Hi Martha
I’m very sorry you feel this way.
At first I was hesitant about saying
anything about this on my blog, because I didn't want to stir up negative
feelings between people. But I've been participating in this challenge for so
long, and I felt I needed to explain why I stopped participating. I just couldn’t stop in the middle of the challenge and say
nothing about it. I hate being secretive. That’s not who I am.
It was never my intention to attack you,
and rereading my post I can’t find I did. I never even mentioned your name. I
just said I was asked to refrain from posting and that that scared me and made
me sad. I was a bit pissed off that you deleted my faces and that’s what really
made me decide that this was the last time for me to participate. I was careful
not to mention anything in the FB-group, I just let them know I wouldn’t post
anymore because some were uncomfortable with it. No one (as far as I know,
before you deleted it) commented in a nasty negative way. The only nasty
comment came from ***, when I posted a face with a quote from Elie
Wiesel. She posted a rather hateful comment about it, and people reacted to
that, but in a very reasonable non-attacking way. Someone asked you whether it
was all right for *** to post nasty comments like that, but you never even
answered. I wish we could've had an open and honest discussion about this in
the group. It could have cleared the air. We are all grown-up, and despite what
you seem to think, we are not trolls who just start to rant when something
isn’t to our liking.
Of course you have every right to run
your group the way you want, to set your rules the way you want, to delete the
faces that you don’t want. I happen to disagree with it and that’s why I left. But
I also have the right to explain why I left. I didn’t do it in a hurtful, nasty
way, as you are suggesting. I didn't attack you as a person.
After that I went on to talk about
politics. It was a general rant about things I have noticed on social media, the
way some people who speak out are silenced, and the fact that I won't let
anyone silence me. It didn’t have anything to do with 29 faces, or you, and if
you could’ve read it without that haze of hurt and anger in front of your eyes,
you would have been able to see it.
I don’t moderate the comments on my
blog. Everyone is free to comment how they want. I'm not responsible for people
reacting so strongly to what I wrote. In fact I was surprised that they reacted
like that, as it wasn’t my intention to make people “choose” between you and
me. I contacted some of the people that reacted so strongly privately to
explain what had happened, and contrary to what you might think I didn’t speak
bad about you. Saying that I'm being hurtful, hateful and insulting is not
right. You are doing exactly what you are accusing me of doing: inciting online
hate against my person by attacking me personally and mentioning my name several times. What you did on
your blog is ten times worse than what I did on mine. And the worst thing is
you are moderating all comments and only approving the comments that go with
what you are saying (people contacted me so I know). I have no way to defend
myself, you are not letting people discuss this in the open, just like in the
Facebook-group.
It is your right to do it like this
of course. But in your own words: this is not the grownup way to handle things.
I am sorry it has come to this.
Enjoy your weekend.
Denise
I’m sorry to all who have been caught
in the middle of this. I’m not out to cause a rift in this wonderful group of
artists. I hope we can just move on and leave this behind. There is enough
nastiness in the world without us adding to it.
