For some reason, you've decided we are e-mail buddies.
I have no idea why.
Your first e-mail was abusive and I didn't respond to you.
You followed that up with an alleged kiss-off e-mail where you swore you'd never write again and I shouldn't bother to write you because you would block me.
I really expected that to be the end of it.
However, lately you've taken to e-mailing your press clippings, apparently thinking I wanted to link to you here.
Feeling sorry for you, I finally wrote you this week and that was my mistake.
I tried to word it as nicely possible, I complimented your smile (and your eyes) and explained that I don't have any use for people who trash war resisters or slime IVAW. I explained that if you had changed your opinion on those two topics, you should inform me of that but, otherwise, you should stick to your promise not to write.
Today you're back again, playing injured party and getting a friend to write and vouch for you.
You say you were misquoted but we both know you weren't. We both know you said what was reported. (I know because I confirmed it before I called it out.)
So now you're not only the person who's written to share your abuse, you're also the one who's written to lie.
Why you're so concerned with what I think, I have no idea. You're not the first obsessive fan I've had. You'd have to go back many decades.
But around the third or fourth, pay attention here this does apply to you, I was told I needed to stop laughing at and ignoring these things -- stop treating them as a joke. So we handed the mail (and in those days e-mail wasn't even a dream) over to the FBI and they dealt with the sicko.
Remember I told you to pay attention? What I was told by the FBI then was to hold on to anything like that in the future. Translation, your e-mails still exist.
Now you can play injured party today and rush around trashing me. But you and I both know the reality and probably the question for you now is whether or not you'd like that reality to be posted up here?
If it is posted, not only will your hotmail account be listed, your name will as well. I doubt that's the impression you want the world to have you.
Judging by the e-mail you had a friend write, you really don't want even your friends to know about that.
I made an error in judgement (not my first, not my last) by responding to you the one time because I believed from your recent e-mails that you were just in a hot head mood when you first wrote. We now both know that's not the case.
Your e-mail today just made me laugh.
You don't scare me. But writing that may confuse you because it's not as tough talking as you like to self-present.
So let me explain it to you in language you can understand: Listen you litle punk, I buried a husband before the war started, I battled cancer in 2005. Translation, not only could I buy and sell your thuggish ass, I could eat you for lunch and still have an empty stomach.
You're not dealing with a former hippie here or someone grooving on peace and love. More power to those who do, but I wasn't like that even in the sixties (or "sixties"). I am someone who was kidnapped by a disgruntled former employee of my grandfather's when I was eight-years-old. He thought he could perv on me. He didn't get to. He also, after I was done with him, wasn't able to father a child -- and may not have been able to have sex. I've never felt even a moment of guilt over that and, in fact, shared it with each of my children when they turned five so that they would know if someone tries to perv on you, you do what you have to and you don't look back.
All the names you've called me, of which "bitch" may have been the kindest, hate to break it to you, but you're standing in a long, long line and nowhere near the front of it.
I'm not sure whether your abusive attitude is thought (by you) to bring out the tingles in women or just to intimidate them into silence. But I've stood up to much bigger than you and never blinked.
I could care less that you trash me. Reading over the list you provided, I see you've trashed me a great deal. I knew of the trashing when two friends called to advise me it was ongoing. I laughed then and I laugh now.
As you go back and forth from abusive to cowering, I'm realizing you're a powder keg that's going to blow around some woman. That won't be me. And your overt threats and your veiled threats don't frighten me or scare me. You're nothing but a bully and apparently you feel that is your birthright.
If you've never met anyone to call you on your sh*t, look no further.
That may be the scariest thing for you, knowing that I won't cower and beg like others.
As to your friend who wrote for you . . .
You only need write me again to advise me whether or not you were writing on behalf of the organization you stress repeatedly in the first paragraph of your e-mail. The same organization that the bully mentions in his e-mail today although he's not a member of it.
If so, I will need to publicly address the fact that your organization would rather stand with centrists who attack war resisters, IVAW and women than with the actual peace movement.
To you I say, no, we are not "on the same page." I am not "on the same page" with anyone who trashes war resisters.
If your organization does not support war resisters, I imagine this community will not support it. But I can tell you damn sure that my checkbook will forever be closed to the group and to any other group that a member in leadership serves on now or in the future.
My money doesn't go to fund nonsense. Refusal to stand with war resisters is nonsense. Sliming them, trashing them is nonsense.
As a general rule, it's probably a good idea for any woman writing to another in some pose of 'sisterhood' to first determine what went down before attempting to intercede on the man's behalf.
The ignorance in this comment is alarming: "I hope you all can get past this nitpicking and and pursue an understanding of where each of us is coming from. We all stand on the side of truth."
I have avoided your abusive friend. I have only mentioned him here once. He has e-mailed repeatedly and I have ignored that with one exception when I gave him the benefit of the doubt. If there's a "nitpicker" here, it would be your abusive friend who has written countless times despite promises to stop writing. I have no idea where you stand but this community, including me, stands on the side of the war resisters. We don't insult them, we don't trash them and we don't ignore them. On your side of the line it may be different and that is certainly your right; however, it is my right to call you out on it. So please advise whether you were writing on behalf of your organization. I have no respect for any woman that tells another that abuse (written or physical) is something to "get past" or that finding it offensive is "nitpicking". Having never alligned myself with any known pedophile, I have nothing to apologize for. I'm not sure others can say the same. But my own hands are clean.
To the bully, you're not being linked to here. Every woman isn't your mommy. We don't need your press clippings and we're not all going to 'oooh' and 'aaaah' over you.
Your obession with me is unhealthy.
You showed your abusive nature from the first e-mail and I'm not interested in playing out your psycho-drama with you. Sadly, there probably are some women who will.
To all the other drive-bys (who actually are interfering with real e-mails from visitors that actually matter), let me recap for you briefly. Having spent all of 2003 but the month of January speaking on campuses about the illegal war and all of 2004, a number of us got together to figure out what we didn't do that we could have. Throughout 2004, "blogs" were cited. I didn't know the first thing about a "blog" (still don't) but after the meeting, I got off my ass and did the first post here. I screwed up repeatedly, still do, but that didn't matter because this isn't a "blog." When we started, most were WalkingOn, WalkOn.org from the illegal war. Some members posted comments (in the early days we had that option), some didn't. But African-American members were sharing their stories of how comments weren't friendly to them. When Keesha was called racist term, the comments were shut off. At which point, the e-mails of "Please address ___" or "You've got to address ____" became even more important. I'm not speaking just for me. If something works here it is directly because of the members. Our best pieces here come from them asking for something to be addressed. I am not "in charge," I am one member of the community. Were I in charge, all this time later, I would've been able (as I thought I once would) to write about the privatization of water (an issue that concerns me and that I've worked on for years). In the early days, we covered anything having to do with the administration and the illegal war. When All Things Media Big and Small began checking out on the illegal war, members made it clear that this would be our sole focus. It is now. Monday through Friday, I have to address the topic three times a day. Anything after that is a bonus. But that is my responsibility and I don't shirk it. (I should do more on the weekends but I have two columns to write for community newsletters, two TV reviews to write for one of them and I have work to do at The Third Estate Sunday Review.) We are not perfect and any mistakes can be assigned solely to me. But anyone wanting to butt in at this late date, is too late to the party and not showing up with a gift.
When the Iraq snapshot first started, I played it down the line with just facts. Members wanted more commentary and humor so I try to put that in when possible. With regards to Turkey, we have members of many different opinions and that is still played down the line. With regards to almost any other topic in the snapshot, I'm free to write whatever (and usually not addressing something quickly enough). At The Third Estate Sunday Review, I can cut and loose and Ava and I can say whatever. Before that happened, it was checked out with members. There are very few positions that are taken here that have not already been polled on or warned about before they take place here. Anything that is just me talking has "my opinion" in it repeatedly.
I never sought out links nor asked for them. Members have built this community. So before you decide to write me about what you think we should cover or not cover and how we should do it or not do it, this community started November 2004 and we got along just fine without all the advice that's been popping up the last few months.
We're not looking for new members or to be liked. I plan to end this site in November of 2008. (That will result in e-mails. Today, I would end it in November 2008. At a later date when I'm not dealing with so much crap in the public e-mail account, I may feel differently. I know members want it to continue.) We're not going to waste the time that remains playing like everything's peachy keen or pretending that it's okay to attack (or be silent on) war resisters. We're not going to applaud the Democratic Party for con games. Members know that personal friends can get things noted here as part of a trade off (such as for covering a war resister). The snapshot appears on all community sites, all reposting it are told of any trade offs and a weekly record of them is kept in the gina & krista round-robin.
This community owes nothing to visitors and hasn't been waiting around for your welcoming committee. In the early months a 'name' blogger used to write to offer advise -- it was never taken. (I'm not referring to Ron for anyone who goes through the archives. Ron was always helpful. We took his advice when it could be used here and we ignored it otherwise.) If I would do this or that, I would get links. There's always been this confusion that I ever intended to play anyone else's game. That's not how I live my life offline and I'd be a fool to live it that way online. Having never sought out favors online, we truly are an independent community. We proved it on July 4th and we'll demonstrate it again on Labor Day.
But the blogger who seemed to write weekly had a masculinist way to do things. That's never been our way here. And it never will be. If this community doesn't speak to you then it's probably not supposed to. And if anything done here is that revolutionary to you, it only means you've probably absorbed way too much patriarchy -- knowingly or unknowingly.
I stumbled in many areas and had the community set me straight repeatedly, but we've never had anything here that embarrassed me from a feminist standpoint and we never will. So you can take your big tent that leaves a little space for women off in the corner and you can shove it up your ass. We're not interested in you, we built up without you, we built up in spite of you. You offered nothing and it's really shocking that at this late date, as you continue to offer nothing to women, you think you can show up here and give out advice. No one needs it, no one needs you, no one ever has.
Sometime in early 2005, Gina dubbed this a private conversation in a public sphere. That's what it remains. You're more than welcome to listen in, but outsiders do not and will never steer this community.
