I think he’s okay with that.
Maybe after reading this. . .
This,
This,
and this. . .
I slid past her stunning proclamation of her perfectly carefree life. . .
What is the “fairly typical smart-kid introvert childhood” by the way? Being a picked-on, beat-up, loner? That sounds like the typical smart-kid introvert childhood to me, and wouldn’t diminish DtC’s point in the least.
Is that what I missed, Miller?
Did Lilairen have a father. She mentions her mom in that thread. It’s not “mom” issues I’d expect from a female in a poly-relationship.
Personally, I don’t care. But if you want to tear DtC a new one for his question, you could start by answering them.
Yeah, but what am I gonna do, threaten him with noogies? Besides, from the looks of things, he needs all the friends he can get around here. He should be shaking hands and kissing babies at this point.
I believe that if he doesn’t respond, either with a defense that stands up or an apology, he’s a coward and a fool. Right now I only know that some people think that of him. Soon, I’ll know for myself, for sure.
I don’t know what you missed, but I missed the mention of childhood trauma you seem to think you’ve found for us. A less-than-perfectly-happy childhood ain’t trauma, it’s life.
My conception was not, in fact, miraculous.
You could start by *justifying the question *: not just ethically, but practically. What can be demonstrated by the answer? That one person either does or does not fit Dio’s model? Another person in that thread already came forth to be very specifically the opposite of that model, if that’s what you’re looking for. Lilairen didn’t have to answer the question because Dio had no right or reason to ask it in the first fucking place.
Only in Soviet Russia…
I sent an apology to Lilairen yesterday via email. I don’t know if she’s read it but I sent it. I had no intention of judging, insulting or offending her at all in that thread but I apologized privately anyway. I don’t see that I owe anyone ELSE any apologies (certainly not cthiax), so that’s all I’ll have to say in this thread.
… because, if you had just given us a blank look and said, “There vas no father…”, people would talk. :dubious:
I don’t understand a refusal to discuss personal relationships with an antagonist being interpreted as an admission of a fucked up childhood. She chose not to discuss it. It doesn’t mean it was so sordid that it pushed her into a life of “chaos” or that it cheapens her relationship with the men in her life.
Everyone’s got imperfections in their lives. He refuses to believe Lilairen could choose this lifestyle because she prefers it to monogamy, even though she’s told him exactly that. And he refuses to offer up support for the bizarre claims he made. Sounds pretty damn judgemental to me.
I didn’t ask her. I just said 'I’m guessing." I was not seeking any actual information and “childhood trauma” is an extremely vague guess. There is also nothing insulting about it.
On the one hand, I think it’s great that you apologized, but on the other, I think if you affront somone publicly you ought to apologize in the same vein. But, since I’ve got no dog in this fight, if it’s good enough for Lilairen, it’s good enough for me, too.
Swats FinnAgain on the rump
Attaboy!
If there’s one thing the Internet has taught me, it is NEVER to provide a self-righteous asshole intent on defending a stupid overgeneralization with information about my personal life, no matter how relevant.
Enjoy,
Steven
I’m going to stop amusing myself being a wiseass for a bit to make a serious response to this point.
Even if Diogenes’s attempts to slime over my parents, my brother, and other people in my childhood had had a basis in reality, they had no relevance. They served no purpose in the discussion – only anecdotal evidence at best, which Dio dismissed when it came from people other than me. I was the first poly woman to openly post to the thread, and his immediate response was to put on a facade of manufactured pity for how damaged I just had to be.
I was not a person for him to engage with. I was just an object for his unwelcome pity. Every one of his posts to me was an attempt to pry out what horrible things could possibly have happened to me to warp me into what I am – without consent, without psychological training (unless I am greatly mistaken), without professional ethics, without familiarity with the research relevant to the field, and without facts. Other people with equivalent anecdotal information were ignored – perhaps because they weren’t the first target that presented themselves in the thread, perhaps because they chose to answer his invasive, offensive questions in terms that gave him no leeway to manufacture a pathology, whereas I declined to feed his prurient interest for most of the length of the thread (thereby, unfortunately, prolonging his obsession).
(I will, in the future, be less oblique about saying, “Your invasive questions are unwelcome and bordering on personal attack. Go fuck yourself.” I have learned from my mistake. However, I do not believe that saying this more directly would have changed his “Ah, so you do have something to hide!” attitude a whit.)
The message Diogenes (and now Trunk) conveyed to me is, “Shut up and let me treat you like a broken thing.” I’ve seen this behaviour before – directed at rape victims, frequently increasing the trauma that they suffer because they wind up locked into the role of “the one who was raped” and can never free themselves. I’ve seen it before – directed at gay folks on the presumption that something horrible must have happened to them to make them so broken. It’s also the basic dehumanisation that abusers use to make their victims pliable.
I’m not broken. And I refuse to tolerate the premise that loving and being loved by several wonderful people is a sign of my intrinsic pitiability. I also refuse to do anything more than laugh at the notion that my husband and lover are “definitely pigs” for the horrible crime of loving me, and that this is somehow feminist. I do not know a single woman who would consider it empowering to have her mate or mates characterised in terms that suggest abusiveness simply because they love her.
I am not interested in being Exhibit A for someone’s pet social theories; I am more than a diorama about sexual deviance. My past is not something I’m interested in giving out like candy to someone whose interest is only in convincing himself that I have to be somehow damaged to love as I do and that those who stoop to loving my defective self are “pigs”. I have my own scars to deal with without also having to fight off those who want to make up a history for me and puppet me through enactments of what that has to mean.
I am not a prop in Diogenes’s personal drama, to be carried on stage and displayed to suit his director’s vision of the action. I’m not interested in the chaos and confusion he wants to project into my life because he likes it better that way. I have my own life to live, and I will spend it with my husband, my lover, and those worthy people who have the basic human consideration to treat me as a whole person.
I would like to note that I have received, read (last night), and responded to (this afternoon) this apology. Had he apologised for any of the things I found grievously offensive, I might have accepted it, but as it stands at the moment, I have not.
I realize this is none of my business, so feel free to tell me to get bent, but if he didn’t apologize for the offensive things, what exactly did he apologize for? I ask merely out of curiosity.
His abuse of the passive voice.
It’s really sad that Dio is tossing out his pet hypothesis with no data or research to base it on. Everytime I see a poster repeatedly do this, I am far less willing to believe them when they say something, even if it’s something I agree with. Like when Dio said…
…um…
…er…
…oh! He likes the Offspring. So he can’t be all bad. I don’t mind disagreeing with other posters. But not believing them is sad.
This reminds me of myself a few years back, arguing with one of the board’s pre-op transsexuals about how she’s “not a woman”, regardless of her opinion of the matter. I couldn’t get it through my head that a person who can sire a child should damn well be treated as a woman if that’s who she feels she is. It wasn’t a matter of insulting her, I was just reiterating the “fact” that she wasn’t a woman…
I’m embarassed at how I acted, and like to think I’m more open to these ideas now than I used to be. Maybe Diogenes will look back on this in the future and be more understanding of Lilarien and others like her.
You mean, like, your name?
The irony! It burns!