Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: NVC & Sociocracy [was Screening prospective members for sexual abuse in their background

[Sharon Villines (sharon]

> On Mar 4, 2022, at 9:17 PM, Maggie McGovern via Cohousing-L <cohousing-l [at] 
> cohousing.org> wrote:

Maggie, I’ll respond to your original message because it doesn’t have the extra 
punctuation and is easier to read.

I find the reason for all the odd formatting people get is that they don’t 
compose in their email program. Cutting and pasting from other programs adds 
behind the scenes coding that may work fine for Word but when pasted into other 
programs all hell breaks loose. One of the first widely used WYSIWYG programs 
had a special setting for  cleaning up Word. I think that was actually the name 
of the command.

> The reality is that not all cohousing members can or will try to understand 
> each other as you long for. I too wish they did! But assuming everyone is 
> like that is going to have you ignore major issues. When you have someone who 
> won’t communicate, won’t meet with a professional, and continues to abuse 
> someone else then you need more than this. There needs to be some 
> accountability for those who chose actions that harm. There also needs to be 
> a fair way to assess harm. The assumption that all problems in cohousing can 
> be solved with good intentions or certain communication tools is enabling 
> abuse and harm.

I think it is important to see that people skills are not about "good 
intentions.” They are about listening and understanding and explaining — 
sometimes just modeling the desired behavior. I don’t pretend that I’m a people 
person. I often find the touchy feeling people to be more touchy than feely — 
some tend to attribute negative or hurtful intentions where there are not. A 
hammer only sees nails. If the person’s devotion is to helping people 
understand each other by identifying negative and hurtful reactions, then they 
only see negative and hurtful reactions. I’m not infrequently stunned when a 
people skills person recites back to me what I believe or think. It will be 
totally nothing like what I was thinking or intending. As an interpretation of 
what someone else might think, that might be helpful, but often, even in NVC 
trainers it is what they have learned that "this means.” It’s like applying 
example of one person’s language use to all people. Children are told now not 
to say the word "stupid.” Well, stupid is a perfectly find word with very clear 
meanings. It is both accurate and appropriate when used properly. But, of 
course, it often becomes a stand in for many other words and feelings so people 
avoid it.

> Cohousing is more prone to this in my mind than other non-community focused 
> HOAs because people assume the same, that all will follow or try to follow 
> agreements and work to understand and do conflict resolution. Having 
> agreements alone puts cohousing in a different category. If a new member is 
> given agreements and told that the community has all agreed to those 
> agreements that is misleading when some members do not at all agree to the 
> agreements. The fact is some come in and don’t intend to live by the 
> agreements or don’t realize they can’t or won’t until they’ve lived there for 
> a bit. I’ve seen many cohousing members be blind to abuse because they are so 
> attached to conflict resolution and the written agreements even when 
> agreements aren’t being followed and harm is being done. At that point it’s 
> no longer appropriate or safe to follow the conflict resolution guidelines if 
> they say nothing about what to do if someone won’t follow the agreements. 
> It’s a big hole and big assumption to assume and act as if all follow those 
> agreements. And cohousing communities should be following the law. Harassment 
> needs to be investigated when it is asked for. Sure we all hope it doesn’t 
> come to that, but too often it does.

All of these things are perfectly true as anyone reading this list will know. 
But the task is for community members to work with each other to sort things 
out. If there is no one in the community who is skilled at this, there is a 
problem. Since people with people skills are drawn to cohousing it would 
surprise me if there was no one in a group who could facilitate resolutions. We 
have several who are good at different things. But without them, some 
situations would not have ended well at all. Probably never ended, in fact, 
until someone left.

For some the importance of reaching consensus is fairly intuitive, but others 
have been trained to majority rule. As soon as a majority is found, there is no 
more discussion. Some have been active in situations majority rule is the only 
possibility because at least it means the largest number of people won’t be 
shooting at each other. One of our members who was Egyptian and still had close 
family ties in the Arab Republic once asked, “Why have you thrown out the most 
revolutionary method of making decisions in history!” For him, majority vote 
was revolutionary because the only other alternative was a dictatorship.

Consensus is about resolving objections. The goal is a solution that works for 
everyone. And if people share the same purposes or aims, that is possible. So 
when people join a community and don’t understand the objectives of consensus 
decision-making and the values it represents, things can be rocky. 

> I think screening prospective members (and their housemates, partners, 
> friends that might chose to live there later) is very difficult, if even 
> possible, and thus we need to have some of the above protections in place for 
> when we get less than ideal ones and that’s why I mention it.

It sounds like you have had a very hard time in a group with destructive 
members who were using violence to maintain their own sense of safety. While 
the most extreme examples of these people would be problematic and perhaps more 
than a small group could cope with, I don’t see any screening program that 
would be more revealing than just interacting around the tasks required to 
develop the community. Or if the community is built having the person involved 
in community activities and workdays while waiting for a unit to become 
available.

This is another conversation but it isn’t so easy to join a community. They 
take a long time to develop and rarely have openings. Except when there is a 
wave of turnovers because people are aging, work is scarce, etc., sales are 
infrequent and rentals have been rare.

Cohousing is a risk. But avoiding cohousing is also a risk because life is a 
risk.

Sharon
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Sharon Villines
Takoma Village Cohousing, Washington DC
http://www.takomavillage.org