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Well, I think you first undertook to keep your nose clean and do better in future was in a thread called "Barbelith doesn't get mad... it gets locked", a little over a year ago. The last time, obviously, was just now. Which I think may be contributing to a degree of cynicism on that front. For example, the quote from me above was in direct response to you being, frankly, a douche to alas. To quote:
A bit simplistic alas, and not true either.
Your explanation of why alas was stating simplistic untruths was, of course, about two blocks back - I don't think she needed to be alerted to the existence of Tom Clancy, she had simply already acknowledged that he was not relevant to a discussion about the likelihood of writers to be called "greatest living American novelist", because she was working on the assumption that we were not talking about the likelihood of writers being called such by absolutely anyone.
Personally, I felt that that discussion was quite profitable and useful. However, it was an example of you haring off in the wrong direction, pausing only to insult people who have the temerity to undertand what is going on better than you do - this reached its high watermark in "Ugliness on Barbelith", I believe, about doing which at some point after a very lengthy process of explanation you undertook to be more careful. However, here we are, in a thread where your actions have been quite explicitly related to normative misogyny and in which you are once again claiming that no evidence of misogyny in your attitudes has ever been advanced. See above:
1) You started out with an icky statement of violent intent against a woman, in the belief that this was an acceptable way to express disapproval.
2) When questioned about this, you decided that it would be good to detail a nastier, ickier description of same.
3) Most people here do not have, I think, the brain chemistry that makes the weirdly detailed imagining of breaking a woman's fingers an instinctive response to a) Big Brother or b) a questioning of the desire to see a woman's fingers broken and her teeth smashed out.
4) If people do, with a couple of exceptions, they probably have the good sense not to share those weirdly detailed
imaginings on a public forum. This is partly because consideration would suggest that one's fellow members, who may themselves be victims of violence, will not expect to find this turd in the middle of their room. It is partly because opening up the unpleasant recesses of the mind in which such imagining takes place, if you have one, is likely to make you appear to be an icky person, and one without suitable understanding of or boundaries for interacting in a mixed social environment.
5) If by some awful moment of typographical tourettes you find that you have shared this detailed imagining of violence against a caged and helpless woman with an audience that might reasonably not have expected same, it is probably best not to get pissy when people react with incredulity and/or disgust.
6) "I was being sarcastic" is precisely equivalent to "IT WAS A JOKE!" - it is not that people failed to understand this. It is that it is not particularly relevant. The problem here is not that people did not get that.
I think this is my understanding of the situation, and why it might be best to focus on the not detailing your imaginings rather than the making it clear that you were being sarcastic.
and
I just reckon that if you're a guy, and you're writing extremely sadistic fantasies about women as some form of OTT humour, then you're erring way too easily on the side of normative misogyny to let that pass by without interrogating it somehow.
I think you need to undertand the distinction between a mutual understanding reached between a poster and Barbelith, and a poster simply demanding that Barbeblith disregard or never mention or think again of that poster's previous actions. This is particularly the case in Policy, I think, because posts to the Policy often seek to direct the way Barbelith works and thus how someone has interacted with Bareblith previously will affect how their suggestions are taken - in the past people have demanded significant structural changes to how Barbelith behaved when on the verge of being banned, which changes were not as a rule instituted.
So, in terms of second chances - in a way, this _is_ a second chance, or a third or a fourth or a fifth, because people are still taking the time to interact with you. However, one of the conditions of that is probably accepting that some people are currently pretty hacked off with you, for various historical reasons, and dealing with that in a responsible fashion and with a minimum of douchery. Other people will not be, because they have different prioriities. Honestlly, the examples you have cited above seem pretty mild, really. Flyboy in Cormac McCarthy might be a better example to bring.
Now, it's possible that the conditions for some of these people to be reconciled with or enthusiastic about your continuing presence are not within your gift or their gift to manufacture or maintain. That is a real shame, and might lead to procedural problems within Barbelith which might ultimately have to be resolved by moderator action. However, right now I don't quite see what you are looking for. An undertaking that everyone be nice to you? A resolution to forget about or at least not mention every previous action you have taken on Barbelith (that is, a clean slate, tabula rasa sort of thing)? If we have a clear objective, rather than a complaint about how mean Barbelith is, we can maybe work from there. |
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