On Fri, 25 Jul 2003 07:37:09 GMT, wrote:

turtledove wrote:

Woah!! I know that you and Paul have issues between each other...but
that doesn't mean that everyone has issues with him.

how you can defend him i do not understand. we keep having this same
argument brianne. how can you be my friend and at the same time defend a
man who consistently makes fun of my mental illness for god's sake? he
followed me here from alt.child-support to harass me and just like all the
others who have come here to troll me he has been welcomed by you and some
other regulars instead of condemned so he stayed and got along with you but
persisted in his harassment of me. thanks a lot.

And Cele posted once all about how sick Paul Fritz is to mock my mental
disability and how he needed to stop doing that and she thought she had the
support of the group regulars...

I posted that I thought, and I continue to think, that it was and is a
moral wrong. I said that I would not respond to posts using that
terminology or displaying that behaviour, which I haven't done,
because I mean and believe what I say.

What I felt at that time WRT the rest of the group, was that quite a
lot of people agreed with me on that point. That is, there were many
who felt that Paul's behaviour in this respect was wrong, and they
objected to it. Many did so visibly.

I think that's still the case. My perception is, rightly or wrongly,
that sometimes people see it as an aberration of his, and so they
ignore it because they like him otherwise and recognize that he's not
likely to change. I agree that he's not likely to change. He's made a
conscious decision to behave in the way that he does and he's
apparently uninterested in examining how it reflects on himself, and
that's of course his own business.

People here are largely being pragmatic, IMO. They recognize that
Paul's behaviour is as it is, and they further recognize that
discussing it and increasing references to it appear consistently to
fan the flames. For months and months when you didn't react, his
references to you at all were much more limited and his abusive
terminology was much less. But as soon as it becomes a topic of
discussion for whatever reason, his behaviour is reinforced and
increases. Pragmatically speaking, the apparent *effective* way to
diminish the unwanted behaviour is to ignore it.

I think most experienced usenet posters have had some occasions on
which they've been verbally mistreated in a pretty big way. The most
foul one in my case was a fellow who attacked me in another echo and
told me variously that my daughter's assault was her own fault simply
because she was 13, or that he didn't believe she'd been assaulted, or
that I was an enabler, or it was my fault she was assaulted, or
whatever. His posts were pretty vicious and uncalled for, and everyone
that mattered in that group recognised this. As soon as he became
abusive and vicious, I ceased posting to him altogether. My attitude
was that when he sank to that level, he was no longer worth my time. I
simply wouldn't dignify his comments with a response. And after awhile
he lost interest and went away. Meanwhile, other posters had no
difficulty recognising where the trouble lay, whether they said so or
not. I knew that.

What led me to that position was that I recognised I could not control
him. I could only control me. If I couldn't make him stop, I would
make me stop. Abusive cycles can only continue if there are at least
two players. I deprived him of that second player by completely
ceasing to respond. Whether you agree with the underpinning need to do
so, it's what works.

It's important to separate 'should' from 'is'. In the ideal world, we
*should* be able to express ourselves freely without abuse, we
*should* be able to trust one another totally and we *should* be able
to expect compassion and just treatment wherever we go. But in this
world, the *is* is very different. Railing against the absence of
those *shoulds* not only doesn't help address the problem, it also
takes energy away from where it's needed, in the world of 'is'.

And Paul talks about his daughter here on a regular basis.

really? google.com tells otherwise. Of his 1,160 posts only 128 include
the word daughter and only 89 of those are about HIS daughter. 69 are about
lorain, 67 are about lorian, 61 are about loony, 16 are about looney, 14 are
about feminitwit, 2 are about loon, 52 are about how he discredits my
beliefs by saying it's just women's studies, 16 from feminism, and in 77
posts he just refers to me simply as LL. That is over 300. There are
probably more but I got tired of remembering all the names he has called me.

Most of his posts are not directed at you because you haven't been
posting here regularly except for the past 2 weeks.

I've been posting here for four years. He has been posting here for one
year. I came here for support as a single parent, he came here to harass me
and Moonshyne and he followed us from alt.child-support to do just that.
That is easy to prove, google tells all.

His introduction to the newsgroup a year ago this month was harassing
messages like:

From: "Paul Fritz"
Date: Mon, 29 Jul 2002 18:55:49 -0400
Message-ID:

"BWAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHA

lorian with her classic "woman's studies " defense. When you cannot refute
the facts resort to this sort of response."

wrote in message
.net...
We try to warn people not to go to alt.child-support because of the sharks
over there ,they are obviously out for blood. Put up a fight, you get
more
blood. Try to leave, they follow the trail of blood. Bloody sharks.

"Nope, just posting the facts......something the like of you cannot
comprehend."

From: "Paul Fritz"
Date: Mon, 29 Jul 2002 15:12:28 -0400
Message-ID:

"Moonie has been caught in another of her long string of lies So typical of
moonie to feign ignorance

Here is the original post where moonie invited everyone with headers. Her
invite is the second to last response by her She didn't get the nickname
'nasty' for nothing."

snip

It's [the parenting plan] posted to alt.support.single-parents -- you're
welcome to go see for yourself.

and just the other day still is harassing Moonshyne (Amy Lynn) (accusing her
of parental alienation which is pretty serious and routinely done over on
alt.child-support but I had hoped regulars here would not tolerate) with
this post:

Message-ID:
From: "Paul Fritz"
Date: Thu, 24 Jul 2003 06:34:59 -0400

"Nope, but not surpising coming from the parental alienator amy
lynn...........ever the ASSuming ass..."

Paul has been
posting on a daily basis since he's been on here.

not every day, every week though.

Lorian, who care where, how and about what Paul posts? All of the
focus on Paul and his posting habits only serves to draw more
attention to your frustration and anger with him. Given that his style
is a conscious choice, that's probably very gratifying for him. It's
important to realize that.

Everyone with a clue can recognize rude and nasty behaviour when they
see it, whether they acknowledge it aloud or not. You're either
preaching to the choir, or you're telling people who've already
decided not to hear. Think about what your goal is. Is it to stop
Paul? Is it to get a certain response from other people? Is it to take
what's available in the way of support? Really and truly, the best
possible way to proceed, IMO, is to decide what specific goals you
have on this matter. Having done that, you need to think very
carefully about what, in the pragmatic world, is most likely to be
effective in achieving those goals. Probably, it won't have much to do
with feelings, legitimate though they may be. It'll have to do with
action and inaction.

and he flirts with you, take a closer
look at how he treats the women he does not get along with, that is, the
women he chooses to take out his rage on ... is that really acceptable to
you? the dr. jekyll/mr. hyde thing is a serious problem, listen to me!

Paul flirts with damned near everyone. Some buy in, some don't. It's
not your worry how they respond. You can't walk other people's paths
for them. You can only make sure you're walking your own in the
healthiest possible way. Paul *isn't* a serious problem for Brianne,
and it seems like jekyll/hyde men aren't either. Brianne likely has
her *own* things to work out and they're different from yours, as are
mine and everyone else's. She's made an open statement that she
disagrees with his behaviour WRT you. Her position is clear. Beyond
that, what she chooses to do with her time and interactions really has
nothing to do with you at all.

I understand that your feelings are hurt. There's a 'them' and 'us'
thing iin human minds that seems to result in our expecting people to
choose. It's the same mechanism that results in kids feeling really
torn between hostile parents, for example. Even the kids recognise
that human tendency for people to see the world in terms of 'them' and
'us' and to want everyone to choose our own side. It's natural, when
we feel we have to draw up sides because we're in a battle, for us to
want everyone on our own side. But feelings aren't always a good guide
to effective behaviour, as you're well aware. Those hurt feelings can
lead you to say and do things that end up alienating the very people
you had hoped to keep on your side, as it were.

You take offense? Offense? How dare you try to control and
manipulate someone by using that choice of wording. Geez, you sound
like my grandmother when she takes 'offense' of me not going to her
church.

I'm not trying to control you, I'm telling you how I feel when you are
friendly toward people who go out of their way to hurt me every chance they
get for over a year!

Lorian, virtually everyone on the planet does things that are
offensive at one time or another. If all of us chose not to interact
with everyone who behaved badly some of the time, nobody'd talk to
anyone and human society would collapse.

I think everyone recognises that Paul is very hurtful towards you. In
a group like this, I'd say the strong evidence of that is that mob
mentality has *not* engaged, with everyone else chiming in and
actively becoming part of the hurt. The whole white crow syndrome
could easily have kicked in here, and it's a testimony to people's
willingness to think for themselves that it hasn't. In fact, there've
been numerous public statements, at one time, denouncing the targeting
behaviour. I suggest that although that may not feel like enough to
you, it's remarkable that you've got that much support.

Sweetheart.....STOP IT!!! You're having a good day, ENJOY IT! Why
waste so much time on such negativity. Light a candle, burn some
incense, meditate, go outside and look at the stars, listen to some
uplifting music, focus on the GOOD.

I am, but I can't just ignore the train wreck that is this news group
sometimes, LOL!

Yes, you can. You really can. If you recognise in your heart that it's
the best thing to do at times, you can do it.

You know, I'm sitting here musing about you and Joelle. Joelle has
said clearly that she chooses not to post much about her personal life
here because it hurts when people are judgemental or negative or
whatever about her posts of that nature. You're posting some things
that can make you pretty vulnerable even when you *know* that you'll
get those kinds of reactions, and indeed, you find them upsetting.
You're like opposites on that score, you and Joelle.

I suspect the amount of posting one ought to do on one's personal life
is proportional to the amount of harassment one is capable of and
willing to ***completely ignore.***

all said with the utmost love and respect,
*bri

oh, maybe I'll write a song about it and you can sing and dance to it while
Paul makes fun of it. LOL!

That could be taken any of several ways.

Really Brianne, this is serious. Think about this. Why do you feel the
need to keep the peace with men who you see continuously harassing other
women?

Whoa. You have a sample size of one. You don't know what, precisely,
Brianne is feeling. It seems to me that you have quite a lot on your
own plate right now in terms of managing your reactions. It's possibly
not the ideal time to worry about how Brianne manages hers.

My suggestion to you is that when Paul and what's-his-name....Tom??
react to this post with all sorts of snide comments, you ignore it.
It's what I'm likley to do. Forget 'em.

Cele