a confession
Sep. 24th, 2019 09:27 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chhotiiYesterday I flamed RKOV on the list and today I apologized.
The hard part of apologizing was admitting that I, at age 50, might still be making the stupid childish misjudgments of a young teenager. Well, but, the President of the United States has the emotional maturity of a toddler, for example; so I should not feel so deficient on account of the fact that I'm still learning.
Apparently there's an unwritten rule that Arisia staff are to not take a flame-y tone of voice on the mailing lists?-- I hadn't gotten that memo. But, when pointed out, the rule makes since, since we do have to work together. It's like the rule that employees of the government cannot be too strident in expressing their political opinions, regardless of the strength of their opinions privately.
And-- not being aware of that distinction-- the general tone of the mailing list is contagious. Yesterday morning started with Lisa saying something to the effect of* "tho' I didn't win election to the eBoard I'm happy I had a chance to speak, thanks for hearing me out y'all", which I thought was a perfectly innocuous thing to say; and then someone (Etana?) coming back in response with something like "OH CUT THE FUCKING BULLCRAP LISA". Like, whoa? Why open fire on that? Although I was opposed to Lisa's candidacy, I was shocked at what seemed like uncalled-for expression of hostility.
* I am paraphrasing wildly. I am NOT going to go back into the Corp mailing list to dig any of this up.
And then I went on to be all flame-y?-- But the difference is that there was no substance to disagree with in the actual text of what Lisa posted (as far as I could tell), whereas Rick seemed to be calling into question the policy of having centrally located gender-neutral bathrooms. When it comes to gender-neutral bathrooms, I become protective mama bear, all claws and teeth.
But in the light of morning, I realize: It doesn't matter what Rick thinks of gender-neutral bathrooms, at least not at Arisia. It might matter at a smaller, more conservative con in which Rick is more influential. But there's enough people who are central to Arisia for whom an enlightened view of gender is important that there's no way we are going to lose ground on the bathroom issue. So, Rick can mutter his grumpy old opinions but he's organizing the inventory and that's great.
I did not apologize to Fred. Fred seems to have gone on to dig into this issue just to be a troll, willfully repeating misinformation (thanks to Wex for chiding Fred for that.) And AFAIK Fred doesn't do any important work for the convention.
You would think that by this point I would've learned to ignore the "but someone on the Internet is wrong!" buzzer. But I'm not on Facebook, so therefore I don't have as much practice ignoring that buzzer as the rest of y'all.
I know that the list monitors had something to say. I don't know if they chided me personally. I need to take a break from reading any of The List until I'm in different headspace, so I'm not going to go look any time soon. (I especially do not need to know this year how Rick responds to my apology-- graciously, ungraciously, nor not at all.) Hopefully people understand that a phase change from "reading and getting irate about every bit of list traffic" to "just not looking at the list at all" is likely, and would CC me on anything I really really need to see. Better that I should just leave the whole mess buried in my e-mail.
I should switch back to digest format, rather than getting messages individually, if I'm going to be mostly trying to ignore The List and not get worked up over every stupid thing that gets said. But to even switch it I have to go back into e-mail... argh...
Just going to go to the gym now.
The hard part of apologizing was admitting that I, at age 50, might still be making the stupid childish misjudgments of a young teenager. Well, but, the President of the United States has the emotional maturity of a toddler, for example; so I should not feel so deficient on account of the fact that I'm still learning.
Apparently there's an unwritten rule that Arisia staff are to not take a flame-y tone of voice on the mailing lists?-- I hadn't gotten that memo. But, when pointed out, the rule makes since, since we do have to work together. It's like the rule that employees of the government cannot be too strident in expressing their political opinions, regardless of the strength of their opinions privately.
And-- not being aware of that distinction-- the general tone of the mailing list is contagious. Yesterday morning started with Lisa saying something to the effect of* "tho' I didn't win election to the eBoard I'm happy I had a chance to speak, thanks for hearing me out y'all", which I thought was a perfectly innocuous thing to say; and then someone (Etana?) coming back in response with something like "OH CUT THE FUCKING BULLCRAP LISA". Like, whoa? Why open fire on that? Although I was opposed to Lisa's candidacy, I was shocked at what seemed like uncalled-for expression of hostility.
* I am paraphrasing wildly. I am NOT going to go back into the Corp mailing list to dig any of this up.
And then I went on to be all flame-y?-- But the difference is that there was no substance to disagree with in the actual text of what Lisa posted (as far as I could tell), whereas Rick seemed to be calling into question the policy of having centrally located gender-neutral bathrooms. When it comes to gender-neutral bathrooms, I become protective mama bear, all claws and teeth.
But in the light of morning, I realize: It doesn't matter what Rick thinks of gender-neutral bathrooms, at least not at Arisia. It might matter at a smaller, more conservative con in which Rick is more influential. But there's enough people who are central to Arisia for whom an enlightened view of gender is important that there's no way we are going to lose ground on the bathroom issue. So, Rick can mutter his grumpy old opinions but he's organizing the inventory and that's great.
I did not apologize to Fred. Fred seems to have gone on to dig into this issue just to be a troll, willfully repeating misinformation (thanks to Wex for chiding Fred for that.) And AFAIK Fred doesn't do any important work for the convention.
You would think that by this point I would've learned to ignore the "but someone on the Internet is wrong!" buzzer. But I'm not on Facebook, so therefore I don't have as much practice ignoring that buzzer as the rest of y'all.
I know that the list monitors had something to say. I don't know if they chided me personally. I need to take a break from reading any of The List until I'm in different headspace, so I'm not going to go look any time soon. (I especially do not need to know this year how Rick responds to my apology-- graciously, ungraciously, nor not at all.) Hopefully people understand that a phase change from "reading and getting irate about every bit of list traffic" to "just not looking at the list at all" is likely, and would CC me on anything I really really need to see. Better that I should just leave the whole mess buried in my e-mail.
I should switch back to digest format, rather than getting messages individually, if I'm going to be mostly trying to ignore The List and not get worked up over every stupid thing that gets said. But to even switch it I have to go back into e-mail... argh...
Just going to go to the gym now.
