Comment Massagement

Me, Pat and Steve on 25/09/11
Mum died on 21/10/11.

It's a long while since I've had any time for blogging.  Moving across the world gets you like that but I'm here to post a comment that was left on a blog that claims to be about humanism, although it's hard, given the vitriol and closed-mindedness in evidence there, so see what that might be that is of any use to anyone. I'm posting the comment here simply because three quarters of it was deleted, with the express intention of reputation destruction. (My comment policy is at the end of this post).

Email correspondence from 19/7/11, before Melanie's son visited us.

Someone I blocked ages ago (only because everything she wrote to me everywhere was name-calling) wrote a targeting blog post with my name on the title, (yes, another one), with my husband Steve's name too, and with the sole purpose of slagging us off more because we just won't shut up and go away like good targets.

Yep that's right, I just don't respond well to being treated like a pariah unless I've done something truly horrendous in which case I'm usually begging for forgiveness, which my friends all know obviously.

Not only is this person (who thinks humanism involves writing targeting posts) not a friend, she appears to be a definite enemy, for reasons all her own, and that's ok, I don't expect everybody to like me, I'm not that naive, or that young.

But here's the thing, people who claim to be something, like "skeptical" or "humanist", who spend time defining those things on the net, and lecturing others about them, and then who behave in exact opposite ways... well, you see where I'm going.

So here's a fabulous example.  Having begun her targeting blog post on her "platform" blog, she first of all redacted the name of an important person in the story (Melanie Byng - @thetismercurio) of how we came to be targeted by a big gang immediately before, during and after my mother's death, and then, well you can see in the full comment at the bottom...

Steve wrote the comment to ask why, according to the stated humanist values of the blog, a person's identity should be censored rather than they be required to meet the challenge of answering allegations of, to be frank, some quite awful behaviour which has been allowed to spill out of the personal and into the political sphere to the potential and actual detriment of children.  After all, isn't being required to substantiate all your arguments a fundamental part of humanism?  Nobody's perfect, are they?

But the humanist blogger (I honestly don't buy that this person understands humanism much if at all), deleted most of the comment, about 3/4.  She's still written more herself on the post with our names on it after also deleting Steve's account though - a familiar "skeptic" pattern.

So in the interest of disclosure and transparency the comment is reproduced below as it first appeared.

A couple of things:

This "thing" we're supposed to have done to poor old Melanie Byng is important because it's being used as a justification for our reputation destruction, but poor old Melanie Byng is never going to be required to even say what it was.  Oh dear, that's kind of thing is never fishy at all is it?

Obviously this is all so it can serve its purpose of becoming a nebulous "thing" that skeptics are required to refer to as "what they did to Melanie", now also referred to as a "victim" (yuck) but in reality, banging uninvited into people's private lives of impending grief with offers of help and then cutting them dead from both personal and shared political interests when something goes a bit awry your end, is, well, bad manners to put it mildly.  There is just no way round that, however much time goes by: it should have been dealt with immediately and in a way so as to definitely not effect the shared political interests, whatever personal problems or viewpoints were held by any parties.  That's surely so obvious it should really need stating at all, let alone years later...

Steve and I have both repeatedly said that we would let that water under the bridge, and we've tied ourselves in knots trying to find a way of presenting such apparent callousness as possibly some kind of mistake, in spite of the horrible effects on our own family, but in the political sphere, where children's welfare generally is concerned, not so much.

Likewise, Alicia Hamberg is not to be asked by any evidence-based skeptic to provide evidence of the awful pressure she constantly says we put on her to do things for us.  How convenient, as this is the main thing she's always citing as a reason for her irrational and hypocritical attacks on parents of bullied Waldorf children.  So the fact that it's baloney is, well, facts just don't matter when you're riled, do they?

So I'm posting the comment below because not only is it all true, (everything in bold below was "edited" out), but we have evidence of all of it, unlike the poor old skeptics who can only come up with how they can call me a liar because I called Andy Lewis out on his hypocrisy, and the evidence of my lies is all over the web apparently.  (Well if so, why edit it out? Duh...)

Andy Lewis' behaviour is absolutely hypocritical.  It defines hypocrisy. I feel totally able to say that because I have so much evidence of him saying one thing in public and behaving in opposite ways behind the scenes.  How does that make me a liar?  Ok, perhaps I slipped into personal labelling of him (as a hypocrite) out of frustration at his easy misleading of the public or his personal defamation, and I can apologise for that, but it is an evidenced fact that Andy's platform concerning Steiner education is hypocritical in the extreme and also misleading to the public in a way that could certainly effect the welfare of actual children.  I don't have any patience with that, I hope that's clear.

Yes, I wrote an article called "Everything Parents should know about Andy Lewis", (i.e. name in the title) but that was referring to his own post, and National Tour (and probably book etc.,) "Everything Parents should know about Steiner Education" or whatever - see, it was a take off.  I do happen to think people should bloody well know when he's claiming to cover "everything" about anything, if he's hiding information about that exact subject.

Likewise there's plenty of evidence to back up everything I've said anywhere about Ms Melanie Byng.  Anyone with a brain cell, (who isn't a friend of an involved skeptic) can see that all my words are self-defence, and plenty do, and I've linked to all the reasons why....  Why don't I publish all that evidence?  For the same reason that I never published the names of the kids who bullied my daughter - because I am an anti-bullying advocate and hold to the idea that out and out attacks are bullying.  Especially where minors are involved and Melanie's son, for all that he was "there to help" was really a minor.  That's not to say that I won't publish all of it if lies are told.... ah, now maybe you begin to see why Ms Byng is so quiet.

Get it?  So if any of you have the guts, or imagination to read any of what I've written anywhere about this through the lens of "this is a woman who's mother was concurrently dying of cancer and who had just been dumped by someone who had offered to help because of it", then go on, I dare you.

Yeah, takes guts to admit you were wrong doesn't it.

And that's the last thing, Alicia claims that this article from 29/08/11 is where she started to realise there was something very wrong with me which then necessitated a good few years of mobbing.  Gosh, was it because I dared to apologise in the comments?  I wrote the article at Melanie's request, who having thrown herself, her husband, and her son at us like a bull at a gate, then dumped us all, me, my mum and my daughter, as well as the rest, refusing to even speak to any of us, all at once before it was even published.  And I still managed to apologise to Alicia in the comments for being in any way over-arching, however freaky it all was.  (Mind you, the article still stands up as a statement about the difficulties of speaking out about Steiner - things that "skeptics" go on about all the time.)

There's a word for people who see apology as the worst crime: "sectarian".  And sectarianism doesn't exist outside of religiosity, so WTF? Skepticisim - really?

But anyway, here is the result of our Steiner action which we didn't actually do for the Byngs or for skeptics, we did it for the kids and the parents who have to watch their kids be bullied and feel shit and plenty of them get it.

So if you all platform people don't get it, that's fine, even if Alicia, who was bullied and nobody did anything about it, can't see it, or feels angry with us because nobody did that for her, that's ok, she's not my kid and neither are any of you (although I would stand up for you if I saw you being bullied too).

In fact, as far as I'm aware you're not actually children at all, so again, WTF?

All we've ever asked for is for democratic communication and not to become targets because Melanie's son changed his mind about something she'd initiated, apparently out of consideration for the fact that my mum was so ill.  Not a massive ask.

The fact is, that letting personal stuff effect political concerns to such an extent that you have to delete questions, facts and names, and even go against your own stated platform for example by actively trying to undermine actions against bullying of children, is without any merit, and eventually, can only have one result.

____________________

Steve's comment on the blog. (it's something like think humanism if you want to google it - a misnomer on both counts there).  The "edited" bit is in bold.

"So you justify removing someone's name because I didn't name that person in a private email? An email that was created for the sole purpose or telling our story without revealing who *any* of the people were on the remote off-chance that David, the chap I sent the email to, wouldn't be biased towards the story, should he happen to know who was involved?

"Since Melanie Byng has revealed her identity online and stopped hiding behind a pseudonym, we haven't had a problem naming her. This was the only time I didn't. So I don't see why my decision to do this explains why I couldn't put her name on what I now understand to be your blog. You haven't had a problem with all the other names I've written about. Why did hers have to be redacted?

"Why couldn't she, for example, clear up the situation by finally telling everyone what it was that we did that was so appalling it necessitated never ever speaking to us again, and then attempting to destroy what she was so gushingly supportive of before.

"As you yourself said, we must've done something absolutely terrible for her and her family to stop talking to us. Anyone would think that - but what was it? I didn't mention it in that letter, and elsewhere where we've told our story; not because we're hiding some gruesome act, but because we have no idea what would have caused a family to throw themselves at us one minute and then block every attempt at communication the next, especially when a major reason, apart from Steiner related things, they gave for their initial involvement was that they wanted to help a family whose grandmother was dying.

"We tried for weeks to get her to tell us what we did that was so horrible that it warranted dumping a child who had been traumatised by a school and who was then being actively persuaded by Melanie's son to come and try his local democratic school rather than any other. In fact, him convincing my daughter to come and stay with them for a week to try the school out was one of the main reasons for his visit according to Melanie.

"Another was to help us out during the highly stressful time of us being away from home and Angel's mum dying of cancer. He jokingly said "I am your servant" when he arrived, but he was there to help me look after my kids, help teach them until Angel's return a few days later, and hopefully learn a little French along the way.

"He had every right to change his mind about staying with us. His timing could've been better, we could've communicated better about the situation, it caused a lot of unnecessary stress on us and on Angel's dying mum - who had to reschedule some care appointments to make this work- but everything got resolved and he left when he wanted to and attended the party he wanted to go to. As I drove him to the airport, we were still discussing how his democratic school worked and how my daughter might fare there. Nothing was amiss. We parted on good terms. Or so we thought.

"So what had we done that necessitated breaking all contact, adding huge stress to our family at a time when we needed it the least, and casually chucking a 10 year old child aside, apparently without a second's thought? A child this woman knew was already badly damaged by her Steiner experience?

"On top of which, she's since been saying on Twitter and no doubt elsewhere that we're "mad as cheese" (and she's the wife of a senior lecturer specialising in mental health, so you'd think members of this family wouldn't be using such words lightly), and her friends, like Andy, are convinced that we've "spread very terrible lies" about her which is a reason why both us and our work should be ignored, and yet more others don't want to talk to us because they've "heard negative and concerning things".

"So what is it that she's saying behind our backs? Whatever it is, it must be troubling enough for Andy to say, as he left his Bath Q&A: "if you come near my family, I will call the police!" Those words concerned an audience member enough to come and see us as having been involved in serving justice to pedophiles she recognised this type of insinuation immediately.

"But to this day, we have no idea what it was that we did that was so terrible.

"As for Alicia, she continually asserts that we demanded that she collaborated with us and were furious when she didn't - without providing any evidence. That's because we weren't. Only once did we ask her if she could help us - around a poster we were working on. She declined and that was the end of that. I don't recall any other instance of us asking if we could work together. We never really did speak much with Alicia before her attacks on her blog.

"She also implies that there was something wrong in our communication with the school and says that had she read our email conversation with those staff members sooner - which are all online - she would've seen us for what we truly are, or something like that. I think she said somewhere else that what we were asking was beyond what any human being could ever give. Maybe that says more about her than about us, because all we asked was for the school to provide what it advertised it was offering: "a safe, peaceful, natural learning haven". Punching kids, throwing them into ponds, pulling them off climbing frames, closing their fingers into desks, damaging their property, hitting them with hockey sticks, calling them names, ridiculing them, threatening them with axes, pushing them down steep banks, to me at least, don't appear to fit in with those lofty words. But again, maybe it's just me. You probably think all of the above is just fine and dandy.

"Mind you, you also think a case picked up by Human Rights which led to legally binding statements can be referred to as an anecdote...

"As for Andy not allowing us to post a comment on his blog, of course he's allowed to do that. The actual problem is that he can't call himself an evidence based skeptic whilst stopping someone posting evidence on his blog, even evidence that supports his own assertion and which neither him or others are providing, whilst at the same time bemoan the fact that no information, like the one he's not allowing, is available. 

"Finally, as for your humanism and skepticism, you explained that you pasted that illegal letter from the school here because someone pointed you to it. That's exactly my point: you didn't exercise any kind of skepticism: it appeared to contradict the legally binding statements, so that was good enough for you. That's not skepticism; that's using what you can so long as it's in line with what you already believe. Not the same thing. Not by a long shot.

"It is interesting to note however how much communication is going on in the background: someone gave you the link to the school letter, David sent you the email I wrote him. Both of these people could've simply posted their own comments, yet they didn't. At least Alicia wrote her usual rant herself.

"What all the people who are shouting about the dangers of Steiner education ignore in targeting my family in this way, as you're doing here in the name of humanism, is that you're contributing to that very same damage. What a cruel joke.

Au revoir."


COMMENT POLICY

I'm happy to engage with people politely, and evidentially.  Evidentially doesn't mean citing a nasty thing someone else said about someone as evidence that it's true.  You need actual evidence.  Comments that name-call, or are obviously just meant to attack personally without engaging with the subject in hand, or combinations of those, will not be published.  I'm a very busy woman.

This post concerns events originating around the time of my mother's death, who I loved very very much indeed, and miss every single day, and I do expect you to respect that fact.  If you can't do that, please don't comment.

Having said all that, I'm pretty confident in my ability to engage politely on difficult subjects.  So come on all you hating aggressors, challenge yourselves to communicate equally and you'll find yourselves treated as equals.