"In 2012, blogger Cliff Pervocracy coined the term “missing stair” to describe individuals who pose a..."

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In 2012, blogger Cliff Pervocracy coined the term “missing stair” to describe individuals who pose a danger to others, but are tolerated within a community because everyone is aware of their issues. If you know about a missing stair in an unlit stairwell, you can work around it and avoid it. No one bothers to fix the missing stair because jumping over it works just fine.

But if no one told you that there was a missing stair, and it’s just assumed that you’re aware, it’s all too easy to be hurt.

Every time you allow someone with a known history of harassment to drum for your band, or play at your venue, or come to your party, you’re saying that their presence matters more than other people at the event feeling safe. You’re putting the onus on potential targets to be aware enough to leap over the missing stair, rather than roping off the stairwell with caution tape. And if someone does get hurt, it’s their fault; that’s what happens when you use a shitty, jacked up staircase, dude.

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an easy to understand metaphor about why the scumbos should be driven out of communities of all kinds.

from IMAGINING A SAFER SPACE: BUILDING COMMUNITY & ENDING HARASSMENT IN PUNK by Lorena Cupcake

(via christophersebela)

I think a lot of people think of the missing stair only in contexts related to sexual harassment and violence.  Don’t.  The amount of utter bullshit that happens in large social communities (like fandom) over and over again because we’re trained to think we’ll be punished for warning people about those with patterns of abusive and toxic behavior is massive.  That’s not our fault, but we gotta get better at it. The level we wait for shit to rise to until we do anything about it is, generally, probably a bit higher than it should be.

(via charminggoats)