Comment by lenova
10 months ago
I should have been clearer, I'm specifically replying to this statement: "... he's giving them ammunition by mentioning them and complaining about them. It proves that it's working."
Are we supposed to not speak publicly about being harassed? I feel like a culture of silence only allows bullying to perpetuate, and puts the onus on the victim to change their behaviour, and not the harasser's.
In general, yes. But in the case of obsessive stalkers, I've heard that the standard advice is to "go radio silence", because their pattern if you ever break down and reply is to think "now I know how many times I need to harass to get a reply" and increase their efforts to get through that count faster. So it ends up escalating exponentially.
Of course, ideally some authority should stop the harasser. But you probably don't want to wait until it gets severe enough for that to happen.