Re: I'm leaving for now
Ironcross, yes, it happens. I believe I acknowledged that. What I'm saying is that it's not the accepted norm, and shouldn't be treated as such. Because while it happens, bringing attention to it without cause can be an issue.
If you have someone with a legitimate problem, and something referenced casually sounds like "since when did this become trendy", you're apt to send the message that the original poster is doing it for attention or due to it being popularized. You may not actually intend this, but why else would you bring it up in a topic clearly about this user, and not about mental health in general? I wouldn't have had as much of an issue if that question had been brought up in a way that was totally unrelated to a given user and their declarations of mental health concern. For instance, if someone had made a thread here in the off-topic room the other day called "questions about mental health" and this came up, then that's just a talking-point. I might still weigh in on it, but it's not near as loaded as it was here. And I refuse to believe that Moonwalker did not know what they were doing.
I am glad that you agree with me on the rest of it, the bit about how we should believe until or unless we have sufficient reason not to. That I'm totally on board with, so cool.
I want to sort of outline what I'm talking about, just to make it perfectly clear.
If you want to talk about mental health in general, and you're not pointing at any one person, then bring up points as you see them. Try to be respectful, but otherwise you're cool.
This goes for things like abuse and assault as well. I'm going to hit a hot button topic now, so hold on.
So, it is statistically true that in cases of sexual violence, some women either lie or misremember the facts. The latter can happen through no fault of their own - can happen to anyone, I mean, under high stress or when trauma is involved - but straight-up lying happens too. Now, the likelihood of this actually occurring is really, really low, like considerably less than 1%. So out of a hundred women who are victims of sexual violence, approximately one of them has misrepresented their situation, and some of those didn't do it on purpose.
Now if somebody brings up a case of sexual violence alligations and the first thing said is, "Yeah but sometimes women lie", can you see the mixed message this sends? Because yes, women lie. So do men. This isn't the point. The point is that we have alligations on our hands and should deal with them in a fair and respectful manner. If lying was involved, we figure it out. But since statistically it's likely that it didn't, it's better to just keep that off the table until or unless there's good reason.
This goes for all oorts of things, by the way, not just violence against women. I used that one as a point of reference because it's easy to see. I'm also well aware that many people of all genders are sexual violence victims; it's awful and it really, really needs to stop.
Now, back to mental health. If we're generally talking mental health and then someone walks in and talks about how trendy it is to cite mental health, that's kind of a bad thing to do. It sends a slightly weaker version of the message I just explained, something like, "It's possible the original poster is doing this". Because okay, sure it is, but do you have any proof? Do you have any good reason? And if you do, do you really need to say so here and now?
Since the strong likelihood is that Sam is legitimate in this claim, I thought this sort of interjection from Moonwalker was extremely insensitive, and necessitated the reaction it got. This is also not Moonwalker's first rodeo, and controversy tends to follow in their wake sometimes, so I tend to take such things into consideration when looking at a situation. I care whether or not you've ruffled feathers before. I care whether or not you should be expected to know the effect of your words on people. And if, like Moonwalker, you've demonstrated that you don't seem to care much, then repercussions are a good way to make you care, at least to some extent.
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