thread: 2011-04-29 : A Fantastic Walking Eye Roundtable
On 2011-06-04, Todd wrote:
Chris asks: ""Why is this [problematic material] showing up, in this game, and what made you think it was a good idea?"
The thesis of the Walking Eye podcast (and of the discussion here) is that privilege is the reason why.
And thus the remedy is to be mindful that others may not share the safety of your privilege.
Sound advice. But what happens when every care is taken to be considerate—to establish a healthy social contract and safe space—yet offense is still taken?
If the offended party is taken by surprise at her own reaction to a situation, how can the players who offended her be faulted for having taken her words at face value—faulted for having played within the explicit boundaries which she established at the start of the game?
(Especially when she gives no indication that she was offended, or any chance for the other players to make amends, vanishing without explanation. )
Elizabeth took responsibility for her share of the problem in her telling of the Fiasco story, but her roundtable cohorts argued that her self-assessment was wrong: that her reaction was 'completely valid' rather than 'the coward's way out'.
Ever since then, there has been a snowball of hearsay—in the Walking Eye comments section, here, elsewhere—from the home audience, all disregarding Elizabeth's own firsthand assessment of what happened—in favor of the version they imagine must have occurred.
Where's the checks & balances on this privilege thesis, to keep it from devolving into fuel for an irrational mob? Wags such as Simon C and Judd, above, have declared that dissenting Comments are categorically tainted as proof of privilege, to be sneered at, rather than regarded as face value attempts to establish common ground and trust.
