In lock-step with a hive mind
Aron and Lilandra are leaving Freethought Blogs.
Aron explains that it’s not an acrimonious divorce.
We had considered moving the blog a couple years ago, but I didn’t want to do it then because that’s when FtB was under attack. I thought it would look like we were bowing, or cowering to criticism of anyone who blogs at FtB. I also stayed because I could use myself as an example against the absurdly stupid stereotypes people tried to pin on this group back then. I often pointed out that, if everyone on this network is required to work in lock-step with a hive mind, as so many outsiders have alleged, then why am I still tolerated whenever I publicly disagree with so many of my associates on this network? That strategy must have worked because I haven’t heard any such criticisms in quite a while now.
I don’t know the answer to his question. I don’t know why he is still tolerated whenever he publicly disagrees with so many of his associates on that network. I don’t know why he is still tolerated and I’m not. I do know, though, that it’s not because bloggers on the network never do push anyone out over a disagreement.
Ironically, Lilandra herself helped them push me out. I don’t know if she did it inadvertently or on purpose or some of both. (You know how you can do things without fully consciously planning out the consequences, right?) She decided it would be a good idea to start a discussion of me on the back channel, with my name in the subject line and everything. Ed very quickly said that would not be a good idea at all and please stop right now, but it was too late. The discussion went ahead anyway, and went as well as might be expected.
So, Aron is only partly right. I think it’s true that most people on the network are not required to work in lock-step with a hive mind. But some are. Or, at least, I was.
At bottom I don’t think the issue is disagreement. If you had been more … pliant? Come to heel when you were called, and apologised for having offended anyone etc., things might have gone down differently. I think it’s your refusal to have your interactions policed, your refusal to apologise when you don’t think you’re wrong, your refusal to let others tell you what you should and shouldn’t do while being a woman that isn’t tolerated.
Oh, yes, that’s true. If I had consented to utter the exact correct formula, and apologized abjectly, and stopped trying to think the issues through for myself as opposed to just uttering the exact correct formula…then they probably wouldn’t have combined to trash me.
Which pretty much confirms exactly what Aron says isn’t the case – that “everyone on this network is required to work in lock-step with a hive mind.”
On this particular subject – trans activism – everyone on that network is indeed required to work in lock-step with a hive mind.
I’d love to see a male blogger there talk about the pressures toward gender conformity male have pushed at them and why they don’t really feel “cis-gender” in that they often feel less masculine than they are supposed to be without actually wanting not to be male… and that they totally understand transmen wanting to live as men and would never want them harmed by bigots, but aren’t quite sure that it’s totally a matter of “born that way” as men and transmen, and women and transwomen, all formed by a society that gives men certain privileges and expectations, and women certain options and expectations, and that he thinks that what it is to be a man is up for question.
Would he get shredded?
Part of the problem of having come into this particular dramasplosion late is that I’m not sure who we’re talking about. I don’t like that Ophelia was driven off from FtB, and I think it’s a shitty thing for people to have done. But I missed a lot of the actual action, so I found myself a bit at sea.
Ophelia, can you say which bloggers either:
A: Actively called for you to leave the network, or;
B: Permitted comments to that effect to stand without rebuttal?