This narrative reverses victim and abuser. Orenwolf has specifically addressed this topic and debunked these assertions.
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I guess only one thing can be true.
And Iâve repeatedly said Iâm not about to start @âing people and dragging them into this by linking them. Itâs happening right here in this thread and if you donât see it you donât see it.
Also, numerous people have DMâed to thank me for saying what theyâve thought for a while, but donât want to say anything here because 
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I really donât think that anyone here can really deny that pile-ons happen. (I am not saying that this is good or bad in and of itself. This is simply our communityâs immune system in action).
I would also venture to say that those pile-ons are justified about 98-99% of the time. Thatâs all good. But that still leaves a percent or two of cases where pile-ons are in error due to misunderstandings.
Like I said before. I donât believe in cliques. I donât like that word. These are individual users acting autonomously, and it is not the same users every time.
What I want to understand is: is 1-2% just the cost of doing things in a community like this? And even if so, could we perhaps work to get that number down a bit?
Or are we still arguing about whether pile-ons happen at all or whether they are 100% justified without fail?
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The flip side of that is telling marginalized people to just suck it up and takeit. Thatâs not ok.
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Which is fine when someone is willing to admit that maybe they misunderstood, but instead a few users seem to dig their heels in and insist that âno, youâre wrongâ is viable discourse.
Agreed. I wouldnât characterize it that way either.
Perfect example. Never happened nor was it even implied.
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And that was what I thought was so excellent and on point about orenwolfâs posts. I really hope not, but if people are saying something and others just keep saying it isnât happening, maybe that cost canât even buy civility.
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Canât we find some other way? Canât we hold off on escalation until we know who is friend or foe? Canât we move suspicious posts to specialized threads before it blows up into a 10 against 1 free-for-all?
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That would be wonderful.
And I think you bring up some great points. If someone already said it, maybe let that be enough. If someone admits they misunderstood something and is abject in their apology, maybe just accept it and move on. And maybe donât assume you know everything about a person whoâs posting. People shouldnât have to fill out a demographic survey to participate.
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Huh? Jesse just wrote that most of the pile-ons (Iâm not comfortable with that characterizatiin, but sure, why not) were justified and a small number werenât. Weâve established upthread that the responses that have been characterized as âpile-onsâ are responses by marginalized people to microaggressions. So if the majority are justified and a small minority are unjustified, then insisting we have to eliminate those small number of unjustified âpile-onsâ is telling marginalized people they have to shut up and take it to preserve the peace.
That is NOT OK.
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And Iâm saying there is a whole world of comments and threads that exist outside of that framework that youâre dismissing out of hand.
If I was the only one, I would be the only one.
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Duke, you were in that thread too but will it be remembered as âthat problem guy Duke?â I think not.
I think this is definitely about how hostilities are raging and how the women are BLAMED for it when the reason they are reacting the way they are is that they have already been harassed too much.
And here we, many of us now in this thread, we are TELLING YOU and BEING IGNORED and talked over with no one acknowledging that this is happening.
Again we are being treated like we are the problem because one or two of us is too visible at the wrong time and gets into it too much.
But yeah suggest something that no one actually can individually control so the next time Mindy posts to some one that Duke is also arguing with we can get her banned for good and really clean this place up so we can talk like we use to in the good olâ days before they ruined everything!
You want us to be nice be nicer to us, defend US, try defending Mindy for a month and see where you get and what that changes for you?
Or you know just make this another place where the most manipulative narcissist wins the islandâŚ
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Stifle the voices of marginalized people in the name of civility? Maybe just a little bit?
We already isolate problematic posts from other topics. The example that kicked this off is one of those. And your characterization of such interactions as a âfree-for-allâ is not cool. If 10 people are offended by a userâs post (which really means ten out of how many were brave enough to speak up), why are you assuming that they are the ones in the wrong?
Demographics have nothing to do with it. Weâre all cartoon dogs on the internet from that perspective. Marginalized people can be insulting to other marginaziled people. It happens all the time. In my career Iâve witnessed so much misogyny committed by women against women that it would blow your mind.
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I thinik that I have kind of deluded myself into thinking that I know the people in the community well, but I actually do not know any one individual member well. I keep seeing the forest while overlooking the trees, and that has perhaps been the biggest reason behind my own communication failures.
For example, I know that we have many members from marginalized communities, but I donât know who in a lot of cases. I see arguments and I am not sure if something is a micoagression because I do not know enough about the speakers. I donât want to pry into peopleâs private lives, but this lack of information makes it harder to tell what is and isnât a microagression.
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You are not the only one to see this. But I think this conversation has drifted a lot.
I appreciate that youâve brought up an important issue, which in my reading is that people post something, there is an attack-response and, despite their attempts to clarify and correct their original statements they get piled on anyway. If youâre referring to something else, please correct me. But thatâs what I read, and see happen here more than 1-2% of the time.
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No, thatâs exactly it and despite what is being said, it very often exists outside of the framework being assumed here. But assumptions are made and the narrative moves onâŚ
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I am not assuming that they are in the wrong. I am saying that 1) they do occassionally misjudge people and 2) 10 against 1 free-for-alls are not a good thing to have happen, period. It ruins entire threads and turns fun discussions into something that is not pleasant for anyone.
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My take on all this is that goes back to a level of privilege-blindness that is common everywhere. Not at all unique to BBS or even online. Itâs a problem IRL for a whole lotta people. The real issue is we are frequently so totally unaware of it in ourselves that we are startled and offended when we get called out for something we did not see as offensive in the least. Hereâs the thing though. I, as a white guy, donât get to tell a Black woman what it is ok for her to be offended by. As a man, what a woman can be offended by. As a cis guy, what a trans person can be offended by. Etc, etc, etc. The general pattern i see here is male-presenting members lecturing female-presenting members on how important it is that they be respectful and polite to them. Itâs pretty nauseating, honestly. If someone tells me that what i just posted was offensive, and it has happened, my job is not to tell them how it certainly was not. It is to learn from that and do better. We have created a community where women, minorities, gender- and neuro-diverse people feel that can safely be themselves. If the price for that is that some white guys learn that they need to interact in a more respectful way, so be it.
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Then youâve missed the point. The way to tell if itâs a microaggression is to listen.
ETA:
Thatâs still off. The âfree-for-allâ didnât ruin the thread. The microaggression those ten people are reacting to did. Youâre still putting the burden of discourse on marginalized people in the name of civility - even as you seem to recognize that most of the time they are justified in that reaction.
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