Will Shetterly reports he has been banned from Minneapolis’ annual 4th Street Fantasy Convention.
In 2017, a 4th Street board member recruited Shetterly to help with a writing workshop, however, after seeing the info appear on the con’s website, 4th Street’s Safety Coordinator raised concerns. The board overruled the selection and Shetterly was dropped. Shetterly exchanged emails with people to find out what those concerns were and why the decision was made. Today he published that correspondence because the board has notified him he is banned from 4th Street Fantasy, due to his having raised the spectre of legal action when dropped from the 2017 workshop, and also for his public criticism of the convention.
Shetterly quotes the board’s notice about the ban in section three of his post “Positively Fourth Street, or On being banned for … vague reasons about nearly indescribable things?”
- I was done with 4th Street, but 4th Street was not done with me
After deciding I was done with Fourth Street, I rarely thought about it. When I did, I remembered it like Minneapolis’s Uptown neighborhood, a place that was fun that has been gentrified. It never occurred to me that Fourth Street was not done with me, but the convention is like a lover I ghosted—she felt obliged to tell me the relationship is over. On March 8, I woke to find this email:
Dear Will:
On April 27, 2017, as part of an email conversation regarding your removal from a programming item at the 2017 4th Street Fantasy Convention, you wrote “Someone has suggested this decision to imply I’m unsafe in public might be actionable.”
We cannot disregard this implied threat of legal action, particularly combined with your lengthy and detailed public criticism of the convention on multiple platforms. Despite your reassurance in correspondence dated April 30, 2017 that “I just want to reassure everyone that Emma and I have less than zero intention of suing anyone”, the Board of Directors has decided that we are unwilling to open ourselves to liability through further association with you.
We are therefore banning you from Fourth Street Fantasy.
We would like to resolve this privately. These are the practical steps we have taken:
• As stated above, you are banned from Fourth Street Fantasy. You will not be allowed to register for the convention or attend convention events. Please do not come to the Doubletree Hotel during the weekend of the convention.
Thank you for your service as a founder, programming participant, and long-time attendee. We wish you well in your further writing career.
Sincerely Yours,
The Fourth Street Fantasy Board of Directors
Brad Roberts
Scott Lynch
Alex Haist
Arkady Martine
Max Gladstone
Shetterly says he was “done with 4th Street” already (partly for the reasons covered last year in “Steven Brust’s Fourth Street Fantasy Remarks Generate Heat”, which Shetterly commented on extensively.) However, he believes a public statement is needed to clear the air, lest people assume he has been banned for the kind of behavior that has gotten other men banned from conventions.
Soon afterward, I realized these things:
1. The only substance in the Board’s letter is the fact that I’m banned because they’re concerned I might sue them for implying I’m unsafe. Their logic is odd. If I was the sort of person who liked using the law, banning me would make me more likely to sue them. By banning me, they are giving me the only reason I might have to sue them—in earlier times, no one would have been banned for polite disagreement, so people will quite reasonably assume there must be more to the charge.
2. Their letter says I criticize the convention without citing examples because there are none. I’ve always supported the convention. I’ve only criticized its current administrators who speak as if they are the convention—L’Etat, c’est moi is the motto of all petty people who fail to see they are only caretakers.
3. The letter says the Board “would like to resolve this privately”, but a ban means nothing if no one knows about it, the idea that five members of this community could keep anything private is hilarious, and there’s nothing offered to resolve: the Board isn’t dangling any hope of rescinding the ban if I promise to keep from criticizing them in the future. Their “privately” may mean they want to keep the story in the realm of gossip instead of making a press release, but the game of telephone began the moment a Board member told a friend I’d been banned or answered an inquiry about whether I’ll be at this year’s 4th Street.
So the Board has given me three choices:
- Do nothing, thereby validating the implication that I’m banned for the same reason other men in our community have been banned.
- Sue the Board to make them admit that the implications of their ban are false.
- Make the historical record public so people may draw their own conclusions.
Shetterly says he has chosen the last option, thus his post.
[Thanks to Mark Hepworth for the story.]
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David W. on March 16, 2018 at 7:16 am said:
You made an assumption. I pointed out that it doesn’t apply here.
John A Arkansawyer:
Then I’ll show them to the place your attacks against everyone writing in this thread came from.
If you want a convention to spend an enormous amount of time on a baseless lawsuit only because it would make people here angry, then you are the attacker and attacking in the way an internet troll would.
@John a Arkansawyer
You’d have to ask the board. 🙂
I’m not arguing that he was bounced for harassment. I’m arguing that harassment is a legitimate and understandable interpretation of what the board member said, and that given how early the thing that people think is harassment appeared in the conversation, it is also legitimate and understandable to think it was a contributing factor. Whether the board would call it harassment I have no idea (and I’m not entirely sure I’ve decided yet, either), nor do I know whether it truly was or was not a contributing factor. But it isn’t unreasonable for people to think that it was harassment, and that the harassment was a contributing factor, even if you’d rather people were more conservative.
The ill will underlies the complaints which leads to the hassle. SF&F conventions are private social gatherings and in this case the ban is essentially a dis-invitation to the party because enough people have had enough already. Even if much of the ill will comes from online interactions, it’s still ill will in real life, and that can and in this case does lead to consequences in meat/meet space.
@Hampus Eckerman: I encourage you to place your nerf banhammer wherever you put that personal attack a minute ago.
And this–“If you want a convention to spend an enormous amount of time on a baseless lawsuit only because it would make people here angry”–is wrongly premised. That would indeed be petty, and I’d rather not make people angry. What I do think is this sounds like a closed system gone toxic and opening it up might help.
I get that fandom has its own ways and that success in maintaining a culture over time speaks for itself. I could say that about a lot institutions, from the great to the sinister.
So y’all could use an outside reality check from someone equipped for it. Not me.
And since I just acknowledged I’m not equipped for the reality check, you can doubt that I’m equipped to say you need one. If the thought gets in your head, I’m happy.
Every interactions I’ve had with Will Shetterly in person has been friendly, but they’ve also been few and briefish and mostly with me in the role of fan or fellow music-admirer.
My early online interactions with Will Shetterly were as a well-spoken thoughtful man with whom I agreed politically more than I disagreed, but who seemed to SOMETIMES carry his opinions about class so far he actually told some people (middle class people, or black people who dared to say racism hurt them more than classism) to their face that they were factually wrong about their own lives.
By the time Racefail happened, he had already started participating less on topics that were not his personal bugaboos, and spending MORE time going all-out and a bit hairy in political disagreements. To the point where I was starting to want to avoid him in such situations.
Then Racefail hit, which of course punched him personally right in his weak spot (his politics). I will freely admit that some voices on both sides of that got nasty (Though it was the white people I saw bend over backwards to excuse a dismissive and point-free personal attack by a white person on a black person trying to make a point as acceptable because the argument was heated, when all of the black person’s angry comments, while angry, had avoided personal attacks or singling out.)
Will Shetterly
– was active on multiple threads, and while I concede he kept his tone* more level, he also said a lot of damaging things in that level tone. His method tended towards sea-lioning
– He, as described by 4th Street, would not let go – to the point ultimately of following people BACK TO OTHER SITES to keep arguing with them, after being repeatedly asked not to, and banned in some locales (Which is beyond a hint).
– Was fervent about pointing out black people and other POC who were getting abusive – except that he *also* tarred some non-abusive people under the same umbrella.
– made more than a few people who had previously liked him say, “Too much.”
Still, I would occasionally see him at some mutual web sites, and I still read his books, and even would try to engage him, briefly, in some future kerfuffles.
It never went well. He had entrenched himself.
Then more reports of following people after racefail (And some later smaller incidents, if I recall correctly) — including into private correspondence. That started to weird me out.
Virtually every time I have seen him online in the last 6 years, it’s been because some political incident happened and he was jumping up and down waving his flag hard for the side he’d decided was right — and for a fervent socialist, even arguably further left than that, it seemed exceedingly frequent for him to attack other leftists, and extremely rare for him to attack right wing extremism with half the enthusiasm. (Maybe he saves it for his own blog? Not going there to find out.)
There’s a reason JDA wants to link their names; Will Shetterly probably looks to him like they’re on the same side when it comes to favourite bugaboos and favourite targets.
John A Arkansawyer:
Do not come here with trying to gaslight me.
You said yourself that you hoped this would go to court which would cost the convention both time and money. And you said that the reason was to make everyone react uglily.
This is what you said. And I agree it was petty of you and showed how you despise people who comment here, likening people to some kind of “mind group” and not as individuals. If you can’t even acknowledge what you yourself write, then you shouldn’t talk about reality checks for others.
As a point – Following people around and repeatedly trying to get them to continue an argument thay have said they don’t want to have, and who have asked you to leave – IS HARASSMENT.
It is NOT sexual harassment, which is what Will is determined to make clear he has not committed (and he’s right as far as I am aware.) But harassment doesn’t have one meaning, and while we should be absolutely clear he has never harassed a woman for sexual reasons, he has harassed people.
@Hampus
Eh… I think John was saying he thought people were acting in an ugly way and that going to court might reveal that ugliness, like a mirror. Not that going to court would make people angry. “One advantage of taking this to court would be an outside check on whether or not this is bullshit.” is what he said if you remove the parenthetical snide remark.
I don’t agree with him, and there’s plenty to criticise in that snide remark (Mark’s done so), not least that it made it unclear, but I think you’ve misread the statement as a whole.
Meredith:
If John confirms that this was his meaning, I will apologize for this.
If the “you” is File 770, you aren’t in a position any more to know how our behavior looks to outsiders. You hung out here too long and became an insider.
As for your dream a lawsuit over this could give the satisfaction of a judge declaring one side right on a specific matter of fact, when does that ever happen? Any time I hope a court battle will lead to that kind of moment I am disappointed. Civil trials are almost never about right and wrong. They’re about which side has the lawyers, money and time to exert their will over the other.
Lenora:
Following people around and repeatedly trying to get them to continue an argument thay have said they don’t want to have, and who have asked you to leave – IS HARASSMENT.
Agreed.
I find it interesting that the only bad behavior that Will has ever, in any forum, been willing to admit to (so far as I have seen) is something that happened a decade ago, and about which he feels he has a winning argument. And, indeed, one can see why he thinks this, since every time he brings it up, some number of people go off on a tangent, discussing whether or not what he did was _technically_ doxing, or if it was merely rude, or if the person who was upset is just an hysterical female… and this makes me crazy mad, because the actual issue is that Will violated consent. The woman in question did not want her LJ handle linked explicitly to her real life handle. I no longer remember whether or not Will admitted to knowing this at the time. But, even if he inadvertently created the link, the correct answer, when having screwed up like that, is to apologize, delete the information if one can, and try and do better. One doesn’t get to evaluate the whether or not the person whose identities were linked had a right to not want this to happen. In some ways, it’s very similar to someone asking to not be misgendered. You may not be completely comfortable with the person’s choice of pronouns for any number of reasons. You may make the mistake through bad habit, or ignorance. What you do not do, if you are a decent person of good will, is double down on why it was ok to use the wrong pronouns. That’s a dick move, proving that you don’t actually care about the person to whom you are talking. Over and over again, Will casually violates people’s boundaries and disregards their consent in conversations. When he’s called on it, he retreats to polemical justifications about speaking hard truths and shit like that. What he never does is acknowledge that other people have the right to their boundaries and limits and preferences.
Agreed. There’s also a fine line between being persistent and being a boor, but there is a line.
Your premise at your blog is frankly bullshit from my viewpoint. If a book written by a POC gets a critical review by us, it means the reviewer thought the book just deserved such a commentary. And if a book by that same hypothetical POC gets s rave review, it was deserved. We certainly don’t go light on POCS et al in reviews
Cat, there are three blog entries at my site on reviews, all of which discuss recent articles based on positions taken by prominent editors. The article you’re referring to was written by Rafia Zakaria, who is herself a minority writer. After having read up on the subject, I’m not surprised you’ve gotten threats after posting critical reviews.
@David W: Agreed. There’s also a fine line between being persistent and being a boor, but there is a line.
When one party says, “I really don’t want to discuss this with you anymore,” it’s a blazingly bright line, one that Will S seems incapable of seeing.
I think that some of this is a dispute about proper analogies. To what is a con analogous?
If I’m thinking of having a dinner party at my house, I can invite whomever I want. I can exclude people for any reason, or no reason. I can certainly exclude somebody because he’s rude and argumentative and won’t get along with my other guests. For that matter (though I would not do this) there is no bar whatsoever to me excluding people because of their race or gender or religion.
On the other hand, a restaurant or a hotel is a public accommodation. Now of course there is a whole layer of anti-discrimination law, but even before that there were common law rules that restricted how public accommodations could restrict or deny entry to people.
Is a science fiction convention more like a fairly large private party, or is it more like a hotel or restaurant? Can they say “we are excluding you because we don’t like you?” or must they give a “good” reason, as defined by a third party?
Legally I think the answer to this will turn on a lot of things, but it’s an interesting question to chew on.
@zippy
In thinking on this with respect to Mr. Del Arroz, I suspect the thinking is that paying to attend a convention is prima facie evidence that acceptance of that payment mandates that you have to be accepted unless you do something at the convention to warrant expulsion. That line gets real fuzzy though when you state your intent is to do things against the CoC. Is the pre-emptive banning in that case justified? I think it is.
In the case of Mr. Shetterly…I can’t comment directly on his situation vis a vis 4th Street.
Meredith is basically right to say this: “I think John was saying he thought people were acting in an ugly way and that going to court might reveal that ugliness, like a mirror. Not that going to court would make people angry.” I’d say that I’m wary of the health of any system that holds its secrets so tightly and so loosely at the same time.
And I agree that going to court over it would probably shed more light than heat. If the parties involved get an arbitrator to try to resolve this dispute, though, I will kick in money to help pay for it. Whenever everyone knows what no one will say, I suspect something unhealthy is going on and that an outside observer could be useful.
I am utterly certain that going to court over this would shed far far far more heat than light. Particularly in the public eye, which seems to be where you are most interested, John.
I have rarely if ever heard of civil court proceedings, even those which actually did point up a significant injustice and shine light on something dreadful, which actually resulted in press releases and news reports and public opinion all also agreeing upon the significance and the interpretation.* You seem to think that this is an ideal world where all these things come together to find a TRUTH — I think it is a pretty world but not this one.
* Recently, I and two friends had to once again debunk the standard nonsense about the McDonald’s Coffee Lawsuit, as being quoted by third mutual friend. So this disconnect between lawsuit and press release might be on my mind again.
@rochrist– No, I wasn’t implying you made it up. I was saying I believed it to be a long time ago, unless Shetterly had made a lower-key visit to Boskone that I had missed. While that possibility seems very unlikely, it certainly wasn’t impossible, and I didn’t want to say that it couldn’t have happened more recently.
Now that we’ve confirmed that it was in 1994, 24 years ago, when Will and Emma were Guests of Honor and Will was perhaps on his best behavior, perhaps my point is a bit clearer.
@John A. Arkansawyer– No amount of sophistry, special pleading, and gaslighting will change the fact that Will’s online behavior for decades has been tilting more and more consistently toward persistent forced engagement with people who are trying to disengage, chasing them from forum to forum, regardless of increasingly firm statements that the target wants to cease having this conversation, is harassment. It’s not sexual harassment. It’s just harassment.
And it sometimes involves disrespect of the target’s identity, in addition to their other social boundaries.
This is, in fact, behavior that gets you booted from cons run by volunteers working very hard for no pay to put on an event that’s intended to be fun for everyone, not just the guy who just will not leave people alone, but will persist in telling them they’re wrong not just about some political issue, but about basic facts of their own lives and experiences.
Will is not the victim, here.
@Lenora Rose: I was actually thinking of the one time I sued somebody, in small claims court. I won–he did kick me and no one lied about it–but the judge gave us all a proper ass-chewing because we’d all been behaving like children. I resisted that for some time, but the fact was, he was right. And I never did collect my winnings.
Lis, when have I disrespected someone’s identity? Examples, please.
I have addressed most of the other comments here: http://shetterly.blogspot.com/2018/03/writers-at-file-770-validate-my-concern.html
Okay, who had 18 hours in the how long until… sweepstake?
@Will Shetterly– Already covered in this discussion. I’m not taking your bait.
@Lis
A wise decision!
Lis, not a surprising tactic. When you can’t defend a claim, refuse to address it.
Not me.
I will be away from a computer for about six hours starting now, so moderated comments will be delayed that long.
@Will Shetterly: “Lis, not a surprising tactic. When you can’t defend a claim, refuse to address it.”
Oh, the irony.
Wealtherglass, if you sincerely believe there’s anything I haven’t defended, let me know, and I will give you what I can.
Lela E. Buis corrects me aprtly: Cat, there are three blog entries at my site on reviews, all of which discuss recent articles based on positions taken by prominent editors. The article you’re referring to was written by Rafia Zakaria, who is herself a minority writer. After having read up on the subject, I’m not surprised you’ve gotten threats after posting critical reviews.
Interestingly enough, all of the threats could be traced back to white, older males (with the exception of the YA author). None liked that the writers found there stories to be less than superb as everyone else else, particularly on Amazon, had.
The responses we’ve had by writers I could identify as POC have tended to be both more courteous and generally more thoughtful. I won’t say that these folks were happy after I explained the review was after all a personal opinion but they didn’t threatened to seek me and break my nose as one husband of a then upcoming and coming Americana singer-songwriter said he’d do after our reviewer said her voice was grating and her material cliched.
I have been punched in the nose. It hurts a lot.
… you did a lot of work, got yelled at by a judge, and then didn’t take the time to fulfill the legal action you won?
I’m not sure that taking legal advice from you is in anyone’s best interest.
@Alexvdi:
I’m pretty sure you’re right. But practical advice? My doctor’s bill was around fifteen bucks and that’s all I was awarded. That was about half a day’s pay at that time. But I think what the judge said about all of us being in the wrong was working on me before I realized it.
I’m glad now I didn’t collect. Both the people I sued and my witness (who I didn’t subpoena and who thus didn’t show up, which shows I didn’t do that much work on it) are dead now. The last staff picture I was in with them, I’m the only person left alive in. i’m just as happy to not have collected. I’d be embarrassed now if I had.
I wasn’t out of fandom during Racefail and know little about it today because it doesn’t sound terribly entertaining to research. There is one thing I’m curious about since it has come up here.
Will: Did you know Coffeeandink didn’t want her real name used when you first used it? That to me is more relevant than whether her first name was easily linked to her LiveJournal in web searches.
rcade, If you can answer this question from my history of Racefail, I may be able to answer yours.
“For years, Coffeeandink used her full legal name in public, google-searchable posts on her LiveJournal, and her user name was her extremely rare first name. She linked her legal name with her LJ on other sites, too—for example, on the first International Pixel-Stained Techno-Peasant Day, she shared on her LJ a story published under her legal name. She was so casual about linking her name and her LJ that from 2007 to 2009, K. Tempest Bradford hot-linked Coffeeandink’s legal name and her LJ in articles at Fantasy Magazine.
“But during Racefail 09, Coffeeandink declared she was pseudonymous and the people who named her were “outing” her. Several weeks after she claimed she had been outed, she changed her user handle, made private the posts where she had used her name, and changed her LJ settings to “no robots” so Google would forget her. Neither she nor her friends have ever answered this question: If she truly believed she had been pseudonymous, why did she change her public record?”
John A Arkansawyer:
Then I apologize for saying you said something that is not what you said and now what you meant and was a wrong interpretation of me.
Otherwise, Lis Carey said what I wanted to say.
@rcade, here’s the shorter version, as Will is likely moderated at the moment: Will said he used her name because he claimed it was already easy to find out who she was*, and he thought it was relevant knowledge to make public at the time. You could learn more of the details yourself if you’re willing to go down that rabbit hole.
In retrospect, IMO it was less the actual doxxing and more the interminable debate/flamewar about it afterwards (and that only a part of it all) that’s relevant to the current discussion, because that’s what’s led to the ill will underlying what’s happening with respect to Fourth Street. Who knew burnt bridges couldn’t be crossed back over?
* – IMO, that’s like saying “you left your gate open so I went in and burgled your house”. Sorry, you own your own actions.
JJ: Of course they are holding something back — the specifics of the complaints they got, and the names of the people who made them — because publishing that would be violating the confidence of those people and painting big harassment targets on their backs.
David W.: “Objection Your Honor – Plaintiff is assuming facts not in evidence.”… I’m making a point about things being assumed by JJ
WS: Alex Haist emailed me: I’m still not sure what you’ve heard, so I’ll lay out what happened. When the seminar page went up, we received many complaints, and I brought these Safety concerns to the Board.
“Overruled.”
The next time you feel compelled to make snotty, condescending, mansplaining comments to demonstrate your Imaginary Superior Knowledge, consider doing your homework first. 🙄
I am curious what this supposed lawsuit would be based upon. I.e, what is the cause upon which relief might be granted? In the small claims court hoopdedo referred to above, there was some physical contact, right? Somebody kicked somebody? That has an actual cause of action attached, where you say, “Hey, this guy kicked me. Assault and battery. Boom! It resulted in an injury and it cost X dollars and now I want that person to make me whole [or as whole as the law can make someone] by paying those dollars.” If it’s a more egregious kind of thing, maybe you even get some extra dollars in punitive damages predicated upon the X dollars of the actual injury. But what are we talking here, in actual legal mumbo jumbo? What is the cause upon which relief can be granted?
John A Arkansawyer:
And I apologize for calling you a troll.
Well, this was fun to read and look into but my popcorn is gone.
let’s see if I have this right.
So, a YEAR ago, people at 4th Street plead for his help with a seminar and he doesn’t want to do it. More pleading, finally he agrees.
Plans are made, work is done, then “oops, we found someone else-so sorry we forgot to let you know sooner”.
Explanation demanded and finally told that the Safety Committee had issues because of complaints. But not what the complaints are.
Was this a mandatory seminar? Why couldn’t those who opposed his giving it just say “Ugh–I’ll skip that one.”?
Hurt feelings, foot stamping, useless threats of ‘actionable’.
Year later, decision made to ban WS because of ‘actionable threat’ which,IMHO, is a really really weak reason. Because it sounded stupid at the time; like someone stamping their foot and pouting.
It’s starting to sound more like 4th Street’s reason is “Ick–I’m tired of dealing with him.”
He does make a good point in that, by removing him from that seminar because of ‘concerns from the Safety Committee” and then banning him totally, it creates the perception that he’s a danger in some way.
If there have been complaints, then the Board needs to tell him.
Of course, it could be just something like this:
https://youtu.be/rEFKH9KzJEE
@BigelowT, about all I can see is the claim that Shetterly has harassed people, and him saying that claim is false and was made to deliberately damage his reputation. I don’t think a reputable lawyer would be willing to take such a case on, given the long fannish history of this vast kerfluffle. Shetterly is widely disliked and that’s enough reason for the Fourth Street board to dis-invite him from the convention. The pretext of banning Shetterly based on the threat of him filing a lawsuit is a fig-leaf, IMO.
I’m quite sure it is and I have banned people from things I have organized because of the same reasons. That is usually a smart decision, it gives you more time and energy to actually organize the event.
Racefail was no fun, and most of the actual journals where it happened are no longer extant*, but fanlore wiki has a pretty good précis which lets you see the gist without the emotional pain of the actual thing.
It covers both the actual issues (appropriation, miswriting of characters of colour by white people, racism in fandom and in SF writing, the place of white people in discussions of race, the difficulties of writing non-Western cultures in a world that expects Western narrative styles) and the derailment (anonymity and pseudonymity online, created in part by the explicit linking of Coffeeandink’s real name. At the time I considered this a separate wank – and also one of the reasons I view anything Kathryn Cramer has to say — even more so then Will Shetterly — with a grain of salt.) AND the longer term fallout.
I do actually suggest people read at least the articles written after the fact about the long term impact, as while this was no fun, it was an important turning point. Some of the people cited for bad behavior during have also been some of the better people for *making* some of the future change. Black and white and non-black PoC.
__________________
* (And not always because of racefail, though at least two cases are directly cited in the wiki; many many of the journals migrated off LJ and onto dreamwidth, or were deleted, for a variety of unrelated reasons in the 9 years since then)
No, not really. Brust said some things that he later walked back. WS jumped to “help” him, long, long, loooooong past everybody including some close friends had become totally fed up with his behavior, which is what David W. has outlined. He won’t sue, because the number of people across the whole political spectrum that will show up to testify that he is so unwilling to drop a subject or admit a fault that he crossed the border into annoyance and skirts the one to harrassment would queue twice around the block, and I would be one of them. And I used to like him. Furthermore, I agree with a lot of his political opinions, despite the fact that he manages to state them in a way that no reasonable person would agree with them. WS is one of those people that, if you find yourself agreeing with him, you need to do a quick check to see where you went wrong.
@David W Then it would have been a bit more upfront to say that. “We’re banning you from the convention because you’re widely disliked.”
Except that doesn’t look as good for them, so they don’t, which in turn, makes it seem he’s threat to people.
Been there, got the scars, concur in the assessment. Not fun but a definite turning point and a learning experience.
@Hampus Eckerman: “And I apologize for calling you a troll.”
Thank you. I particularly appreciate that. I am often clumsy but try to be sincere.
I’m persuaded that I was too conservative earlier, and that I should get off the fence and call it harassment.