Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Play/toy weapons

[Tiffany Lee Brown (magdalen23]

These are interesting issues. To me it seems odd that policies on matters like 
this are not made ahead of time, but after someone is already moved in. 

A friend moved into a cohousing community that had no policies or official 
position on guns. Her family does keep guns, which is traditional in much of 
America, though not in our old city, which they had just moved to. 

Others in the coho freaked out, would not allow their children to play at my 
friends' townhouse, etc., and did not confront my friends about any of this 
directly. They learned through the children's gossip. One neighborly community 
member even called Children's Services on them. (From what I could see at our 
preschool community, they were great parents, just not from our insular, 
"progressive" city.) It sounded awful, passive-aggressive, and bizarre, and 
undoubtedly other factors were at play too. 

My overall impression was, "if this community is anti-gun, shouldn't that be 
written into their community guidelines? Why find this out after you buy a 
townhouse and move across the country?"

Thoughts on that for people starting new communities ? How do you get across 
such expectations? And why wait until someone happens to have a violent video 
game obsessed teenager to write down, "no violent imagery in the main house," 
so people already have an expectation of what's considered appropriate media -- 
before they sign up, or before their kids get to that age? Or "members may use 
media facilities as they see fit. Please monitor your preschooler so she 
doesn't end up watching half an hour of racist war mongering in the Teen Army 
Recruitment Room, er, I mean, the Media Room." Then everyone coming to the 
situation has an idea of what to expect. 

?

Just curious, as usual!

Tiffany
Wannabe Co-houser or Something Similar
Central Oregon




Sent from the far shores of a distant land

> On Jul 20, 2016, at 9:56 AM, Lynn Nadeau / Maraiah <welcome [at] olympus.net> 
> wrote:
> 
> 
> At RoseWind Cohousing we have a smallish room in the Common House which 
> includes a big screen for media viewing. We intended to have this for 
> occasional joint watching of movies or basketball games or such (many of us 
> do not have televisions at home). It has also been useful as a big screen for 
> computer files when a committee is updating documents. 
> 
> Concern was raised when some of our teen and preteen boys took to 
> watching/playing violent video games. I mean grossly violent (Black Ops 
> etc.). Assault weapons, in the virtual hands of the game player, mowing down 
> "enemies" (some of whom look to be civilians, some look dark skinned) almost 
> continuously for hours. Many wished to ban such gaming in the common house. 
> (A windowed door from that room lets onto the entrance hall, so many pass 
> by.) BUT some parents involved were convinced that such games are harmless 
> outlets and that their kids had the right to watch what they wanted. For a 
> time, the gaming was less evident, presumably moved to homes. Recently one of 
> the kids has been in there for hours at a time, blasting "enemies". Those 
> kids happen to be moving away. Maybe that would be a good time to seek 
> community consensus on a ruling against video gaming in the Common House. 
> 
> Maraiah Lynn Nadeau
> RoseWind Cohousing, long built in
> Port Townsend WA
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