*Disclaimer — This is a work of mostly fiction. Names, characters, business, events and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental. (or is it? )
Community-building increasingly feels like such a dirty, tainted and abused buzzword now, with everyone clamouring to hog the space and be the beholder of the narrative on just what community-building SHOULD be. What happens to THE COMMUNITY in community-building? Ironically, the community becomes voiceless and drowning in the self-righteousness of so-called leaders.
Most who know me, would know I am not one to pander to anyone who thinks they are powerful, nor do I take to bullshit, gaslighting or posturing by anyone. Life is too short not to live it real, so no, I am not going down that path.
On Scapegoating
When a leadership collective becomes non-objective, punitive and develop high-handed herd mentality, in order to deflect from a far more real issue of making the community feel safe on inclusive level ground again, that’s when you know a community-building group has gone whack and all toxic.
Bunny Goddess shared vulnerably and honestly about her experiences having worked under an abusive Compassion Pilot leader, and how she was basically made to feel silenced, when a promise to recontract was suddenly rescinded. She was paid insulting peanuts (at least IMHO), (most times, late) in this position too and made to be worked to bone with expectations that were never clearly communicated. She was also constantly made to feel like she was not giving enough of herself all this while. As a swan song to community resulting from the trauma experienced, a support group came in place to share her story, cushion the potential backlash, and hopefully give the community a feedback to do better moving forward.
Saviour mentality
Instead of focusing on the problems that Bunny Goddess reflected in her story, the leadership collective that be, rushed in biasedly to “investigate” what was already intended to be shared with the community, by blaming the support group sharer and “assuring” the rest of the community that what was shared, was a “mistake” (it was not) and would be debunked and “clarified” by Compassion Pilot ALONE. Should Bunny Goddess and support group sharer be a part of this clarification process as well? No, as the leadership collective deemed. Never mind that the both of them no longer want to engage with further toxicity that is stewing in the community leadership collective, they were both not even personally invited to said “clarification session”. The truth in the story shared and the explanation of the support group sharer probably not fairly, humbly and compassionately acknowledged as part of the truth either.
Perhaps in claiming a space for self-proclaimed “change-makers”, the savior mentality and self-righteousness justifies every non-inclusive, non-compassionate and punitive act that ensues, ironically. Use deflection and frame the sharer as the scapegoat wrongdoer, than focus on the lived reality shared first-hand by Bunny Goddess. Use deflection as a tool, and avoid the real underlying issues.
Toxicity, abuse and lack of trust, safety and transparency, that bleeds insidiously in the name of self-justification
About slightly more than a year ago, Compassion Pilot shared about how Puppet Maker was no longer seen as a leader to him because she did not provide the psychological safety that leaders are meant to instill. Unaddressed, unprocessed and buried, his experiences of being constantly gaslit and abused, eventually bled into him taking on the role of abuser himself a year later, inflicting upon a co-worker, the very abuses he was subjected to himself.
We are, perhaps, always blind to the very things we choose to carry over, from the way we allow ourselves to be treated by others. And in that blindness, one becomes deadweight that the rest of the community needs to lug around (quite like an oxygen thief of a group while on a climb).
Unchecked power and lack of transparency in processes, alongside a lack of implicit trust in the community to steer to the community together, means toxicity keeps leeching over time, insidiously.
A matter of “he said she said they said…”
Instead of coming together in REAL humility, with an acknowledgement of one’s own flaws, blind spots and uglies, it becomes a case of he said she said they said in small little pockets and groups, and where things shared in confidence are constantly spilled over to others that it was never intended for, or shared grossly out of context. Everyone has an emotional attachment to something and someone, and soon, everything becomes personal when there is no independent body present to “investigate” matters openly and objectively anymore.
Non-inclusivity
For a community that seeks to be inclusive fighting for social issues, there have been more than one instance where non-inclusivity had been reflected. In the recent scapegoating, several punitive comments were passed in smaller groups, about the support group sharer, alongside punitive and policing sounding top-down emails from the leadership collective. No attempts were made to compassionately create a safe space for talking about it all fairly, honestly and freely. Instead, more attempts were made to push out one-sided public statements to greenwash and embellish the group’s seeming integrity, by vindicating the sharer. Truth warriors on a rampage. No one in the leadership collective was listening, everyone within was just glad there was a scapegoat to deflect to. Only fools rush in..
What it all comes down to…
Never ever ever fear speaking your own truth and shining your own light. Choose to do things that your own conscience can live with, and perhaps its in that genuine space of non-bullshit non-pandering openness, that real community-building can then start to actualize. Also, real change comes from within oneself.
Allow others to speak their truth and acknowledge that truth, rather than drown or distort it. On a personal (and less fictional) note of myself embodying this, the ex hubs recently sent in his 13-page angry defense story, in reaction to my new filing for a divorce (yes, I finally came around to it and decided to get the paperwork settled properly now, 3 years on after he first filed and I tried to save the marriage for the first year, and then we were officially in separation the last 2 years). I asked my lawyer if both our claims could go in since our end goal was mutual anyway. I don’t want him to feel unseen and unheard, nor make him feel like his 13-page truth is not a part of the truth of us either. I wish the laws for divorce in Singapore are not so acrimonious, and I cannot wait for the 6th fact for divorce to be allowed and passed as law in parliament already.