I am totally furious

[luckykaa]

I know shirtstorm is news, but it's been really infuriating me.

Bullying has always been an issue I'm passionate about. I identify with those who speak out and campaign against it. Yet this week, because of a shirt, a mob formed. Hundreds of people weighed in to criticise someones choice of clothing. Telling him he's the reason women aren't going into STEM; that he's a sexist pigdog, that anyone who wears a shirt like this is a sexist pig. Over a shirt! Over what he was wearing. I mean sure, he probably should have been a little more circumspect. Hey, he probably should have covered those tattoos as well since not everyone likes them. He didn't. It was a fairly minor mistake and he didn't deserve the abuse.

Matt Taylor made a mistake. He apologised. The apology was accepted. Those who harrassed him also made a mistake. They are yet to recognise they have even made a mistake. Outside of the small echo chamber that's defending this hrassment, I see comment where people are ashamed to be associated with feminism.

As far as I can see, this is ganging up. I checked the people who are usually socially aware of bullying. A lot of them not only weren't critical of the mob. They were actively joining in! When people say "hey, this is bullying" tweets were disected and analysed and the bullies decided, that what they were doing wasn't bullying. Not one of them even considered the possibility that perhaps this was an overreaction.

When you gang up under a banner and collectively harass a guy over what he wears, then it is bullying. When you drive a man to tears, then it's bullying. The bullies aren't the ones who get to decide what bullying is.

I tried adressing this with other people. My complaints are dimissed.

This is bullying plain and simple, and the worst thing is, it's been defended by those who usually take a stand against bullying. This is the worst kind of hypocrisy. These people have formed a morality police, telling people what they may and may not be offended by. Well, I reject your assessment. This offends me, but the hypocrisy offends me more. Anyone who defends the haters digusts me.

Comments

[the-smut-fairy.livejournal.com]

That thing's gone that way? I had last read the story on the first day, when it went something like "This aspect of your public appearance seems rather ill-judged" - "Ah, yes, I see what you mean. In hindsight, that was a mistake, and I sincerely apologise". Then taking it beyond "OK then, let's move on" is worrying.

[chess]

I haven't seen it doing so - I've only seen a massive backlash of 'you shouldn't have criticised him at all!' and people going 'uh, actually, that backlash is a massive over-reaction'.

Some of the latter can look like they're still attacking the poor guy who made a genuine mistake and apologised and generally acted like a decent human being, but I haven't seen anyone actually doing so - they're actually aimed at the people who are making bad analogies and sending rape threats to the people who politely raised the issue that it might not have been the best choice of attire.

[luckykaa.livejournal.com]

It's not that people are still attacking. Nobody is.

They attacked in the first place. Then denied that it was an attack.

They're wrong. It was an attack. It was a mob. They were bullying. The only person who I will accept tell me it wasn't bullying is Matt Taylor.

Here's wikipedia's page on mobbing (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobbing)

In the book MOBBING: Emotional Abuse in the American Workplace, the authors identify mobbing as a particular type of bullying that is not as apparent as most, defining it as "...an emotional assault. It begins when an individual becomes the target of disrespectful and harmful behavior. Through innuendo, rumors, and public discrediting, a hostile environment is created in which one individual gathers others to willingly, or unwillingly, participate in continuous malevolent actions to force a person out of the workplace."

Aside from him not actually being forced out of the workplace, which parts of this don't apply?

[chess]

'One individual gathers others to participate in' - there's no co-ordination here.

I do understand that when someone does something wrong in a high-profile fashion, the result feels a lot like a mob / pile-on / bullying because a large number of people independently decide to talk about it, and that it causes more upset / suffering / harm than was necessary to fix the problem - especially in such a borderline case as 'wore a shirt without realising that it had problematic connotations when taken out of context'.

I'm not sure what we can _do_ about that without unacceptably limiting people's ability to criticise people who are in the public eye, though.

[luckykaa.livejournal.com]

There's a #shirtstorm tag. Did people spontaneously and independently start using that? There's coordination.

We can be aware. Awareness is important. We can start a discussion. All I saw was "this isn't bullying", even from people I thought were serious anti-bullying campaigners.

[luckykaa.livejournal.com]

That's not the problem.

There's a tendency on the internet for things to hit critical mass. For people to start brigading. Pretty soon you have a trial by social media. You have thousands of people weighing in. Unless you've experienced something like this, people who don't know you talking about you and judging you and you being powerless to do anything about it, it's hard to understand how this can affect you without experiencing it, but it is a horrible feeling.

The problem is it was going on in the first place. Whether it stopped when the mob got what it wants is beside the point.

The punching always stops when the victim cries. When that happens the bully gets defensive. "He deserved it" "I hardly touched him" "That's not bullying" "He's such a cry baby" "You're all cry babies too"

I've seen all these sentiments in the responses