Guru falls

FallenAngelina said:
Have we heard any specific accusations from specific partners?
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A document was released after Franklin's pod contacted the survivor pod. TBH, I only just found it today: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Jhk7nlq71dzRUsQKxlem35a40r2r6Pzz/view

I would definitely lump some of these accusations in the "abuse" column, even though they're not as specific as many people would like.

I'm glad the pod went forward and released this, but it's not all that easy to find. The Medium page could use a bit of organization.
 
YouAreHere said:
A document was released after Franklin's pod contacted the survivor pod. TBH, I only just found it today: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Jhk7nlq71dzRUsQKxlem35a40r2r6Pzz/view

I would definitely lump some of these accusations in the "abuse" column, even though they're not as specific as many people would like.

I'm glad the pod went forward and released this, but it's not all that easy to find. The Medium page could use a bit of organization.
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I agree, and I'm happy with that as a public release. However, I can't imagine an "accountability pod" working with this level of detail-absence. If this (and his version) is all they've got... ugh. What are they supposed to make of it?

For instance, it's absolutely unclear how he supposedly "coerced" someone into group sex. I can imagine him being as rude as having sex in their bedroom or kitchen and kinda talking his partner into joining (all the while believing she's fine), but beyond that ... how do you coerce someone into group sex?
 
MeeraReed said:
So are you thinking that there is a conspiracy of people (women, I assume) who have deliberately set out to ruin Franklin's life? Including by committing identity theft & tax fraud?

And, again, this seems MORE LIKELY to you than that Franklin is abusive?

???
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What a strange way to phrase it.

It's unlikely that a group got together with that specific intent and hatched a master plan. It is likely that the majority of the pod has good intentions. However, we know that the current subculture has a mantra of "believe all women". At least one member of the pod has admitted to this, as well as admitting they don't care if the accused is guilty or not.

Furthermore, in an attempt to control the narrative, the pod is only releasing information that shows them in a good light. There is also pressure on the public poly bloggers and podcasters to support the pod narrative. They justify this by claiming FV has controlled the narrative up to this point, which is false. To my knowledge, he has never stopped anyone from telling their side of the story.

We know from the interview with Rickert that she was the one who set the ball rolling. It appears things snowballed from there.
 
Tinwen said:
I agree, and I'm happy with that as a public release. However, I can't imagine an "accountability pod" working with this level of detail-absence. If this (and his version) is all they've got... ugh. What are they supposed to make of it?

For instance, it's absolutely unclear how he supposedly "coerced" someone into group sex. I can imagine him being as rude as having sex in their bedroom or kitchen and kinda talking his partner into joining (all the while believing she's fine), but beyond that ... how do you coerce someone into group sex?
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I'm guessing the pod has more detailed accounts but distilled them into general statements for that doc.

It's easier to say you were coerced than to say you tried something and found you weren't ready for it.
 
Tinwen said:
For instance, it's absolutely unclear how he supposedly "coerced" someone into group sex. I can imagine him being as rude as having sex in their bedroom or kitchen and kinda talking his partner into joining (all the while believing she's fine), but beyond that ... how do you coerce someone into group sex?
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Lots of these accusations sound like emotional manipulation: the financial stuff, the triangulation/gaslighting, redirection/deflection, etc. My ex-husband was great at pushing my guilt buttons, for example, to manipulate me into being the person he thought I should be.

I can understand having vagaries here, assuming there are more details being kept private. However, I know for me, it's hard after the fact to come up with specific instances of emotional manipulation when most of it is sussed out after the fact.

That said, some of this will probably ebb and flow if both pods are looking at everyone's accountability. Denial makes sense in the case where Franklin didn't actually do some of these things. It also can certainly be abusive if used to gaslight. We still don't have all the info (and may never have all the info), but at least there can now be forward movement.
 
I saw the document when it came out but found much of it vague in terms of attributing an abuser over an agreement that it was a toxic situation.

I'll give an example of one point: Dishonesty.

There are several reasons why a person might feel compelled to make an agreement and then break it. I don't think it's a good thing to do as it compromises trust but I generally find it a common symptom when there is some fundamental incompatibility.

I've seen this happen in poly situations when a person agrees to restrictions they don't really want or conversely, when someone agrees to an open structure they don't want.

Is it abusive? I think it can become a toxic situation when it is allowed to continue rather than the people concerned acknowledging the incompatibility and agreeing to split.

Sometimes, one or both parties can feel very aggrieved if the other party wouldn't compromise and it led to an impasse. A common example of this is when a mono/poly couple claims that the other would adapt their needs if they truly loved and cared for them thus they are a bad person rather than an incompatible partner. There is a sense of belief that the partner is obliged to sustain the relationship at the cost of their conflicting needs.

How much one needs to tell their partners about their wider life varies greatly. I was reading an old thread in here recently where NYCindie argued that the onus to screen out undesired poly partners is on the person who doesn't want them. That isn't how I do things and my approach will not change but I've definitely shifted from thinking that it is wrong to "conceal" your non-monogamy from potential partners to seeing it's a different but still ethically valid way of being NM.

I can see someone being quite irritated that a partner didn't tell them that legal marriage was on the cards in another relationship so was likely not avaliable in theirs. I can see someone thinking that they need to provide "informed consent" for activities their partners' engage in with other people. For some of us, that makes sense. For others it absolutely does not. Some (I'd describe as extremists) would argue that the very notion that you'd need to consent to 2 other people having sex (even if you're married to one) is abusive in itself because autonomy cannot be restricted. It's all grey areas.

I've had some shitty partners who I know have other exes who would agree with all the reasons I think they are shitty. It wasn't just incompatibility - they were at least partially shitty people. Greedy, selfish, liars, lazy, whatever. But to me there is a fundamental difference between them and an abuser. I think intention forms part of that. On both our parts.
 
Of course. Some of these things can be abusive, or can be evidence of a bad relationship or bad communication (or just plain old not understanding each other, like misrepresenting someone else's experiences, for example). I think Franklin is a TERRIBLE interpreter of what "Celeste's" needs and feelings were, but is it abusive that he didn't get her input for his book?

It's entirely possible that he's an abuser, AND that he's being abused as well (or not, and he's a huge liar). I just hope that however this process moves, it's fair.

The tax fraud / ID theft thing is something else, though, and if it's the result of someone thinking Franklin deserves it due to the current situation, then I believe the pod needs to take accountability for that, or at least put out a blast saying they don't support anyone who would take any kind of "justice" into their own hands.
 
But what do they *want* from him? To publicly admit that he did these things, apologize, and promise never to do it again?

If he does that, will that help the victims/survivors move on?

What does "accountability" look like here?

That's what I am curious about.
 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transformative_justice

This gets a little fuzzy. Or a lot fuzzy.

It sounds like the goal here is a root-cause analysis followed up with education. It also sounds like transformative justice can end with either side not agreeing on what actually happened, but at least agree on ways to reduce further harm. This sounds very much like stuff we do in our post-mortem documents at work with respect to lessons learned.

So... a path forward may be what the desired outcome is?

There's no obligation to actually do anything with the results if the community doesn't hold you to it, it seems.

We have the same problem at work, where we don't even know where to find all our lessons learned, much less take them into account at the start of new jobs.

The model, though, is already broken if the publicity makes it impossible to *not* point victim/abuser fingers here.
 
"It also sounds like transformative justice can end with either side not agreeing on what actually happened,"

This happens in relationships all the time. The people move on and do what is relevant to them to ensure the bad bits don't happen again. However, when you use language like "shadow", "darkness" and "damage" to introduce something like this, you're setting up an Abuser vs Abused situation. You can't just agree to disagree on whether you're an Abuser or not. You can A2D that you had certain obligations etc but that's different
 
Re: Tax Fraud

I don’t have conclusions either way on the main issue, but the tax fraud has happened to enough other people (I know at least two) that I am perfectly content to assume it’s irrelevant to the case. It seems far more likely he’s fallen victim to this widespread fraud than that someone who sympathizes with the survivor pod has decided to pursue a life of crime specifically to mess with him.
 
I've seen enough people telling their stories - my friends - about relationships they were involved (at that time and in the past) in to never buy it at face value, as a description of reality not as a description of their feelings.

Sometimes the discrepancy, and honest at that, between what i saw with my eyes and how they retold it was staggering. And they were normal people!

Back to this stuff, nothing i read about the case convinces me that Veaux is actually a bad partner at all. Some things convince me that Rickert is really bad at looking at herself from distance and seems to be prone to mistaking her feelings for reality.

The easiest part is her reinterpretation (assuming here she was okay with it while she was with him) of her paying for his trips to see her as abuse. This is some truly malicious interpretation of reality. Trying to be a victim very hard.

I have no doubts that Rickert is/was in pain. But then, the dude that 20 years ago attacked a partner of a friend of mine and got beaten up in the process was honestly saying "how could he do that to me that was so unfair".
 
I've just read Elaine's story, so far, it sounds like he set up a hierarchical relationship with his ex, Celeste, and quickly found that that sort of "checking in" relationship doesn't work for him. Instead of asking permission to not use condoms with someone else, it sounds like he'd be better suited to just telling a fluid bonded partner if he goes barrier free with someone else.

On the reddit thread, someone asks whether these things just make him a shitty partner, a member of the pod replied that being a shitty partner a lot of times adds up to abuse. So their stance *is* that these are basically everyday poly issues that we see on forums all the time. But because the author "researched" through old blog posts and asked these people what I feel are really quite leading questions, they've collected a bunch of these to sort of "diagnose" FV.

Added later: Reading Celeste's story (mono ex wife), she blames Amber for being too demanding. Amber tells a different story where FV is a bad person for staying with an unhappy partner (her and Celeste). I don't see any responsibility thrust onto the woman to leave a situation where she is unhappy. I think both have the responsibility to leave. These women need some sort of empowering therapy to take charge of their lives and learn to say no and not do things so they can say they're in a relationship. FV sounds weak in a lot of ways and he attractive to weaker partners. This isn't anything to do with abuse. Not so far.
 
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Reading the Elaine story. I haven't read more than two, so I'm unclear on the timeline - please help me out. Was she one of his first outside partners? Is that the first few years they were practising poly?

I'm feeling like 'that guy messed up', but then I also realize that it's judging from today's standards (that the guy in question helped set) something that happened decades ago and maybe some of those events are what helped him set the standards.

(That's not my finished opinion, just some passing thoughts.)
 
Celeste's account about their relationship failing sounds very mature to me, a story about her finally leaving a life she didn't want. It doesn't sound accusatory (except for the parts about money and divorce).

Amber's reflections are a truly interesting read. Loved it, and had to pause to think many times.

All women refer to a pattern of inconsistency and shifting responsibility, Eve&Amber additionally describe how spiritual beliefs ('just because you feel bad, doesn't mean someone did something wrong') can be used to set up a specific pattern of gaslighting. Amber's story also exemplifies a parallel perceptual reality.

I don't think we should be too hung up on deciding whether that's "abuse" or not. Not the point.

While I found the stories instructive on (shitty) relationship dynamics, I'm not thrilled with how the 'transformative justice' framework is being put to use here. When I read up on Reid Mihalko, it seemed that after the initial accusation it was him (and his pod) taking innitiative, collecting stories, and learning in his own pace. Over here it's FW being pulled into it. I may be mistaken, but that's how it all reads. This gives me cringes. Forcing someone to change, making a major disruption in his life at a time that may be inconvenient, under public scrutiny ... well that sounds majorly traumatizing too.
 
Here's an answer by someone on the "accountability pod". They are doing the only thing they can do, given that half of the "survival stories" were edited by Eve, and that the "survival pod" obviously has a double purpose of both providing feedback to Franklin, AND changing the public narative.

"To that end, we are in the process of establishing a system to independently solicit and investigate claims made against Franklin. This has to be conducted in a way that ensures the anonymity of the claimant to Franklin so that there is no room for potential reprisal, yet also provides communication pathways between the pod (and other investigators as needed) and the claimant."

Ugh. So much work. So many times of reviving the trauma. I can't imagine.

https://www.quora.com/What-progress...J8K7lYOKHd7HTnNntyWrehTXtSLG2EcEgBRrrm94SxkOs
 
Based on what certain members of the "survivor pod" have said, both here, on reddit, and elsewhere, this is obviously a case of trying to make an example of FV in a purposely-generated war of women vs. men. I use the word "war" metaphorically, of course, but I feel that the term is apt. Of course, there are men and women on *both* sides of this "war", but it has been made clear by the survival/women's pod that if a person doesn't unilaterally and unconditionally side with their narrative, it means that person is by default siding with the "enemy"—thus defending the patriarchy, rape culture, and the oppression of women.

I especially :rolleyes:'d at the fact that one of the survivor stories ("Ruby") wasn't even a first-hand account, and the individual called "Ruby" has in no way, shape, or form been directly and personally involved in this...process. That entire account was put together by Eve, using anecdotes from blogs, forums, journals, and other social media/correspondence. It says so right in it.
 
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ref2018 said:
That entire account was put together by Eve
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By Luisa, the journalist, probably. There's no signature. But it says
"My work is about setting the record straight", and
"I reached out to Ruby via snail mail, because even today, she remains offline. Eve Rickert says she tried to reach Ruby, too, in the summer of 2018."
I, too, thought yesterday it was Eve.

Btw., I understand why Ruby's story would be important to mention along with the other three releases from roughly the same time (apparently there are 8 more to come). It could be more factual perhaps.
 
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