I've had a few days to think about this, to process the events of the last week, and to try to put them into perspective. So many dynamics happened all at the same time, dealing with issues that have been going on here for a long time, and I needed some perspective to get them straight in my head, and decide how I wanted to talk about them, what perspective I wanted to write about them through. I'm not bitter or angry. I'm still just a little hurt, as some of my friends who've had to listen to my mindless ramblings for the last couple days can attest, but I'm not angry at anyone. I'm not holding a grudge. So I don't want to write anything that might sound like 'I was screwed over'. I really don't feel like I was. This was just an unfortunate misunderstanding that got waaaaaay out of hand, and people got hurt. Hey, these things happen from time to time.
I think what I want to write about here is what I see as the bigger issue. One that has bothered me for years now. And because of what I've experienced in the last year, and the last few days, I feel I've earned the right to talk publically about it.
By now, anyone who cares to, knows that I spent the last several days in one of the most difficult types of battles over one of the most important posessions a person has, my reputation. I was accused by a certain person of being a stalker, an online letch, a 'dirty old man'. Those are some very harsh, and very scary, accusations for a person to have laid on them, because if things had turned out badly, I could possibly have ended up in jail from this experience. That's how much weight these words carry. My life could have been shattered, the career I've worked so long and so hard for, that is finally coming to fruition could have been over, the friendships that have taken me so long to make could have been ended. And if you think I'm exagerating, I'm not, It has happened time and again to innocent men, just because a woman has 'a feeling', and expresses 'her opinion'.
But this isn't the first time I've dealt with this situation. I've been fighting these alligations for a year now. These 'opinions', these 'feelings'. But nobody ever asked how they started, where they came from, why it was that I was being accused. So now, it's time to publically tell my story, in hopes that anyone who ever thought these things of me will think again before making snap judgements about another person's character.
I won't go into elaborate detail, but when my ex and I split up 2 years ago, I ended up not being able to see or talk to my son for nearly a year. Last october, my ex called out of the blue, after no contact for a year, and asked if I wanted to see him again. For 6 weeks, I made the 6 hour round trip on Friday and 6 hour round trip on sunday, just to bring him back to my apartment for the weekend. Then my ex told me that she had to find another place for them to stay. So I offered for her to bring him to my town, and they could stay with me until she could find a job and a place to live, and we would share custody and expenses of the child (he is actually my ex's oldest daughter's son who i raised from the age of 2 weeks). She thought that was a fine idea, and they moved in with me just before thanksgiving.
I had been single for over a year, and had made close personal friends with some of the women of this site, and of other places. I had been friends with these women for a long time. We would chat, talk intimately for hours, banter and coo like single people who like each other do sometimes. When my ex moved in with me, it was purely a plutonic situation, to which she whole heartedly agreed. However, she had other designs.
About a month after they moved in, I thought things were going pretty well. Some of you might remember my blogs from that time. So I thought there would be no harm in introducing my ex to Soulcast and my friends. She created an account, and began to happily blog. And then I began to hear some pretty amazing rumours.
You see, I'd met a single woman in her 30's not long before. She and I really hit it off at first. And then one day, She began to get very graphically sexual with me. I thought that was great, so we would have some pretty overt sexual banter from time to time. But she was on medication and under a psychologist's care for manic depression, she would have mood swings. One day, after my ex had moved in, this lady and I were chatting, and I started with the banter. She told me she wasn't in the mood and to stop. So I did, and I never started again after that. But my ex had been watching over my shoulder, (I have a tiny 1 bedroom apartment) and saw our exchange. About a week later, i left a comment on this lady's blog asking about some preparations she was making for an upcoming holiday particular to her faith. It was then that she reminded me of an experience she'd had 2 years before on another blog where her heritage had been discovered, and caused her great harm in her real life. She said that she could no longer stay on Soulcast because I had revealed her religious heritage, and left that very day.
However, unbeknownst to me, my ex had been reading my emails, chat logs and pm's from these ladies who were my friends, while I was at work. She then went through the list of women I knew, and any other woman she could find to listen, initiated contact with them, and proceeded to, as one of those women who is now my friend phrased it, 'trash talk' about me. You see, she always had a thing where she would do whatever she could to drive all my friends away because they took my time and attention away from her, and she felt she deserved it all. That's one of the reasons we're not together anymore. And one of the things that she spread to these women was that I was 'preying on impressionable young women' here at Soulcast, a thing that surely would get me thrown right off this site.
Imagine my surprise when I came home from work one night to see a pm from hottips in her box! (her computer was right next to mine, and she didn't hide the screen fast enough). I told her she shouldn't trust the person, and not to tell them ANYTHING about me. She told me I was being paranoid and controlling, and she could handle it. You should have seen the look of horror on her face a couple weeks later when I got home from work and found that hottips had taken these pm's and emails of my ex, and posted them on her blog.
Thus, a predator was born.
During this time, there was a certain young lady who had been following me all around sc, and started calling me her 'bro'. So I started calling her my 'sis'. We would chat by pm, I would give her advice, listen to her stories, whatnot. But I never said or did anything to her that her own father wouldn't. However, when she was contacted and told that I was a predator and she was 'next on my list'. She decided her only defence against my 'stalking' was to change her screen name. When she announced this publically, I immediately stopped all contact with this person. But the damage was done. The tongues were wagging. And I was labeled a predator. It was said that I'd driven one woman from the site, and forced another to change her name because of my uncontrolled lusts. And people believed it, because 'my wife', who lived with me, had said it. Nobody questioned her motives, (After repeatedly telling her that I had no interest in her other than to share custody, I happened to see an email from one of the ladies stating "just be patient dear, he'll come around and you'll be together again. i'm praying for you") because she is a woman, and this site is 90% women. No one asked me personally about these things. And the rumour mill churned and churned, pm's about me flew, and suddenly more and more women had 'a feeling' about me that was 'confirmed' by others on this site.
Once again, a week ago, this label of my character reared its ugly head. A young woman who'd had an emotional trauma on a different site in the past took something I said wrong, and got 'a feeling'. I appologised to her, and then stopped all communication. Two days later, she had written a post about it on her site. A screen name that I'd never heard of before popped up and said 'yes, a woman left because of him doing that to her, and another changed her screen name'. Several others pm'd her and said 'yeah, i have that feeling about him too'. And then, in her mind, her suspicions were confirmed, she was 'convinced she was right'. Because some people she didn't know with motives that I cannot fathom other than they could very well be just another alt of hottips or andora, told her some lies. I just totally stayed out of it, because my name was not used, and I knew if I was ever connected with it, what the outcome would be. But another blogger, who has a heart of gold and a great desire to protect the women of this site, read her post. He remembered the rumours he'd heard about me, and assumed them to be true. He heard from a couple other screen names that said I had done the same to them. But he never came and talked to me. (I sincerely wish he would have, but I understand why he did not.) And then the fur started to fly. People chose sides. Accusations and harsh words abounded. Until this blogger went and read my post about the situation. Saw for himself the indesputable evidence of what had happened between that woman and I. Saw that there was no sexual harrassment as she had told him, saw that she had taken everything I had said out of context, blown the situation totally out of proportion, and accused an innocent man of some very horrible things, and sucked him into the fray. He felt horrible. He immediately appologised. He stopped believing these other screen names who told him they had 'a feeling', or that I had been 'out of line', thinking they probably had been just as judgemental and hysterical as this woman had. You see, all they could provide was alligations that they had 'a feeling' that I was. I could provide proof for everyone to see that I wasn't. So the incident died away. But the problem remains.
The problem is that so many people believed their own 'feelings', their own conclusions, never asked for substantiation, any proof whatsoever that what these women were saying was true, a simple 'creepy feeling' was enough to condemn me. And just like this person:
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phoeby said 1 day ago....
wow there's some really harsh words and insinuations going on in here??? people polarised one way or another....
seriously? i think most normal women have got a creep detector that goes beep-beep when a creepy guy goes near it. if this 'prey' woman didn't turn her's on who's fault is that truly? the creep.. or the prey?
while i sympathise and all that jazz, truly every person for themselves and if this guy is doing the do like people say, isn't it a case of buyer (or do-ee) beware?
i got creepy vibes from him ages ago and i must have given off leave me alone vibes and he's never come near me. so i dunno... it's all horses for courses. lotsa stuff playing out beyond what we know. but why all the personal attacks twyla and mobil??? i dont' get that part. just live and let live ffs.
phoeby
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don't know me, never talked to me, never came to find out if their 'creepy feeling' was right or not, but they're perfectly willing to put out on a public post their 'feelings', thus adding to the already large pile to convince anyone who reads it that I must be a predator, which surely must be true after all, because the reader suddenly thinks back to a public comment I may have made to one such as my very good friend lucytorial that was of a sexual nature, which we all do with our friends, and voila, their 'feelings' are confirmed. The 'vibe' they got must be true. Therefore, I must be a stalker, a predator, someone who uses my talents, whatever those are, to lure naeve, unsuspecting women into my trap, get them to trust me, to give me their personal information, send me pictures that i do 'god knows what' with, and use my 'numerous alts' to post their private information all up and down the internet. And since there are now so many people that have this 'feeling' about me, it must certainly be true, because hey, all those people's 'feelings' couldn't be wrong, could they?
Except.
They never once talked to me, including phoeby. They never asked me anything about those incidences. They never asked for any evidence out of any one of those other screen names that would show those women weren't trying to sabotage my reputation, or just being hysterical as in the case of the woman this week. Never stopped to realize that if I truely had the character they supposed, there would have been post after post written about me with specific details to warn other women, I wouldn't have been able stayed her for nearly 2 years. And there deffinately wouldn't have been testimonials to my character from half the well known, trusted women of this site who did take the time to get to know me personally. Those rumour mongers never did ONE SINGLE THING to substantiate their 'feelings' about my character, not even exercising their own minds. They only stated their 'convictions' both publically and privately. and look how much damage their 'feelings' have done to me, to mobil, to blondee, and to soulcast itself.
If you are going to accuse a man of such a heanous act of being an online predator, or of sexual harassment, or of acting in an 'inappropriate manor' toward women, and add your particular feiry log to the heap, and publically or privately pass along this judgement of someone's character, it is your responsibility to have some concrete proof of such allegations.
Because of the damage that can be done by such busybodies scurrying around with their soap opera minds, convinced they know the motivation and character of someone they've never met, never talked to, just from a misinterpreted comment and a 'feeling',
can be devistating.
And you will have been a party to it.
