I agree with your analogy and appreciate your level headed approach to understanding the situation. As a newbie in the sex blog industry this windstorm which has blown through the blogging community has scared me a bit on how insular it is, and how someone (company or individual) can be ostracized and outcast. It has made me very wary of who I associate with lest I be next!

I do hope that the community as a whole is open minded and open to understanding and making judgments from their own experiences. I appreciate viemoira’s comments about “Tolerance and co-existance is maturity and humanity.”

Thanks!

It does bug me that so much effort is going into whispering, backstabbing, and just generally gossiping about the bad stuff, rather than — you know — developing the issues that matter and finding new readers. If everyone who had “cut ties” in this situation had spent that same amount of time — say — finding interesting new blogs that don’t know much about the sex-positive community, and leaving comments on those blogs, then we’d be way further ahead, I figure.

But I suppose it’s important to seek out the truth of these matters as well. It’d be nice if we didn’t lose sight of what we’re here for, is all.

Thank you, Rori.

One thing I take issue with is this framing:

But once you start moving away from the source, does it really make sense to cut ties?

My answer is an unequivocal “yes, it really does still make sense.” However, the costs are different because, as you said, we’re all linked somehow. Nevertheless, don’t imply that distance—especially in the well-connected world of the Internet—somehow means impact is diminished.

In fact, I would urge you to watch Nicholas Christakis’s TEDTalk, The hidden influence of social networks. It made me question a lot of things about how influence—and impact—spreads through social ties.