I’m out for a few days – I’ll be on the beach.
Before I go, here’s another update on the problems at Rationalia. Fresh from their criticism that I used the term “sexual abuse” when what I should have said was “verbal abuse of a sexual nature to an unconsenting person” (everyone happy?), it seems Rationalia has been suffering from a bout of collective amnesia over whether any actual verbal abuse from their mods took place at all.
The query comes from the warm matrimonial environs of Pappa’s life, apparently, where his loyal wife has queried my recollections of the abusive behaviour from their moderators last year. So convinced is rachelbean that I never suffered any such abuse from moderators she is prepared to publicly call me a troll and say it never happened.
So in order to be helpful to you guys over there (is my megaphone at full volume? I’m certainly not coming over there to be on the receiving end of the kind of treatment you gave one of your other members last week), one relevant thread you might want to check out is
http://rationalia.com/forum/viewtopic.p ... 9#p1020619 from late last year.
Those of you here who retain privileged access will be able to see the abuse straight away but for those of you who don’t here’s a flavour of the conversation:-
by Exi5tentialist » Sun Oct 30, 2011 8:15 pm
No it’s not about dramaz, but I’ve been increasingly pissed off with the way that open abusiveness on this forum comes straight from moderators and I want to use my constitutional rights to assert my status as a human being who would prefer to be respected as such. Today, moderators and executives of Rationalia have told me to fuck off, called me a twat and troll and now you are swearing at me and posting tit-graphics. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t want to prevent any members expressing such things – but I don’t want them to think that on top of receiving the systematic abuse, I’m going to vote for them to be execs or have the power to appoint moderators. I’d rather vote for people who say their aim is allow free speech within the existing rules, but recognise that moderators / execs have a special role not to encourage the abuse of members. That’s a reasonable personal view to have isn’t it? Why shouldn’t I be able to express it in the form of a vote?
Then pretty much straight away I get this response:-
by stripes4 » Sun Oct 30, 2011 8:49 pm
Exi. Go and have a wank. It’ll do you the world of good. x
Quickly followed by posts from two mods, not moderating stripes4′s comment but instead saying how justified the verbal abuse is.
Later on in the thread we get another moderator not giving a “flying fuck”, followed by a third moderator posting in response to the thread just to say that she wants to say “fuck”, a helpful contribution in the context of Rationalia’s “Play Nice” culture.
There’s a limit to how much of Rationalia’s moderators’ sexualised abuse I want to re-post on another website, so please don’t get the impression that what I’ve posted is the sum total of their misdemeanours.
I do think it’s quite interesting though the way their high ideals of “Play Nice” and no “Personal Attacks” have shifted to a situation where such behaviour is now seen as “mild” or “a joke.” It’s not irrelevant that the maximum verbally sexualised abuse is reserved for someone who was seeking to initiate their existing procedures. As Pappa says in his rape joke, abuse is about power.
Needless to say, I was the one that got the official warning for posting the thread about six staff vacancies on the Executive. Apparently I was responsible for their behaviour, you see.
Rationalia is an abuse website. Most of the abuse is sexualised. Their lead admin abuses people, their mods abuse people, their members abuse people. Their severest warnings are reserved for people who post politely. So let’s not pretend Rationalia are capable of rehabilitating themselves without a radical shake-up of the mod team.
Anyway, I can’t stick around – I’ve got packing to do.
