I teach anti-bullying in my martial arts classes. The identifier for
bullying in simplified kid-friendly is making someone else feel bad, to
feel good(or powerful) in oneself. I love what I'm reading as there are
three parts of any community where the focus must be: empowering the
victim(of course), without also empowering the bully(and conversely,
punishing the bully in a way that does not punish the victim), educating
and gaining support from the community at large, and having those in power
working toward all of the previous actions. Looks like it is happening here
and now! Cheers!
On Fri, Feb 26, 2021 at 10:54 AM Joel Geier <clearwater@xxxxxxxx> wrote:
Thank you Mary, for this very constructive essay. These couple of
sentences really cut to the heart of the problem:
"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. "
I looked up the Wikipedia page as you suggested, and found this
definition: "Bullying is a subcategory of aggressive behavior characterized
by the following three criteria: (1) hostile intent, (2) imbalance of
power, and (3) repetition over a period of time. Bullying is the activity
of repeated, aggressive behavior intended to hurt another individual,
physically, mentally, or emotionally."
Trying to apply this standard in practice seems like it might be
difficult. Looking at the most recent example on OBOL that prompted this
discussion, we had the following sequence:
(1) The OFO board issued a statement on sexual assault and sexual
harassment, then one board member gave a personal clarification of the
context.
(2) A prominent birder stated an opinion that could most charitably be
described as "socially tone-deaf," appearing to question the motives of the
victim of an alleged sexual assault.
(3) He was quickly denounced by multiple birders (I count 6 separate
postings on OBOL, plus apparently more messages that were sent to him
privately).
(4) He became defensive, doubled down on his very unpopular views, adding
a few more socially inappropriate remarks aimed at those who were
denouncing him.
(5) More people joined in the argument, with the denunciations, hashtags,
and words like "libel" flying in all directions, until finally Treesa shut
the thread down.
While I found his initial statement (in step 2) offensive, I'm not sure it
meets the above definition of bullying. It was just a one-off, offensive
statement not directed at anyone in particular. On the other hand, some of
what followed in step 3 could fit under this category of bullying:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobbing
"Mobbing, as a sociological term, means bullying of an individual by a
group, in any context, such as a family, peer group, school, workplace,
neighborhood, community, or online. When it occurs as physical and
emotional abuse in the workplace, such as 'ganging up' by co-workers,
subordinates or superiors, to force someone out of the workplace through
rumor, innuendo, intimidation, humiliation, discrediting, and isolation, it
is also referred to as malicious, nonsexual, non-racial/racial, general
harassment."
There was a previous incident where an individual who happens to hold
deeply unpopular views on homosexuality was "called out" on OBOL for
attempting to give anti-gay literature to a gay couple, at an
Audubon-sanctioned event. This was offensive behavior in my view, and
completely unacceptable for an Audubon-sanctioned event. I supported the
steps that were taken by Audubon in response to that behavior. However was
it appropriate for him to be hounded by dozens of birders for weeks
afterward, to the point where he had to change his e-mail service and leave
OBOL to avoid continued harassment? That seems like "mobbing" to me.
Perhaps some of those individuals should have been sanctioned as well.
It may seem easy to identify bullying behavior in cases where the
perceived bully holds a minority viewpoint, but maybe much more difficult
when the majority are ganging up to harass an individual with unpopular
views. For a moderator to be able to implement an anti-bullying policy in a
fair way, there need to be objective standards, independent of the
popularity or unpopularity of a given viewpoint.
I guess that's what Mary was getting at: How do we define objectively
which behaviors are egregious, in a way that's fair to all?
All the best,
Joel
------------------------------
*From: *"Mary Garrard" <springazure1@xxxxxxxxx>
*To: *"boo" <boo@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
*Sent: *Friday, February 26, 2021 8:32:40 AM
*Subject: *[boo] Re: A few things--definition of bullying
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
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
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
