When I was a kid, I went to the Unitarian Universalist church here in Nashville. At the time it’s minister was a fairly charismatic, smiling, smooth man named David. I don’t know his last name and I don’t really want too. Y’see, David was a sex addict. He used his position as minister to prey on women, lots of women. While he did this, he used his charm to build support from lots of congregation members, and was generally thought very highly of.
When this came to light, my mom happened to be on the church council. She was one of several that pushed for David’s removal, and the resulting fight split the church in two. She wasn’t even one of the people who came forward and she was called all kinds of nasty names by his defenders, who yelled about how she and the others were just trying to be divisive and that they had something personally against David, that it was just a power grab.
Eventually David was ousted. He didn’t go willingly, and the fight left deep scars in the congregation that still have not healed today. Many of those who were his supporters left the church and there is still tension between the two. New members are told about the history, and more than 15 years later it is painful to those who were involved.
From everything I can tell, my mom loved that congregation, and felt like it was her home. It was one of the first spiritual homes she had since leaving the Catholic faith she’d been raised in.
After the pain of this fight, she never stepped foot in that building again. She’s never found another spiritual home.
But she says it was worth it. David couldn’t use his power to hurt anyone else, and as far as I know, he was barred from any power within UU churches.
To those of you who are holding Schwyzer to his actions, and trying to stay whole, my heart goes out to you. You are doing this with significantly less backing than my mom had, and have significantly nastier shit being thrown at you.
To those of you who are defending him, I’m not angry at you, or at least no more than I was angry at those hurting my mom. From everything I’ve seen and heard, this guy is a slimeball of epic proportions who uses emotional manipulation and abuse to control those around him and protect himself from the consequences of what he’s done, and to keep hurting others. I do ask you, however, to ask yourself if that even if he IS “reformed” is the supposed good that he *MIGHT* be doing as a male feminist leader (mmmph.) worth the pain and suffering he is causing women? In a movement that is supposed to be about women?
To Schwyzer? If you are anything close to the person you claim to be, you’ll realizing that shutting the fuck up is the best thing you can do for those you’ve hurt. You know why? Because your actions have consequences, and one of those is that you will hurt people with your very presence. There is nothing in the world that will change that.
ETA:
So I sorta regret one of the lines in here, but I’m going to leave it in with this addon. I’m not mad because I’ve no reason to be mad. This doesn’t make me “reasonable” and anyone who is mad or hurt “unreasonable”. Especially considering the fact that many of the people who want Hugo to go are WoC, don’t even start with that bullshit. Don’t.
