The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:
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Notes -
I have more updates from a previous situation. Things have escalated in a direction that I feel this may be more appropriate as an /r/drama post, but I don't go to such places, so I am here to share with you again.
Here was my last update
https://www.themotte.org/post/616/wellness-wednesday-for-august-2-2023/126205?context=8#context
What happened this week is that she posted in a facebook group of "World [obscure sport] players"
I am only minorly editing with []s what she said for some privacy:
We had a flurry of messages among the board to discuss this. Eventually we got the only woman on the board (and by far the coolest head among us) to send her a message that we had removed a bunch of emails from the list of people that are not in the area, and are not dues paying members. The problem lady then took the post down from facebook a few hours after being told that.
One of the other things I learned is that she told another board member (the one she accused of fat-shaming) that our board had caused her tons of stress in the last month and led to her to the point of a failed suicide attempt. That board member has been consulting with a lawyer. I'm consulting with you all. I feel there might be a different level of quality in the advice we receive.
The board member who spoke with a lawyer is now suggesting we implement a code of conduct and probably some other sets of rules. I would rather avoid this and just fall on the grenade and kick her out. Or not explicitly ban her from practice, but just let her know that she is unwelcome, but allowed to attend.
This is probably the part where I need some advice, probably from a psychiatrist rather than a lawyer. I know I am supposed to feel guilty or bad that she might kill her self due to my words. And that even if she does not kill her self, she will certainly feel like crap and have her emotions badly hurt. But I simply do not care. I haven't been able to find a speck of caring in myself for her plight. I am only slightly worried about showing that I pretend to care, just so people don't think I'm a sociopath. (I'm also pretty sure I am not a sociopath, I can feel quite deeply for other people, I get secondary embarrassment quite easily, cry at movies, and have felt physically nauseous watching my daughters go through pain).
I am perhaps seeing this lady as an enemy. And I really have no sympathy for enemies. She hasn't done much of anything against me personally, aside from be mildly annoying (but I put up with lots of behaviors that I find annoying in others). But she has harmed and attacked people I think of as my allies or 'my people' members of the club I am responsible for, and fellow members of the board. I find that what she does to piss off the other around me infuriates me the most, and has drained any remaining sympathy I might have once had.
tagging @TheDag and @Walterodim since they commented on the last update.
Since I was tagged in a reply by @TheDag I will add the following (note: I am not a psychiatrist, I just, like you, dislike people such as this lady):
Western culture is heavily Christianised. Anybody growing up in it, regardless of whether they be Christian, atheist or whatever inevitably have certain aspects of it imprinted upon them. One such aspect is the idea of doing well to your enemies, regardless of how they behave towards you, indeed it appears many many times in the Bible, perhaps most famously in Luke 6:35 : "But love your enemies, and do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return, and your reward will be great." and Matthew 5:39-40: "But I tell you, do not resist an evil person. If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to them the other cheek also. 40 And if anyone wants to sue you and take your shirt, hand over your coat as well." (both are sayings of Jesus).
This is all well and good when everyone in your society is living a proper Christian lifestyle and believes all the other God stuff as well. That leads to a stable system. Unfortunately God has been killed, and one of the consequences is that people have adopted certain tenets of Christianity and turned them into what "every good moral human being clearly does and if you don't do it then you are a Bad Person", and doing well to your enemies is unfortunately one of them.
"Treat your enemy in the same way as your treat your friend" may well have been adopted by baseline modern culture from Christianity, but many of the people currently benefiting from it are not Christians, they may well be actively disdainful of Christians and as such I see no reason why they should get any protection based on this maxim when they so clearly reject the whole which it comes from.
Indeed I personally far prefer the Confucian solution to this problem, namely that "Treating your enemy the same way as you treat your friend is an insult to your friend". Think about all the other people in your club that you do like and are friendly with. Treating this woman in the same compassionate way as you would treat one of them is not you doing a "good thing", it is you insulting your friends, plain and simple. They are helpful to you, pleasant to be around and in general make your life better and you decide to repay them by treating them no better than someone who quite openly wants to hurt those your care about and will go to large lengths to do it? Shame on you!
My point is that you should not feel bad in the least about not treating such a person well. Remember to cover your ass and not do something that could hurt you and yours and absolutely make sure to not give her any ammunition. If you don't feel particularly vengeful towards her then it's perfectly fine to not do anything beyond protecting the group from her attacks, this just means she is not worth your time, but you absolutely have nothing to feel guilty about from seeing her suffer and doing nothing to alleviate it. If she wanted your help, maybe she shouldn't have attacked the club you are a part of.
My TL;DR advice: If she's a believing Christian, maybe go somewhat easy on her, otherwise: Let it Rip!
I like this, and it gets at what has bothered me about how some of my fellow board members have responded to this problem lady. They have been very accommodating. Once the facebook post came out, and she started speaking with a high up and powerful person in the [obscure sport] community I felt that all bets were off. It was scorched earth time, and if it was solely my decision that is the route we would have gone.
I'm not sure if she is Christian, but I'm certainly not, so maybe I should bother with the mercy either way.
Vestigial Christianity fucks stuff up again. If modern society wants to reject Christianity it has to reject it fully, not just reject small parts of it like belief in God etc. That gets you to where we are now in the world. To quote the great Chesterton:
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