It's been a long time away from this site for me, but there are some recent events in fandom that has left many people feeling hurt, scared, and angry. I'm hoping that this eases their suffering some by making a bit of sense of things, as well as suggesting the beginning of a path forward.

No more fear.

No more silence.

Let's make it better.

I'm going to make a lot of you laugh right now by saying that I have been known to be a bit of a feminist.

See? You snorted. Because most of you know I'm a Red Hulk raging feminist. Part of that means doing my reading and staying current with new thinking. Debate is also a huge aspect of any social change. None of us has the answer right the first time we step into the ring. We learn through the school of hard knocks, and sometimes the lessons hurt. That pain is not always the result of bullying. It's sometimes just the price you pay for your own arrogance, stupidity, or ignorance.

Most men are given social examples of how to deal with these smacks in the metaphorical head. The rise of the beta male thanks to feminism gives men more leeway than ever to be complete and utter screw ups and still make good. Women are not given the same social examples: our media counterparts are either perfected caregivers or love interests, or they are locked in a state of perpetual neurosis regarding men, career, or body image. To be confident in any of these areas is to be considered "uninteresting".

Perfection is not strength. An angel does not have free will -- sorry, Victoria's Secret. But we have no mosaic of common examples of truly strong women to draw from, and therefore we can't agree on very many permutations of "strong woman". That's why we're left with a slate of perpetually neurotic serial victims, plagued by schlub husbands (if they're not abusive), strings of defective dates, an abusive or perverted boss, more abusive or perverted drill sergeants, love/hate relationships with maternal figures, and Ashton Kutcher. They way a woman reveals her "strength" in our culture is to survive victimization. You can't even get a lasting female character on House sans sob story without nicknaming her "cut-throat bitch".

Yes, entertainment stories require a problem to solve. But that problem is not required to revolve around 1) a man, 2) a cut-throat bitch. Unfortunately there are not enough women in stories to expand that paradigm. As consumers of media, we are defined by our stories. We look for things in fiction to which we relate in an increasingly digital and distant world. And so women are stuck in a virgin/whore dichotomy that lends itself to branding -- not the commercial kind. The red hot metal on your ass kind. You don't choose if you are branded, you only choose the mark. And your options are virgin or whore; or, in the context of this discussion, victim or bitch.

This is the linchpin of what happens when women bully other women. It's something I call "The Nice Game". The object of The Nice Game is to, without being terribly obvious about it, force your opponent to choose "bitch" over "victim" forcing her to, therefore, stop being "nice."

Feminine niceties are the fine art of eating copious amounts of shit. It's finding that snappy comeback to having your ass grabbed. It's perfecting the disdainful giggle in response to a lewd or insulting comment... because as long as you giggle, YOU'RE STILL NICE! It's mastering indirection, avoiding direct confrontation, and claiming victim status if you get caught doing anything mean, underhanded or even illegal.

The Nice Game has a whole lot of nasty side effects, including mental instability, false accusations, paranoia, and an increasingly flimsy grasp of reality… that’s what happens to the winners. The losers are ostracized so badly that they minimize their involvement in a community, or worse, leave completely.

A Flawless Victory in the Nice Game is not getting a person thrown out. Oh no, that’s a loss, because it makes you a “bitch”. No, a Flawless Victory is making the other person leave all on their own. The Nice Game crushes dissent, destroys free thought, and cuts the knees off of female ambition. We’ve all heard the phrase “ambitious bitch”.

In an era of falling violent crime rates, the most power weapons are words, tempered and amplified by digital technology. Anonymous facebook or twitter accounts provide instant power! With text messages, if the recipient shows it to anyone, they betray a trust. That’s the move of a “bitch”, and so the person who sent the text is a victim, because “that’s private”.

Furthering the gender stereotyping, in The Nice Game, if a woman claims she was abused in any way, you MUST believe her and give her comfort. If you don’t, YOU’RE NOT NICE! This is why reporting sexual assaults becomes an experience of re-victimization for so many women: if the cops are going to put someone in jail, they need to be convinced that a person is telling the truth, and not just out for revenge. Cops are huge “bitches” in the Nice Game. Conversely, men are often guilty until proven innocent in the court of public opinion when accused of abuse. It's a downside of general privilege that is being exploited by unscrupulous women.

My friends have heard me say numerous times, “I am fair, but I am not nice.” I have personally embraced the mantle of the Bitch, even adopting the moniker of a Dungeons and Dragons goddess known as “The Bitch Queen”. Lady Gaga has done something similar by repeating “I’m a free bitch.” But Gaga knows that a bitch ain’t free: she’s still part of the Game.

If I stick my neck out on something, I recognize that someone may object. If I try something ambitious, I’m aware I might fail. I’m aware there’s no hard-wired fairness in life. I know you can’t win unless you try, but trying doesn’t mean you’ll win. The Disability Advocacy community calls this “the Dignity of Risk”, and we need to start teaching it to our girls, even if it means they’ll lose the Nice Game a lot. The good part, the recovery from bullying, happens when you stop trying to win and start learning to live with your individual limits and talents.

In my encounters with bullies, my goal is only to weaken them, because no one can fight a bully alone. Rachel Simmons writes wonderful books about the isolating tactics that bullies use to gain power over their targets. What she calls “alternative aggression” are the manipulation tactics that girls and women use over others to get control of their social lives. Also called social or relational aggression – in its extreme digital form its called “cyberbullying” – this phenomenon hinges on the shared perceptions of masculinity and femininity, most notably that it is feminine to want to be everyone’s friend. Alternative aggression rewards victimhood and punishes honest anger. It is not okay for women to ever be legitimately angry. Cultures that promote feminine aggression are marginalized in the West. Competence or success in any field is used to prove that a target of bullying just “thinks she’s better than everyone else”. The attacks on Hillary Clinton during her presidential campaign highlighted this: when racial epithets were spewed at Obama, everyone went nuts, but comments like “How do we beat the bitch?” and “You’re likable enough, Hillary”, went unnoticed by anyone but us bitchy feminists. These comments were made or endorsed by men with daughters, who, thanks to comments like these, don’t have a hope of being President if things don’t change.

Sadly, women are bullied by the world. Any woman who feels bullied has something of a point. The put-downs have become so widespread that it’s becoming increasingly difficult for a woman to pinpoint exactly what is making her feel bad, because the combination of factors is more complicated than my bartender friend’s “mixology” drinks. Both phenomena make people dizzy.

And research shows that the abused become abusers, and the bullied become bullies. Left with no safe spaces, they turn to the Dark Side. “If they hit you, hit them back” becomes “If they hit you, hit… something.” The feeling of victimization runs so deep and becomes so central to an individual’s self-perception that she justifies every action going forward with those feelings. She can’t tell when she crosses the threshold and becomes a bully herself. Perception becomes situational, and the self-deception piles up. The Nice Game turns inward. If an individual such as this ever attempts to correct a single bad act, the sum total of their mistakes buries them and they become overwhelmed.

Understanding this motivation, however, does not make me excuse the behavior of the women who are currently plaguing the Toronto geek community with their false claims of victimhood, and the anonymous bile that goes with it. What started as simple, forgivable mistakes have mushroomed into very real evils. People are hurt and scared, and blog posts, denials, and outrage solve nothing. I sit back and marvel at the irony of the very same women who have publicly accused me of bullying, taking to their blogs to talk about how horrible such accusations are now that they are leveled at them.

Girlfriends, sisters, I didn’t bully you. I told you hard truths. I did so because I cared about you as women and as individuals. I believed in you, and supported you when you succeeded. But, since I respected you, I also called you on your failures, so that you could get better. This is how I learned. This is how thousands of accomplished women before me learned. I was angry at you at times. I might have even… perish the thought… YELLED at you! Heaven forbid I yelled, when you expected me to do nothing as you tried to publicly shame, humiliate, and defame others, without proof, or justifiable cause. I got angry, I yelled, because not only did these others deserve better, YOU deserved better. It's tragic that you saw that as bullying instead of tough love, mixed with desperation as I watched you go down a very dangerous road. Whoever hurt you in the past is not a beast continuing to act through you. These are your actions and your choices, and if you feel you have no choice but to hurt others because you were hurt, you need counseling, not a bully pulpit.

To the general community: those who witness bullying CAN support the victims in ways that don’t involve direct confrontation with the bully. Being supportive after the fact, confirming privately that what you witnessed was wrong, is proven by research to help those who have been hurt. It can, in fact, be more effective than taking on the bully yourself. You don’t have to do anything but be a good listener. Telling someone you “just want to stay out of it”, or you “don’t want to pick sides”, may actually have nothing to do with what the person is telling you. They might just want a friend to hold their hand while they feel awful about what happened. There might be something you can do, but that something might be as simple as not pressuring a person to attend an event where the bully is present. Social events are just that: social. They are not mandatory attendance.

I’ve been hearing a lot that I, or others, have a RIGHT to attend events without being bothered. This is, under current circumstances, a fallacy. Without a strong support network wherein people rely on reason instead of rules, a victim of bullying has only two actual rights: the right to go somewhere and possibly be bullied, and the right to stay away. These truths, without brave, noble individuals willing to risk using their critical faculties, are self-evident. Don’t believe me? Read Rousseau: he was the first guy to write down in a pretty way the idea that people without reason are either little more than animals, or selfish pricks.

"Man was born free, and he is everywhere in chains.” He said. “Those who think themselves the masters of others are indeed greater slaves than they." This is never truer than when dealing with bullies. Bullies thrive and multiply in flawed social systems. They can only do serious damage when “I, the person” becomes more important than “We, the people”, because relational aggression is based on a fear of isolation.

You may have noticed by this point that this examination of women has become a discussion of people. This is the ultimate goal of feminism: to make women equal people. To make the sisterhood link to the brotherhood like the hemispheres of the brain. To make us a component of society, not the Other to mankind.

Humans have thrived because we are social creatures. No single individual can take what the community does not give them in some way. Stopping a single bully only allows another to emerge until we adopt a stronger social contract.

How do we do that? Here are seven concepts to get us started:

1) Understand that every action has a consequence. This isn’t fun, but it’s reality. Having the “right” to say or do something is counterbalanced by other people’s “right” to think you’re a flaming asshole for doing it. Freedom of speech and assembly mean a lack of censorship, not guaranteed approval.

2) Realize that a public situation involves the public. You ARE involved, because this is a community. Your only choice is the nature and character of that involvement.

3) The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few. This means you don’t have justification to make others miserable because you’re miserable. “It is the greatest happiness of the greatest number that is the measure of right and wrong".

4) Stop using the term “drama” to describe conflicts. Research has shown that the word “drama” is specifically used to downplay the seriousness of bullying.

5) This isn’t playground dodge ball. You don’t “choose sides”. You treat people as individuals and you are not absolved from doing the right thing just because you didn’t ask to be dragged into it.

6) Friends are honest with each other. However, friends also disagree while respecting the other person’s dignity. If you’re not being honest, or you’re taking public shots at a ‘friend’, your friendship needs work, or it needs to end.

7) If you have to say something anonymously and you’re not calling Crime Stoppers, you shouldn’t be saying it. Any opinion you state in public should be one you’ll put your name on. Then, read concept #1 again.

This is, obviously, just a start. I don’t have all the answers, nor do I claim to. I just think that someone needs to start the dialogue, and I’m enough of an ambitious bitch to believe that person can be me. No matter if I succeed or fail, taking this risk maintains my dignity. At least I’m trying to make things better.