The question about a veteran member that reveals who asks it

Dealing with a veteran member: the question that reveals the person asking it

"How would you deal with this veteran member?" The question, circulating in anonymous debate spaces, seems to be asking for advice on how to treat a long-standing member. The answers, however, offer no suggestions at all. They are nothing but a cascade of rude comments that turn the exchange into a catalogue of hostility with no basis.

The curious thing about the matter is not the question itself, but what it reveals about the person asking it and about those who answer. A community that seeks to "deal with" a person instead of listening to them has already taken sides. And when the toolkit for dealing with them boils down to insults and mocking diagnoses, the conversation stops being about her. It becomes about the inability of certain digital spaces to tolerate the presence of women with a mind of their own.

The phenomenon is nothing new. Anonymous environments have always been fertile ground for degrading venting. The difference is that, this time, no one even bothers to disguise as an argument what is pure run-of-the-mill misogyny. Not a single fact, not a single experience, not a single attempt to understand the context. Just cheap locker-room humour.

The final irony: the only one who needs managing is not the veteran, but the conversation itself. And the first step would be to acknowledge that the problem does not lie with the person who has been in the community for years, but with those who cannot sit down and talk to her without resorting to bile.

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