Bye

[Amake]

Originally Posted by Gregness

but it's not the group's responsibility to shepherd one's every insecurity.

I guess only if you want to be part of a group that can help people feel safe who usually don't feel very safe? Though that sounds pretty good to me

[Karrrrrrrrrrrresche]

Originally Posted by Nique

Also, I just gotta say; After years of seeing Shiney try to manage this shit, to see him just straight up tell someone to fuck off was a sexual thrill.

Because of phone I can't write the longer contribution I want but holy hell, wasnt it just.
That's print it out and tell your grandkids quality 'fuck off' posting. Couldn't have happened to a nicer guy.

[Gregness]

Originally Posted by Bard The 5th LW

Greg, no one's treating it like its fucking krystallnacht 2.0
*snip*

*ahem*

Originally Posted by Kim

*snip*

You're all fucking scum.

Originally Posted by POS Industries

*snip*
...then 1) you are enabling the behavior of the worst sorts of people and 2) fuck you for doing so.

I'm not leaving until you make me.

Originally Posted by Sweet

...I don't feel welcome here... *snip* ...Fuck this. I'm going back to twitter. If you want to stay in touch, message Marc and ask for my twitter handle. Otherwise, bye.

Originally Posted by POS Industries

*snip* ...they no longer feel safe here.

*snip*

Originally Posted by Kim

I am coming back long enough to say that while I am glad RMB is gone for good for being a racist fuck... Those are some fucked priorities... It causes me grief and guilt... I am still angry. I am still disgusted...

Originally Posted by Amake

I for one am glad RMB finally managed to give away what a disgusting person he is in a way that the staff was able to ban him for without bending on our rigid rule of law that'd be better suited to a community a hundred times bigger than this. And we only lost, what, a third of the best and brightest...

*snip*

My expectations are just that low.

Originally Posted by Marc v4.0

I understand the need for levity and all that, but some horseshit just drove my wife and girlfriend away from a forums we used to enjoy and love a great deal, perhaps the right place for it isn't in the middle of their goodbye thread.

Originally Posted by Solid Snake

...Shitty Mod decision was shitty.

*snip*

Insofar as Kim is really genuinely hurt by all this, I will say I'm offended by you fuckwads all bein' like "Let's INJECT SOME ~*LEVITY*~ into this shit ... Kim's a precious friend and you don't get to pretend you have the privilege to eradicate her feelings because they mildly inconvenience you.

*snip*

Yep, clearly I'm imagining things.

Originally Posted by Bard The 5th LW

*snip*
...they're just pissed off about it and expressing it, I think you are deliberately misconstruing the attitudes, language, and reactions of those involved.

What misconstructions specifically are you accusing me of?

--------------------------------------

Hey, that's a nifty little feature that tells me there's been responses while I was writing all that.

I guess only if you want to be part of a group that can help people feel safe who usually don't feel very safe? Though that sounds pretty good to me.

People feeling safe isn't my responsibility, and I fundamentally can't control whether someone feels safe around me or not. I can be as sweet as humanly possible and someone with one of those learned, fearful mindsets will never be fully convinced. The only person who controls how you feel is you. I can influence someone feeling unsafe, as if I sent a threatening pm implying that I knew where they lived or something...

Okay, so I dipped back a little into what Nique was saying earlier about physical safety vs 'safe space' which is making this pretty annoying. Are you meaning physical safety there Amake? As I said earlier, I think the 'safe space' (i.e. this is a safe space to let out all your problems, we're here to help not judge, etc.) sort of safety is hugely important for people to have, and actually undesirable in this kind of public discussion forum.

This is not the place for it. That we keep trying to make it one is what keeps leading to these misunderstandings I think.

The 'safe space' discussion maybe deserves its own thread?

[Red Fighter 1073]

Fuck you. I hate causing drama anymore but fuck you. Fuck RMB. Fuck every one of RMB's friends. Fuck anyone who thinks this fucker still deserves a place on this forum.

You're all fucking scum.

What I don't get is, if you hate causing drama, then why are you even posting this thread? This thread is really nothing but drama. If you want to stop using the forum, then just stop using it. It's that simple.. Dozens of people have done it before with much, much less rage-inducing hatred caused from all sides.

[shiney]

So you just skipped my post entirely so you could cherry pick contradicting opinions, or?

Yeah, they were mad. Perceived injustice happened. No we can never make somewhere 100% perfectly safe but it's like the concept of fixing wage inequality. There are a ton of people who say "Well that won't fix the problem so why bother." The idea is incremental steps toward finding a solution, not ignoring the problem and pretending it's just going to go away until we can find a big magic bullet to solve everything at once. That's why this happened in the first place, was ignoring RMB's repeated problem-causing.

[Karrrrrrrrrrrresche]

What I wanted to get at more at length is that this forum is a public space in the sense that anyone can see the forum and nearly anyone can join, but really it's a private space. Your ability to come here and post can be taken away at any time, it's a privilege. "Safe Space" whatever or not RMB Abused the fuck out of that privilege by posting as a bigot. I'd hazard a guess and say that it was only by some very selective self editing that he got this far without being banned, and had he not totally fucked up something royal by finally admitting that he's scared of black people for being black, he would have gone right on being a bigot but dressing it up as reasonable debate for a while longer.

It's not like we're talking about eggshell caution 24/7, don't say anything mean ever. It's... it's bigotry. Fucking racism, homophobia, sexism. Blatant and unapologetic. RMB didn't accidentally slip up and get demolished for it. He had a history of saying unapologetic, hateful things. It seems like we're talking backward, because it's not 'Why keep those things out' to me. It's why keep them. Why defend it? The community isn't made any better by it, and it's pretty blatant that people like RMB don't have interest in actually talking about or learning the issues. They only want to know enough to try and make people stop talking about it for some reason.

Addendum for new posts, if you're going to *snip*, you might want to make a note of what you're snipping.

So, most of those would be *Snip* (Context)

[shiney]

I dunno it just feels like there's a contingent of folk who are comfortable brushing things under the rug. It's like, Kim got so ticked off that she wrote something nasty and hateful like that, but it happened because we were like "hey you guys who were mean to the racist, never again! hey racist, try and be less racist."

[Nique]

Gregness, just, ugh, I think at this point that the only thing you are accomplishing is simply restating your opinion that your paticular interpretation of what it means to have a safe space is bad for the forum. You don't seem to have any real rebuttal or argument other than 'I think I think' and your tone is coming off as taking things personally as well as being intentionally obtuse about the entirely rational arguments you've been presented with.

Like, man, no, as strongly worded as Kim and et als posts were, no one acted like they were being physically assaulted and you quoting them didn't' prove otherwise.

[Karrrrrrrrrrrresche]

Originally Posted by shiney

I dunno it just feels like there's a contingent of folk who are comfortable brushing things under the rug. It's like, Kim got so ticked off that she wrote something nasty and hateful like that, but it happened because we were like "hey you guys who were mean to the racist, never again! hey racist, try and be less racist."

And, fuck, I was right there on that "Hey just don't be so mean about it" side of the fence for a long time and it was only relatively recently that it popped into realization that, no, not everybody who argues about this shit on those particular sides is doing so in good faith with real concerns about actual consequences. Some are just bigots! Who knew. Oh, I know who knew, the people who kept telling me that which I ignored.

Take the most recent examples for convenience, but in those days/posts leading up to this RMB talks about how, 'no guys it's totally insulting to the black community when you try to help them.' and helpfully offered up all kinds of strategic advice for those of us who want to be helpful to social justice, all of which was by sheer coincidence 'Stop posting about it here'.

In the context of RMB as a guy who uses phrases like White Guilt and who thinks black people are scary in groups, does he really give a shit about that? Did he ever give a fuck about how Social Justice is being hurt by the way we talk about it? Fuck no.

[Gregness]

Originally Posted by shiney

So you just skipped my post entirely so you could cherry pick contradicting opinions, or?

Yeah, they were mad. Perceived injustice happened. No we can never make somewhere 100% perfectly safe but it's like the concept of fixing wage inequality. There are a ton of people who say "Well that won't fix the problem so why bother." The idea is incremental steps toward finding a solution, not ignoring the problem and pretending it's just going to go away until we can find a big magic bullet to solve everything at once. That's why this happened in the first place, was ignoring RMB's repeated problem-causing.

I'm going to assume this was directed towards me since I don't see how it applies to Red's post. I thought that ~80% of your post was at best a tangent to the issue I'm actually interested in discussing. RMB was being racist and he got banned. Whatever, I wasn't a part of that thread, and I honestly don't care. He was being toxic and now he's gone.

Now, for the parts of your post that are related:

This situation arose because of someone deciding that it was their right to be directly racist by proclaiming as valid as anything their right to feel xenophobic about blacks in pairs and groups. As a community, that is not okay. There have been a few people posting in this thread to just calm down or just ignore them -- that is not what you do with irrational fear and hatred. This particular person has been given probably ten or fifteen chances to recant those feelings over the ten or fifteen times this situation occurred with that single person. They decided instead to justify their so-called xenophobia by trying to split hairs vis-a-vis "I didn't direct it at anyone".

As the mods are so fond of telling everyone, that's what the 'report' button is for. You report that shit, RMB gets banned and everyone gets on with their lives.

Safe space I think lends more toward triggers than any expectation of not being physically assaulted because of viewpoints on the internet. This forum is full of triggers for GLBT minorities women and a number of other historically marginalized demographics. We enable people who pull those triggers by treating their viewpoints as valid. We treat the opposing viewpoints of "trans people need more acceptance" and "trans people make me feel icky inside" as if they are equally as valid as "the sky is blue" and "the sky has donuts in it". One viewpoint is demonstrably wrong -- it may be that person's inner feeling, but it is inhumane because those people are every bit as human and entitled to feeling loved and accepted as anyone else.

Like I said, this discussion maybe needs its own thread, but I don't believe that it's my responsibility to avoid triggering people. There are literally infinite ways to potentially trigger someone, and it's ridiculous to expect anyone posting to account for all that. How thin must I assume the average reader's skin to be?

Also, as far as I'm aware, no one was actually defending RMB except for RMB (admittedly, I only skimmed the threads in question) so how were his viewpoints being validated?

What I wanted to get at more at length is that this forum is a public space in the sense that anyone can see the forum and nearly anyone can join, but really it's a private space. Your ability to come here and post can be taken away at any time, it's a privilege. "Safe Space" whatever or not RMB Abused the fuck out of that privilege by posting as a bigot. I'd hazard a guess and say that it was only by some very selective self editing that he got this far without being banned, and had he not totally fucked up something royal by finally admitting that he's scared of black people for being black, he would have gone right on being a bigot but dressing it up as reasonable debate for a while longer.

So, would maybe a private house party be a more appropriate model? The moderators would be analogous to the hosts who have the power to kick people out of their house.

---------- Post added at 06:30 PM ---------- Previous post was at 06:25 PM ----------

Originally Posted by Nique

Gregness, just, ugh, I think at this point that the only thing you are accomplishing is simply restating your opinion that your paticular interpretation of what it means to have a safe space is bad for the forum. You don't seem to have any real rebuttal or argument other than 'I think I think' and your tone is coming off as taking things personally as well as being intentionally obtuse about the entirely rational arguments you've been presented with.

Like, man, no, as strongly worded as Kim and et als posts were, no one acted like they were being physically assaulted and you quoting them didn't' prove otherwise.

Okay, I don't think I'm really being unreasonable in reading this:

Originally Posted by Bard The 5th LW

Greg, no one's treating it like its fucking krystallnacht 2.0, they're just pissed off about it and expressing it, I think you are deliberately misconstruing the attitudes, language, and reactions of those involved.

Putting it through the 'internet hyperbole' lense, and interpreting to mean "hey, no one was actually that angry" then putting up a bunch of quotes of people being angry as shit as a counterargument.

I never (intentionally) implied that I thought that anyone else thought they were in physical danger.