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.

This very easy thing would solve it:

Not everyone can know everything, but we can at least trust our minority friends when they tell us something is harmful

If you are not disabled/gay/black/trans, trust your disabled/gay/black/trans friend when they tell you something is harmful. It's that simple. Apologize and ask for assistance either through a conversation or a reference to website if you don't understand. How this could have (and should have) gone down:

KB/Laura says something without realizing it's problematic.
sj tells them it's problematic and why.
KB/Laura say, "Oh shit. I'm sorry. I see what you're saying and appreciate you letting me know."
Or
"Oh shit, really? I had no idea. I'm sorry. I'm not sure I understand and would like to so that I don't mess up next time. Could we talk about it here/offline or could you send me a link to an explanation? Thank you so much for speaking up and for helping me understand."

And that would have been the end of it.

And that would have been the end of it.

I concur.

I too have been pondering all day (and most of last night).

I am regretting saying we should take the conversation out of Good Bye and Good Riddance, because it was uncomfortable there and I was uncomfortable there. But I think we may be having a productive conversation now. As Glamcookie said, we have to be uncomfortable with being uncomfortable because it is the only way to have productive discussions. I think maybe that thread might have been a good place to have the discussion because it is very indicative of 2020. I apologize for that, because it seems to me now like sweeping it under the rug because I was uncomfortable.

sj, I also want to thank you for saying something originally, and Debetesse and Cindy and anyone else who I missed. You were OK with being uncomfortable, while I was not.

So- I think now we have a problem to solve, which of course will never be solved, but it is what do we do to make people feel safe? Unfortunately, I think sj FELT safe and then wasn't which makes me a little sick. Because I was beyond shocked at the response, but like JZ, I am a Gen-Xer who works in Higher Education, I am on the school council for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, and I am just steeped in this stuff. I don't say this as signaling, but just that I have had a lot more education and I still step in the guac.

In truth, I think a lot of it is just doing the work within ourselves and cannot be mandated by the board- how do you engage when you have stepped in the guac? But we can't let those consquences (defensive guac steppers) keep us from pointing missteps and hurtful words in a kind way, and the consequences may just be that we lose good, well meaning members, unfortunately.

It seems to me we may need a step between "resolve in thread" and "warn, ban", but I also think that might be giving in to current bad cultural norms about speech...

Or we need a guideline for guac steppers? How to respond? What to do besides letting it flow by or being defensive. I think Glam's suggestion above (I will admit that I smartet for years after the voting discussion because I percieved I was being called Madame Mao for being bossy).

If you are not disabled/gay/black/trans, trust your disabled/gay/black/trans friend when they tell you something is harmful. It's that simple. Apologize and ask for assistance either through a conversation or a reference to website if you don't understand.

I think you have the right of it there, Glam. Beyond that, knowing the components of an apology vs. a defense of self or intention is key, as demonstrated in your examples.

Because I think it's relevant to this discussion: To be slightly humiliatingly honest, this a lesson I have only learned with varying degrees of success within the last few years and due mostly to my DP pointing out more than once that, while he believes I intended no harm, to say something like, "I'm sorry you thought I was being dismissive," is not actually an apology, is, in and of itself dismissive, and also invalidates his feelings. I might as well have appended, "...because I wasn't being dismissive, so you're wrong for thinking I was, and it hurts my feelings that you think I was, so, actually, you ow ME an apology."

I... probably did actually say similar more than once, before the whole concept clicked for me. Yeah. It's not a good look, and I cringe in retrospect.

In terms of how to apologize, I'd like to share this video again because it's so wonderfully informative without shaming and Franchesca Ramsey even provides her own example of being called out and how she went from defensiveness to a place of growth. I refer to it all the time - it's fab. [link]

And thank you JenP for your example and how folks switch up the transgression so that they are the victim and are owed an apology. That is not how it works.

Glam, thanks for sharing that video - I'm going to pass that onto my colleague who runs our monthly D&I conversation series and see if we can work it into an upcoming session.

That's a great video, Glamcookie. Thanks for sharing that.

I also appreciate the work that you--and others--are doing here.