Accountability in Music • Page 318

Because they’re being referred to in a hypothetical “they’re-over-there” non-comittal way, not because they’re not not actually survivors.
It’s INCREDIBLY frustrating that my post could be taken as any way other than that when I have never once made any kind of discounting statements towards victims/survivors so miss ME with that toxic bullshit.

I appreciate the chance to clarify myself, as I clearly don’t want to be taken the wrong way, I just can’t believe that after all this time I have to clarify at all.

 

I saw multiple people say specifically what they were talking about and it got either ignored, or talked over/past. I saw others explain why they feel like they need to walk on egg shells around certain topics when they're just looking for someone/other people to talk to about how they're working through something with music, and some of the reaction to those posts were negative as well.

There seems to be a lot of straw manning at the moment where people are arguing against two different things and not what people are saying is bothering them about this thread.

 

Phrasing matters. That is an awful way to say that and you need to change it

 

Okay?? This is what I mean. What does that mean? There’s language being used by so many different people who are on so many different sides of seemingly the same coin. Like. This is so vague and is just an attempt to make people feel bad without providing anything actually tangible about ways people can change, if they are willing.

 

they also are not hypothetical they are people who exist and post in this thread just to get talked over and past

 

Again, I don't know what to tell you other than that we've interacted positively before and I'd hope that you can take my word. There are people on this site who, through DMs and other pathways, identify themselves as survivors and are uncomfortable with the way that this thread and discussions about accountability have been turning over the past few years. They don't want to post in here, so I was speaking about the posts that I've seen/conversations that I've had. I apologize for having to be vague about it, but I'm not going to blow up anyone's spot

 

I moved the supposedly, thanks for pointing it out but next time don’t you dare come at me like I’m one of the toxic ones.

 

I think this is what's been missed, by and large, in the conversation. That there are people that are very deserving of hostile tones, but there are times, and people, that are really trying to understand, trying to work through things, and are looking for the space to work through a difficult time with a band, or situation, and feel it's impossible to do here without being put in the "bad" bucket. And just talking about the people that deserve those hostile remarks as though those are the only people, I think is the wrong way to look at this.

 

All I can say is can you give me a better idea of what posts/users to look at?
There IS a LOT of cross argument going on right now, to the point where I’m not even sure the “two” different things you’re referring but I agree it’s a lot of missing each other and not hearing each other bc of this.

I literally don’t know how else to explain that I’m expressing that they are removed and that I’m using language like that specifically because they are (apparently) posting it in a place that I CANT SEE so I have literally no frame of reference to go off of. That’s all I’m trying to illustrate.


Also if either of you could show someone I talked over by all means please do. If that’s something I’m doing I’d like to do better.

 

I apologize if any comments I made in here yesterday was disingenuous, it was not my intent to do so.

 

Starting around here: Yesterday at 10:56 AM, I think is the best place to start.

 

Okay. I read through all of that (again) and still don’t see many specific instances or specific people saying anything that got ignored.
That doesn’t mean it didn’t happen, we could clearly be looking at and noticing different things.
But that’s why I’m asking for more specifics of things and examples to point to because the conversation is so out of hand now and so far removed from any real discussion that was happening. Legit there are several topics/arguments covered in those pages so It’s hard to know what people mean when they say “in the past few pages” or whatever (I know I’m guilty of this too!)

 

I think what happened is that what was ignored was what people were saying to start the conversation, because a new argument sprung up around something else that was not being advocated or argued by anyone. So there were then multiple pages going really hard at an argument or ideas that really no one was making.

Reading back from where the conversation started, to where it then went over the last page or so, to me, it looks like two completely different things being discussed.

 

Exactly it is totally different things that are being discussed for sure.

“A new argument sprung up around something else that was not being advocated by anyone” what do you mean by this? Which argument are you referring to?

It’s honesty ironic because the only person I saw largely ignored was leerkats post that was full of hard-to-swallow pills. Even if you don’t agree with what they were saying I still think that post deserved being acknowledged. And then it basically devolved into a fight surrounding that.

Also it’s super hard for me to even know wtf is going on because I swear to god some of the same people preaching about toxicity are some of the people I could have sworn have said extremely toxic things themselves- but my memory could be misserving me in this case so I don’t want to call anyone out.

 

You’re right. It’s a tight rope to walk.

 

This x 100

 

Im going to try to never post in here again, but I do think it’s interesting that the thread seems to be 60% call outs, 39% arguing with eachother and maybe 1% honestly reckoning with rehabilitation/ways to move forward both for the listener and the artist so I’m not sure what we’re accomplishing in here at all anymore. It’s devolved into such black and white thinking without any nuance or context, just a race to throw everyone in the cancellation pile and it becomes easier and easier to put someone being inappropriately pushy in a relationship into the same category as someone grooming children. Things exist on a spectrum, and I rarely see that reflected here.

Anyone who has interacted with me at any length will know I care deeply about these issues, but when the answer is to either fire the perpetrator into the sun or yell at each other for multiple pages at a time, it does no good. This should really be restructured as an awareness thread. Accountability is (to me) generally centred around the idea of eventual progress, and I don’t think the discussion here has any room for that.

 

This discussion started with a woman saying they feel uncomfortable in here because of the tendency to immediately lump people in with defensive apologists and shitty people and the overwhelming response has been to immediately lump her in with defensive apologists and shitty people. That's not great, guys.

 

I feel genuinely very confused and like I’m looking at a different thread than some of y’all so I’m definitely gonna take a step back and observe for a while and maybe re-re-read for more context

 

Yeah, that's a big issue for sure. I think (and I'm stealing from a conversation I had with someone else earlier), part of the trouble is dealing with what "accountability" is and means. What, by and large, we want is to hold the person that did the shitty thing accountable. But, we have very little to no power to actually do that in many of these situations, so, that leads to frustration, and a lack of power, and to try and regain that power or feel like we're doing something to help, so that can lead to wanting to hold forum posters "accountable" for continuing to listen to or discuss a band, because those are the only people we may actually be able to "hold accountable." And, like was discussed before by multiple people, it ends up where the people that actually are trying to work through their own feelings about problematic behavior and its relationship to art they love, with people that actively do not care about survivors or people harmed, and they get put into the same bucket. And people that maybe are very early on in the learning process of what all of this is, or could mean, end up being written off so early on in the process as bad. Which, in my view, ends up hurting the end goal of trying to educate expand the minds of those in the music scene. I don't have the answer, but I agree with nohandstoholdonto about feeling like a good faith discussion about these issues includes a place for mistakes, for growth, for pain, and to feel safe enough to ask questions or try and walk through a difficult moral issue without feeling like you'll be attacked for doing so.

 

It’s so disheartening to see leerkats post largely ignored or outright shunned for being too “aggressive” and written off as toxic. There was a LOT of really important and relevant points in there that got ignored by most of the people who came around saying that there are people getting ignored/talked over?

Like. Leerkats post looked largely identical to the kind of discourse happening in feminist circles surrounding this topic. And almost all of the people piling against it are (as far as I know?) straight white men. So like. What does that tell you?

 

For the record, everything said here is pretty much what I was going for with my posts. I understand I probably could have come across more articulately, but it felt like the thread turned into me, nohandstoholdonto, DarkHotline, and some others versus everyone else. Which sucks. And is deeply counterproductive. And unnecessary.

If we can’t allow people to grow here, it probably shouldn’t exist.


(That/this isn’t directed at you Jason, I’m just bouncing off your ideas)

 

I’ve defended and advocated for leerkat for many years on this website and agree with a lot of their points. I was not calling them out specifically

But if we’re getting into that, sure. I’ll step down from posting anymore about it. Apologies to all that I have offended

 

I do truly apologize for the way I responded to Leerkat’s post. There are vital points being made in there, and to reduce them only to the things I didn’t like about it isn’t fair. I’m not going to go back and respond to it now because I don’t believe they want to interact with me or this thread any further.

 

like y’all I don’t know what to tell you. This discourse is messy. It’s complex. It’s angering and frustrating. That’s going to happen. There are gong to be hurt feelings because people can’t parse the difference between their actions/words being called out and THEM being called out.

I’ve never once seen the sentiment that a user should be “cancelled” because they dared to bring up a facet of a nuanced topic like this. A small percentage of users might respond with “hostility” but overall there IS room to grow here and people have been educated over and over and over again so I really am having a hard time grasping this idea that this is apparently a space where people can’t even say anything.

Sure we could all get better at focusing the call-out on the behavior/words and not the person, And we should work on that. But we should also work on hearing people who are calling out, even and especially if it isn’t worded in a nice and palatable way.