"I love footbag and the community. It is not my responsibility to [virtually] pat noobs on the back and tell them how awesome their toe stalls are."
"Anyone that really cares for this sport doesn't need that anyways."
I will admit that these statements were insensitive at best. My bad. I’ve actually been making more of an effort to reach out lately to be honest. My only point is that nobody should feel like they HAVE to give people props all the time. If I don’t actually know you personally it’s probably just not going to happen.
"Yeah I could totally list all the contributions I've made to the sport and imply that nobody else [aside from a select few] has done anything to help the sport ever."
This was my frustration at the negativity of the whole post, and mood lately on modified. Apparently it rubbed off on me a little. It’s one thing to contribute to the community - that’s awesome! But this whole post came off as a complete bummer and to me it sounded like he was listing all these things in order to have people pat him on the back and tell him how great he is. Not really cool in my opinion.
After I made these statements I was called a pretty harsh name. Fine, whatever. I still attempted to make amends.
Do you know what he came back with? The pm that he sent me was absolutely humiliating and degrading. I only quoted a small portion of it but I will tell you that it had ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to do with the disagreement in my blog. I was called a ‘hacky slut’ and told that I should change my ways because I am hurting the community. I was told that most of the community looks down on me for my actions and speaks poorly of me behind my back.
As far as I’m concerned, ESPECIALLY as the only active open level woman freestyler in North America, I have EVERY RIGHT to expose this blatant sexism and defend myself and my actions to the community. There were claims that people are ‘uncomfortable’ around me etc.etc. Since no names were given the only way to actually gain any insight on this topic, aside from what he was telling me, was to make it public.
One of the first things in the pm was something along the lines of “I was going to post this in your blog but I didn’t want to damage your name more than you already have” so I didn’t see why it would be an issue if I posted it myself.
I’ve been making a real effort to have a more positive presence on modified since all this stuff. Apparently that hasn’t been noticed. I guess I shouldn't bother
Thank ya! Makes me happy to hear, or, I guess, read.
