Alright so in general, this community handled this whole ordeal really well during the investigation. But now that it's closed, turning it into a "meme" is still really harmful for anyone who has been sexually abused or has gone through the process of reporting sexual abuse.
Just, keep in mind that the jokes you make may seem harmless to you, but for people who have experienced this kind of thing (on both sides), it makes the community feel less like a safe space.
Yesterday, a bunch of people on the Discord were ripping the original story to pieces in a way that almost seemed victim-blame-y. While yes, I tended to agree with a lot of what those people were saying, anyone reading the reaction would likely feel uncomfortable or unable to come forward in the community if they had experienced sexual abuse without being "ripped apart."
I didn't see that much here on ChaCha, but it's worth a reminder. So, just something to keep in mind while y'all are celebrating.
Edit: y'all this should not be considered a "hot take"
Edit2: alright this has been extraordinarily exhausting so I'm gonna just.. call it quits for a lil bit on this. toodles.
Another reason to move away from the branding of a mostly cis white podcast. That then created another mostly white userbase subreddit. We need to open this place up to more marginalized groups and make sure we create a space where they feel welcomed. We’re not doing a very good job at that.
literally every time I try to point out "hey, you may not realize it but this is a harmful thing to say for xyz group" I get like seven cis guys in my DMs saying "well actually...." like, you don't always have to be right. learning is good. being a "woke leftist" doesn't give anyone a free pass to say whatever they want, you know what I mean?
edit: I'm agreeing w/ you btw. wasn't sure if that was clear
Yeah It’s clear. I was watching Hasan the other day and he said “there’s going to be some ableism. I’m going to be a bit ableist. Deal with it.” And I think that’s how most people see themselves. People get to a certain point on certain topics and they’re no longer going to self-crit because there’s not enough social pressure on those issues and because it doesn’t effect them directly and so the marginalized groups have to wait until there’s enough shame in the society or social group to stop. In the mean time they continue to hurt others.
Calling it out like you did is how we put an end to it. More of us should be calling it out in the posts themselves as well.
That person who said they know it’s hurting some survivors, but others are celebrating, so where’s the harm, really pissed me off. Fuck people like that
yeah that felt really fucked tbh. I don't know why people think that announcing they are going to say something fucked absolves them of all guilt, but it happens so much in leftist spaces. I mean, at least they're honest about it, but it doesn't change the effect it has. someone being ableist on the left and someone being ableist on the right has the same effect on ND people, for example. no one is "better" for being self-aware about it.
The fact that they end up dm'ing you sucks. I'm sure they do so to avoid getting shat on like they deserve.
Please report the DM spam to the admins and moderators if you feel harassed or uncomfortable, they take that stuff very seriously in my personal experience.
It doesn’t matter the point you bring up. They’re stuck to chapo because of its legacy to them personally.
Stop trying to distance yourself from your whiteness to score leftist points, especially if it’s in order for you to disregard others struggles
Seriously this site is like 90% white and it's super cringe everytime someone does the above.
There was the perfect post/meme about this on the southafricanleft subreddit but sadly it's been deleted. It said something like "all the white kids posting fuck white people jokes are just trying to absolve themselves of their guilt instead of doing actual introspection and solidarity"
I completely agree with you. the whole "I've experienced oppression or discrimination in xyz capacity so I'm not fully white" completely erases the reality of intersectional identities.
It’s more when people act like being Polish or Irish makes them not fully white or something.
It is a bit complicated though. Whiteness isn't binary. While white polish people are privileged within that power structure it isn't that they are having the same stand as e.g. white assigned German people. The antislav mindesets and more structures which are powerful within the German border esp. vs polish migratory workers and also people who live in Germany for generations are relevant for them. The synthesis of intersectionality is to be aware how inclusion and exclusion isn't based on truth, but on power and that historically who got counted as white by the imperial core was only expanded in a move to retain power. E.g. after WW2 creating a new fiction of a "white" Europe.
This means that there can be plenty of privileged "enjoyed" by people who are now assigned as white and privileges perpetuated by structures, while on the same time - unless politically expedient - people and structures can scream how "they" are to be deported, how "they" are criminals and that "they" ought to be attacked (in case of polish people in Brandenburg this does happen commonly by Nazis). Naturally very common are attacks by Nazis on PoCs, too.
I fail to see how it's their fault for being white or from a white country - when they call people anglos or crackers they are showing a very obvious distaste for the actions of their country (plus it's more about the mindset, rather than the skin color, I've seen plenty of non-white people being called anglos or crackers well after they do the dramatic reveal of their race that many non-white reactionaries love)
I mean yeah the past incidents regarding transphobia and pronouns kind of revealed this. Though most people here seem willing to take criticism and educate themselves, which is good.
that's not what anyone is talking about though. we're talking about the post-investigation victim-blaming language. yes, it was almost definitely fake. but some of the language being used is the same language used by victim-blamers in other instances. that's what we're trying to combat.
I mean they sort of do to their own detriment. They do have a tendency to go way to hard to do something simple
It's pedantic but worth pointing out cause it's one of the funnier things they do.
I was talking about it a lot yesterday and the day before on here, but mostly about the opsec stuff and how much shit he had on his profiles. Definitely wasn't attempting to disprove but I'm going to self-crit it a bit because I think I should have just kept my fucking nose out of it.
Mostly just stunned how much crap was easy to find on his profiles and wanted to lay it out.
Nah I've come to the same conclusion after the fact. You're spot on and you're not being rude telling me that.
:this:
As cringe as my jokes can be try my best stay away from a topic this heavy. I understand people using humor as a way to relieve tension but idk try something else since it's hurting our comrades here. Just admit you were scared and confused while everything was going on, I know I was. Gonna see about doing sombrero posting or something cute soon.
Thank you, I absolutely agree. It's disappointing to see so many people being like "Aha, I knew it was fake all along!" as soon as the investigation was closed. I have never experienced something quite like this, but I'd imagine it's painful for a SA victim to be given the impression that secretly, silently, everyone who claims to be listening really thinks that they're lying. And they're all just itching for the moment that it becomes okay to say it, so they can make jokes and tear the thing apart. It's a good thing that we treated the allegation seriously, even if some aspects seemed strange. Looking for specific reasons to feel like you "called it" just reinforces the current culture in which victims have to be flawless reporters in order to be taken seriously.
I'm one of those people. I refrained from commenting, probing into allegation, but privately I thought the allegations were suspect, and I said as much after the investigation was complete. I thought that it was a serious allegation that should be investigated, but now that it has, it's odd to be told that I still have to pretend that a false accusation seemed perfectly credible all along.
maybe if you can't handle not using victim-blaming tropes when talking about it, it's best not to talk about it at all. and I'm not meaning you single you out here - I mean that for everyone.
What's a victim-blaming trope in this context? I'm not trying to debate bro you here, honestly. I'm willing to have my mind changed, but it seems like what people are saying is that even saying that the allegations seemed less than credible or that there were suspicious aspects to the account is enough to constitute being victim blamey, even if it's after the fact.
okay so a lot of it is what sappho already said here. that whole "I always knew it!!! what 15 year old likes craft beer! the omaha steaks! what a joke!!" kind of language can create unnecessary anxiety that every story (true story, of course), has to seem completely 100% plausible. when, sometimes, that literally just...isn't the case. or, even if it is the case and someone's experiences do seem to be "the norm," seeing the reactions here and the circlejerk behavior is enough to make someone question whether or not they would be taken seriously. yes, people generally kept quiet about it before, but seeing all this talk about how "this is what I was thinking the whole time," "I never believed it," etc etc etc only leads to SA survivors being extra wary of who in the community they can trust. because now, it feels like if I were to come forward with something, everyone would be secretly judging me and ripping me apart.
I guess the short way to put it is "sometimes it's best to remain silent, even if you are correct". I think that emily's point is that you may have a person come along who sees "I knew it was fake all along" without knowing the details of this particular accusation.
Perhaps if they know the details as well as you do, they would understand what you mean and there wouldn't be an issue, but if they browse the site casually (or maybe heard about the hubub and wanted to check in) they would see a handful of comments like that with a few handfuls of upvotes and assume that this is the default attitude of this site toward SA accusations. This could be incredibly isolating toward someone who may be a victim of harassment or assault, when most of us intend to be inclusive of people who have those sorts of experiences.
My suggestion to anyone reading would be to re-iterate emily's original point, and try not to be overly snarky or memey about the situation. Any commentary should proabably be fairly verbose and lay out the context, instead of assuming that everyone already knows what you're talking about. If someone still wants to snark it up, it's probably best to take it to a group DM or something where your audience is a bit more limited and assumptions are safer. If someone is going to have the attitude of "it's the internet, if they don't have context it's not my problem, I don't really care" some self-criticism is probably in order.
I guess the short way to put it is “sometimes it’s best to remain silent, even if you are correct”.
Oops, it's my Achilles heel. Thanks to you and @emily for additional perspective on this
I was replying to the person who is mad that people were ready to see that the most outlandish story of all time was in fact false but thank you
Yeah the admins and mods do the right thing and take the accusation seriously and investigate it, then we have tons of people saying they shouldn't have done that
tons of people saying they shouldn’t have done that
Do we though? And are those "tons" even regular users? Or is this a few people who maybe don't represent the attitude of this site?
And are those “tons” even regular users?
That's the question. I think the admin and mod team handled it as best as they could, but then there were highly upvoted comments saying "I wouldn't have let this go on for so long" and "I knew it was fake the whole time!". So yeah
to be honest, I've been avoiding this place the past couple days because I didn't really want to know. a couple people told me that users were being generally okay about it here so I just took that at face value. I know on the discord that is not the case, so it doesn't surprise me to learn otherwise for here
I wasn't even aware of this shitstorm until this morning, and legitimately considered leaving the site over it. I almost always sort by new and rarely read pinned threads.
Thank you for this post, I haven't been commenting that much on this issue because of this. I made a very cringe joke that I quickly deleted after I realised how terrible it was. We shouldn't be memeing something like this, it hurts survivors and someone got doxxed pretty badly because of the whole situation.
Lmao absolute " anime character smugly pushing up their glasses" move, just breathtaking.
People on here are accusing him of planting the story to smear the site
They probably shouldn't be doing that either.
Categorically do not understand how people are still able to get themselves worked up over the same set of Rebr0 bits he's been using for 2 years.
Because there’s nothing the people here like more than getting themselves worked up.
100% agreed. How about we just don't dunk on people who make allegations of SV. If the allegations turn out to be unfounded, make it clear in a pinned post (as the mods have done) and move on. Continuing to shit on the allegations doesn't do any good and can harm other comrades, especially when it invokes victim-blaming tropes.
And the allegation wasn't even disproven. Very distasteful to be running victory laps when nothing has been concluded.
The point here i think is that no one should be taking victory laps.
Agreed but we can be happy without posting in poor taste about the whole affair.
See, this is why this can keep happening. It's not possible to "disprove" it. Anyone can say "x sexually assaulted me" completely anonymously and completely refusing to provide any specifics between fanfic. No chat logs, coming up with excuses for why the police report is lost or whatever, more excuses to not talk to the other alleged victims and lying about admins tampering with dms etc. What is more, the internet is FULL of people who will absolutely do that given the opportunity. Believing victims isn't about lending credibility to whatever nonsense accusation by some anonymous bloop on the internet with nothing more behind it. It hurts victims because it ends up casting doubt on actual allegations. There should be a strict line in the sand, you shouldn't lend credence to everything. Everyone should just forget about this pathetic shit.
There was a subsequent allegation about an hour after the first that was targeted at another mod that got memory holed for being an obvious op so it's clear the notion that we have to take every obviously contrived allegation incredibly seriously and somberly is a fiction.
.... not really sure what you're trying to accomplish with this one tbh. so uh, who decides what gets taken seriously and what doesn't?
Right, and the point isn't that she should now be suspended pending investigation, because those allegations were clearly on their bad faith wreckers. The point is someone is not being problematic for also thinking that Beatnik's accuser was a bad faith wrecker on their face, because as I've documented elsewhere, Beatnik's accuser was actually far less credible than a simple "Mod-so-and-so sexually assaulted me".
a really good way to make sure the accused know we believe them is to tell them we believe them. like, I don't think this needs to be that difficult
I hadn't considered this. I thought declaring it fake meant we could treat the accusation as any other wrecking attempt and/or joke. It does have implications for how people think of SA allegations. I'll stop taking part in the memes even if I find the details in the story absurd and funny.
