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[quote=Anonymous]Not sure if anyone is reading this thread or thinking about this story anymore. But I just had a thought I wanted to share.

A lot of people really want to "both sides" this and I think I understand why. I think a lot of people wind up identifying with Sonya Larson and her friends because they've done something like that before. They've encountered someone who rubbed them the wrong way. An outsider. And instead of (a) ignoring them, or (b) actually being empathetic, they've done the easier thing -- cruelty, piling on, ostracizing. Not everyone has done this (I haven't) but enough people have that they can see themselves in it.

But people don't like feeling guilty, they don't like recognizing a nasty, unpleasant part of their personality in someone else. So they need to be able to say "well Dawn also brought this on herself" or "well Dawn's later behavior is just as bad" because it makes the guilt easier. If you can both sides it, then no one is really guilty.

But if you look at it with moral clarity, this doesn't work because whatever Dawn did, she didn't deserve to be treated cruelly. And if you can see she was treated cruelly, it's hard to argue that she "went too far" in fighting back because if someone harms you, are you supposed to just do nothing? If you come to this with clean hands, its pretty much impossible to both sides it because what Dawn did was justified (by Sonya's behavior, which was directed at Dawn and designed to hurt) and what Sonya did was not (since Dawn never did anything to her).

I just feel like if you both sides it, what you are saying is that people you deem annoying or uncool deserve to be punished for it. Or that people who experience cruelty have an obligation to simply turn the other cheek. I don't believe either of those things.

The only person who could have prevented this mess from happening is Sonya. She could have chosen not to engage, written a story less obviously based on Dawn, obviously chosen not to steal Dawn's letter, or even just recognized her mistake and pulled the story, and none of this would have happened. What was Dawn supposed to do to prevent this situation? Not donate her kidney? I guess you could say that she shouldn't have invited the Grub Street people into her support group, but how on Earth could she have known, based on their prior behavior, that they weren't her friends. I just don't think there's any way for Dawn to have anticipated this, but Sonya could have and should have.[/quote]

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