Because we are already discussing the long Matt & Cecily Brown post on this thread, and some of us have voiced that certain aspects of that post struck us as slightly missing the mark for one reason or another…
I think it’s fair to share a follow up comment they made, clarifying their position. They do not want to condone abuse or apologize for it. They do seem concerned about the possibility of someone self harming when in the midst of a spiraling public professional meltdown like this one …
Anyway - here’s a quote of their follow up & clarifying comments, in the interest of fairness.
As with the initial post, they strike me as very well intentioned. I personally am just a slightly cynical human being who has some personal experience with manipulation via suicide threats from someone in my past… and I tend to find this line of argument unpersuasive. But that’s definitely a “me” thing. I just have less empathy and more cynicism on that issue. Sadly.
I truly hope we can put horse welfare first and hold people accountable for despicable actions and also still not be unkind in doing so. I agree with you and others that have posted that there is no room in the sport for horses to be treated the way they’re being treated in the current Andrew videos and in the videos we’ve seen from charlotte, Cesar and Andreas. I guess what I maybe didn’t make clear enough in my post is that I don’t want to apologize for the behavior, in fact, I want to eliminate the behavior, and I take advocating for proper treatment of horses very seriously, but I just don’t want us to be so mean and hateful on social media towards the human. Do I think horse abusers should be punished, fined, suspended, banned, etc?? Absolutely. But I hope we can do that without being cruel. Do I want those people out of the sport if that’s how they’re going to behave? Yes, 100%. Do I want them to kill themselves because of what’s being said about them on social media? No, I do not want that, and I think we must consider that as a real possibility for those people. I personally do not believe in the death penalty. I do believe that criminals should serve time, sometimes entire lifetimes in jail, depending on the severity of the crime, but I want to allow room for the possibility that those people can become better people while serving their time and don’t want to see them killed by themselves or the system.
I’m sorry if my post came off as apologetic of bad behavior. I’m trying to find a balance here of advocating for the brave people who are calling out abuse, asking for the groups in power to do a better and more transparent job of dealing with these cases of abuse, asking for the general public to actually open their eyes to what’s going on around them because there is so much bad-ranging-to-cruel treatment of horses going on around ALL OF US, and also just trying to remind everyone that we can hold people accountable for their actions without being mean. And that some people who have made mistakes, and I emphasize the use of the word ‘some’, may have the ability to do better if they make the effort to become more educated and to change their ways, but if they kill themselves because of a social media pile on then we never get to see if they can make some kind of amends.
Maybe it’s not possible to have all of that. Maybe I’m being naive. And I agree that I am a coward for not reporting all of the abuses I see or know are occurring on the regular. A lot of it I don’t have photographic or video evidence of, so wouldn’t hold up anyways. And the rest is honestly out there for all to see, if we just pay attention. FEI jogs happen in the public domain. Anyone can have a horse that doesn’t present quite right for one fair reason or another, but if someone is presenting the same lame horse and getting held or spun at almost every first or second jog for YEARS, then I think it’s not fair to say to one person “you should call that out” when literally everyone, including FEI officials and vets are not doing anything about it. Continuing to compete a clearly lame horse is abuse, in my opinion. I don’t have enough fingers and toes to count the amount of times I’ve told someone at a horseshow to stop whacking or jerking on their horse. I’ve been called a “mother fucking do gooder” to my face for speaking up to a professional who was mishandling his students horse in front of officials and everyone in warm up. Said officials told ME to not engage with him when he was getting in to my face calling me names. So while I’m not ready to put my own career on the line to just start naming names without photographic proof of the misdeeds I’ve witnessed or known about, I do take very seriously advocating for the horse in my every day life on the farm, at every horseshow I attend, as a volunteer member of many committees, and as someone in the social media domain. I’m sure I could do better than what I’m doing, but I guess that’s also my point. If we just label people as horrible and write them off without allowing for some nuance and grey area, considering each case individually, then no one has the chance to improve. When a lot of the examples of abuse that I site happened I was a different person (and again, didn’t have any of it on camera). Now, if I see something bad, I say something. Usually directly to the person, or alert an official (when I witnessed the top rider punching her horse in the face in warm up I turned around and marched up to the FEI steward in the ring and told him what happened. So I am trying to do better, as a horseman and also as an advocate, but also as an empathetic, imperfect human to other imperfect humans. As I said in my post, if someone is going to be a piece of shit and have no interest in rehabilitating, me being mean to them isn’t going to change them, but there’s a tiny chance maybe extending some grace to people could actually help them become better. Again, probably completely naive, and not saying we should rub them on the back and say don’t worry, I forgive you, but we can at least just be not mean, focus on the despicable action and not the person, and what we as a community are going to do going forward to do better. That’s what I’d like to see the conversation shift to - how can we do better, how can we educate better, how can we improve the governing system so these things can be addressed more effectively, how can we protect whistleblowers better? How can we officiate our shows better?
