please, no more hate mail on Pynchon-L

[Doug Millison]

Fellow P-listers,

At the risk of inviting insult from the usual suspects, I want to express
my concern for Terrance, and about the increasingly violent imagery he uses
in his posts to Pynchon-L, and to ask that threatening messages about me
(and others) cease to be posted in this unmoderated forum.

I've shared these concerns directly with Terrance earlier today, and with
the Pynchon-L list owner.

For a long time now, Terrance has published on Pynchon-L posts in which he
depicts me being physically assaulted. (Morris and MalignD have also taken
part in this activity, but I don't recall anything along that particular
line from Morris or MalignD recently, just the usual obscenities and slurs
and misogyny, until I filtered them out of my email box).

I mentioned this fact to our family attorney, as an aside to other
business, in a meeting today, when he asked if I had any other concerns. He
urged me to formally warn Terrance (and other P-listers) against making
threats to me in any medium, and to warn Terrance specifically against
publishing such threats in a public forum such as Pynchon-L.   "In a world
where sick people drive cross-country to shoot complete strangers, you've
got to protect yourself," he told my wife and me.

In particular, I mentioned the homicidal fantasy posted to the list
recently by "Monica"/meet_mersault at hotmail.com, an email persona generally
understood on Pynchon-L to be the creation of Terrance
(lycidas2 at earthlink.net).   On the off chance that Monica is the creation
of somebody else, I also sent a formal warning directly to
meet_mersault at hotmail.com.

I formally warned Terrance and  "Monica"/meet_mersault at hotmail.com against
this sort of thing today, in an email stating,  "I do not wish to receive
this sort of hate mail nor to figure in images that involve knives,
cutting, blood, rape, etc. , and other acts of violence -- depicted in gory
detail -- done to my person, nor do I want them to be broadcast to hundreds
of Pynchon-L subscribers, and  available for viewing (in the Pynchon-L Web
archives) by anybody with a Web browser.  In the context of the
increasingly hostile messages Terrance has been posting to Pynchon-L about
me (and [about] a few other people), I want to stop this threatening
behavior before it gets out of hand."

I went on to say:  "If you're joking, it's not funny.  If you can control
yourself, please do. If you need to get counseling or some other sort of
help, please do that, too.  The sort of homicidal fantasy you express in
this recent message represents, I fear, a symptom of a serious
psychological or biological problem that may require immediate attention.

"If you can't control yourself, I'll take whatever legal steps that I must
take  in order to protect myself. Please consider this a formal warning, a
written notice.  I am also forwarding this and related email to our family
attorney, who has already begun to research the steps that we can take to
ensure the safety, security, well-being, and good name of myself and my
family.   As I'm sure you're aware, an investigation, if undertaken by the
proper authorities, will uncover your identity in order to put a stop to
this threatening hate mail.  I urge you to stop this threatening behavior
immediately."

It's not difficult to imagine the emails that may flow in response to this
message, that's to be expected, based on past behavior here.  Keith is
likely to make a little joke about it, Mackin to seek to marginalize it in
some manner, Otto will defend Terrance against any accusation, jbor will
attempt to "deconstruct" this post, etc.  I've got you folks filtered out
of my email box, so I won't see them until somebody forwards them to me.

If you think this is making a mountain out of a molehill or is otherwise
inappropriate, please reconsider. For those of you who still retain some
shred of human feeling, I ask you to consider how you would feel to be the
center of these violent fantasies, disseminated by strangers, what any
court would easily understand as threats and which, in the current climate
of fear, would be taken seriously.  If you disagree with my
characterization of these posts, perhaps you can conjure up some sympathy
for Terrance who appears to be increasingly out of control.

In the single phone conversation I had with Terrance, some time ago, he
presented himself as an unstable person, quite unpredictable in his
behavior.  Since that time, based on his communications on Pynchon-L, he
seems to have degenerated.  I hope Terrance will get the help he needs, and
that he will cease this behavior.  Pynchon-L has always been a
free-wheeling venue, unmoderated, extremely tolerant of insult and
character assassination, which has been widely indulged in by many people
here.  I have participated in some of that behavior in the past; but, I
have not published any fantasies here that depict any of my interlocutors
as victims of a bloody crime.  Depicting me as a dead victim is creepy,
hateful, and threatening, and represents a step well beyond the sort of
discourse that has typically characterized  the Pynchon-L discussion.
Terrance and his personae have moved beyond funny, into something quite
sinister, imo.

Post-ironically,
Doug


Let the flames begin if they must, but please, no threats, no fantasies of
physical violence with me -- or anybody else -- as the victim.   I won't
respond onlist to anything more in this thread.







Doug Millison - Writer/Editor/Web Editorial Consultant
http://www.Online-Journalist.com