octopus contends that “dirty laundry” should be taken to the proper authorities.
I define “dirty laundry” as stuff that one or other of the parties in a dispute may not want aired in public.
If that is the same definition that octopus uses: then what is the correct proper authority you are supposed to take that too? The police? What are the police going to do about “dirty laundry?” And if that isn’t the same definition that octopus is using, then what is that definition?
There is no contradiction. There is no de facto an attempt at mob justice. And I’m not spinning anything.
I would define dirty laundry as the rather mundane kinds of disagreements between people that may be discomforting but certainly do not need to be shared with the world at large. I believe that is exactly what Chloe Dykstra chose to share with the world via her essay on Medium.
If you’re asking me, I don’t think it should have been reported at all. If Chloe truly felt abused or sexually violated, it should have been reported to the police, as close to the date of the occurrence as possible. Do you see how perhaps this does not rise to the level of something worth reporting? I mean, Chloe herself didn’t even think it does.
…originally I was asking octopus. But you *really *wanted to add your voice. So here we are.
That wasn’t my question. See, this is the problem when you barge headlong into a conversation just for the sake of barging headlong into a conversation. The question I asked wasn’t addressed to you. Because I know you didn’t think it should have been reported at all. octopus states that they believe this should have been taken to “the proper authorities”. I wanted to know what octopus considered those “proper authorities” are. If you don’t have an opinion on that, why were you answering the question in the first place?
But if was just “dirty laundry” then taking it to the police would be inappropriate, yes?
octopus is the person who suggested this should have been reported to the correct authorities, not me. I would suggest you direct this comment to them and not me.
Make up your mind. Either you’re looking for answers to your questions or you’re not. I’M the one who brought up the term “dirty laundry,” for what it’s worth.
…I was looking for an answer to the question I asked. That question was “what is the correct authority one should take “dirty laundry” too?” It was addressed directly at another poster related to a statement that the other poster had made. If you want to reply out-of-context I can’t stop you: but your answer doesn’t address the question I asked.
Being a shitty human being isn’t a crime we prosecute any way other than socially.
This goes way back to points made early in this discussion. We sometimes use words in a casual context that are inaccurate in a legal context “I was robbed blind by that used car dealer” But just because you aren’t going to turn it over the cops to prosecute, doesn’t mean that you can’t post a critical yelp review.
And she didn’t report it. She told a story about it. She did so in a public manner, using the internet, but not referring to Hardwick by name. That isn’t any different than me making it known on my Facebook page that my ex husband cheated on me, except not being even internet famous, I’m unlikely to go viral with my stories.
I think everyone would be on her side if she had said/posted/talked about him being a shitty human. But the accusations were much stronger than that, she accused him of actual criminal behavior. Things that get people put in jail using words as inflammatory as possible. In order to what?
This is a really good point, and I’m probably one of the ones who would very much have been inclined to be on her side. Furthermore, if she had done that – if she had dispassionately described a shitty relationship and a dominating jerk, I doubt anyone would have questioned her truthfulness since we see this sort of crap happen every day. But instead, she chose to use all the sanctimonious jargon of #MeToo to get on the bandwagon and characterize herself as a victim of major abuses, thus triggering all the predictable over-reactions of support for her and retaliation against Hardwick. And that, really, pretty much sums it up in a nutshell.
This is my viewpoint as well. He was a bad boyfriend, but I feel she attached highly-charged terms to that behavior for the purposes of maximum impact and exposure. I don’t agree that him saying “Don’t drink around me” and “Don’t have guy best friends” constitutes emotional abuse. I don’t agree that him saying “If our relationship doesn’t have intimacy, I think we should breakup.” constitutes sexual abuse. She may not agree with those things and not want to go along, but those seem like reasonable positions to have in a relationship. I feel it’s purposely inflammatory to start calling it emotional and sexual abuse.
Whatever lesson she was trying to evoke was lost because we are all caught up in this meta discussion about what is abuse. If instead she said that she didn’t like those requests and realized later she should have left rather than trying to make it work, that would be more impactful. If her messgae was “If he tells you who he is, believe him.” and “If you don’t like what he’s doing, don’t think you can change him.”, then there wouldn’t be any of this controversy. But instead, there’s all this back-and-forth over what I think is a valid debate: Do these actions constitute what is considered abuse?
