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

[mizarchivist]

This is about where I stand, too. I did try for big parties once upon a time (like 10-15 years ago) but quickly moved to curated to ease my spouse's discomfort at the chaos that is an open-invite. And now I've become someone who prefers carefully curated parties. These days I do not do well these days with large parties, particularly one I'm hosting. More than 10 people, and I'm really not having fun.
My habit has been to drift from people who generally cause chaos and strife around them: not necessarily abuse, but obviously that would fall into the spectrum. So, I've not had to immediately face this issue of what to do? I, like others, would like to think that I'd be willing to separate the unrepentant from the penitent. But, if this event I'm theoretically throwing is in my home, I also defer to the comfort of my whole house. I'm probably the least hard-lined of the four adults here... and yeah. So, ???