Obviously, I can’t speak for your situation nor can I speak on whether I have anything similar happening. And that’s the issue in the end. These people are so effective at the manipulation of these groups that even speaking out about the abuse is welcoming truly awful consequences. To me, to you, to anyone.

That applies even if someone who writes about this hasn’t dealt with the abusers directly. The abusers may see the post in question, dealing with the general topic and target the individual anyways because the post is a threat to the control the abuser has.

Exploring this topic has revealed some unfavorable things about myself as well. But those aren’t the only issues arising from talking about this. Look at most of the comments in this thread. A huge number of them are spending more time trying to take apart the tone argument rule then deal with abuse patterns being hidden behind it.

I really don’t know how to address this without enabling people to divert my words towards enabling them to use tone against oppressed people. This very thread is evidence of that.

Most of my life, I’ve considered a feminist in a general “I support women’s rights” sort of way. It was only in the last couple of years that I started to REALLY learn about Feminism, among other things, largely through reading blogs every day. I’ve never been much of a commenter, but become somewhat active. The feminist, or more accurately “social justice”, blogosphere opened my eyes to a lot of things and for that I’m grateful. But I can no longer ignore or excuse the patterns I’ve seen develop on these sites.

A lot has happened, not all of applicable to this post. What does apply though, is amount the “bottom up” abuse and bullying toward possible allies that I have witnessed, which, when called out, has been dismissed as “tone arguments” even when what was said was very, very clearly out of line. I have not seen anything (other than this post) to indicate that anyone is going to anything about it anytime soon. (In fact, until I read this I was really wondering if I was the only one who saw it. The only other time I’ve seen it mentioned, someone made a comment that what’s said on the internet can’t be abusive because it’s on the internet. Like there aren’t people behind the monitors.)

Call me self-centered, but the last straw was experiencing something like “horizontal oppression” where it was made clear to me there is, quite literally, no place in feminism for someone with my specific “issues”.

Yeah, I know how whiny this sounds. I also know that working for any type of social justice is difficult and thankless. I certainly didn’t expect cookies. But when dealing with people who are supposed to be working towards the same goals as I am starts to feel like the abusive relationship I left, it’s time to get the hell out. And I can’t help wondering how many others are going to leave before this gets settled.

/rant

On a personal level, because I think you are a wonderful writer and would want for you to flourish and be treasured in your chosen communities.

And, I am sorry on an empathetic level. I have been through this, and it was excruciating. Not even going into the recent issue in which a blogger has followed me around the blogosphere, including commenting on here after me and complaining about me (not Arwyn!), calling me choice names like “stalker” and “bitch” and “cunt”. But, I didn’t join a supportive community intentionally with that blogger. We just happen to share some advocacy interests.

But, a few years ago, I joined a private online community for mothers, based on a small group from a public site, who wanted to get together to help support the members in a way that couldn’t be discussed openly. You know, abuse issues, addiction problems, etc. Well, one of the members was a licensed counselor. And was also abusive. She used my abuse history to attack me, while trying to make a tone argument. Most of the members were outraged and many quit, but some sided with her, and mocked me alongside of her, including calling me a “narcissist” when I was upset about it. One of the moderators tried to create a rule banning any posting of any private messages – and then deleted the abusive private messages from this member that I was posting to show the abuse.

I wish there weren’t so many ugly people in this world.

I definitely don’t want to discuss the particular incidents or cast of characters that motivated me to write the post — which is about a dynamic I’d observed well before I became a part of the community those incidents occurred in.

If I am reading the post right (and if not, I apologize, my brain is fairly foggy): yes. This is definitely a component to that dynamic, when it occurs in social justice communities. We all recognize the concept of a tone argument (even if we might not always recognize that is what it is when it’s used in situations we aren’t attuned to yet). And you know what, it’s a good base rule to have: a person’s tone, approach, aggressiveness or lack thereof, personalness or lack thereof, should never be used to dismiss or neglect to consider the content of a person’s comments/criticisms.

But I feel like there’s a little more nuance to the concept, which is sort of the area I was trying to get at in my post: “tone” is about the particular slant to a person’s speech, the way they are speaking. What I was trying to articulate is more of a pattern of behavior — which includes speech, but is not solely comprised of speech.

It might be behavior of following a person to gather information — of using knowledge of that person in a targeted way to wound a person or weaken a person’s defenses — of using trusted friends and acquaintances, carefully plying them, coaching them, persuading them to do or say things that weaken that person — etc.

It might also be use of “the tone argument” as a way to discredit the person — intentionally saying something in an outrageous way, then claiming the person used the tone argument against them (whether the person said anything or not) and trying to cultivate support, for instance.

In other words, our own rules in our community, which we settled on for very good and valid reasons, can be twisted around to use against us by a person who is so inclined. Which, I think, is the over-all point you were trying to make – (right?)

It makes it so much more difficult to address, because it has to be addressed this way: anonymously on the part of the person speaking against it, or with any identifying information (names, places, subjects altogether) carefully scrubbed and speaking only in the widest generalities so as not to alert the abuser and possibly end up with more escalation. And then people have no context with which to evaluate the situation, which is essential to truly understanding the problems with it. (Plus, some people might not agree that it is abusive or problematic, and that is their right, and it is true that not every person/story can always be trusted for veracity. Generalizing means that you remove the context by which others can determine the trustworthiness of the complaint.)

I don’t know. I’ve been really digging in and thinking deeply about abuse in the past few months, and I’m finding and clarifying a lot of things, some of them even unfavorable to me, and reevaluating my own behavior in some places. It just… it’s intensely saddening, watching the dynamics play out and seeing how much it scares people, how it impairs the efficacy and growth of the community in a lot of ways. It’s difficult stuff to deal with.

And, I sincerely offer my empathy to the original poster, the faceless person. It can be especially excruciating when you are a member of a community and have a common purpose, and use other members for support.

See my comment below.

And, I have experienced activists who would rather not cooperate with an ally. I think there is a difference between helping an ally be an ally and refusing to work with them at all when they are doing the work they are supposed to be doing (checking and admitting privilege, doing background reading, etc). As an ally, though, I realize that it is not the job of the oppressed to necessarily teach me or work with me, period. I am really happy when I find someone who will, though. And, hostility hurts no matter, what, especially if you have good intentions and are really doing to work.

I also think the opposite problem, the typical anti-privilege backlash and tone BS is much more common and should be the main focus of these dynamic problems, though. In fact, I didn’t want to derail the what you won’t blog about thread, but someone on it did there, toward me. Seriously, the original post and the nonsense in reaction to it was five months ago, and zie is still complaining about it here and elsewhere, and it was only because I had the audacity to post (something completely unrelated) on the thread. At least zie switched from calling me a “cunt” on twitter to not as “creative” as here. Yeah, because racism denial takes a lot of creativity. That’s why saying “but I was brought up POOR in the GHETTO!” is on every anti-racism bingo card, because it is such a creative response to complaints about racism.

I think the abuse in these communities, when you look at it, can be explained in the regular abuse dynamics language, (see #2, for example) and is rarely simply an oppressed individual telling a nonoppressed individual to watch their tone. Since oppression isn’t only one quantity, that situation is rare, anyway. And, as destructive as the bullies can be, especially if they have a lot of support, they usually can be explained with the right language. I have been in those situations, and have unfortunately had to leave communities that were important to my support structure, otherwise. But, usually the people who really were my allies left with me.

Just like people who really are allies don’t think it’s creative to call white privilege “white guilt”, and saw through that nonsense pretty quickly.

I also desire the same treatment in return. I don’t always get it and that is fine and fair. It isn’t up to my in my position of privilege to tell someone in an oppressed group how they should treat me. However, if I try to listen, offer support, and help spread the message of an oppressed group and get shot down every time I do it, I am less likely to put my neck on the line. That is just human nature. So I will back off and certainly do my best not to oppress that person/group, but I am less likely to speak up in support of them. In my mind, not being willing to speak up is a form of passive oppression. But speaking up = accusation of injecting myself into a conversation on someone else’s issues and doing it wrong.

All that to say, I think people who are trying to be allies are worth being nice to (even when you are calling them out) and I don’t think it is a silencing tactic to say so. But people who are intentionally or callously being oppressive deserve whatever tone comes their way.