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

Re: Yes.

[taura-g.livejournal.com]

Perhaps the best we can do is to respect everyone's right to reach his/her own conclusions, and realize that holding different views on these issues does not make anyone a bad person. We should try to accept that each of us has the right to decide who we invite to our homes, whether we attend (or stay at) a given event, whether to socialize with a given person, and whether to warn others about the situation.

As the conversation has continued, this is the one thing that wish more people would agree on. Respect for everyone's right to reach their own conclusions.

We are not all going to agree. Too many different viewpoints and experiences.