One of the things we discuss in transformative justice when confronting harm is how the community -- people and organizations both -- intentionally and unintentionally enabled the harm to occur and to continue.
"When we focus only on abusers, we individualize something that is often a community problem." -- @theleilaraven
Enabling harm can take a million forms. It happens when we don't check our friends when we learn they've done something out of alignment with their values. It happens when we tell those harmed by friends that they must have misunderstood what happened, instead of listening.
Enabling harm happens when we buy into the idea that protecting friends means dismissing and minimizing the harm they do instead of intervening when we learn they're harming and calling on them to stop, timeout, and self-examine.
Enabling harm happens when we prioritize our own comfort over community safety, basically.
It is extremely easy to enable harm, to fail to have the hard talks and ask ourselves the hard questions. A status quo where harm is ongoing only requires our silence and inaction.
It is extremely easy to enable harm, to fail to have the hard talks and ask ourselves the hard questions. A status quo where harm is ongoing only requires our silence and inaction.
As I read more threads about #MeTooSTEM, I see that much of this work has been started for the Science Twitter community. Let's not wait for calls for accountability to get started with the self-examination! Ask yourself this: how did my actions enable the harm here?
How did my actions enable the harm here? I'll go first. I'm very peripheral on Science Twitter nowadays, and I know this. I could have checked in with community nodes that I trust about BethAnn after she and I connected over the story about Epstein's ties to academia.
Since BethAnn acknowledged her most recent harm, I've seen threads from at least four women in science I know and respect saying that they had warned people, at least one from the inception of #MeTooSTEM. This tells me the information was available, I just chose not to access it.
Checking in with community members about someone who's running an initiative in that community is a pretty basic step for donors and endorsers. It is our responsibility to do this kind of due diligence.
I didn't do this due diligence for reasons that I'll be unpacking at greater length, but the TL;DR is that I expected to feel misgivings about an initiative that accepted without question mandated reporters, police and other vectors of harm and coercion.
While I wouldn't have referred a survivor to #MeTooSTEM without telling them I considered some integrated mechanisms potentially/inherently harmful, I didn't stop to check that the organization itself was structured to address harm when it happened within.
As a result of not checking in with community nodes about #MeTooSTEM, it took over six months for me to realize something was wrong with the initiative. I learned this thanks to public resignations and discussion among community members. Thank you for courage and harm reduction.
However in those intervening months, I reshared at least one #MeTooSTEM event tweeted by BethAnn for survivors of harm -- a vulnerable population that we now know she exploited and retraumatized. I regret this immensely.
When I learned the harms happening at #MeTooSTEM, I amplified those harmed and called on BethAnn to be accountable.I chose not to unfollow her at the time to underscore that taking ownership of harms and doing accountability doesn't have to be isolating. This is not uncommon.
It's not uncommon but it is dicey choosing to remain connected with someone who is harming and not taking ownership of their harm or doing the work to change, because profiles show only the people you have in common, not the reason someone's following someone else.
Following someone on social media, whether we want to acknowledge it or not, is an act of endorsement. Our presence on their profile signals safety to those who know us.
It's hard to sit with this, but it's not unlikely that there is at least one person out there who has come to harm because they saw you also followed or were friends with someone who ended up harming them. Our presence signals safety. We must be mindful of how we use it.
In the case of BethAnn and #MeTooSTEM, dropped the ball. I should have checked in a few weeks to see if she was owning her harms and let her know I would be unfollowing as a result (a form of consequences that can be effective in bringing change), but I forgot!
That is not meant to sound dismissive. The fact that an important task fell out of my mental inbox is a sign that I'm having project management issues in community upkeep. That's important to note as part of this accounting.
I intend to keep marinating on this. In the meantime, please know I am available to do accountability and repair for any follower of mine who was exposed to harm through #MeTooSTEM, BethAnn McLaughlin, the sockpuppet #sciencing_bi and any other fake accounts she maintained.
