Working with some people

I deal with quite a handful of people as moderator of an online collaborative writing group. My job is to make sure folks in the group are happy and other groups we interact with are satisfied with us. There's a couple of other things along with that to boot, but the long and the short of it is I have to speak to people within and without of my group. And sometimes, the things I have to deal with are pretty outlandish.

I've written a general post that more or less sums up a gist of the issue:

"When you're in common society, you're faced with several choices. Among these choices is to avoid getting stigmatized as a result of your own actions. Maybe it was an accident, or maybe a cause of ignorance, or maybe you just didn't care, but you end up branded with negative labels.

Keeping that in mind, when you attach a stigma to someone yourself, you're part of the problem. It's even MORE depressing to see that stigma spread and persist for years without looking at that person a second time and keeping your head down (or nose up, depending on what kind of stigma you're attaching). What's MOST depressing is to see that when you yourself are pointed out to be part of the problem for not doing something sooner and just covering your ears, your response is to be irresponsible and deflect, ignore, play the victim and say that the person with the stigma deserves it for their actions. No matter how many times you get acknowledgement that the stimga-ee (is that even a word?) is indeed at fault, you will not take the part-blame for perpetuating the problem. By not seeing how your past years of loathing of the person for whatever reason has prevented you from being unbiased in your approaches, you failed to cut the problem when it was relevant. At the time, you felt that it was best you deal with the issue yourself - but what did you do exactly? And what was the result of that? If you're unhappy with your inaction, you end up blaming the stigmatized - yes, the one you attached yourself and continued to spread it among other people.

But that's human beings for you right there. :P But moral of the story, avoid the stigma, but don't label and perpetuate it. And don't let other people paint the stigma for you. For the love of God and the universe, don't let other people paint your perceptions of a person or party."