I think I’m one of the examples Roo has in mind because she’s expressed similar sentiment in the past to me specifically. I’ve talked in extensive detail about my traumatic experiences on these boards, often in the course of debate. Often I wasn’t in a rational state of mind but dealing with some personal trigger. Some apparently perceived this as trying to manipulate the conversation or shield myself from criticism.
What it really was, was compulsive behavior driven by severe PTSD. I did not have access to the treatment I needed for a long time. I left the boards for a few years to get it straightened out. Sufficed to say, I no longer feel physically, viscerally threatened by words on a message board. I’m probably always going to be open to a degree, but it’s coming from a completely different place now.
What you have, I think, is two people on opposite sides of the trauma coin. One coped privately and the other wasn’t coping at all. The best we can do, I hope, is extend grace to each other.
Obviously having a traumatic history should not make someone immune to criticism. You can be traumatized and extremely wrong. But people should not be mocked or insulted about their trauma. And of course nobody should feel compelled to disclose. Nobody owes anyone their story.
Cool, so that answers my OP - yes, it will be moddable from now on.
That ruling actually seems way broader than just rape denial, but I guess we’ll have to wait for the more precise formulation to see what that entails.
That’s the problem. That does not appear to be the case with @Heffalump_and_Roo. She appears to be arguing that said posts should in fact be allowed because someone might actively exploit the rule being proposed to prevent such posts.
The thing is, her supposed “exploit” is nothing of the sort. If we’re already talking about a particular trauma, and someone says that they had that same trauma, that doesn’t open it up to being able to criticize the poster for their trauma. Nothing about the proposed rule says you can’t discuss the general topic. You just can’t use it to attack the person who revealed their trauma, even in the Pit.
If someone did ever lie about their trauma, why would that matter? No decent person should want to attack someone using a trauma, even if said trauma is fake. It still would be being a jerk, so don’t do it.
This limits nothing, since it’s already not the norm in the Pit to be able to do this. There’s a reason why Miller got so many reports. We already were acting like such a restriction was already in place.
This type of defense is never a good one. “But sometimes” is never a reason to not do something.
Perhaps more to the point, making the distinction between “trauma that is real” and “trauma that is not” is impossible to moderate. This is a message board, not the Straight Dope Detective Agency. Asking the mod staff to make distinctions between these traumas being true and those ones being likely to not be true and therefore having different standards for response is simply not practically possible.
The purpose of the rules and corresponding moderation and enforcement is not to reward or punish people for moral decisions, or to distinguish between good and bad people. It’s to keep the board operating in a certain manner. If you want the board operating in a certain manner, the rules have to be clear and practical to enforce. “Do not accuse someone stating they were sexually assaulted of it being their fault” is a clear rule and practically enforceable. “Do not accuse someone stating they were sexually assaulted of it being their fault, unless, like, you think they’re making it up” is not.
I am struggling to understand Heffalump’s objection here, to be honest, which suggests maybe I’m stupid. If you think someone’s account of sexual assault or some other equally dreadful trauma isn’t entirely true, I would think one could simply disregard it. I really don’t see why it’s necessary to attack them over it, and quite honestly I cannot think of a situation where inventing a story of personal trauma would help win a debate.
In any case, though, let’s be quite frank; does the membership want the Board to allow people to be attacked over the veracity of their statements of personal trauma? If so, let Ed know and aybe he’ll change his mind. If not, we need a practical rule, and his proposal is practical.
Poster A: I think people in X bad situation only have themselves to blame!
Poster B: I have been in X situation and it was very traumatic and I feel attacked by your opinion!
Now, has A done something wrong? Must they immediately abandon their argument, lest it be seen as victim blaming B?
The specifics matter to everyone except the willfully obtuse.
Also if you reverse the order of that to:
Poster A: I was subjected to x and it was very traumatic. [where x is a horrible crime]
Poster B: You should have done a, b & c to minimize your chances of someone doing x to you, so it’s your fault [you drunken slut]
That’s beyond being a jerk. This is not someone leaving the car door unlocked and having someone nick their phone.
This is as close as I can understand to what Roo might be talking about. In this case, Hyposter has no point: people can talk about holding people accountable, and it’s only in edge cases like “holding rape survivors accountable for their own rape” that it’s beyond the pale.
But if, later on, I was in an argument with Hyposter about Critical Race Theory, and I said, “You’re the asshole who got fired from your job for being a racist, right? I laugh about that every night, and I hope that your kids never speak to you again!” I’d be crossing a line, possibly even crossing a line in the Pit.
And that’d be true whether or not Hyposter were lying.
Maybe a better example would a hypothetical poster in our recent threads about fireworks.
A: everyone who fires of fireworks is a poopy head
B: I like fireworks they are the best way to celebrate our country
C: I was a solder who fought for our country and I have PTSD from it. Every 4th of July is a nightmare for me.
From my perspective, all three of those posts would be okay. What would also be okay, in the Pit, would be:
A or C: Fuck you and your damned fireworks, B! Your patriotism is shit!
B: Fuck you and your fireworks-hating self, A! Go back to Russia!
What would not be okay would be:
A or B: God, you suck, C. I bet the rest of your unit laughed about you behind your back and called you a coward. Afraid of a firework? No wonder our military is falling apart.
I’ve not read that thread and was just dealing with Oredigger’s hypothetical. Something like that, outside of the Pit? Maybe they should be told to dial it back. But when it gets really personal and uses a person’s trauma to attack them elsewhere–that’s where IMO it crosses the line very clearly.
Sure, but the implied context was, “You shouldn’t be upset about this and are being ridiculous.”
From my perspective we can’t have a meaningful conversation about trauma without being able to discuss when and in which contexts we ought to accommodate trauma survivors. I’m wondering to what extent that debate is going to be squelched.
Because personally I don’t think “some people have PTSD” is a good enough reason to ban fireworks. Am I allowed to say that? What if I also have PTSD? Whose perspective takes precedence now? And should I have to reveal that I have PTSD in order to have an opinion?
I think that’s what Roo is getting at.
It’s a valid concern, because there are people out there with that exact mentality. There’s a hierarchy of trauma/oppression and only people in ranking position are allowed to have a valid opinion about said subject. In my case it was calling out someone for being a misandrist, which they attributed to their trauma, and then it became this fiasco of, “That’s not a healthy way to deal with trauma” and “How dare you tell another survivor how to cope with her trauma?” and so on and so forth.
So yeah, while I agree that telling someone they are responsible for their rape is absolutely 100% unacceptable and this should be a warnable offense, I can see the potential for an overly broad rule to stifle a lot of conversation.
saying, in a thread about fireworks, “I’m sorry that they cause you PTSD, but I’m still not convinced we should ban fireworks. That sounds like a shitty thing you’ll have to deal with.”
and
Saying, in a Pit thread about gun control, “Aren’t you the wuss who freaks out every time a firework goes off in your neighborhood? Maybe you shouldn’t be talking about gun control if you wet your pants every time you hear a loud noise.”
