Why Groups Must Turn Their Backs As A Group
Someone in your group frequently misbehaves. In your own private relationship with that person, you can take their good intentions into account, one-on-one; those good intentions determine how much energy you spend educating them. But groups must exclude individuals based on outcomes-- the damage they do to others. Good intentions don't change that.
I'll tell you something which summarizes a large part of the last several years of my life. Many people avoid participating in a group, in order to avoid a specific individual who is imposing a severe cost on them. Sometimes this is a serial rapist. Sometimes this is a stalker. But it ranges in severity and subtlety. Sometimes it's public mockery which results in a chilling effect on the group's creativity.
Lots of people want to avoid paying that cost, so they quietly leave the group.
Despite this, time and time again, those who remain in the group refuse to turn their backs on the individual perpetrating the mistreatment. These are the "Good People". Good People will change the subject onto good intentions. Good People will feel pity. Good People will debate whether the person is "really bad at heart". Good People will accept empty apologies for behavior which never stops. The one thing Good People will not think about is the terrible outcome the group is getting.
Because Good People will not, as a group, formally turn our backs on one individual who mistreats us, Good People effectively turn our backs on the countless people who don't want to come around any more because they will be mistreated.
I watch that pattern repeat over and over. I have stopped arguing with the rapists and the thieves and the stalkers and the intimidators. I argue almost exclusively to get the Good People to come around. I have spent years of my life documenting rapes, stalking, thefts, complaints. Years arguing and cajoling and working to convince groups, such as Penguicon and i3Detroit hacker space, to turn our backs on an individual.
The argument I have found most persuasive is this. You may not realize just how high a cost you have personally paid in relationships you did not develop, with people who just vanished before that could happen, because someone was consistently harmful but you were too much of a Good Person to fire them, to exclude them, to tell them to leave. You paid an invisible cost for that. I am paying it too.
I want to make it visible to you.
Comments
none
Leave a Comment