Are we our own worst enemy?

[Equilibera]

3 hours ago, heavyhorse said:




I'm sorry, no.   Just no.  The 3 or 4 public spectacle train-wrecks are all people remember.  Fausty, Aluzky, Mr Hands, are what immediately pops up in people's mind.   Trying to scream what a stable genius and all-around great guy I am as a zoo on my youtube channel (then getting tagged for pedo posts) is NOT helping.  Visibility of a quiet majority only makes it seem like there are more of us, sending people screaming with torches and pitchforks.  

First off, I totally agree. Visibility has not gone well for us over the past few decades and it's not a good idea to be public about anything at this time. Not only that, human beings latch on to the negative and extraordinary way more than they do to the positive and everyday, which is a shame, but a fact of life. 




I'm sorry that your efforts seemed to crash and burn as much as they did...I am sincerely thankful that you tried, but I know how that must have made you feel at the end of the day. However, I, in general, think you misunderstand a bit. In the end, I'm not advocating that everyone make a YouTube channel (or something similar), put themselves out in public, and broadcast ideas. I'm talking about living your life, and if it just so happens that a natural opportunity comes up to subtly influence someone, to not ignore it as it is so easy to do, but instead to take advantage of it. It's one thing to be a talking head on the internet; it's another to be a trusted friend.




If you're known for being a respectable, reasonable, trustworthy person, and a casual discussion comes up, a tactful dissenting opinion is sometimes all it takes in such an intimate setting to get some rusty mental gears going. It might not be worth much, but there's a nonzero chance that it will lead to someone else at least thinking twice. It's not outing yourself at all, it's not "going public", it's not overexposing anyone. It's just disagreeing respectfully and not being a creepy loser while you do it. In the end, I'd advocate for a nearly invisible majority that's doing as much as they can (that is to say, not much, but in large numbers), bit by bit, staying totally under the radar, playing the waiting and numbers game until some kind of critical mass is achieved way way way down the line.




That's all we have, and it's something to give to folks who are dying to resist their marginalization with action. Self-improvement and tactful disagreement with the mainstream in limited, private settings.

2 hours ago, silverwolf1 said:




Despite the desire to compare, we are not like the "Gay" community. Whats worked, is working, or might work there will not work here. That community is human/ human, we aren't. That simple difference throws those methods out the window until it's proven that partners even have rights to uphold.

There is a comparison I see and a sort of empathy between all severely marginalized groups in that everyone suffers in similar ways. However, otherwise I agree totally here. The simple fact is that human beings have had thousands of years of time to work out how they are supposed to interact with each other, and we're still not even good at that. Comparatively, we have no collective goddamn clue how to treat the other intelligences on this planet. It's like a global schizophrenia, and it's not just zoos who have called mainstream culture out on this, either...AW and AR types have too. Books have been written about it.




The struggle isn't comparable because people can't even comprehend that other species, our partners, have worth and value beyond that which human culture gives them. That's a hill to die on that few other communities could even consider having.

[heavyhorse]

2 hours ago, Equilibera said:




I'm sorry that your efforts seemed to crash and burn as much as they did...I am sincerely thankful that you tried, but I know how that must have made you feel at the end of the day.

Um, I admit my choice of pronouns leaves something to be desired.  [img]<fileStore.core_Emoticons>/emoticons/blink.png[/img]/emoticons/[email protected] 2x" title="O.o" width="20" />   The "I" in my above post was not "me" (HH), rather a famous youtuber/site troll/thread hijacker of those above mentioned spectacles.  Who notably came out in defense of pedophilia on his Zoo youtube channel.  Thus confirming in much of the public mind what they already "knew"; that critter sex is just a slippery slope to child rapist.  Thereby raising the bar even further (who would have thought that possible) of what harm to the cause a proper public spectacle can be.  And ironically, these people think they are crusading for the zoo community by their loud proclamations, and we have no way of shutting them up (short of what used to be referred to as a "pineapple enema").  

[Equilibera]

4 hours ago, heavyhorse said:




Um, I admit my choice of pronouns leaves something to be desired.  [img]<fileStore.core_Emoticons>/emoticons/blink.png[/img]/emoticons/[email protected] 2x" title="O.o" width="20" />   The "I" in my above post was not "me" (HH), rather a famous youtuber/site troll/thread hijacker of those above mentioned spectacles. 

Ohhhh, okay. I see now. I retract my sympathies! [img]<fileStore.core_Emoticons>/emoticons/tongue.png[/img]/emoticons/[email protected] 2x" title=":P" width="20" />

4 hours ago, heavyhorse said:




Who notably came out in defense of pedophilia on his Zoo youtube channel.  Thus confirming in much of the public mind what they already "knew"; that critter sex is just a slippery slope to child rapist. 

Yikes. We all may be marginalized, but some things are marginalized for a reason...

4 hours ago, heavyhorse said:




And ironically, these people think they are crusading for the zoo community by their loud proclamations, and we have no way of shutting them up.

A great example of the fine, but sometimes oh so tangible line between stupidity and bravery.




While we can't work harder and immediately overwhelm these kinds of people, take some solace in the fact that we can at least work smarter than them.

[caikgoch]

The problem is that Fausty is a Zoo.   A thieving, dope dealing, sociopath Zoo but still a Zoo.   I can't deny the reality of that.   We have to have some way to accept the orientation without the extra baggage.

[Wolf Seeks Dog]

On 11/17/2018 at 1:08 PM, 30-30 said:




Social media is the wrong way for our activist urges. We´re mostly successful when we´re having eye-to-eye conversations with our best and closest friends [...]

I guess that's the difference between activism and making allies. One public, one private.




Recently on Twitter I've noticed an uptick in people trying to reason with explicit zoo haters. As a rule of thumb, it's simply not possible to turn a hater, because they're actively disinterested in the facts. https://theoatmeal.com/comics/believe describes the problem particularly nicely. It should be required reading for anybody who wants to engage with people on emotive subjects.

[Thunder-Bay-Syd]

10 hours ago, caikgoch said:




The problem is that Fausty is a Zoo.   A thieving, dope dealing, sociopath Zoo but still a Zoo.   I can't deny the reality of that.   We have to have some way to accept the orientation without the extra baggage.

I am not sure how you can do that when the extra baggage is so sensational. The sensationalism draws people in. It is why someone decided to write a book about him and why we are still talking about him here.




Fausty is unquestionably a zoo but he is a zoo that causes a cycle of pain and destruction wherever he goes. I can't separate that much like most people can't separate him from the rest of his baggage.

[caikgoch]

Not everything that Fausty has done is bad.    He started the conversation with Jesse Bering that led to some good sense in the public eye.    In the course of that conversation someone brought up his history and verdict was that his personal problems didn't invalidate his arguments.




Don't get me wrong, I'm the one that launched him on one his biggest crusades when he told me that violence was an acceptable relationship tool between a teenager and a thirty something year old man.   But he is intelligent, articulate, and driven.   He does get conversations started.

[Wolf Seeks Dog]

The story of Fausty seems to be a history all unto itself. As someone who's never really been involved with the mainstream of the online zoo community for all these years, I find these political undercurrents fascinating. Until now my only information about Spink was from Uniquely Dangerous, which paints him in a pretty heroic light, so it's interesting to see him as a more nuanced and ambivalent figure.

[Thunder-Bay-Syd]

2 hours ago, caikgoch said:




Not everything that Fausty has done is bad.    He started the conversation with Jesse Bering that led to some good sense in the public eye.    In the course of that conversation someone brought up his history and verdict was that his personal problems didn't invalidate his arguments.




Don't get me wrong, I'm the one that launched him on one his biggest crusades when he told me that violence was an acceptable relationship tool between a teenager and a thirty something year old man.   But he is intelligent, articulate, and driven.   He does get conversations started.

The bad overrules the good unfortunately. I am not going to argue anything you said here because all the points about him you've made are true and that is what makes him so dangerous. People who don't know better follow him then get caught up when he shows his other side and find themselves in real danger. Again - I sat with the person whose life he destroyed a few years ago. This person was caught up in who he believed Fausty to be and was trying to help him. In return for that he got his house burned down and was outed to his friends and family resulting mostly in the loss of both. This isn't a threat based upon probabilities but something that actually happened.




He doesn't get a pass. He is a danger.

[caikgoch]

19 hours ago, Thunder-Bay-Syd said:




He doesn't get a pass. He is a danger.

How could I argue with that?   He tried (is still trying) to do the same to me.   But the best way I know to *NOT* become the thing I loath is to be fully honest with myself and others.