I've seen this countless times, from columnists and from people in positions of power in the LGBt and feminist 'movements', so I thought it was about time to share the formula.
1) Say something in your blog or column that is a bit dodgy, possibly while being well meaning but ignorant of how your words are harmful to a minority.
2) When called out on this, instead of considering this from the POV of those calling you out, or those they're defending, refuse to listen, defend your words, and then say a few more in defensive anger that are actually worse.
3) When the minority gets angry and tries to articulate why they're angry, screen capture or storify the most angry tweets.
4) Write a new blog or article using these as evidence of how irrational, angry, and abusive people were to you. Make out this was because of your original piece, not the inflammatory tweets you did after.
4a) If you're feeling particularly defensive and want to make yourself really bulletproof, delete the inflammatory tweets so you can make out they never occurred.
5) Tweet this, and flounce*.
6) Stay away from twitter for a while, while your large number of followers attacks the people who called you out, using words and techniques far harsher than any used at you.
7) Return to twitter to a heroes' welcome, accept graciously the praise for dealing so well with online bullying. Your friends in the commentariat will now repeat from step 1.
8) Keep talking about your experience like it makes you an expert, offer comfort and supportive blog posts to others going through the same ordeal, which also take you back to step 1.
* Clarification on 'flounce'. Leaving twitter to do real life stuff is not flouncing. Nor is taking a short break. To be a proper *flounce* it needs to be a big, showy, door slamming exit, announcing you're closing your account because of bullying and giving your followers a clear idea of who to blame. Don't worry about the account being totally removed 30 days after closing. You'll be reactivating it in a couple of days.
Great article!! This happened with a prolific feminism blogger recently with my friend calling her out. She had the cheek to post a link and screen shot of my pal's twitter!!! And the blogger also banned my mate, citing her safe space policy for her blog. No one had done anything other than politely call her out on something that was heteronormative and not cool and she was all like I ACTUALLY DIDN'T MEAN THAT AND YOU SHOULD HAVE KNOWN THAT
ReplyDeleteLike it isn't hard just to adopt a policy of calmly looking into things, apologising and being more careful next time.