If someone is using a personal story with blaming statements as a means to make commentary about a more general topic of discussion, either the appropriateness of the blaming statements given the narrative must be just as subject to challenge as it would be if the narrative were a third-party news story and the whole style of argument of using such stories in a discussion needs to be viewed as out of bounds, otherwise you've created a specially privileged argument style for which only silence or agreement is allowed.
We need this for discussion quality because challenging someone on their intimate personal details typically makes them feel wounded where it already hurt, prompting a defensive attack and a flamewar. Also, because we can't know from internet comments what was really going on in someone's life, it's more intellectually honest.
There are other things one can do to signal that someone is not being attacked. You can rephrase a statement as a neutral question. You can lead with "In my experience," making the statement about yourself. You can say "Of course I can't judge what was going on in your situation, but" and return to a general case.
I agree with you that when someone makes blaming personal statements as if they had general force in an argument, most of us immediately sense that something's off. But such statements come from pain and pain never responds to argument, only acknowledgement.
You're a fine HN commenter and I think you know all this already, but maybe the above will help clarify something for others.
Would you be interested in essentially a mirror of HN's front page, but where you're free to say most things?
The mod criteria would be "If you get personal, or you're destructive to conversation, you're out." But conversely, uncomfortable ideas will be allowed.
I'm thinking we could also set up a Slack community for the site. If people have problems with the moderation, they can come chat about it openly.
The moderation here has been getting a bit stuffy, and maybe other people feel the same way. I don't know. If you're interested, shoot me an email and we can start hammering out a plan.
Unfortunately, I have no way of contacting you other than to post this here.
If my father had cheated on my mother I'm assuming it would still be his fault if she left him; that seems to be the gist of what you're getting at.
Once a cheater, always a cheater. We grew up poor because my mother cheated, not because of my father leaving.
And we grew up poor because my mother relied entirely upon my father for financial support and negated that benefit by cheating.
No, independently of your mother cheating on him, it's his fault for refusing to uphold his legal obligation to materially support his children.
Leaving the spouse is not the issue. (Leaving the children may be an issue, but to the extent it is it is at a minimum mitigated by fulfilling the legal support obligations a parent who is not raising their children has to those children.)
> If my father had cheated on my mother I'm assuming it would still be his fault if she left him
Whoever's fault leaving is, it would be his fault if he chose to refuse to meet his legal obligation to support his children.
> We grew up poor because my mother cheated, not because of my father leaving.
From your own description, the poverty was at least in large part because your father refused to pay legally-required child support after leaving you and your mother. Assuming that there was not a custody contest that you omitted in which your mother was awarded full custody, leaving children is not necessary with leaving their mother, however justified the latter is, and in any case, neither requires being a deadbeat on child support.
He was required (by Texas law) to pay child-support to my mother up until we were 18 (I am 29) to my mother who cheated on him; he still owes back pay on that and refuses to pay until they put a warrant out for his arrest.
My mother demonized him to us by crying about not knowing why he left her; she never once mentioned until 5 months ago that she cheated on him.
Dad regrets leaving us (his kids, not my mother) because it put a rift between us. We never knew the truth until recently when my mom let it slip in a conversation.
At this point I feel like he has been punished enough by the state of Texas for leaving my cheating mother.
Recently my eldest brother had a girl and my father has been in her life as much as he can and I'm incredibly happy for that (not jealous one bit) because at least my niece will have something my brother and I never had because he was soured by her behavior.
We grew up poor because of my mother's infidelity...