Caleb and All,
I agree with much of what you wrote here. However I suggest that we all need to
be aware of passive-aggressive behavior, which is a different, less obvious but
equally destructive form of bullying.
I do know of a few individuals who have engaged in this type of behavior while
talking "a good party line" about inclusiveness in their public statements.
We're dealing with both generational and regional-upbringing differences here.
As a Minnesota native raised in the idea of "Minnesota nice" as touted by the
now-infamous Garrison Keillor, I'm all too aware of how a front of "kindness"
can be used to mask hostility. As I've gotten to know more folks from immigrant
communities who moved to my home state, and listened to their experiences, and
also still in touch with old friends and neighbors there, I've also come to
understand how selectively "niceness" can be applied.
In this process, I've come to appreciate the "in your face" attitudes that I
associate with Chicago people, more and more. When people are honest about
their feelings, at least you can have a discussion. When everyone is pretending
to be nice but secretly harboring deep-seated, unspoken prejudices, well, ...
not so much.
I also don't think we should be taking a utilitarian perspective, based on
individual assessments of birding "talent." We should be able to support
inclusiveness for its own sake, and not in terms of "talent."
I would love to have a world, or at least an Oregon, where my Somali-American
Muslim friends, both male and female and yes, even some who might be "queer,"
could enjoy just going out to look at birds without being hassled for being
Black, or wearing a hijab, or being called in to local police as possible
"terrorists." They've dealt with enough in their lives -- seeing dead bodies
floating up on the shore.
One Somali-American friend has shared with me her father's lists that he kept
as a birder in East Africa. Really an interesting guy, who met both Gandhi and
Nelson Mandela in his lifetime, with photos to prove it. I would happily trade
any bird on my life list, to be able to say the same!
I'm not just mentioning those names here to be name-dropping. They're very
relevant. Gandhi and Mandela both had to deal with very significant opposition
to their views. They both put their lives and liberty on the line, to work for
what they believed to be right. If our worst complaint is that we're feeling
"bullied," that's not measuring up to their standard.
If you believe in a cause, please take a stand. I might very likely support
you. From our prior discussions (both on and off OBOL), I think we agree on a
lot of issues. But when I take a stand on an issue, it's not going to be on the
basis of "niceness." Because I remember "Minnesota nice" and all of the
hypocrisy that that stood for.
All the best,
joel
From: "Caleb Centanni" <caleb@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: "boo" <boo@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Thursday, February 25, 2021 3:15:01 PM
Subject: [boo] Re: Discussion
Hi all
Thank you, Teresa, for starting this informative discussion.
Just wanted to share something quickly, about the damage I see it doing to
allow people to remain on the listserve after engaging in bullying behavior.
Personally, although I know many in this thread have called for a more
forgiving approach, I support banning anyone from the listserve who
purposefully bullies or abuses another member, unless perhaps they are willing
to apologize fully and publically and promise not to act this way again. If so,
they should still be placed on moderated post permanently.
This isn't because I want to punish these people or I hate them or anything
like that--I don't. It's because I think we lose much more than we gain by
letting the very few people who can't keep abusive language out of the
conversation exclude disproportionately more people. Even if these few might
have a lot of experience and insight, I believe they are still excluding more
experience and birding knowledge than they are contributing. Here's my
evidence:
There are five birders that I've had the privilege of birding with in Oregon
whose skills, knowledge, and passion far surpass anyone else I have met. Of
these five birders, none of them use OBOL regularly, and three of them never
use it. Two of these people I've discussed this with at length, and they say
that the only reason they are not on OBOL is because of bullying and abusive
behavior. These two people are not even from underrepresented groups, so it's
likely that women and BIPOC would have had even worse experiences than they
did. Some of the best birders I've met in Oregon are women and people of color.
None of the ones I know well post more than occasionally, at most.
By allowing the few experienced birders who repeatedly bully others, we lose
vastly more of the best and brightest voices in our community than we are
retaining. By not taking strong and quick action to remove bullying immediately
and create a safe space without abusive people, we exclude tens or maybe
hundreds of voices, many of them with vast amounts of knowledge and expertise
to contribute, for the sake of keeping maybe ten people who act in an unsafe
way included.
Much of this bullying takes place privately, off-list, so I suggest that we ask
people to report bullying emails they see off-list to the moderator and to the
OBA, and that people who engage in this behavior off-list are banned as well.
One of the people who engaged in the recent thread about #believewomen
continued bullying Courtney and I off-list after he was moderated on-list.
Please, I implore this community to not lose sight of what matters here and
revert to the old state of things. We have a choice here. We can make OBOL a
truly safe place for the full diversity of birders, or we can see more and more
people abandon this list until it is a discussion board for only a small group
of old-timers, and everyone else in the community has moved elsewhere.
Thanks for reading.
Best wishes and wonderful birds to all,
Caleb
