive and upsetting this is. I don’t know why I haven’t left the group myself to be honest.

Are there a lot of transwomen supporters in the group? That would explain it more.

I've been avoiding this thread all day. I just can't with the level of grossness and indecency.

So angry on behalf of women who have suffered genuine loss.

I'm shocked there are women in the group actually pandering to this and to be honest it makes me wonder if there's more than one person in this group for less than honest reasons.

Obviously I know nothing about this particular FB page but odd people do get drawn towards trauma groups. The woman who faked a dead fiancee on 9/11 springs to mind.

@Datun that’s hard to know really, with the exception of this particular individual’s “journey” most of the posts tend to stay pretty on-topic... he certainly gets plenty of support though!

He’s just so ready to co-opt women’s pain... this is one exchange I found particularly hard to read- in his “update” he wrote-

“An old acquaintance & co-worker who experienced an actual stillbirth validated my experience and helped me process some feelings this week. On his advice, to deal with the upcoming loss and remember my journey, I'm coming up with a name and will pursue breastmilk jewelry. I think I'm skipping on the doll.”

And then this happened in the comments...

Woman on FB- “ As someone who has experienced multiple miscarriages, and years of infertility, I am stunned to hear that you think this experience is preparing you for a comparable experience. I never knew that my pregnancies were going to end in death, and I certainly wasn’t able to prepare myself mentally for the deaths of my children. That pain is indescribable and cannot be simulated. I truly feel like you’re trivializing the gravity of that scenario. It is the actual death of a child. Death.”

To which “Gabrielle” responded-

“By no means am I attempting to trivialize your experience or the experience of anyone who has lost a child. I cannot imagine the loss and pain you have gone through, nor am I trying to simulate that experience. I truly feel for you.

At the same time, you cannot imagine the pain and loss I am experiencing, nor how debilitating and overpowering my dysphoria has on my life. I experience actual phyical pain at the mere thought of a miscarriage or stillbirth—certainly not the same as you have felt actually losing a child—but still real.

My acquaintance who relayed his and his wife's stillbirth experience recognizes there are similarities in what they went through and what I may go through, and offered comfort given their firsthand experience. Please understand, I know they are not equivalent experiences. That being said, my sense of loss is very real, even though I know in advance there is no baby.

I am not here to compare or trivialize. I hope you understand and can sympathize where I am coming from.”

That's insane.

This group needs to find a spine and kick this man out. And this man needs to pay a therapist - a male therapist - to help him work out why he is so twisted and cruel.

Oh and let’s not forget a couple of weeks back when he had the gall to ask this question

“For anyone that has gone through a stillbirth or miscarriage and is willing to share their experience with me, what did you do to help you get through that very emotional loss? Your stories and advice may help me get through my own grief that I am almost sure to experience in the very near future.”

I mean he’s quite the method actor, gotta give him that. The man works like de Niro.