@mynameistillian I have complicated feelings about this. On the one hand, I don't *disagree* with any of the things described there. But I also recognize the risk in how those descriptions can be interpreted.

Because there are genuine reasons to expect people to immediately stop and reflect, those reasons just aren't "immediate superficial apology", but rather "training the 'muscle' of self-reflection". And I worry that if this distinction isn't made clear, this type of pushback is parsed as "we should become defensive again", which isn't good either, and gets us back where we started through overcorrection.

And likewise, the post mentions that we haven't addressed structural influence (ie. power) issues, which is true - but what it doesn't mention is that having healthy internal community dynamics (which includes self-reflection and making space) is likely going to be a prerequisite for making that change possible without drowning in unresolvable internal conflict!

I suspect that the author and I actually agree that the takeaway here should be "learn to talk out conflicts, and defensive and fawning responses are *both* problematic substitutes", but I'm not sure that the post makes that clear enough for people to extract that intention from it 😕