When I ended my membership and left the team of the Fate and Challenge Association I have left this farewell message to the readers of their website:
Dear readers
This is Max with a personal message today. It is now the 14th of December 2022, and January will mark 14 years of me being active online on the topic of pedophilia. The activism and peer-support are very important to me and they have become central themes of my life.
In the last 3-4 years, unfortunately, I have started to feel increasing tension and frustration with my own team. There is agreement on the goal, but is that enough?
I think Fate and Challenge's team mates lacks structure and reliability among ourselves. Long discussions led to no real agreement, clearer wording of team-decisions brought only little stability, and addressing serious concerns rarely led to a change in behavior. Years of futile attempts to better our working atmosphere have eaten me up. After the events of early November, I finally realized: I no longer have the energy for this. That is why I am now taking my hat and leaving our team and the Fate and Challenge as an association.
What remains? I intend to continue in the field of education and self-help after a recovery phase. To what extent is still unsure.
What has led to this? Since the last trigger has unfortunately been something, that has happened quite publicly in the forum I think giving a rough outline is appropriate at this point:
To make this clear: I am writing this entirely from my point of view. From Nov. 4-7, 2022 users and team of our forum have discussed sending a letter to voice our concerns before the German Ministers of Justice met up for their autumn conference. As I said this was openly discussed in the GSA-forum - two teammates willingly made a fool out of me equally publicly: A veto mechanism within the team (written down in our team's internal "moderation guideline") was ignored and both my and Mascha's interjection that a more detailed discussion was needed before such a letter could be sent "on behalf of the association" were just passed over as if we both had said nothing. In public. The discussions that followed showed me how far our priorities and views sometimes diverge and how little of my words had even been understood or even read. Even third uninvolved persons felt a need to insult and condemn me afterwards in the forum and one also bothered me privately via a direct Messenger for hours. This has little to do with the team, but it shows part of the problem.
This was the proverbial "icing on the cake" in a long series of similar experiences. Images that others have thrown in are "many cooks spoil the broth" or "a ship without a captain", where someone rows to the right instead of to the left as they see fit, or spontaneously hoists one of the sails but no one scrubs the deck.
For some time now, I have seen a fraying of the team (according to everyone's own aspirations and views) as well as problems with basic reliability. For example, I regularly felt resistance as soon as I reminded people of agreements we had made together in the past. Parts of the team went into defence mode and internal team agreements (like the mentioned "moderation guideline" and also other regulations) were subject to personal interpretation and were often discussed anew and anew and anew.
This felt excruciating. In fact, it has even started to change me: right now I have grown to expect resistance all the time. And I have become quite tough and sometimes unfair as a result. One of my favorite songs says, "Pain is a warning that something's wrong."
Especially sad for me: the causal mistake was probably even with NewMan and me. We weren't aware of it at the time but when we expanded our team in 2016/17 we should have presented a better thought-out structure, communicated it more clearly and also enforced it. In my eyes, we failed to do that at the time. It would probably also have delayed the opening of our new forum.
This is my view and assessment of the situation. It is subjective, as is everyone's personal view.
Our team is already tackling some of these issues. However, because of this last "icing on the cake" and the controversy it has ignited, I have come to the conclusion that there is too much going wrong and I no longer have the strength to continue to try and fix it. Or in other words: I no longer have the confidence that we will solve the problems before I personally suffer further mental harm. (Tinnitus is even knocking on my door right now)
That is why I am taking my leave now. To my previous teammates, I wish that despite these current challenges, they will manage to guide Fate and Challenge on a safe course. It is incredible what we have accomplished together in the 14 years since I have known NewMan and participated in this project! Could Marco have dreamed of this when he started laying the foundation in 2006? I'll ask him about it sometime within the next days for sure.
It is with great sadness but (unfortunately) also a feeling of liberation that I leave our association and its teams.
Take care guys!
Your Max Weber
(This text has been translated with some help of the free version of DeepL (see https://www.deepl.com))