Accountability in Music • Page 86

This is true too, though. There are many different cliques on this site and a lot of people who don't engage in threads like this who often get defensive or dismissive when topics are brought up in different threads. I think they should be called out for their behavior, just maybe not in here.

 

I would kind of go as far as to say that when deliberately engaging any group of people (e.g. entering a band thread to make it known that a member is an abuser), it's your responsibility to exercise a base amount of empathy to the people you're engaging and that includes caring about their feelings, and if you can't do that, maybe someone else should be engaging those people instead.

this is absolutely not to say "don't call out abusers because it makes their fans feel bad", but rather that the mentality of "I'm going to tell you about this fucked up thing and I frankly don't give a shit about how it makes you feel" is wrong.

 

so wait are you going to be nice to me now?!?!?!

 

absolutely





not

 

I’m NOT defending personal attacks. I didn’t support it then and I don’t support it now.
However from my memory that is not how it went down in the a1 thread. People were discussing the album and you said something to the effect of “should we really be talking about the album considering what happened in the 30stm thread?” You were the one who effectively instigated the debate so I don’t see at all how you were trying to prevent a rehash.

Once again I’m not defending personal attacks, 30stm, or anything like that. Just giving my perspective. Maybe this is why these misunderstandings happen. You think you’re trying to stop a debate but you literally started it. You might have had good intentions but that’s why people here are trying to say- sometimes good intentions can come out harsh and start a fight.

 

I'm not going to sugarcoat things though. It does everyone a disservice. If I go into, say the Forever Came Calling thread and call them out for having JJR on their new record, I don't care if that makes the people in the thread uncomfortable. Raising awareness about abusers getting a pass is an uncomfortable thing to do/talk about.

 

how is it sugarcoating things to actively attempt to take into account how the conversation is affecting other people emotionally?

you're acting as if it is mutually exclusive with unambiguously calling out abusers, and it's not.

 

Yeah that's basically exactly what I said. I'm not relitigating this, I stand by what I said and the intent behind it.

I can't control how others interpret what I said. If you honestly think I said that to start a fight and not to try to prevent it, well, I don't know what to tell you.

 

I think what Joan is trying to get at (correct me if I’m wrong @nfdv2) is if you’re intention is really to raise awareness that leads to change, you’re message will be better received if you carry a smidge of empathy inside of you. That is literally all.

 

I don't know how a general statement directed specifically at a band and not a user can be made any more innocuous to individual users. When I say I don't care, I mean I don't care if they read what I write and get angry about the fact that I called out a band they like. There doesn't seem to me to be any better way of doing that but if you know of one, I'd love to hear it.

 

I’m saying that regardless of intention you DID start the fight lol there wasn’t a fight going before that. I’m only pointing out that good intentions don’t always equal good discussions & outcome

 

yeah i mean. what is your goal? if its anything close to "having a productive conversation on the topic" then literally not caring how it makes the people you're talking to feel is not the way to achieve your goal. forgive me if this quote is maybe inappropriate for this thread but thats a pretty bad way to start a conversation

 

It’s possible (and not actually very difficult) to both accept that you can’t control how people respond to what you say and to also take the time to choose words that are respectful to your audience and that don’t condescend to them.

 

My goal is just to post a comment to make sure things aren't forgotten and that's all. I'm not going to direct it at anyone in particular except the artist in question because that's not the goal, the goal isn't to make people feel bad. If people feel bad incidentally to what I said, well, what am I supposed to do about that? Should I care about people who, as a hypothetical, still want to listen to Brand New when I call Jesse Lacey scum and the rest of the band scum for their silence? Honestly, I want to know because this whole line of debate is confusing to me. I thought the goal was to make sure people aren't directly attacking other users? That's certainly not what I'm trying to do.

 

If you don’t know how to bring up a topic without being rude... then i don’t know what to tell you. Like it isn’t hard to bring up difficult topics or make people aware of crappy situations without being a dick.

Now I’m not saying i handle this stuff well all the time. I’ve had my share of hostility and all around dickishness. But for example my friend loved As I Lay Dying and specifically he loved Tim Lembesis. Consider how it would have gone down had i approached said friend with “f*** Tim Lembesis” and left it at that and just got belligerent vs “look man, this sucks i know what this guy means to you... but this looks pretty bad and you should be aware...”

Like you can bring awareness, make sure abuse is known, and be empathetic. It’s all possible from all of us.

 

hi, I haven't been keeping up with this thread and I just tried to skim through the posts from the last couple of days. just wanted to say that if anyone feels bullied/harassed please feel free to reach out to me and I'll do my best to solve it, whether it's deleting a post that makes you uncomfortable or DMing a user to talk to them about their behavior on your behalf.

also want to reiterate @sophos34's suggestion to take a second to consider what you're contributing to a conversation before posting—especially important for this thread imo. in the same vein, try to be aware of when you're posting a lot in one thread and try to step back if you notice that; it's very easy for a few people (typically men) to dominate a conversation and I'd like to avoid that happening.

 

Incredibly well said.

 

just popping in to ask - what things are y'all trying to do to make non-men feel comfortable and BE safe in music scenes/in your communities? i make the distinction with "Being safe" from "Feeling safe" because we've seen time and time again that there are dudes acting like they're holding up survivors, only to find out they are actually doing the same shitty things they were "denouncing". trying to take each other down and put up a front of "i'm a very safe person" is different than actually doing the work (the work which is hard to accomplish by just making posts on a forum). these conversations aren't super useful after a while if the outcome is just you feeling better about yourself for making a point. we all have never ending work to do that often involves not centering ourselves in discussion (i.e. "i don't listen to this for this reason and you do listen to this so you're bad and i'm not")

i think other people have said similar things in the last few pages, and i don't think i have anything else productive to say right now, so i'm out

 

i took my night last night to do some serious thinking and i wanted to say im very sorry. i think we got off on the wrong foot and id like to make a clean slate if its all the same to you.

i spent a good bit of time last night thinking, messaging people who are much smarter than me, and just generally trying to navigate my way through all thats happened the past few days. im quoting you but this is a much broader statement that i want everyone to see.

ive been on the wrong side of these things for a while now. i need to stop trying to one up and admit when im wrong. im not contributing to anything worthwhile with snide comments or trying to seem woke when in reality im still learning and im still very naive about these things. this has been an unfortunately rough but good learning experience for me and i hope it was for other users as well. im rly bad about going into threads to start fights and trying to seem like im better than i actually am. i need to work on that but i dont think cutting myself off from a site i really enjoy is the way to go about it.

i hope if any of you feel like ive bullied you or made you feel like shit or was just generally boorish or hostile towards you, that youll forgive me because im truly trying to get better with these things. id really like to start over fresh with a lot of you.

thank you @kaylasananjou @nfdv2 @OhTheWater @Kiana @Wharf Rat and @Jason Tate for your informative posts and for being patient with some of us.

 

Most people have had good intentions. It gets extremely frustrating having the same conversations over and over again, and I guess that some of that frustration has projected into discussions where others actually are willing to learn and figure out how to interact with problematic artists. And that's a shame because people shouldn't be scared away from having these already difficult conversations. Things have definitely gotten too heated at times and could be communicated better via dms.

I'm not perfect, and I'm trying to work on remembering that everyone has different lines that get crossed - whether it's working with JJR, misogynistic lyrics, association with abusers - and bringing up that certain people are problematic or abusive spreads awareness. Sometimes this gets shut down, but other times there's someone who asks what happened and they're engaged in making music scenes safer for all. That's awesome. The struggle is coming across people who aren't as upset as you are, or don't give a shit. It's hard for me to get personal but, I can't support Turnover and for a while, I was furious that not many people talked about their ex member being emotionally abusive. It got worse when the band ignored tweets from people calling them out and only bringing up the entire situation before promoting a new album. It was very personal for me as a victim of emotional abuse, it triggered years of experiences, and I was hostile towards fans supporting the band. A line was crossed for me and I had to find out how to interact with others even when we had a big disagreement. It's not easy. So I get it when people are enraged about associations or features with abusers. And I get it if you can't listen to Kanye West or Morrissey or any other problematic artist. But I also very well know that connection to music is personal and intense, so remaining empathic while spreading awareness about shitty people is important; no matter how challenging it may be

Sorry for rambling

 

In a similar vein as @CoffeeEyes17's post above, I very clearly need to reassess how I speak and act on this site. I'm not representing my best self through a lot of what I've said, in here and in other threads, and I need to improve that. I'm sorry to everyone for causing trouble in here, it's not right and I should know better. I've been careless with what I say and not taken into account how what I say, even when not directed at specific people, can affect people.

The truth is that a lot of times when I'm starting in on an artist that has demonstrated problematic behavior, it's coming from a place of hurt because I myself was a fan. And that anger at the artist for their actions can translate into callousness and a lack of empathy for others, again even if I try to keep my statements directed at the artist and the artist alone. I'm also wrong in that scenario, no matter how strongly I've convinced myself in the past that I was right.

Anyway thanks to everyone in here for letting me know why I'm going about all this stuff wrong. Specifically to @nfdv2. I'll try to be better in the future.

 

How this thread feels now:

 

Thanks for sharing your experience! I can relate to it a lot. As a survivor (I guess? I'm still not rly in a place to call myself that most days) sometimes it's hard not to take things personally and feel xtra emotionally invested. When people say they have no problem listening or supporting an artist afterwards it's hard not to be like wow are mine and so many other women's experiences that easy to push aside for your own enjoyment??? Are these experiences that easy to write off?? It feels like they're trivializing your own experience and saying it doesn't matter enough to stop listening and it's hard not to get defensive sometimes

 

We all can do better, and I know things have gotten tense and a little out of hand lately. I’m sorry for contributing to that. I get a little hot headed when it comes to this topic because of personal experiences and it’s hard for me to separate my own experiences from that of others, and it does cause me to be irrational and hostile. I apologize for anyone I’ve made feel uncomfortable or made it seem like I’m trying to bully them or have a vendetta against them. My inbox is always open to hash things out with anyone at any time. At the end of the day we all need to do a better job of listening to one another and working towards understanding what we all can do to improve.

 

Yeah okay for example the whole "racial component" re: kanye and Cosby doesn't sit right with me at all because Cosby's victims were mostly black women. People probably don't realize but you don't look nearly as woke as you think you do for defending kanye because he's black. Didn't say anything last night because all that other stuff happened