Hi all, thanks for a most productive and thought-provoking thread.
What is bullying? Here is the Wikipedia page.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullying ;<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullying>
This points out that bullying is distinct from conflict. One of the factors
involved in distinguishing bullying from conflict is imbalance in power. One of
the factors in power imbalance is styles of communication that come from
culture or gender. Speaking to gender as the one I’m most familiar with, there
is a lot of research about the ways in which women and men communicate and how
that affects interpersonal and social relationships. Specifically, the
masculine style of communication is to to dominate conversations, saying more,
expecting to be the authority, interrupting more, being less likely to listen.
The feminine style tends to be concerned with equalizing input, listening more
carefully, moving communication along, gaining understanding. OF course these
are generalizations— "these are cultural norms based on research that showed
that a large majority of men and women display some of these characteristics”
quoting one of my sources.
It’s especially tricky when communication is online because as is obvious we
don’t have visual cues for assessing someone’s intent and the kindness or . I
think that’s why emojis evolved because it gives us a substitute for body and
facial language.
So the question is: what is bullying in the context of OBOL? Maybe we could
agree on what the most egregious behaviors are and work from there. Also,
perhaps we could benefit from some thinking about how to handle potential
conflict by seeking clarification of someone’s meaning before firing off a
response.
I am really sorry that people have dropped off OBOL because of the behavior of
others. I have almost dropped off once or twice myself, both because I was sick
of the snarky, mean, personal attacks, and also because of being mansplained
several times by someone who doesn’t know me and made assumptions. Some of
those people no longer post, so they may have left OBOL or just stopped
posting.
In any case, I hope that OBOL will continue because it is valuable to me for a
variety of reasons.
Finally, I agree that OBOL shouldn’t be responsible for regulating off-list
behavior.
Happy spring birding, everyone!
Mary
On Feb 26, 2021, at 4:12 AM, Teresa Hertzel <teresa.hertzel@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Be sure to REPLY ALL when you want to say something.
If you have joined this discussion more recently, you can read all the posts
from before you joined here:
https://www.freelists.org/archive/boo/02-2021 ;
<https://www.freelists.org/archive/boo/02-2021>
Kevin S alerted me to the fact that the BOO list is not shown on the OBA
website, so he was unaware of its existence. I'll leave it up to the Board
whether or not they want to add it, but in the meantime if you know of
someone you would like to have join our discussion, let them know about it.
So far, I think we all agree that the guidelines for OBOL should include a
"no bullying" policy, BUT what one person perceives as bullying, six other
people say it's not. People get their feelings hurt and unsubscribe all the
time and no one else even seems to have noticed anything untoward. For
example, the person I said would be a good "test case" yesterday, the woman
who joined, posted twice, got her feelings hurt, and quit. Is she spreading
the word that we were unwelcoming? Were we? What should we do? How do I (we)
constantly monitor everyone's feelings and constantly determine whether or
not there was "actual" bullying?
One more thing. I don't think we are responsible for someone contacting
someone else privately, off list. We cannot monitor or take responsibility
for private conversations. Maybe some attorneys on this list could weigh in
on this.
Treesa
