I Resent You – An Open Letter to Shanley Kane

https://medium.com/building-gittip/i-resent-you-a6beb5ce19d6

by tshepang • 12 years ago

40 15 12 years ago

whit537• 12 years ago

I'm only going to make one comment on this thread:

If you use this thread to make disparaging comments about Shanley, you're missing the point and you're doing it wrong. Go look at how respectfully I tried to treat Shanley when she gave me tons of crap, and then go do the same thing. Shanley's abuse does not make your abuse okay.

Let's all be kind to each other! :D

calibraxis• 12 years ago

You made this "open letter" knowing it's a lightning rod to abuse her. Since that was a predictable outcome of your action, you share responsibility in abuse.

I resent you leading abuse against her, especially when we give you our money... to give to decent people.

I resent you piling onto her (ironically from Medium) while her account is protected due to other attacks.

I resent your "need" to do so PUBLICLY to someone who suffers threats of violence for fundamentally improving the world. Your reason: "because my resentment is my problem, and I need to express it to you".

I resent you THANKING people who call your top users (like her) "professional victims" -- yet you "resent" it when important criticism is turned onto you.

MangezBien• 12 years ago

This seems entirely unfair. She publicly and viscously attacked him for not running his company (which paid her) in a way that best suited his interests.

When he responds with "You hurt my feelings when you did X" he is piling on and contributing to her abuse? Her attitude would've hurt my feelings. There seem to be no acceptable avenues through which to attempt any sort of conflict resolution with Shanley. White men are just expected to be silent and let her disparage any work they do that doesn't meet her world view.

Thank you Chad, for making the world a better place with your work. I disagreed with how you implicitly supported a sexist comment on HackerNews but I think that is a forgivable offense and that the good you do with Gittip far outweighs the negative of that action.

ben0x539• 12 years ago

If this is you being kind, I hope I never raise your ire.

didgeoridoo• 12 years ago

This whole thing leaves me feeling like I just watched a dog get kicked for bringing the wrong color tennis ball to its owner.

Chad seems to have made a fundamental category error: he thought he was dealing with a person who wanted to have a reasonable, productive discussion. In reality, he was dealing with a vicious bully who wanted to hurt him.

This Shanley person sounds like she has a lot of anger. Maybe it's justified. Maybe someone did something terrible to her, and this horrific persona is a logical defense mechanism. But I feel like it probably wasn't Chad's fault.

beerbajay• 12 years ago

he was dealing with a vicious bully

Really? Posting on twitter and github doesn't make you a vicious bully. Chad's whole post seems super defensive and unprofessional, which is typical when you point out the privilege of the privileged.

ryanpardieck• 12 years ago

Actually a common thread through much of the discussion about transparency/publicity/safety is that someone engaging on social media should be aware of their platform's effect on the people they talk to. I think that's a pretty good point really. In the case of many of the activists mentioned, it means the amplification of the threats to their safety. In a different situation, it might mean the ability to easily get someone fired.

Having a large audience / lots of followers is a powerful thing. Maybe it isn't vicious in the sense that it isn't violent, but I think it can definitely be a way to bully.

rubious_dan2• 12 years ago

Thanks for posting this. I feel the discussion around this topic has become particularly vitriolic; it's nice seeing individuals attempt to recenter the dialog on dialog.

rubious_dan2• 12 years ago

Edit: Well, at least I hope we're trying to dialog about this, our community needs it. I can't believe some of the stuff I'm seeing on Twitter right now: can we please just admit there's an issue here, and work together to resolve it?

lhnz• 12 years ago

Does anybody have a running total of how many people this person has abused or even gotten fired?

sbonzo• 12 years ago

Shanley is a perpetual victim who lashes out at everyone and everything around her.

cbp• 12 years ago

Hahahah the author of this sounds like a shitbag.

Closed my gittip account. Sniff, I had fun growing my very own company ;_;.

hayzeus• 12 years ago

I guess I'm a little unclear on why anyone would bother engaging with shanley in the first place. Her twitter feed, while frequently entertaining, screams "professional bullshitter" pretty loudly. It's reasonable to assume that her primary motive is to drive traffic to her website. I suppose it's also possible that she's just a truly damaged person -- or maybe some combination of both.

Either way, it seems like there are better ways to expend your energies. In the end, outside her relatively small circle of fellow cottage-industrialist diversity activists, shanley is a pretty insignificant presence in the wider world of tech and likely to remain so for the foreseeable future.

chmullig• 12 years ago

I feel really bad for Chad. I agree with @didgeoridoo that it feels like I just watched a dog get kicked.

He's on a quixotic quest toward a certain kind of world, with openness and transparency. Unfortunately when he tries to interface with the rest of the world it can often go horribly wrong. His general attempts at embracing those who disagree with him, eg by thanking them and retweeting, exacerbate and lend weight to unpleasant comments.

It's truly unfortunate that Chad didn't manage to support the diversity activist community in a way that was acceptable to them. I think fundamentally there missions are much more similar that they're acknowledging now, and each is loosing out on what could potentially be a great ally.

I hope in the future these sort of things can be more constructively handled on both sides that either has so far.

I Resent You – An Open Letter to Shanley Kane

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