A Question of Kindness

[Todd]

Let me say up front, that I'm not sure whether this would be a better topic for the Pig's Arse (just for where this could go), but here goes:

There's an online blogger I read, Ferrett Steinmetz, he recently wrote an article called, "Choose Carefully Who You're Kind To"

It has nothing to do with poetry, but it applies directly to any group site where people come together for any interest. In this case, he's dealing with a Fetish site FetLife. He deals with an issue where a guy (male domm) joins the site and spams every woman in a 20 mile radius of himself, in an annoying way. What ends up happening is the male domms end up getting mocked relentlessly.

Ferrett related a post where someone came to this group's defense saying (in his paraphrase):

“Why aren’t we more compassionate to these guys? They’re stupid and ill-informed, yes, but instead of responding with mockery to drive them away, why don’t we as a community concentrate on educating them? Guys who look at the Kinky and Popular board will see nothing but parodies of them. I feel like all we’re accomplishing is creating this negative atmosphere for new male doms.”

This was Ferret's reply:

“This mockery accomplishes something more vital, in a way: creating a more positive space for women, both dominant and submissive, who are less likely to have to deal with this shit – and more likely to stay. And who would you rather privilege – newbie male doms who are acting reflexively like assholes, or all the women on FetLife?”

“Think carefully,” I concluded. “There’s some very encoded and subtle sexism built into your thought patterns here.”

Don’t get me wrong; I am all about the teachable moment. I think you’ve got to allow for them, and someone has to stand up and be nice and take someone’s hand to walk them through all the dumb mistakes. But every time you “open up” a community to make it more welcome to those expressing dumb and insulting behaviors, you alienate those who are insulted.

And you have to choose. There’s nothing wrong with wanting to be compassionate. But if you create a place where people are very tolerant of the MicroDom’s mistakes, then more MicroDoms are likely to thrive there. Which means that the women get more dumb emails. Which means that the women are more to leave rather than being harassed.

I wonder what our views are when we take this idea and apply it to a poetry site.

Thoughts?

Here's the full article so you can see the context more fully if you want. I think what I posted, and how it relates to this site is what I'm interested in.
Original Article