Alright so in general, this community handled this whole ordeal really well during the investigation. But now that it’s closed, turning it into a “meme” is still really harmful for anyone who has been sexually abused or has gone through the process of reporting sexual abuse.
Just, keep in mind that the jokes you make may seem harmless to you, but for people who have experienced this kind of thing (on both sides), it makes the community feel less like a safe space.
Yesterday, a bunch of people on the Discord were ripping the original story to pieces in a way that almost seemed victim-blame-y. While yes, I tended to agree with a lot of what those people were saying, anyone reading the reaction would likely feel uncomfortable or unable to come forward in the community if they had experienced sexual abuse without being “ripped apart.”
I didn’t see that much here on ChaCha, but it’s worth a reminder. So, just something to keep in mind while y’all are celebrating.
Edit: y’all this should not be considered a “hot take”
Edit2: alright this has been extraordinarily exhausting so I’m gonna just… call it quits for a lil bit on this. toodles.
I guess the short way to put it is “sometimes it’s best to remain silent, even if you are correct”. I think that emily’s point is that you may have a person come along who sees “I knew it was fake all along” without knowing the details of this particular accusation.
Perhaps if they know the details as well as you do, they would understand what you mean and there wouldn’t be an issue, but if they browse the site casually (or maybe heard about the hubub and wanted to check in) they would see a handful of comments like that with a few handfuls of upvotes and assume that this is the default attitude of this site toward SA accusations. This could be incredibly isolating toward someone who may be a victim of harassment or assault, when most of us intend to be inclusive of people who have those sorts of experiences.
My suggestion to anyone reading would be to re-iterate emily’s original point, and try not to be overly snarky or memey about the situation. Any commentary should proabably be fairly verbose and lay out the context, instead of assuming that everyone already knows what you’re talking about. If someone still wants to snark it up, it’s probably best to take it to a group DM or something where your audience is a bit more limited and assumptions are safer. If someone is going to have the attitude of “it’s the internet, if they don’t have context it’s not my problem, I don’t really care” some self-criticism is probably in order.
