From: rsr@soda.berkeley.edu (Roy S. Rapoport)
Newsgroups: soc.bi
Subject: Re: I'm unhappy
Date: 28 Sep 1992 05:41:01 GMT
Organization: U.C. Berkeley, CS Undergraduate Association
NNTP-Posting-Host: soda.berkeley.edu

In article <1992Sep28.044534.13947@leland.Stanford.EDU> mlloyd@westmark.Stanford.EDU (Mike Lloyd) writes:
->Let me come clean(ish) -  someone has specifically told me that
->sie thinks people will not respect hir posts in the future
->because of all this.  (If you're guessing who it is, you're
->probably wrong.)  That's why I want to know what people here
->don't want.  It's clear that there are preferences - plenty of
->us have talked about hom awful it was and how much better it's
->getting (again, I'm well entrenched on that list).  What are
->these prefs?

I can sympathize with that person.  The flame wars, and my part in them,
definitely did change the way I feel about soc.bi, as I mentioned to people
here, and to you in email.

There are several ways in which my feelings toward soc.bi changed.  The
two most prominent ones are somewhat contradictory to each other, but...
that's the way it goes.

My postings to soc.bi generally have been of two types:
A)  Informational / rhetorical postings (also known as "I think that ... ")
    Postings where I share my opinions.
B)  Sharing postings (a.k.a. "I feel ... ").
    Postings where I share myself and my feelings.

My first post here, the post where I came out to all of you, the post that
changed the number of people who knew about my orientation from two
(including me) to about 30,000 was a 'sharing' posting.

Some other postings have been of the first type, though most of my posts
seem to have been of the second type.

With the exception of the first post in the 'kill all men' thread, all of my
posts during the flame wars have been of the first type.  I was massively
shot down, usually.

More correctly, actually, my _opinions_ were shot down.  What I learned
about posts of type A is that while many people in this newsgroup may
disagree with me, they generally respect me enough to debate with me, rather
than ignore / killfile / personally attack me (with the possible exception
of David Parson's article where he claimed I was 'whining').  This made it
easier for me to actually voice opinions, actually say what I think,
regardless of how many people disagree with me.  This is, IMHO, a good thing.

On the other hand, this whole tough period soc.bi has been through changed
my view wrt posts of type B ... I'm not quite sure how people will react to
posts of that type anymore, so I pulled back somewhat, emotionally
speaking.  It means that I'm much more hesitant to share happiness/joy with
you (though there have been occasions, such as the 'wow' post, where I've
been able to do it, if there's enough happiness there, though I did feel
that my experience / lesson, what I conveyed was probably a bit unusual for
a poster in this group).  It also means that at the moment, I am not able to
share pain/anger/grief with you ... 

In a way, I've come to feel that I'm somewhat different from all of you.
This is a new feeling for me, and I'm coming to terms with it.  It means
that my trust in you to not shoot me down when I share myself has been
reduced dramatically.  You might say I feel a bit like a visiting scholar
... I know that when I express an opinion, those of you who read it may find
it worth commenting on, and, while quite probably disagreeing with it, will
generally not particularly slam _me_ down, but rather my opinion.  I don't
know, however, how you will react to posts where the only thing to slam down
is me ... and I don't particularly want to find out, because being
personally criticized hurts.  I'm not much into being hurt.  

So, my trust in this newsgroup, my trust in you to react well to sharing
articles, is reduced.  This isn't necessarily a disasterous thing, and I
really doubt it's a permanent state.  Trust is a fluctuating thing, and
I'm capable of building it up.  It will just take some time.

-- 
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Roy S. Rapoport    rsr@soda.berkeley.edu  anonymus+328@godiva.nectar.cs.cmu.edu
               It's a great day to be a bisexual pervert.
DISCLAIMER:  "I meant every word of it ... but nobody else did."