I think you’ll find I just addressed the issue and have read it. Also I was the FIRST person to talk in this thread, so I’m not even here to argue WITH people.
And just to prove my point, have you just asked a moderator to ban me? just like my story about my friend on Facebook?
EDIT: Asked the Moderator to make a room to send me to
I really don’t want to join or have close ties to a group where I will be spanked for verbal missteps (and in which the laiety will gleefully offer up the spanking!) for not understanding an in-group phraseology. I’m not into BDSM, and I think it’s a boundary violation to state that “obviously” everyone needs to be part of this power trip in order for the world to become a better place.
I think what the world wants, instead of verbal minefields and in-group mind games, is lessons in diplomacy. A diplomat is self-aware of their experience and values, and must be by necessity, completely open to understanding the experience and values of others. As my people, the Haudenosaunee, used to say, a diplomat must also possess a “skin that is seven thumb-widths thick”, that is, you come to realize that not everyone will have a perfect understanding of you, and some may be downright hostile.
Thinking about the world this way, I think you will gain more allies and be able to offer them concrete steps to action, rather than continually scolding them for not understanding some pedantic rule or another.
Why is it that when people like you (and like so many others in this thread) enter this conversation, supposedly to learn about the topic at hand, only hear, and only want to talk about, the occasional “scolding”? Is it possible that the problem is less what’s being said and how it’s being said, and more how some are (selectively) listening?
I am listening, and I am a good listener, but what I hear is no concrete steps I can take as an ally, and instead I hear a bunch of rules for a game in which I’ll get punched on the arm every time I misspeak, and oh boy I’m assured that I will definitely misspeak.
Tell me how you wish to gain allies by presenting them with mind games?
Listening well IS a concrete step. Maybe you really should take it, instead of pretending that you already have. (a la @anon36081309)
Why for you is this “game” all about you?
And are you really that wimpy in other areas of your life, where when someone takes the occasional time and effort to offer you a helpful corrective, you perceive it as a punch in the arm?
MY focus is on legislative change and changing laws.
Cool. Mine is too. One good thing about our current draconian leadership is that it’s bringing a lot of people out of the woodwork to stand up for what they believe in.
The Reuters memo in this post illustrates a practical application of some of the points made in the article for this thread:
Do’s:
–Cover what matters in people’s lives and provide them the facts they need to make better decisions.
–Become ever-more resourceful: If one door to information closes, open another one.
–Give up on hand-outs and worry less about official access. They were never all that valuable anyway. Our coverage of Iran has been outstanding, and we have virtually no official access. What we have are sources.
–Get out into the country and learn more about how people live, what they think, what helps and hurts them, and how the government and its actions appear to them, not to us.
–Keep the Thomson Reuters Trust Principles close at hand, remembering that “the integrity, independence and freedom from bias of Reuters shall at all times be fully preserved.”
Don’ts:
–Never be intimidated, but:
–Don’t pick unnecessary fights or make the story about us. We may care about the inside baseball but the public generally doesn’t and might not be on our side even if it did.
–Don’t vent publicly about what might be understandable day-to-day frustration. In countless other countries, we keep our own counsel so we can do our reporting without being suspected of personal animus. We need to do that in the U.S., too.
–Don’t take too dark a view of the reporting environment: It’s an opportunity for us to practice the skills we’ve learned in much tougher places around the world and to lead by example – and therefore to provide the freshest, most useful, and most illuminating information and insight of any news organization anywhere
Thoughts, @evildonald ? These points seem to cover some of your gripes as well as mine. For example, it isn’t that I hate your opinion, it’s that you didn’t actually articulate it until after blanketing the thread with aggressive and shrill condemnations that had nothing to do with the article, and unnecessarily picking fights in the meantime. So the don’ts both apply to that well as the kneejerk reactions you seem to be griping about.
Do you see the parallels, though? The similar language? As if the academic discussion of intersectional feminism had some root origin near this set of great points?
Hey, I read both articles. And some of the links. It was crystal clear to me that most of the participants in that blog would not really want me around. So I don’t plan to visit there again.
