> On Jan 29, 2017, at 12:15 AM, Teena Clerke <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> your post begs the question Don Norman,
> by whose standards are ‘self-defined feminists behaving badly’?
Teena,
(First, in case anyone reads the exchange and thinks Don’s use of the phrase "self-defined feminist" was rhetorical overload, I should note that it was another typo: Luiza Prado titles herself "SelfDefined Feminist" on Twitter which is, no doubt, why he used that phrase.)
According to Luiza Prado’s tweets (https://twitter.com/luizaprado/) on January 27, "in the past days i’ve been the subject of vicious & unprovoked attacks by older, white academic men far more powerful & influential than me+" "these men r called Ken Friedman, Terence Love, Johann van der Merwe, Eduardo Corte Real, Gunnar Swanson, Keith Russell, Filippo Salustri" "they will block & hurt me & those who stand with me. They will make our lives very, very difficult+" . . . "These men need to be held accountable for their relentless, misogynistic, xenophobic/racist bullying". . .
So by what standards is this bad behavior?
**By the standards of anyone who values factual accuracy:
I will not bore people with extensive "fact checking" but I clearly did not subject Ms. Prado to "vicious and unprovoked attacks". . . "in the past days." I believe most people reading on Twitter would interpret "in the past days" to be very recent. In the last couple of months, I had posted to this list something like three times. The only post that could be interpreted as having anything to do with Ms. Prado was one where I answered someone who had dismissed the contemporary relevance of colonialism. I stated that, although I did not agree with the substance or rhetoric of much of the decolonizing design discussion, it is wrong and dangerous to dismiss colonialism as a contemporary issue.
It would require considerable sensitivity on her part to call that an attack on Ms. Prado. To call it a vicious and unprovoked attack is hyperbole at best and a clear lie at worst.
Maybe I’m wrong. Perhaps "in past days" includes half of a year ago. At that time, I did refer directly to her. In one post that summarized the facts regarding the de-colonial exchange on this list, I stated that Cameron had seemingly-deliberately mis-described someone’s comment and that Luiza Prado had, to only a slightly lesser extent, done the same. Was that an attack? Maybe. Was it vicious? I think not. Was it unprovoked? Clearly not.
(Someone may find the following to be a "vicious attack" but I can’t believe that a reasonable person could, considering her Twitter claims, say that it is unprovoked. I will be more blunt and perhaps more clear than I was six months ago: Reviewing the @luizaprado tweets and posts to this list, I feel compelled to note that she lies repeatedly about some basic facts and misrepresents other facts. Whether by intent or by outrageous intellectual sloppiness, she is a serial and persistent liar. If she believes these falsehoods to be true, she either has no regard for the notion of factual truth or she has serious problems communicating accurately.)
So by what standards is this bad behavior?
**By the standards of anyone who objects to misogyny, xenophobia, racism, or bullying:
Unless someone has reason to connect anything I said to misogyny, xenophobia, or racism, making that accusation trivializes what strike me as very, very serious charges. Such rhetoric causes people who are casually accused to find such accusations generally less serious. When those accusations are made without evidence or reasonable explanation, the "boy who cried 'wolf'" effect blunts the claims when they *should* be made. And, if one statement correcting the record of a conversation is bullying, how is a lengthy series of rather vitriolic tweets *not* bullying?
So by what standards is this bad behavior?
**By the standards of anyone who cares about other people as individual being worthy of respect:
I responded in this post about my inclusion on the list of older (I won’t bother going any deeper into the problem of agism other than to point out its presence in her claims) bigots because I could address it clearly and accurately. Some others in that basket of deplorables may have done less than I do to deserve the charge of being racist attackers. Ken was certainly subjected to much more defamation than I was. It may do actual harm to Ken if someone reads un-refuted false claims that he told Luiza Prado to leave this listserv, that he harassed her, etc.
I doubt that Ms. Prado’s requests on Twitter that people refrain from citing any of the Maleficent Seven will have the effect of damaging any of us but that is her stated intent. (In her defense, if everyone accepts that we are forces of evil, damaging us may be a worthy cause.)
I sympathize with the outrage and frustration that Don displayed and I have neither power nor right to limit anyone’s expressions but I should note that the acrimony over decolonialism partly stemmed from a flip answer that raised serious questions in a manner that seemed to be felt as an attack rather than intellectual engagement. Subsequently, those with various viewpoints had reason to assume bad will on the part of others.
It is easy in discussions of subjects such as sexism, misogyny, racism, xenophobia, etc. for people to feel attacked. People who feel attacked tend to retreat to their mental fortifications and sieges occur. Mocking the perceived attackers is an appealing mode for such a retreat.
I fully understand what led Don to respond as he did to the tweets but I’m afraid it probably made people who had only seen Ms. Prado’s claims more convinced that she is a victim of harassment. (I hope my struggle to ignore the urge for mockery on this subject has been, and will continue to be, successful. If not, I preemptively apologize for my failure.)
I’ve gone on at too great of a length so will sign off now. Since the question was directed to Don, I hope he will correct me if my answers differ from his.
Gunnar
Gunnar Swanson
East Carolina University
graphic design program
http://www.ecu.edu/cs-cfac/soad/graphic/index.cfm
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Gunnar Swanson Design Office
1901 East 6th Street
Greenville NC 27858
USA
http://www.gunnarswanson.com
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+1 252 258-7006
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