Friday, January 18, 2008

Stepping off the bus

I waited a day to post this to check my feelings and they haven't changed. The discussion on Domestic Discipline went very badly. My original interest in anti-Patriarchy was accidental this blog picked up traffic when I explored the Jen Epstein (original and follow-up) case and I went where the need was. While I am still willing to help people who are fighting church discipline in Patriarchal churches, and I don't retract one word of Defense against Patriarchy I'm today publicly breaking with the anti-patriarchy crowd.

An argument has come forth again and again that Patriarchal churches encourage domestic violence. Christian Domestic Discipline was often used as an example of this encouragement.
This has now come to be a deliberate lie spread with malice and forethought. That is a strong charge that demands clarity and I will move to that directly below.

First off it is a lie. It is clear that Patriarchal churches are no more tolerant of DDers than they are of any other sexual minority, they show the same hostility and persecution. It is clear that every time I've asked people about this topic in their own churches whether the activity was either encouraged or even meaningfully addressed the answer is no. It is clear that patriarchal churches deal with domestic violence badly but they do consider it a sin. It is clear that every single example examined of people participating in CDD/DD do so in a fully consensual way completely in line with their cousins in the wider BDSM community. Quite simple Patriarchal churches do not encourage CDD/DD and CDD/DD is not domestic violence.

Second it is deliberate. On numerous occasions I've attempted when this issue has come up to raise the issue that CDD/DD is not domestic violence. Every time that has occurred there has been censorship. I raised the issue on this blog and faced controversy about even allowing for links. Yet the claim continues. When confronted with counter evidence most of the people spreading this lie simply refuse to discuss it.

Those that did discuss it that had pushed this agenda have in general done so with a level of maturity I would understandable but disappointing in a middle school child but intolerable in a high school age child. Without exception taking part in these discussions are parents and the vast vast majority are over 40.

Still, I struggled with my conscience here. Was I really asking too much in asking Fundamentalists to discuss this topic like adults. Was I simply imposing my own values and demanding they conform to them? The claim was being made over and over again that to discuss such a thing is inappropriately and immoral, and I was wrong to be doing so. I've thought about this and I have come to the conclusion I was not asking to much. I remembered an incident from a decade ago which was similar:

When I taught bio statistics there was a section in the book with a large number of problems which about plant reproduction, that assumed a detailed understanding. Almost without exception the students had forgotten how plants have sex. So in teaching the material I always had to do a refresher on plant reproduction and I always used as my basis human reproduction since it was one piece of related materials that I was sure the students were at least somewhat familiar with. The lecture was explicit and graphic much more so then I have been asking for the last six months.

For example to explain the various purposes of certain chemical reactions I used the analogy of male ejaculate and its effects on the vagina. I walked through in detail the production of male ejaculate and the corresponding chemicals. I did so with a diagram of the male and female reproductive system on a projected slides. At one point there was a question a type of plant where the pollon could fall down the wrong tube and I made an analogy to anal sex.

There were muslim woman with head coverings, fundamentalists, evangelicals, jehovah's witnesses, Sikh's who were in that lecture. They took notes, asked questions and did a nice job on a problem set that took them about 4 hours. That is, quite simply secular and religious student alike were able to engage with and absorb material about sex in an age appropriate manner. They had no problems there were no complaints, and the students certainly had no problems complaining about many other issues. I had a greater number of students turn in that assignment then most and the grades were higher, secular and religious students alike.

So no I don't think I'm asking too much. I have no choice but to conclude that there is simply a reluctance to honestly admit that what was claimed is occuring is not in fact occuring. The why brings us to the next point.

It is malicious. Patriarchal leaders have continuously rebuffed the assertion that their teachings lead to an uptick in domestic violence. CDD/DD seems to be an effective propaganda tool in convincing people that patriarchy can lead to domestic violence. That is this assertion is designed to humiliate patriarchal leaders. The fact that it further victimizes a sexual minority is seen as being of no consequence.

And finally forethought. This topic has come up before on multiple occasions in multiple forums. Many of the people spreading this lie have been challenged on it before. To spread a lie because one refuses to hear the truth constitutes forethought.

I've tolerated homophobia because I understand that from their perspective it is not a lie. But this issue has been bothering me for six months. I've tried my best to assume good faith.

If the anti-Patriarchy bus has gotten to the point that it is willing to defame Patriarchy with deliberate lies, its time for me to step off. In no way should this be seen as an endorsement of patriarchy. Their one case of this does not begin to rise to the level of the dozens or hundreds on the other side. But for me at least I can't see enough of a difference between the two shades of gray.

20 comments:

Anonymous said...

CD-Host -
Just a note of encouragement to you. You're a great thinker and I appreciate your insight.

Keep pressing for the truth - we're rooting for you

Anonymous said...

CD, this is only more of the same guilt by association that I have been speaking out against as well. In this case, some commenters/bloggers have accused patriarchalists of being involved in CDD simply because both groups believe in the wife being submissive, and I think that's the backlash you are experiencing.

However, I would encourage you not to participate in that same type of guilt by association. Just because I speak out against certain forms of patriarchy does not mean that I have ever participated in attributing CDD to patriarchy. I have not.

I agree that what has been said has not been truthful, but I don't think I would go so far as to say it was done with malice aforethought. Although sometimes some of these commenters are quite mistaken and they don't use proper logic, I don't think they have deliberately set out to mislead anyone. I just think they desperately need some lessons in logic. You will, perhaps, notice that I have cracked down in exposing their logical fallacies, especially that of guilt by association and of connecting the dots where none really exist.

So, I understand your frustration, CD, but would encourage you not to jump to the same logical fallacy that you are accusing others of here.

CD-Host said...

Jen --

You have never made this accusation. I tried to say that on your blog. Not only did you not attribute CDD to patriarchy you said the opposite. I especially wanted to say it on your blog since I wanted you to have a record. But I will say it here as well.

And I appreciate the correction regarding to broad a brush. But in this case not only is their a lack of evidence there is a wealth of strong counter evidence. What I was met with was a refusal to consider the counter evidence. And not only that pride in refusing to consider the counter evidence. At what point does that become intention?

And yes what I witnessed on the Chad issue was upsetting. And frankly I should have spoken up, at the time but I didn't feel comfortable getting into what would have been hundreds of posts on a blog that identifies itself as by and for woman. In retrospect, my caution may have been mistaken since it allowed a terrible precedent to be set. I apologize to you. I think in retrospect I should have opened a thread here and addressed those points.

While this is probably worthless now:
I clarify and accurately present views on this blog in almost all my posts that I don't happen to personally agree with. Insisting a view is accurately portrayed does not make one a sympathizer for that view, it is nothing more than basic honesty.

simplegifts3 said...

CD-host, hi.

You named me in your comment on Jen's blog as one of the anti-patriarchy crowd that you are upset by the recent behavior of, and I'd like to know what I said that bothered you, if anything. It appears that you listed me as one of those making the guilt by association comments.

On my blog, I stated up front that I wasn't slamming Degenhart, and that he and James McDonald had freedom of association. The only arguments I put forth online were my disagreements with kinism, the fact that Degenhart, as one of the listed founders of the Kinist Intsitute, and a curriculum director of the same, is responsible for what the institute generally teaches (unless he publicly distances himself from those general statements), and I refused to engage in the guilt by association game.

My main argument all along was that Matt Chancey's wife associated with a woman who associates with kinists, and that it was hypocritical of Chancey in light of "mrsbinoculars."

It was also interesting to note how information about Chad kept getting taken down -- information which clearly indicated he was a leader in the Kinist Institute.

Jen made some comments that kinism isn't racist, which I disagreed with, especially after reading some of their earlier statements about deporting all non-whites away from kinist territories, and their continued belief on banning interracial marriage.

As far as I am concerned, all of that is fair game for discussion.

So -- what did I say that disturbed you, in particular, if anything?

simplegifts3 said...

About the Christian domestic discipline issue, I have had little to say about it publicly.

I do know that Kamilla, on the Bayly blog, once slammed egalitarians as "preferring solitary pleasures not necrophelia," as a nasty swipe, and perhaps somewhere a long time ago I may have quipped back about sexual quirckyness that is more patriarchal (such as Christian domestic discipline), but that comment was more of a riposte than an argument that this is what these churches teach.

Far be it from me to claim that patriarchal churches endorse this kind of behavior.

simplegifts3 said...

Far be it from me to claim that patriarchal churches endorse this kind of behavior.

Although it is obvious to me that there are patriarchalists on the internet who do endorse wife spanking. I've just not heard any churches teach this, nor main leaders in the movement.

CD-Host said...

Lynn --

Thank you caring enough to ask. I'll be happy to address this.

You named me in your comment on Jen's blog as one of the anti-patriarchy crowd that you are upset by the recent behavior of, and I'd like to know what I said that bothered you, if anything. It appears that you listed me as one of those making the guilt by association comments.

What I said was:
"I can understand the desire for a much broader audience and that’s a mark of success and Lynn, Cindy, Corrie, Karen…. deserve to be proud of that. They are successfully delegitimizing patriarchy within the home-schooling movement and that’s a huge accomplishment."

And yes you have been a strong proponent of anti-patriarchy for a long time and did a lot. The fact that it is where it is today might very well have not happened without your work. The people I named I was saying something positive not negative about.

As far as Kinism and Matt Chancey and Chad.... I don't disagree with one fact of your analysis. Do you think it was fair to have this discussion on "True Womanhood", a blog neither Matt nor Chad nor James can comfortably post to much less carry on an extended discussion? An all woman's blog is fine. An all woman's blog that is decimating investigations that's a little iffy. An all woman's blog that is doing investigations and then having extended discussions while naming the men involved. Yeah, I think that's unethical.

There were a 1/2 dozen regularly posting men on Jen's blog it was an open forum. You made excellent points like your analogy between Chad and a male prostitute, regarding James's "what me judge". I don't disagree with any of them. But James couldn't possibly address them in that forum. By and large James had never shown any interest in discussing issues before, here was one time he rdid seem to be willing to make some effort. Their were emails and oblique blog posts on the topic.

Again I haven't seen any evidence of integrity from Matt, but you can see my problem. Think about Sarah Hodges, we started critiquing her work and she showed up and defended herself. And in the end she distanced herself from it and agreed it was heretical. A success and a success that would have been impossible today given what's going on because Dave Hodges never would have come on to that site.


My main argument all along was that Matt Chancey's wife associated with a woman who associates with kinists, and that it was hypocritical of Chancey in light of "mrsbinoculars."

OK that's not one I was thinking of but lets use it.
And Matt might argue his wife is 2 steps removed while Jen was only 1 steps removed (assuming Mrs. Binoculars is true for the purpose of argument) You and every racist in the US are only 6 steps removed. Since you run an internet site and are on a lot of blogs its probably more like 4. Those circles get very wide very fast.

A counter argument I didn't feel comfortable making on a woman's blog. Why has anti-Patriarchy become a woman's support issue and not a political / religious issue? Red Ink, myself, Matt, Mark Epstein, K Thedore Jenkins, Kriegerwulff... the group was mixed. It was also religiously mixed: atheists, catholics, charismatic christians, CREC members, reformed baptists....

Also it was more open minded. There was no statement of belief required under Jen. She had feminists, egalitarians, complementarians, and even some patriarchs. Now "she eschews the man-made stereotypes given to her in the past and delights in God’s distinctive calling on her life in her home, in the church, and in the world."

Maybe you think I'm off the wall but do you see why I'm having a harder time wanting to be associated with a movement that is becoming decidedly hostile on the basis of sex, religion, politics... I'm on your side and established and I still felt horribly unwelcome.

Although it is obvious to me that there are patriarchalists on the internet who do endorse wife spanking.

I don't want to repeat the argument here, there is another thread for this. But I have yet to find one. This was just the straw but this claim just ain't true. So far I haven't found one CDD/DD site run by someone I'd consider a patriarch. And I've looked. I'm sure there are couples that do this inside patriarchy but I can't find any evidence of it. On examination they are all theologically considerably to the left.

And I can't find a single patriarch that advocates CDD.

Female masochism and patriarchy were one of my pet theories. It made perfect sense. I love the theory. You even remember me asking you questions accidentally upon Kate's comment regarding clothing when I got confused about who posted what. Its a great theory there is lots and lots of smoke but as far as I can tell these are two independent groups operating completely in parallel one having nothing to do with the other. I'm compelled by the evidence its overwhelming in the other direction. That's why this issue upsets me. For the anti-patriarchs to claim this they really are just blaming Doug for stuff he didn't do.

And this is probably a good thing. Once Jeannie Channey discovered Jean Paulhan (Happiness in Slavery) things might get more toxic :-)

simplegifts3 said...

Hi, CD-Host. I'm a little fragmented today, but I have seen a couple/few patriarchal sites that endorse domestic discipline. The only one I could find today I found a couple years ago when wondering about this topic.

I take this to mean nothing as far as Christian Patriarchalists go, for I don't know the views of those that responded to the poll, but the overwhelming majority on this Yahoo group endorsed wife spanking as a means of discipline, and it is billed as a Christian patriarchal site.

I will look at the other points you made, but for now, just join this group (doesn't need approval), and go to the poll and tell me if this counts, because this is one place I was thinking of:

truly_patriarchal

What do you think? Still zip? Maybe so, because it's just a poll, not an official view of the group.

Anonymous said...

Well, CD, may I suggest that rather than getting off this whole bus that you continue on those sites that do make you feel welcome, namely mine.

Although I took my site down with good intentions, I do see much damage that resulted from my stepping back from the issues. I will be working hard to bring the focus back to where it needs to be and to really force that the issues be dealt with fairly. I am not out to bring anyone down, nor do I want to see anyone unfairly attacked, patriarchalist or not. I have some ideas for refining the focus and I need a wide audience.

I really do enjoy all types of people on my blog and plan to keep it open to all civilized discourse.

Thank you for explaining about Chad. That makes sense to me, although I didn't expect you to stand up for me. I did get too emotionally involved in that discussion, but my main purpose still remains the same -- be fair.

I learned a lot about people from that conversation and it sounds like you are learning some of those same things from your own conversation. Again, just be careful not to write off everyone because of the actions of a few. I know how tempting that can be.

CD-Host said...

Lynn --

There have only been 20 posts in the group's history. I couldn't make heads or tails of what the group was, in reality. Post #3 had the self immolating language that sounded Catholic almost. There was no discussion of physical discipline.

Yes the polls were strange but that could have been anything. I mean are they just voting an opinion or doing it?

simplegifts3 said...

OK, I've had a bit of time to see that Karen asked people to come over here in order to discuss this topic.

I would agree with her call. There are enough women reading and participating on that blog who have been genuinely abused, either sexually, or by assault and battery by a father, boyfriend, or husband, who might be emotionally traumatized by clinical, graphic discussions on the subject. That would be one of my reasons for asking the discussion to be taken someplace else where there was a specific entry on it. It would be better sequestered for those who could talk about the topic, and those who couldn't tolerate it would be free to continue on the general discussion.

Secondly, I've gone to one of the CDD sites when someone brought it up on Adventures in Mercy about a year ago. This site used to have a free side of "spanking romance stories." I didn't read all of them, but what I read gave me to know the women in these stories had to have sustained bruises at least, if not opened flesh, and that is domestic violence. And I used to work on a burn unit, and I do know about skin thickness, so please keep that in mind.

The fact that the victim was willing does not make it not violent. It was way on beyond playful wrestling with an obvious end goal of sex, or consensual playing at spanking, and it was way beyond playful anything. I only read a couple of the stories, but the beatings described went on for minutes, were meted out with the man's full strength, the pain level described meant that welts and lacerations had already taken place on the screaming woman, but the beatings were not over until way after that point.

Secondly, while I disagree with you about whether CDD is violent or not, I agree with you that key patriarchal leaders and teachers don't teach that this is right, or normative.

Thirdly, your comment about the conversation taking place on the true womanhood blog . . . After seeing how Stacy McDonald alters her blog entries, deletes comments, refuses others, and James does the same, after seeing how neither Stacy nor Jennie can answer hard questions about their book, and after seeing how James also refuses comments on his blog . . . and after seeing that Mike felt free to comment on the true womanhood blog . . . your charges of true womanhood being unfair is a dog that won't hunt for me.

I don't see why you would call a blog on womanhood unethical where they do allow men to comment, and one of the things they talk about is that they try to talk on either James or Stacy's blog but are not allowed. Rebecca and Jen are two people that come to mind, who posted to True Womanhood, saying their comments were not allowed, and I've yet to see a public comment from either of them that would warrant this kind of banning.

And I disagreed with many of the comments over there in those threads, too, so don't take me as agreeing with many of the comments.

Anonymous said...

Just to clarify, Stacy does have a comment policy wherein she does not approve comments from those whom she considers to gossip. I guess that would include everyone who has posted to True Womanhood. Although not stated, I wonder if perhaps James has the same policy.

CD-Host said...

Lynn --

First off thank you for bothering to look at the sites! Its such a relief to be debating the evidence and not conjecture and opinion based on nothing! Regardless of which way you ultimately decide at least now I feel that your opinion is based on something other than prejudice which is a relief.

Now onto the point of disagreement.
I think you are arguing against a point I never made, that DD was merely "playful spanking". I've never said it was anything other than a limited subset of BDSM. What I don't see is how what you are describing (which is BTW the far end of DD) is anywhere near outside the norm for BDSM play. For example if you look at the BDSM page there are BDSMers that reject DD as part of BDSM because the severity is not high enough ( I can include the quotes but they are R rated, I'm trying to be respectful). None of them (mostly woman btw) are remotely phased by what you describing.
That is what you seem to be saying really is they are describing a level of spanking greater than you think they enjoy. They problem is the woman on the receiving end don't seem to agree. I've never heard a domestic violence victim say the beating her husband gave her was erotic or enjoyable or exciting. They don't use that sort of language, ever.
And just to switch sexes for a moment. The standard sessions at a dungeon in NY is an hour (mostly male customers). With more experienced players its around 3 hrs. The woman getting that level of beating would be experienced by male standards. That is to say the DD spankings are short by BDSM standards.

I've never argued that most DDers are not sexual masochist, just that it isn't domestic violence. BTW do you want to move this to the previous thread since you are actually now debating the point I was discussing there?

I would agree that leaving welts when not meeting the SSC criteria is domestic violence.

I'm not sure which story you are talking about, but some of the sites have the woman showing pictures and again the kinds. BTW stories are usually fantasy and can be substantially more masochistic than actual practice. I.E. BDSM porn is worse than BDSM practice.

As for Stacey and James I agree with your assessment of their practice 100%. While I have problems with TW for all the reasons I listed last time it is miles away from the blogs they run. The anti-patriarchy movement still has far less restrictions on speech than the pro-patriarchy movement. But before I used to be able to say that the anti-patriarchy movement support a free and open exchange of views. That doesn't seem to be true today.

You started by mentioning the case of the DD discussion which is a difficult one because in the end Karen did make the right choice. But why was it a choice at all. Why did I have to fight? If you look at my discussion with Mel, during Jen's tenure I linked to far far worse materials. I'll stick with the same example I gave her. Gui's inquisitor's manual with page after page of horrors. Well beyond erotic spanking how-tos. However violent you consider the DD people you would agree they don't discuss their partners dieing, or how to properly cauterize after body parts are removed. Not a single question was raised about it. It contained a key piece of information so of course I linked to it.

Or my long discussions of page after page of medieval love poetry celebrating adultery. Not even questioned. I was discussing the topic. And I was free to discuss the topic I was walking on egg shells all the time like I am now.

Or when I linked to part 5 of how to survive disciple part 5. Where I discuss golden showers and masturbation (using crude language btw). Note, this was in the article not a link not even this was questioned.

Something has really changed.

And you didn't address the membership statement on TW. That was my primary point not the link debate, because in the end while I had to fight Karen did the right thing.

Lets just pick another example that didn't involve me. Jen had arminians constantly debating reformed doctrine on her blog. Lets say a Mormon woman came on TW today and debated the content of scripture. Would it be tolerated?

And again I don't have a problem with TW existing as a Christian woman's support group. I have a problem with a Christian woman's support group being the primary blog for the anti-patriarchy cause. One needs a totally different set of rules than the other.

OK I'm repeating myself.

Blessings to your husband and the girls,
CD-Host

Corrie said...

"jensgems said...

Just to clarify, Stacy does have a comment policy wherein she does not approve comments from those whom she considers to gossip. I guess that would include everyone who has posted to True Womanhood. Although not stated, I wonder if perhaps James has the same policy."

Jen, that would include your blog, too, then. Stacy wrote about your blog on her PW list and told women to stay away from it.

CD Host,

I am confused. I haven't had much time to spend on the discussion lately but I don't see who is claiming that patriarchalists are into domestic discipline? There are some who say they are patriarchalists but, personally, I know that these are not the same patriarchalists I am used to dealing with. There are some patriarchalists that do believe they should discipline their wives but they do not mention how they are to do it when they are questioned.

I am truly sorry if I have done or said anything to hurt you. I hope to have time to catch up on all of this.

On another note, I and others have been exposing the erroneous teachings on several blogs for years concerning patriarchy and their extrabiblical teachings. Jen is not a "leader" in this but her blog was just one of many blogs where this issue has been discussed. I, myself, have owned a Christian women's issues list for many years where we discussed all of these things. In fact, Jen will tell you that she had to be led out of many teachings that she up until recently held firmly as biblical truth.

James McDonald doesn't want to discuss the issues on his blog, either. He and anyone else are totally free to make a statement on TW, I am sure of that. Not so on his blog. He highly censors any sort of dissent or posts coming from people he doesn't agree with in doctrine or ideology as you well know.

On the TW blog there are charismatics, egals, complementarians, reformed, arminian, etc and they all post there. I just think it was that the issue of S&M isn't something that people want to talk about regardless of what religious beliefs they hold. If I remember correctly Jen wouldn't allow that conversation on her blog, either, and that your posts were deleted.

I would love to talk with you further about this. I really like you, Jeff, and I want to understand where you are coming from.

CD-Host said...

Corrie --

We've talked off blog but no you haven't done anything personally.
I saw it more as a collective problem but you did a pretty job convincing me it was more a matter of a 1/2 dozen coincidences and a not trend. I'm going to digest and maybe think of some way to respond.


Anyway, sorry if I got the history wrong regarding what was going on prior to my getting involved. Tell me how best to rephrase my comments regarding "under Jen's leadership". I was mainly talking about my own personal involvement. I certainly acknowledge you have been doing this much longer, and with more dedication than I have.

In terms of this coming up.... Well I keep running into these references all over the place, if you start searching you find them everywhere An author you know well wrote a month ago:
I hear that “The Taming of the Shrew” starring Elizabeth Taylor is something that is used to train these young bucks at Vision Forum on how to handle a woman. How come I am not surprised? Anyone familiar with the film knows that the father is trying to marry his older daughter off but she doesn’t want to marry any of the men he has chosen for her. He finally forces her to marry some beast of a man and she is supposed to like it. But, a good spanking subdues the most stubborn of all women.

That's a pretty good example of the sorts of comments tieing vision forum to adult on adult spanking.

As for TW not being willing to discuss it, Link from July (middle of thread).
And note that wasn't linking off to a discussion that was onboard.

Finally when the post Jen censored was not a link. It was a direct on board post discussing other fantasy scenerios common in the BDSM world. She left the meat intact. Since then however it appears she also has edited the comment history of Are the Biblical Tenets of Patriarchy Biblical to exclude the whole thread including several posts that had the meat of the argument that were not censored (i.e. CDD and patriarchy shared a common language but not a common ideology). And since Jen is following this I'll ask her why?

Anonymous said...

Corrie, I do realize that Stacy does not approve of my blog, although I didn't know that she had issued a warning to stay away from it.

CD, you are correct that I have heavily edited the comments on some threads. I'll tell you what happened. You'll recall in my "Mea Culpa" post that I said the requirements kept changing and changing in order to attend church #5. One of the requirements was that I could keep certain articles up, but the comments had to be heavily edited, so I started doing that. I quickly wearied of it and gave up, so if you look closely, you will see that I didn't get too far. I do, however, have all the original comments and have debated about taking the time to put them back up. I would like to clean up some of the comments, though, especially those that are off-topic. Since I never saw any connection between patriarchy and CDD, that is probably one of the topics I will leave off, unless you have some reason for it remaining. I'm willing to listen to your point of view, especially since you have been one of my more faithful commenters.

I will say that it has always been a pleasure working with you, CD, and I hope you'll stick around.

CD-Host said...

Well first off I think you should undo everything you did for church #5. The historical record should be as accurate as possible. JenGems was an important part of the anti-patriarchy movement and the comments on it should be the comments that were made as they were made. Presenting a subset of comments is essentially revising the record and it throws everything on the site into much more doubt. That is from my viewpoint church #5 told you to lie about history and this among other things, I think, was very bad advice.

But in this particular case its important because its gotten referred to about a dozen times. And several hundred people read that thread. And some of those people may want to go back. Even though you don't see any connection and people like Light did see a connection. Again she expressed that view at the time, and she should be represented.

If you want to distance yourself mark some comments in say color=green saying something like "for edited version skip this"

I would go far as to say that the stuff you were concerned about turning into a flame war would be perfect to re-include so go in exactly the opposite direction. Another reason is that the first few rounds of the conversation were valuable.

Hopefully those are enough reasons.

Anonymous said...

Well, CD, you are pretty convincing. I can see your point. I unmoderated all the comments, so there are plenty to read through again. It will take a good deal of work to change the others back, so that will have to wait for a few days, but I will do it. I'll have to do all those by hand.

I didn't put up all the articles because I didn't necessarily like them all, but I suppose I could put them up with a disclaimer at the top. I'll think about that. My thinking there is that there were a lot of good comments.

I need to go put up the other articles on Ligonier as well. Thanks for motivating me. There are so different aspects of my story, and different people relate to different aspects. I need to probably just leave it how it was.

Just so you know, I average one commenter for every 100 readers, so there were way more than a few hundred readers. :-)

CD-Host said...

I'm really happy to hear that and yes put back the articles you don't like. Include a disclaimer. I've got the same problem with this one. I'm getting a pretty good idea that I was seeing a pattern where nothing more than a problem existed and my stand was likely too strong. I'll make an addendum to this article but the comments don't make sense if I completely changed the article.

Anonymous said...

Well, CD, we grow and change in life. And there's nothing wrong with changing your mind, or mine. That's the thing about putting your thoughts online for everyone for to see: if you change your mind, sometimes people want to hold you to everything you've ever said or thought. But in real life, we allow change, so we should here as well. I'm glad I walked this article through with you. I think we both learned a lot in the last week, both here and at the SGUncensored blog.

Next time, I won't be so hasty!