[Noisebridge-discuss] I got groped at noisebridge at hackmeet

[Tony Longshanks LeTigre]

The following is an in-depth respons to hep's torrential downpour of
insults, hysteria & threats addressed mainly to me. I hope you like it; I
took way more time outta my day than I planned to squander on this bs.
DISCLAIMER: I am not Noisebridge, I am Tony Longshanks LeTigre. What I say
does not represent Noisebridge, it represents me. I am directly responding
to a direct attack made on me in a previous post to this list. The attack
was public (i.e. sent to the general mailing list), so my response is
public as well.

First off let me reiterate that what you did was terribly offensive at
> best, and outright abusive and demeaning to the victim at worst.
>

Wow, really? It's almost like I'm a stand-in now for all the rage against
the person who committed the assault!

You literally used a textbook example of how not to respond to sexual
> assault victims.
>

Please, when you write the textbook, would you credit me for that example?
Otherwise, I'll sue you. (That's a joke, because of the threats of
litigation you've been making.)


> The first thing you did was trivialize her experience, by insinuating that
> in any context it would be a desired experience. This is not really a
> situation to make light of.
>

Stop instructing me on how to respond to things. This is now a shared,
group experience. I am part of the group with whom Susan chose to share
that experience. I make light of everything. My present life circumstances
are somewhat problematic (no home, no job, no money, no bank account, no
food, no family, no job, no drugs...), yet I am able to transform &
surmount them through the magic of humor. It really is a gift. It just
keeps on giving.


> It's like going up to a Bosnian victim in 1991 who lost their entire
> family in the Serbian Aggression and making a bunch of genocide jokes.
>

Wow, could you be more overdramatic, more hyperbolic, more....hysterical? I
practically am Hitler, at this point! They're going to have to reconvene
Nuremberg. Just to decide if my jokes were funny or not?


> It is not going to go over well, and you are an asshole if you do that.
>

This I accept & agree with.


> The proper response at this point would be to accept that you said
> something dickish and apologize for it.
>

Actually, I'm going to accept that I said something dickish and
*not*apologize for it. I'll tell you why in just a moment....


> Not a backhanded apology like "well i am sorry you are so offended then!"
> but a real apology that looks something like "i am sorry that my words hurt
> you." no qualifiers for your intent, no qualifiers for what you meant, no
> attempt to put the blame in the situation on us for "just misunderstanding
> what you are trying to do!" but instead taking full responsibility for
> saying hurtful things in a very serious environment.
>

That's the problem....it's too serious an environment. My role is to make
sick jokes about things that aren't funny & piss everyone off. Your job,
evidently, is to lecture everyone like they're 3 years old & blow things
vastly out of proportion, by comparing a minor incident at Noisebridge to
the fucking Holocaust. Whoa sister, I had to scroll up & make sure you
actually said that shit. You know, I'm pretty hard to offend, but that's
actually the first thing I've seen in a while that's borderline fucking
offensive. And I'm not even Jewish. (Just a faggot.)

>
> This is a free country where people are allowed to say what they want.
>

Thank you so much for pointing that out. This is what I meant above when I
said I'd tell you why in a minute.

There is nothing funny about telling a sexual assault victim that their
sexual assault should be trivialized and they should just get a sense of
humor about it. FYI you should probably tune your sense of humor so that it
is actually funny and not stupid and pathetic. This might have more of a
positive gain for you in the future.

Maybe some people have a different sense of humor than you do, & you should
stop censoring them. Censorship & free speech are issues that I care about
as much as you care about abuse.

>
> It implies that there is some other situation in which a stranger grabbing
> a woman's breast is somehow ok, or acceptable.
>

Outside of a mammogram, I agree there aren't very many situations where
that would be appropriate.


> FYI: doing this means you are a shitty person, full stop.
>

OK. We've established that you & some others think I'm a shitty person.
Whoopty-do, congratulations, you have a fucking opinion! My opinion is that
you seem (based on this exchange, which is all I have to go on) to be a
shrill & pedantic loose canon, issuing wild threats & extremely insulting
remarks ("you are a shitty person. full stop") to someone you don't even
know (have we met....?) You remind me of the anti-oppression activists I
encountered last year during the zenith / nadir of Occupy Wall Street who
were actually rather oppressive themselves—attempting to censor those they
didn't agree with & swinging racist, ageist, homosexist epithets ("old
white straight male oppressors") like dead cats.

>
> And as an aside: I am not sure how you Tony could mistake this situation
> as incredibly serious and hurtful for the victim. From her first post it
> was obvious that this incident was really damaging and hurtful to her. So I
> am not sure why you would think it was at all appropriate to bring on the
> jokes "before you knew the severity of this issue", but I eagerly await
> your explanation of how some sexual assault cases are totally the right
> time for happy fun jokey time, but others are not.
>

I hope you aren't eagerly holding your breath. Because I never had any
intention of explaining any such thing to you. Those are, again, words
you've put into my mouth.

And actually, hep (like hep cat? or hepatitis?), that's all the time I have
to spare today for Noisebridge Disgust drama. Thank you so much, it's been
fun. I apologize for offering to include Susan's account of the incident in
the next issue of my zine, & I hereby retract the offer as you are waaaay
too much drama for me.

T.

P.S. Ever been to "lady's night" amateur stand-up comedy @ Brainwash? I
hope they still do it. Used to be Wednesday nights. They're totally un PC,
totally raw, raunchy, offensive. That whole brilliant exorcism of thoughts
from the id / free speech EVERYONE's A LITTLE BIT RACIST anything goes on
stage & THAT'S WHAT HUMOR IS FOR! thing that I love about stand up comedy.
And on that night the comedians are all women (+ sometimes a gay man or a
tranny slips in there). It's fucking rad! You'd probably be offended.
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