I apologize if my comments felt dismissive. That was certainly not my intent, as I would never dismiss your feelings and never want you to feel hurt. I was trying to return the thread to being lighthearted and failed quite spectacularly.

Honestly, the refusal to admit you might have accidentally said something harmful is far worse than having accidentally said something harmful in the first place. Laura, why do you think your feelings are more valid than sj's lived experience? I can tell you that it's worse to face micro and macro aggressions multiple times daily than to be called out for mistakenly participating in one. You did not use the offensive term, but your post minimized sj's words and contributed to the idea that it was an okay term to use in the first place. A mistake - a micro-aggression. Doubling down? That's a macro. Making mistakes is not a problem. It's how you handle being told you made a mistake that defines who you are. Why is it more important for you to be right than for sj to be heard and her experience validated?

I never said, or thought, that sj's lived experiences were less valid than my feelings. I had the audacity to suggest that both were valid. I'm sorry, but I have to leave so don't bother to continue to double down on the attacks, because I won't be reading them.

There has been no attack. Just clear communication.

An expression I have never used.

I apologize for mis-remembering it then. Which is part of the problem with deleting comments.

I really don't see anyone attacking you, Laura. And I don't think you've apologized, just defended yourself, which is a shame, because I know you didn't intend any harm.

Hec, Laura never used "Diaper Don." Katerina Bee did, BUT people responded under the assumption that KB didn't mean to be ableist when she said it, either.

The problem was more in the follow up exchanges then the initial accidental stuff. KB's initial post (13 [link] ) was:

Lucky Number 13?

2020 didn't like it. Would not recommend to anyone.

At least we'll have an adult in the White House again. Diaper Donnie gets more ridiculous by the day. Someone ought to lock him up so he can be medicated and supervised and kept quiet.

sj replied (14 [link] ) that she knew KB probably didn't mean to be hurtful, then explained why the language is hurtful, despite KB's innocent intent.

KB replied (15 [link] ):

Consider me schooled.

KB, if you're lurking, based on the fact that you're not a mean person here, I decided to read that as you trying to acknowledge sj's point and make a quick—if flustered—exit, rather than slapping down sj for daring to speak up, but I hope you realize it could be taken either way. Regardless, I did not see it as an apology, because it was not an apology.

Laura then replied (16 [link] ):

We often see him depicted as a baby or toddler, but really, that is pretty offensive to babies and toddlers! He really is in a class of his own.

I don't think I have the text of any more of the deleted posts.

Laura, you said this (in this thread, today):

I was trying to return the thread to being lighthearted and failed quite spectacularly.

That was my assumption when I read your post. Based on how sj, Debet, and Dana responded, it appears they understood that too.

I'm breaking this into two parts, because I don't remember the text length limit.

I was attacked for saying 'calling Trump a baby was an insult to babies'. That was somehow horrible and insensitive.

Laura, no one attacked you. It's clear you received it as such, which hurts, and that sucks, but it is not what happened. Our posts are still up, you can go back and read them.

People were intentional with their language to make it clear they didn't think you knowingly did anything wrong. Excerpts:

[DebetEsse (17 [link] )] Hey, Laura, that's a perfectly reasonable joke, but maybe not the moment for it [...]

[sj (19) [link] ] Laura, that may have been the case in this instance, but I can assure you it is not the case in many many instances

[Cindy (22 [link] )] I think DebetEsse is right about the timing of the joke, Laura [...]

It pinged because of the timing, sequence, and substance of the posts that came immediately before it [...]

I can't imagine you would consciously do that to anyone. [...]

Laura and Katerina Bee, I well know you weren't trying to hurt or offend anyone. Everyone who has ever read posts from either of you knows that. [...]

Please know they said something because they love and respect you, not because they don't. [...]

[I know you] would never hurt [my son or me].

Back to today...

Then I hear that some people on some other platforms mock Trump's weight or incontinence or whatever. I didn't and haven't done that.

Please stop speaking about me as an unidentified person, and please stop saying that I accused you of doing that. I provided context in post #22 [link] , so that you would understand why people find "Diaper Don" ableist.

After your reply in post #28 (which is still on the board [link] ), it was clear you didn't understand why I provided that context, so in my response, I was explicit in saying I wasn't grouping you and KB with people who talk like that, and plainly stated why I had shared that context. (My post #31 [link] ):

I provided "Diaper Don" context to you because I figured there was no way in hell either of you could have been familiar with it and still have proceeded to either bring it here (KB), or joke-away sj's objection to it being brought here (Laura).

At this point, you are misrepresenting the conversation—despite clarification offered three days ago. Please stop doing that. Misrepresenting the conversation is a bigger problem than KB's initial unwitting faux pas, or your well-intentioned, but ill-timed attempt to break the tension with a joke.

Some people are going to see this as an attack, because it is long and detailed. It is not an attack. There is no intent to attack or wound either Laura or KB.

It is long and detailed, because misrepresentations of this conversation are making everything worse.

Thanks for doing the work, Cindy. It's good to lay everything out.

Thank you, Cindy, for putting all that emotional labor in.

I've been refraining from commenting much because I'm horribly conflict-avoidant and I didn't want to jump into what was not initially my conversation and potentially cause more harm or make the people already feeling piled-on feel even more so; but, looking at the original guac discussion, I now regret that. As a member of a chosen and consciously worked-at community, I have as much of a responsibility as anyone else to step up and make it an actively safe space for everyone. And I'm grateful to Cindy for doing that work, and sorry you had to do it without a lot of back-up.

sj and Glam, I'm sorry this space feels unsupportive and unsafe.

I do wonder if there's a generational issue at work here--Glam, the language you're using about actively working to undo internalized -isms, accepting call-outs and failures and changing problematic behaviors is totally familiar to me as a fellow Gen X member who's active on a number of social media and has put in a lot of work in the last few years to follow younger activists and learn from them, but it's something that I had to seek out and put the work into. I'm lucky in that my pre-Gen X friends and family, who aren't active online in the same way at all (as well as some of the Gen X and younger ones who also live most of their lives offline), are nearly all on the same path, but most of them have an entirely different vocabulary for how they've gotten here.

I've had a couple of social justice conversations with my mom that looked like they were going to blow up into huge fights but turned out to be cases of violent agreement, just using completely different language to describe the same concepts. Each of us felt attacked and judged by the other, even though our actual perspectives were an inch or so apart, and it's only because we're both wordy, both patient with other people's wordiness, and both coming at it from decades of faith in each other's good will and good intentions that we were able to come to a resolution--even though we mostly agreed!

I don't know how much of that is at work here, but probably some; it sounds like neither Laura nor KB uses Twitter or uses FB except for family and Buffistas, and there's no reason to expect them to already be at ease with this specific discourse expressed this specific way.

Feelings are bruised and everyone feels attacked and unsupported (and God knows I've been where Laura is, feeling so judged and beseiged that even when someone else was clearly stating this is not a personal attack I literally couldn't hear it).

I don't know what the solution is, unless it's this here--just talking it to death. And I'm sorry I didn't say anything before.