My View: What I see as the Heart of the Matter

[taura_g]

The last line on drwex most excellent summation of his views is what I wonder any social community can come to some basic agreement of...

If we cannot find a way to work with each other - despite our different frameworks - to deal with an abuser and social gatherings then we have a pretty deep problem.

In my LiveJournal alone (and I certainly don't have the largest of friends list I know of...), my flist crosses the boundaries of PolyBoston, the local SpinJams, the Burner Crowd, the Kink Community, Community Theater and the MIT Suspects crowd.  More than one of them has struggled with this issue and that is a lot of points of view, a lot of history and a lot of different lifestyles.*

So in an attempt to boil an extremely complex situation and discussion into it's simplest form, I am asking for ideas.

Putting aside recent events and escalating disagreements, how would you want to deal with an abuser and social gatherings within your social circle?

Guidelines to keep in mind:

1. Don't make specific references to people or history*.


2. This is in regards to gatherings in private settings, ie a person's home.


3. One person's friend could be another person's abuser.

*(ETA-Forgot to put this at the bottom) I am a historian at heart and have some very passionate ideas on personal history that I may expound upon in a separate post.

Comments

[yendi]

#3 is the thing that I think tends to really create havoc because people have a LOT of trouble accepting the possibility that this might be about their friends (also applies to "people they admire" -- I'll avoid examples here, as well, but there's a certain mindset that says that creating a great work of art or mentoring someone else who creates great art means the person in question must be innocent).

I suspect you know where I stand on this, but in case it's not clear, I fall very firmly on the side of protecting the abused here. That means that the abuser shouldn't be welcome in my home, and shouldn't be welcome by anyone reasonably expecting or interested in my visiting their home.

I'm not opposed to the notion of contrition or rehabilitation, but those are very different concepts from just giving someone another chance. And while I do realize that this is something that by definition requires the abuser having friends and connections, I don't see the victim as someone who should have to shoulder this burden (nor do I take for granted than an abuser is inherently capable of contrition or of being rehabilitated or reformed).

(And as always, I'm a big advocate of awareness of Geek Social Fallacies and The Missing Stair when having these conversations.)

(Note: Will be at ReaderCon all day today and tomorrow, so my time on LJ is limited.)