Oleg Volk has been here before you ...

aw, you didn't even read it, did you?

this is hilarious!!!!!!!!

I replied to my PMs when I first wandered in this aft, and I had just explained to one of the posters in this thread what the vendetta was reeeeaaally all about -- P0RN!1!

And look what I find when I check My Posts.

Somebody might not be happy that you dunnit it, I fear. I think this was supposed to be a secret. The story is that I'm a homophobe, you know -- not that three or four posters back at old DU spent their time disrupting the Feminists forum there because, y'know, P0RN (for them) and prostitution (for other women) are the only issues on the planet that matter to women! ... and some of us old haggy straight middle-aged prudey feminists just didn't take kindly to their antics.

What a gas, that you should show up right on cue like that.

Why, you'd almost think that somebody with a grand total of 2 posts -- one about me, one addressed to me -- knew me!

This time I really am afraid I may fall out of my wheelchair.

Maybe I should have checked first. Are you still with us??

why bother the poster?

It wouldn't bother me at all to see all the unsuccessful alerts on my posts.

In fact, I very much want to see them. I think a very important bit of data is not being properly collected, the way things are now. I haven't had a post hidden all month, and we all know very well that probably dozens of my posts have been alerted on - unsuccessfully. I can't think of any reason why those alerts should be concealed from me. The fact of the alert is an important fact in itself, when it illustrates a pattern, which too obviously in some instances it does.

So if anybody is a juror for any post of mine, please do feel free to send me the alert and the results. You won't be bothering me!

isn't it inspiring to see that some people really can open their minds

and their hearts?

I had the same sort of experience years ago when I spent time in combat with the forces of evil on line, in the form of seriously malignant anti-choice activists. I "turned" several women who had been in their thrall for some time.

In one case, a naive young woman (who had only been persuaded of the reality of evolution in university, and then only because a clever professor had said she had to learn about it, but she didn't have to believe it) had every bizarre argument against reproductive choice you can imagine. Abortion is evil because nuns in Africa who were sexually exploited by priests were forced to have abortions ... . Then one day she actually heard what was being said about the risks to women if abortion were outlawed, and one thing penetrated the walls of the ideology that had been instilled in her since childhood. Her sister had health problems and was in an abusive marriage that she would/could not leave. If her sister became pregnant again, her life would be in danger in more than one way (pregnancy being a serious risk factor for abused women). She cared about her sister enormously and worried about her constantly, and it dawned on her what denial of choice could mean for her sister. Overnight, she became pro-choice.

In another, a woman who worked as a doula (a sort of professional birth coach) sincerely believed that pro-choicers were a bunch of hard-hearted cows who simply did not care about women and just wanted to get our own way (for some reason). Then she observed me in a discussion forum talking to a woman with older children and a baby she did not want, in a totally unsupportive family; the woman very clearly had severe post partum depression in a hugely stressful situation, and I was urging her to get real help, to demand real help, any and every kind of help she could demand, while the anti-choicers told her what a bad mother she was. Suddenly, the doula woman saw pro-choicers in a whole new light: we cared about women just as she did; that was why we were pro-choice, just as she thought it was why she was anti-choice. Overnight, she became pro-choice.

There are people who are genuinely good, or at least not all bad, deep down -- and importantly, who see themselves as good people and have a fundamental value system that really is consistent with that self-image, that does involve caring about other people. If they come to see that their ideology really is not compatible with being a good person, or that the people their ideology tells them are bad are really not bad and in fact may need and deserve the support of good people, they can have an epiphany.

You can't often guess what will trigger that process for any individual. And there's no guarantee that it will ever happen, for many people. Some people really can ignore everything their eyes see and their brains tell them, for many different reasons -- from it being too tough to do that self-examination to simply having too much to gain by sticking to their ideology to give it up.

But your examples show that it is possible to reach some people. If the person is someone who matters in one's own life, or is a person in a position of power like the ones in your post are, it can be worth the time and effort invested in trying to reach them. Exactly as you say: