Facing Internet Bullies

I'm being bullied and I'm experiencing relational aggression and psychological aggression. It's been going on for at least two years, but it's intensified over the past three weeks. I explained my motive and purpose for writing about this subject in a previous post here.

Let me bring you up to speed. On Wednesday, my best friend Judy Sierra* and I found several messages on Craigslist that seemed to be defaming and libeling us. The first was from Ricki Black* asking for a boycott of a Yahoogroup for Lesbians that I co-founded, LezOver45*. I don't really have much to do with the group, I've moved on to other things. For those just joining the blog, Ricki was the woman who threatened me and warned me not to go back to synagogue, thus prompting me to file a police report and post about it here.

Another Craigslist message was from Lenora Whitley*, who was suspended from the over45 Yahoogroup. Lenora's Craigslist message called me a thief because of that suspension. I wrote about it here.

We found more Facebook notes by Paula Rubenstein*. As you remember, the moderators suspended Paula for 30 days from the yahoogroup called DisabilityDykes*, and from the LezOver45 group, because Paula violated the rules by flaming the moderators, and because they felt harassed by her. And you probably also remember Paula is a woman I once dated and dumped.

On Paula's Facebook page, she called her suspension "censorship" and tried to get the community involved in speaking out against the disabled, Jewish dykes who run these groups -- and boycotting and resigning from these groups, saying it was discrimination against a disabled, Jewish dyke. Oy.

One of Paula's friends, Doris Finkel*, the drummer and musical director at a local left-leaning synagogue, responded on Paula's Facebook with a promise of support for Paula. Paula told me Doris Finkel is a former lover of R Rachel and they're still close. I blogged about R Rachel here, but the succinct version is she hadn't been willing to identify herself to me, even though I told her I'm disabled from a head injury and I couldn't recognize faces.

Getting back to Doris, all the moderators of the LezOver45 group then received Doris' email where she told us she would publicly denounce us and she would ask others to boycott us.

Nena Campbell responded to Doris' email with words that said basically nothing. She's so good at that. We didn't make her the head moderator for nothing, you know. Point is, she didn't present the moderator's side at all. She didn't present any side. It's like she's the Dean of the College of Middle Management-speak. Can you tell I flunked outta that school?

Yet another lesbian newsgroup called Sapphisty published several defaming and libelous posts about yours truly. Originally the traffic was posed as a question: why are there so many redundant groups for lesbians?

Ok, let's take a comedy break and look at that one.

Cuz we don't get along, silly. We're lesbians! We sleep with each other. We sleep with each other's best friends. We sleep with each other's best friend's enemies.

Then you know what we do? We refuse to sleep with each other.

And finally, we do both. We sleep together, we refuse to sleep together. We sleep together, we refuse to sleep together. And then we start all over again, only with a new person. Cuz we think it'll be different if we try our pattern on somebody new.

We take that formula and we go right down the list widdit: friend, enemy, friend of the enemy, enemy of the friend. There's no end to the permutations of frenemy sex, and frenemy sex refusals.

Now back to the concept of oneness. Maybe it's the grand solution.

So why can't we just have one list? And one political party? And one newspaper?

Why can't we?

And why can't we have one factory, one restaurant, and one approved sexual position?

Ok, I'll take a crack at it.

Isn't queerness itself a defiance of this type of thinking?

And doesn't this kind of solution just smack of a generic, singular, totalitarianism- for-the-hip?

And didn't we used to associate that with neo-fascists? Or Republicans? Or at least conservatives?

But lesbians are saying this?

Oh, well, I guess it must be okay, then.

That's the spirit, kids. That's just the sort of sputtering incoherence that makes the left strong.

Or maybe it's all of America, dropping faster than a falling SAT score, more powerful than a really strong cellphone battery, and able to leap tall objections of a world community united against quantitative easing and printing money from nothing.

But I digress.

Back to online bullying. Gradually the tone of emails published on Sapphistry changed. Pretty soon LezOver45 was being trashed. Then I was being called a thief all over again.

Here's what some anonymous RJ said:
"[we] stole the list because one of the people who helped Michelle with the tech part for about 10 minutes deleted her name as an owner and stole the list. We all know who did this so I don't gotta name her but you guys know who i mean.. now everyone feel like they gotta choose..."

Here's what Lenora said:
"[the list] was stolen from me"

And then Lenora said:
"I did have stern words for [Erin] the night before the theft, over her continuing abusive phone calls."

And then Lenora said:
"[the other list] was born of a theft..."

And then Lenora goes on to say that the women on her list:
"have been deeply sorrowed to see another soul suffering due to unnecessary power grabbing by [Erin]"

All of this happened in, like, two hours. It was intense.

You see, more than 1,000 women are getting all this sent to their inboxes. But they're only getting one side, and it is at variance with the truth, to say the least. It's libel and defamation, to say the most.

They're seeing me, Erin Teller, a person with a cognitive disability, getting painted with a criminal label because some moderators hold women accountable for their actions. Over the course of two years, two women have misbehaved in our digital sandbox, and so we suspended them. We gave them a time-out for adults. And they had a tantrum. Yeah, we're tigers. Better watch out. We give time-outs.

Just look at these two women, an attorney and a PhD, getting tripped up and MacGyvered out of power by someone like me, a woman who can't remember her own zip code, or recognize her own mother, or find her way home from her own driveway.

I'm the victim here. And so is Judy, a woman with Multiple Sclerosis. I mean the stress of an online bullying makes her lose her ability to walk.

So after having practically 19 nervous breakdown, I posted to Sapphistry, the list with the most traffic, and the widest membership. It went a little like this.

"Wow, I sure didn't want to write this. Unfortunately, this has reached a point where I've had several conversations with police, and filed a report for threats made to me by friends of a suspended member, and I'm in the process of choosing between attorneys because I now need protection, from lesbians, over email. Sheesh.

So please, kindly cease and desist... on Sapphistry, DykeOver45, Craigslist, Facebook, and elsewhere, or I will take action for libel, defamation of character, intentional infliction of emotional distress, and whatever else the suits recommend. Ok, buttercups?"

Then I explained why the moderators suspended the members. It embarrassed me to hafta put that out there. I alluded to my briefly dating & dumping Paula (obviously she wouldn't be reacting this way otherwise.)

And I said it's been rough for us and I've been frightened. I asked people to get on with their lives and to have a little compassion

So I guess you could say I answered the question I raised about myself in a previous post, about whether I had the courage to denounce this online bullying. I had the strength of Arjuna, after all.

In response, Paula changed her Facebook page. She took down the awful things she wrote about me on her wall.

However, now that I'm calling what's been happening to me libel and defamation, Paula turns around and says on her wall that she's the victim of libel, hinting at legal action against us, or me, I dunno know which.

...

I promised I'd practice Yoga with Judy today, cuz she's taking her midterm tomorrow. And I was so sick all day. I've been taking these suppositories so the headaches don't make me puke.

So we did the Yoga. Durga fed us the best meal -- organic and ayurvedic. I was so grateful.

Even though I'm going through this horrible thing with the bullying. And even though my health is so fragile with the headaches. And even though cognitively I am so slowed down I couldn't decipher any street signs on the road with Judy today (she drove.) Still, I had lotsa moments of peace today.

Even with all that, I can hardly wait to meditate and to pray and to see the sunset and to let go and unclench from all the twists of mind.

On the drive to Durga's we passed through the rolling hills of wine country. Judy had something to say. As a result of everything Paula's put us through, Judy tells me she hates Paula.

I don't hate anyone. I'm just trying not to puke. I just want to meditate. I'm still reading the parsha; still looking forward to shabbat.

I have zero interest in any of this stuff with Paula and Lenore. I feel drawn in only to respond to libel and character defamation that's being directed at me or at Judy.

Sometimes I think about why I'm different. Why I don't hate. Why I'm not even really all that mad.

I'm scared, but I'm not mad.

I totally forgive all these people.

Yes, I'm frightened of them. It's very, very stressful to be so scared all the time.

But all I really wanna do is meditate and do yoga.

On the spiritual side, sometimes I do tonglen. Other times I do mehta. I extend love to Paula and to Lenora when I do the mehta. I really like doing that.

I suppose from a Jewish perspective I'm praying for them to have love in their lives.

That's really their trouble, isn't it?

Time for that sunset now.


(* basically every name is fake cuz I'm being bullied and I don't feel safe at all.)