Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Bullying

[Diana Leafe Christian (diana]

Hello Alan and all,

I appreciate these observations as they're what I've observed too. It's common 
for enablers — usually conflict-averse, fairly insecure people (usually women 
rather than men) — attempt to minimize, discount, or deflect attention away 
from  bullying behaviors by implying that there's something wrong with you if 
you want to address the serious issue of bullying. This minimizing and 
deflection helps keeps the bullying in place in the community. It doesn't get 
addressed at all but continues on, year after year. The way I see it, there are 
two equivalent factors to bullying in community: one is the bullying behavior 
and the other, equally harmful factor, are those who offer New Agey, 
pop-psychology, or communities-movement platitudes to induce us to ignore it. 
Pure manipulation, and, as Alan says, it's gaslighting:

      "Everybody has a bad day sometime."
      "How can you say that? Don't you have any compassion? He's not a bad 
person!"
      "Give him a break; we're all only human."
      "Why are you trying to stir up trouble? Why are you trying to create 
community conflict?"
      "Why can't we all just get along?"

I also totally agree with Alan that bullies tend to target meeker community 
members, mostly women. I think it's not quite misogyny, however, as most of the 
community bullies I've seen or been told about by other community members are 
women, who. And they also target other women in the community, especially those 
who may be empaths or what some mental health professionals call "highly 
sensitive people."

I  these issues in my article series too: gen-us.net/DLC.

Alan, I'm glad you addressed this in your book — it's such a needed topic, and 
for many, a community taboo topic.  I just looked up your book on Amazon and 
plan to buy it.

We can't get too much good information about what works well when we live in 
community!

Diana Leafe Christian

> On Aug 6, 2022, at 8:45 AM, Alan O'Hashi via Cohousing-L <cohousing-l [at] 
> cohousing.org> wrote:
> 
> Susan: Bullying stifles participation. We have three/four bullies at our 
> place. They gaslight their social malady as "initiative." Initiative is one 
> thing, but when it evolves into self-interest and hubris because they don't 
> get their way, that's when it becomes bullying. The problem at my place, is 
> the bullies have cronies who are enablers, "Oh, It's not about So-and-So. 
> Let's get back to the issue." My bullies tend to gang up on the same people, 
> who are the meeker community members - mostly women - so misogyny also is at 
> play. One person was so adamant about getting in the last word on an issue, 
> that on the night of the community meeting, they wrote a terse and whiney 
> email threatening not to follow the policy if it was adopted.
> 
> I devote a few chapters of my book to bullying behavior, causes and 
> accountability:https://smile.amazon.com/True-Stories-Aging-Do-Gooder-cohousing-ebook/dp/B08P4WRRG1/
> 
> 
> Alan O
> 
> 
> Alan O'Hashi 
> Donate and get "Beyond Heart Mountain"books and DVDs
> www.beyondheartmountain.com
> www.bouldercomedia.com..303-910-5782....307-316-2113.. 
> 
>    On Saturday, August 6, 2022 at 04:16:16 AM MDT, <cohousing-l-request [at] 
> cohousing.org> wrote:  
> 
> Send Cohousing-L mailing list submissions to
>     cohousing-l [at] cohousing.org
> 
> To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit
>     https://lists.cohousing.org/mailman/listinfo/cohousing-l
> or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to
>     cohousing-l-request [at] cohousing.org
> 
> You can reach the person managing the list at
>     cohousing-l-owner [at] cohousing.org
> 
> When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific
> than "Re: Contents of Cohousing-L digest..."
> 
> 
> Today's Topics:
> 
>   1. Bullying (Sue Donaldson)
>   2. Re: Bullying (Kathleen Lowry)
>   3. Diversity Training Package (Crystal Farmer)
>   4. Re: Bullying (Diana Carroll)
>   5. Re: Bullying (Kathleen Lowry)
>   6. Why communications software is important (Sharon Villines)
> 
> 
> _________________________________________________________________
> Cohousing-L mailing list -- Unsubscribe, archives and other info at:
> http://L.cohousing.org/info
> 
> 
>