U Mad Bro?: The Trouble With Trolls
For those of you who are Chump Lady fans as we are, you might be aware of her recent post, Chump Lady Talks to Her Trolls.
Trolling is a euphemism of course - in this case it’s a euphemism for anonymous and cowardly harassment and abuse - and that’s the reality of what Tracy Schorn is being subjected to by some of her critics.
How do we know? Because we recently found one of the Chump Lady trolls wandering into our site, clearly seeking to spew its peevishness on fresh ground.
We don’t care to be used as a dumping ground for troll spew in any circumstances but this troll was particularly ill informed if it considered us a safe spot to make a personal attack on someone challenging traditional infidelity advice.
Stance and Disagreement
We support open and even heated disagreement, but not personal attacks intended to hurt or discredit someone. These attacks on Tracy are in lieu of any legitimate debate and are not attempts to engage in any level of meaningful discourse about the approach to infidelity.
Our stance is more aligned with Chump Lady’s position than it is with pro-marriage sites. We don’t agree with reconciliation apologists who encourage people to remain in dysfunction, and we challenge any attempt to evade the issue of unethical behavior in cheaters.
However, some clearly feel entitled to resort to the abuse and harassment of those who disagree with popular thinking - and we consider that to be an unethical and unprincipled undertaking.
The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently.
~ Nietzsche
Where people seek to label us ‘militant’ we are not daunted because we are hard-core advocates for faithful spouses empowering themselves, reaching for their own goals, and not buying into convenient thinking that excuses or mitigates the cheater’s choices (affair fog theory anyone?).
The tone and nature of the abuse towards Tracy is clearly intended to shut her up, put her in her place, demean her, and characterize her as some screeching, crazy harpy. We can’t fail to notice the parallels between these vicious comments and the type of abuse and gaslighting in which cheaters so readily engage.
We won’t give free airspace to abuse or misogynistic attacks - people are at liberty to purchase their own hosting for that.
Being Counted
We wanted to express our own support of Tracy and her stance and have posted an excerpted version of this on her site in solidarity. We believe that it’s important to provide balance to the happy-clappy reconciliation apologists and cheater excuses, deflections, and minimizations.
We need more voices that challenge popular hypotheses like affair fog, to counteract the cloying encouragement that saving your marriage is the only righteous and goodly response to an affair, despite any damaging dysfunction. We need more champions of empowerment and self-worth and we need more opponents to the shared blame nonsense that the reconciliation and marital therapy industry is selling.
Fresh thinking and straight talking can give conniptions to the narrow-minded - but it also offers people different options. It encourages critical thinking and sound reasoning - and it’s this which shines light on the darkness that so many feel when their lives detonate with an affair.
Attacking Chump Lady won’t quash critical thinking and rational thought: Chump Nation itself is evidence that Tracy is not a lone voice. IHG is further evidence of the same. Attacking Tracy won’t silence reason or the advocacy of personal empowerment.
We’re standing up and being counted in support of Chump Lady and the clear-headed Chump Nation. We are standing up for the battle against reconciliation apologists, the marital recovery industrial complex, and giving cheaters a free pass.
Je suis Chump Lady.
Thanks so much IHG. I really appreciate the shout out. Obviously infidelity is a very painful subject, the last thing any vulnerable newly-minted chump wants is a gaggle of insulting, shaming trolls. I used to be pretty hands off on moderating, but alas, now I’m on a strict delete and block policy for trolls. Reasoned debate, disagreement, good natured snark remains. Trolls get the trap door.
I fully expect to be disliked for my own snark and opinions. But that’s fine. I draw a pretty wicked cartoon. Trolls beware!
Thanks again IHG!
You’re very welcome.
Such vitriolic reaction towards you from those who are clearly reconciliation apologists, suggests a fear that they are on shaky ground with their own approach.
We have seen material damage result from the traditional approach. We won’t be party to encouraging Divorce Avoidance Plans that prey upon people’s vulnerabilities and fears. That some people fear advocacy of personal empowerment and the provision of tools that might move others out of dysfunction won’t dissuade us from our stance. Their vehement opposition to an eyes wide open approach suggests that they somehow benefit from it being silenced.
We’ll take your honest snark over disingenuous goodliness any day - what they see as a bad attitude we see as evidence of people thinking clearly.
They’ve targeted you because you are influential, visible, and with an ever-expanding reach. But in targeting you, they also target us and anyone else who disagrees with them.
Je suis Chump Lady.
Thanks, IHG, for your support of Chump Lady! It’s going to take many groups like CL and Infidelity Help Group to change the popular narrative out there that infidelity is something to be winked at and not the painful abuse that it really is.
Hi Moving Liquid
Thank you for reaching out and commenting. We think it’s important to stand united against the type of abuse and harassment to which Tracy has been subjected.
We are firmly of the view that there must be some balance to the pervasive and popular reconciliation apologist position. We believe it is damaging and that most reconciliations aren’t ‘success’ by any reasonable definition.
IHG does not measure success by any particular relationship outcome (be that divorce or reconciliation), but by integrity, growth, empowerment, and the healthy and ethical pursuit of a content and authentic life despite an affair detonating your relationship. It is in these things that we have strong parallels with CL’s own message.
I appreciate you adding your voice here too.