The complaint was that I called my fellow IDESG colleagues Nazi’s. He was unsatisfied with my original statement about the tweet on our public management council mailing list. Some how this led to the Ombudsman taking on the issue and after I spoke with him in Tampa it was followed by a drawn out 5 week “investigation” by the Ombudsman before he issued a recommendation.
Then turns out after all was said and done there was never actually a formal complaint. There was the ombudsman taking action on his own. (its funny how organizations can use Ombudsman to not actually protect people with in institutions but use them as institutional forces to push people out who speak up and ask too many questions)
During the time I was being investigated I experienced intensive trolling about the matter on twitter itself. The trolling was done by someone obviously familiar with the situation who was upset. There were only 5 people familiar with them matter as it was ongoing through this investigation.During my own IIW conference the troll topped off the week by making implicit rape threats. This was very very disruptive and upsetting to me so much so I don’t even remember that IIW.
Here is the tweet that I authored while pondering theories of organizational dynamics in Tampa and without any intent to cause an association in the mind of a reader with IDESG, NSTIC, nor any person or persons in particular note that I did not reference anyone with a @____ or add any signifying hashtags e.g., #idesg or #nstic in this tweeted comment. So unless you were reading everything you would never know I said it.
I own that the tweet was provocative but it was It was not my intent to cause harm to anybody or to the IDESG organization and wider identity community.
We can’t put documents up for community and public input and say “its 40 page document nobody has time to read” and laugh as if it is funny that the process is so bad that there is no ability for the body of the organization let alone the public to have insight. That is how not good things begin to happen no one is looking. I was trying to make a point that the meeting was being badly badly run and that poor process can lead to really bad outcomes.
I am very sorry if the tweet had an emotionally negative impact on people on the management council. I fully acknowledge that referencing anything relative to the Nazi era is triggering. It touches on our collective shame and surfaces vulnerability it is very hard to look at.
I also believe that we have to actually be prepared to do so. If we don’t examine the past we can’t be sure we will not repeat it. [Please click to see my my next post for this to be further expounded upon]
I didn’t choose to say anything along these lines because I was in the middle of a process with the Ombudsman I thought that would be honored and let to run its course.
I also didn’t feel one should feed internet trolls – one was being very aggressive and pestering me for an apology.
I think that we all need to keep in mind our roles as Directors of the IDESG when we interact with the public and with each other.
This includes hiding behind pseudonyms and aggressively trolling to get back at someone you are upset with. Which also happened – either deal with the issue in a formal process or take them out on twitter but do’t do both.
The whole process left my and my attorney puzzled. My attorney wrote a letter to the Management Council/Board of Directors with a whole bunch of questions and now that this is posted we look forward to their answers to those questions.
No one from he IDESG including the ombudsman ever responded or was concerned by the aggressive trolling and implicit rape threats on twitter by someone intimately familiar with the ongoing ombudsman process.
Abusive behavior towards women isn’t just a physical thing it is a psychological as well. I have felt unsafe in the Identity community since this incident. I am now setting it aside though and stepping forth in my full power.
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