On 11/26/2014 6:42 AM, Kevin Gorman wrote:

I'm incredibly disappointed by arbcom's current approach to this case, to the point that I haven't responded to this thread yet because I'm so flabbergasted that I have little idea what to say. The case is ending with banning a bunch of women with flimsy excuses (mostly that when harrassed, they eventually pushed back,)

*Mea culpa. The fact that I had one of those head/chest colds that just drags on and on definitely made me over reactive on the one hand. But I'm not using it as an excuse or even apologizing for my getting fed up at the end and using the metaphor of gang rape about the hysterical hostility against me during arbitration by friends of the "perpetrators" or about my calling them the "Manchester Gang bangers", which I did mean more as related to them being thuggish. However, obviously they did organize a metaphorical gang bang against me, so I don't even apologize for that intepretation.

Pedantic note: gang bangs can be consensual, can be all male or male/female, so aren't always male on female rape scenarios.

Not surprisingly there was total outrage among the Arbs about my comments. Yet nary a bit of outrage over the incident that really got the ball rolling: one guy writing as an obvious reply to the woman who started a civility thread " the easiest way to avoid being called a cunt is not to act like one". (Another wasn't even chastised for writing to a woman who objected "I'm sure that the families of [[Twatt, Orkney]] will be impressed. Especially those whose spelling is poor".)

So frankly I can't feel too bad about my gang bang and gangbangers analogies as symbols of what is acceptable and allowed to go on at Wikipedia among the powers that be. (Hopefully I'll feel the same if my brains ever de-fog from head cold and PTSD of 3 months of intensive harassment.)

CM