One of the problems I'm seeing is that talking about how people interact and how they might shift their behavior to make those interactions more effective is a form of meta, and the lead diarist for the series has said that meta bores her. As a meta-geek, I find the ways that people interact in pursuit of their own agendas is endlessly fascinating, and also that any real attempt to simplify it overly much is doomed from the start.
I am more inclined to sit and watch multiple arguments and try to figure out what the agendas of the participants are than to try to prevent them, for one simple reason: if you successfully prevent someone from using their standard methods of arguing, without putting a dent into their agenda, they tend to escalate their attempts.
It is fine and noble to assume that listening to and appreciating another person as an individual will allow one to interact with them without conflict. It's a great thing to suggest that learning to moderate the tone of a discussion may, in fact, avoid escalating conflict. And it's useful to notice, as though from the outside, how your own responses to a conversation are shaped by, and shape, the conversation. It's also true, on the other hand, that each of these things can be used, on the part of a canny individual, to provoke and escalate conflict.
If the point of discourse on the part of all those discussing an area is to reach more complex, nuanced and viable ways of seeing a situation so that one can promote real change, these techniques are valuable. If the point is to push a single agenda, or to discredit an agenda, or avoid having to look at complexity and nuance, they can be even more valuable. Once you know how to shift the tone and tenor of discourse positively, you also have a good idea of how to shift it negatively, if such a shift is to your advantage.
Rather than just saying that walking on eggshells is a problem that needs to be fixed, one real question that needs to be asked is: to whose advantage does it accrue? Who benefits, or what agendas benefit, when someone like LaFeminista feels as though she is walking on eggshells? Cui bono is almost always the first question to ask in a power struggle, and that's what this type of situation tends to be.
So - who benefits from an expectation that certain topics, that a majority of the members of the site agree on, will immediately lead to highly contentious argument if they are brought up in any but the most judicious/palliative terms? Well, duh, anyone with an agenda, overt or covert, that conflicts with a frank and open discussion of those topics.
There was an incredibly good discussion of women's issues, from a number of different viewpoints, going on for several days. No matter what the real or imagined causes of the kerfluffle that blew up in the turmoil following it, it has had one major outcome: frank talk about women's issues and how to handle the conversation about them, going forward, has shut down.
Anyone who wants to see this as a purely accidental outcome of the situation isn't nearly suspicious enough, though I think that very few of the participants were overtly aware of this potential fallout. (My apologies to LilithGardener, whose diaries helped to spark this one, and who has a much less suspicious mind than I do.)
So, what's next? For all the good intentions that may be wandering around, there will be highly emotional argument, and attempts at threadjacking, and concentrated trolling, and general verbal mayhem, in any attempts to revitalize the subject. It hits too close to home for too many people, enlightened though we may think we are.
Suggestions?