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So, person A is making a name for hirself as an advocate for oppressed groups M and N. Person B, an ex of person A, says, "Hold on, this person raped me at a con, they aren't as pure as they claim to be". Person C, a friend, and probably now lover of person B, says "Yes, I was there, it was baaaad" and describes something eerily similar to a previous case described in fandom circles a couple years ago, with different people, and then spreads this among groups that are innately hostile to groups M and N. Person A says "I've been accused, I admit no guilt, see you in court." essentially "I won't play along with trial by net."
These accusations come immediately on the heels of person A's success - not a surprise, I guess, since such things tend to bring skeletons out of closets. But the fact that person A had a ton of nasty harassing phone calls just the week or two before, to the point that they had to involve the police and change their number, and that they were also subscribed to a slew of disgusting porn email lists, makes the timing a bit more... suspect.
I call the question, ask "qui bono", because something stinks, and doesn't pass my BS filters. Person C and hir choir gets downright nasty, accuses me of enabling "rape culture", "victim-blaming" and other melodramatic sloganeering.
What's worse is, A, B and C are into BDSM, so at the time, C supposedly wasn't sure if it was a "scene" or not. But there was no scene monitor, but they may not play that way.
But the whole thing just reeks of a virtual lynch mob, and I feel that degrades accusers in rape cases. Just like the Julian Assange thing felt like the rape accusation was only useful as a political tool to "get" Assange.
Was there rape? I don't know. Was there miscommunication? Yes, from what I've read! Is that miscommunication rape? I can't say, and I hate that I can't. In a BDSM scene context, "no" may not mean "no", the safeword does.
But I can't jump in with both boots on person C's say-so. Person B didn't ask for that, and they are the only one with the right.
People who know me know I often take the side of the underdog. When I see sharks circling and people throwing around slurs due to this kind of accusation being made, I start to think that there's more in play than simple justice and wanting to warn people against trusting this person's activist credentials.
Person A hasn't made any brownie points with me either, posting hir accuser's whole name in public in what limited response they have made. So that stinks too.
Now, someone whose opinion I trust has said that person A has a history of not respecting boundaries. That I will believe, because the person who has said it is credible to me. That kind of behavior can lead to rape, and needs to stop.
The worst actors on the drama front are person C and the chorus of hate and drama. The jerking knees, the instant "off with their head" condemnation, and rush to judgment make me furious, and wade in with both rhetorical fists swinging.
Would I share a room at a con with either A, B or C? Not a chance - I don't want any part of their drama. Would I 86 any of them from a con I ran? No, because my standard of proof hasn't been met, either for rape or excess drama. Would I invite any of them to a party? No, too much drama for my personal comfort.
I've left names and specifics out of this for a reason: The issue is really a meta one, of where the line is on the use of rape accusations as a political tool, both in real world politics, ala Assange, and in fannish politics.
Rape accusations are a special breed of criminal accusation in our society, because of the twisted culture that makes "consent" a murky mess, because of the intersection of reputation and crime, because of the "he said, she said" nature, because some people assume consent where it isn't, because some people believe in "surprise sex" as sex, and a whole lot of other reasons. But using it as a political weapon is abhorrent to me. It trivializes it, IMO, and that's wrong.
I must apologize to the person whose journal that some of my objections to this erupted in. They didn't deserve to end up at the nexus of my fury at the level of wank this whole thing has engendered.
These accusations come immediately on the heels of person A's success - not a surprise, I guess, since such things tend to bring skeletons out of closets. But the fact that person A had a ton of nasty harassing phone calls just the week or two before, to the point that they had to involve the police and change their number, and that they were also subscribed to a slew of disgusting porn email lists, makes the timing a bit more... suspect.
I call the question, ask "qui bono", because something stinks, and doesn't pass my BS filters. Person C and hir choir gets downright nasty, accuses me of enabling "rape culture", "victim-blaming" and other melodramatic sloganeering.
What's worse is, A, B and C are into BDSM, so at the time, C supposedly wasn't sure if it was a "scene" or not. But there was no scene monitor, but they may not play that way.
But the whole thing just reeks of a virtual lynch mob, and I feel that degrades accusers in rape cases. Just like the Julian Assange thing felt like the rape accusation was only useful as a political tool to "get" Assange.
Was there rape? I don't know. Was there miscommunication? Yes, from what I've read! Is that miscommunication rape? I can't say, and I hate that I can't. In a BDSM scene context, "no" may not mean "no", the safeword does.
But I can't jump in with both boots on person C's say-so. Person B didn't ask for that, and they are the only one with the right.
People who know me know I often take the side of the underdog. When I see sharks circling and people throwing around slurs due to this kind of accusation being made, I start to think that there's more in play than simple justice and wanting to warn people against trusting this person's activist credentials.
Person A hasn't made any brownie points with me either, posting hir accuser's whole name in public in what limited response they have made. So that stinks too.
Now, someone whose opinion I trust has said that person A has a history of not respecting boundaries. That I will believe, because the person who has said it is credible to me. That kind of behavior can lead to rape, and needs to stop.
The worst actors on the drama front are person C and the chorus of hate and drama. The jerking knees, the instant "off with their head" condemnation, and rush to judgment make me furious, and wade in with both rhetorical fists swinging.
Would I share a room at a con with either A, B or C? Not a chance - I don't want any part of their drama. Would I 86 any of them from a con I ran? No, because my standard of proof hasn't been met, either for rape or excess drama. Would I invite any of them to a party? No, too much drama for my personal comfort.
I've left names and specifics out of this for a reason: The issue is really a meta one, of where the line is on the use of rape accusations as a political tool, both in real world politics, ala Assange, and in fannish politics.
Rape accusations are a special breed of criminal accusation in our society, because of the twisted culture that makes "consent" a murky mess, because of the intersection of reputation and crime, because of the "he said, she said" nature, because some people assume consent where it isn't, because some people believe in "surprise sex" as sex, and a whole lot of other reasons. But using it as a political weapon is abhorrent to me. It trivializes it, IMO, and that's wrong.
I must apologize to the person whose journal that some of my objections to this erupted in. They didn't deserve to end up at the nexus of my fury at the level of wank this whole thing has engendered.
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From my standpoint, B's email to A, which has been publicly posted, all but openly acknowledged that the rape had taken place. That, followed by B's behavior after the email was posted leads me suspect that it did.
I understand and respect your comments regarding the rush to judgement. Yes, I saw that too and it disturbs me. It also disturbs me to have read responses from so many people — I have not read any of yours, BTW — who immediately fall into both the role and the speech pattern of 'dudebro' apologists.
Of course — and again, I mean no snark in your direction — it's far easier to condemn rape and rape apologia when the people involved aren't people you, personally, know and/or respect. Similarly, it's very easy to pile-on and vilify when the person accused is someone you do not like and /or respect.
One of the things I take from the meta issue is that, perhaps, much of the behavior we insist is gender-linked isn't. Females and feminists can be rape-apologists just as easily and as emphatically as males and fundamentalists can. We seem to create arbitrary barriers, to convince ourselves that we are better than that, and could never be like that.
The meta-issues involved, though, should not get in the way of the fact that there's been a very real accusation of rape, and that needs to be addressed.I very much hope it does, and that the outcome of all this fits accordingly with the truth of what happened between A and B.
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When friends and lovers quarrel, enemies will step in to widen the gap. C seems to revel in this. That disturbs me.
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I'll hold with my closing statement, though: The meta-issues involved, though, should not get in the way of the fact that there's been a very real accusation of rape, and that needs to be addressed.I very much hope it does, and that the outcome of all this fits accordingly with the truth of what happened between A and B.
This whole dammed mess is disturbing, dammit.
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Yes, IMO, they both have an issue here: in a nutshell, B feels violated, and A feels unjustly accused. The accusation has been made, and needs to be addressed, but not by the net at large, IMO.
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For example there's another situation going on that sounds almost identical to this one. But here are the differences between what you've described and the situation I'm thinking of.
In the one I know about, C has been the lover of B for almost two years now, and was responsible for introducing A and B. The "C" in the one I know of made her post at B's invitation and subjected it to his approval. Once it was up, she didn't flag it to anyone's attention or forward any links anywhere. While C and B have a D/s relationship, A and B did not have a D/s dynamic and there was no "scene" or other context in which no wouldn't mean no.
See how similar these two situations can be, yet there are these small but important details that make all the difference?
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Now A has behaved pretty badly - posting a real name, posting, then deleting, private chat logs. C and B have posted private emails purportedly from A, claiming them to be an admission of guilt. All sides have engaged in posturing and passive-aggressive wank. Part of me wants to bitchslap everyone involved, but that's my nasty side talking.
A is pretty messed up in the head, and so is B - that showed in the posted chat logs. I hope both of them a) stay the fuck apart, and b) get counseling.
But C doesn't seem to be helping either of them, other than trying to play white knight/attack dog. I will credit C with trying to help B find appropriate resources for rape victims, although the whole thing had an air of "look, evil A raped B, help me get hir help, see I'm the good person here." That may just be C's style, but I don't find it endearing, to say the least.
IMO, the best solution would be for A and B to never contact each other again, stay broken up, and break the cycle between them.
It has been pointed out to me that because of the circumstances that even if it did go to court, it would not get a fair trial. This does not make the net an appropriate substitute venue.
The fact that it has spread across at least 4 different forums/journal communities means that someone, and evidence points to C, decided to "make noise" about it, and bring the court of net.opinion in - to get A "punished" by hir community, I guess, or to deny A success because C could no longer claim a share.
Here's where the meta comes in:
1) When does the fact that a person might well be an asshole necessitate trashing whatever they might try to accomplish for the good of the community, and why?
2) How do we call someone on shitty behavior without inviting complete strangers as well as their standard enemies to pile on?
3) How do we keep people from bucket-crabbing (trying to drag back down) or coat-tailing on people's success in marginalized communities?
4) How do we stop the knee-jerk stuff from stifling real discussion of problems and solutions, and not just marginalizing already marginalized people?
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The funny thing in the one I'm talking about is that apparently A had already burned enough people badly enough for them to be watching like a hawk for any sign of anything involving her and spread it around themselves.
The C in my situation was actually kind of caught off-guard about that, and would probably have included more basic background on the relationships in her first post if she'd expected it to mainly be read by people who don't follow her blog and didn't already know who B and C were.
Those are hard questions and I don't have answers for them.
1) "Asshole" is a funny way to spell "rapist".
2) Well, we have to prioritize: when someone who does something that needs discussing has also separately made a lot of enemies, how far backwards do we bend over to not incidentally give those enemies something to chortle about?
3) You'd have to point out the coat-tailing. I assume it exists in the situation you're talking about. In the one I'm talking about, C has a good career as a web author (albeit in a slightly different circle than the one A is a big name in) and would rather not trade fame in her circle for notoriety in the other.
4) Not making posts like this seems like a good start.
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1) Asshole includes more than just rapist - it includes sexual assault (which is a superset including rape) and physical and emotional abuse.
2) When those enemies are also the enemies of the community, wouldn't it behoove the community to not invite the vultures in?
3) In the scenario I'm thinking of, I'd never heard of C before they started braying about this, and A was only starting.
4) So letting people stamped people into knee-jerk crap is preferred? No thanks.
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There are plenty of people who burn lots of time and political energy on what happens inside various communities. I'm not good at juggling those cats.
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I could never do that. That would sweep that high moral ground right out from under our high moral feet. That's exactly kind of hypocrisy the right wing excels at.
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I guess I have this concept that we should treat even miscreants in our community as people, even though they do shitty things, and need to be held responsible. I don't like the fact that when we slap certain labels on people, we use it as an excuse to "other" them.
I don't like the knee-jerk thing, and people who use loaded language and manipulative phrasing to push me toward knee-jerk reactions do not have credibility in my eyes.
I know I have some biases of my own here - certain religious and political viewpoints I have a great deal of enmity toward - but I actually try to live my talk. If people want to think I do a shitty job of it, OK. I don't claim perfection, forgiveness, or a cosmic "get out of jail free" card.
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But more than that, I really don't see how you can assume enough understanding of this particular issue and this particular person's long history, to pass judgement in the way that you have-- with huge disrespect to the actual victims-- to their faces. Shame on you for that. Really.
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Of course you don't see the pile on, it's hard to see the pile from inside it.
There is one real victim that I have seen here, and that is B. Not C, not the people crawling out of the woodwork with the "oh, I heard this and that". B didn't ask for a witch hunt.
Someone is supposed to magically know about all of these oh so aggrieved people, who only pop their heads up when there's a good, old fashioned pillorying going on? Wow, that's special.
I've followed A's journal sporadically for a couple years. Not someone I know, but not a complete stranger. A little odd, was my estimation, and a bit troubled. Did anyone, in that time, say anything privately to me about hir flaws? No? But I'm supposed to mystically know about them, and then believe complete strangers with an axe to grind. How would you like it if A was you?
Yeah, yeah, you'd *never* do that sort of thing, so it could never happen with you, and so says anyone in the community - even A.
But I won't even get you to think about it - you have too much invested in being "right".
If it makes you feel better to say "shame on you" to me for daring to challenge this, then go right ahead. Give yourself a hearty pat on the back for standing up for all those victims who are now celebrating. Have a medal as the self righteous champion of all the silent victims that aren't any more.
I'd rather challenge and be wrong, than not and let some net.mob tramp all over people. Call me stubborn like that.
Yes, A turns out to be an abusive shithead, damned by hir own posting, IMO. I'm not afraid to be wrong in my analysis, or even to admit it. Unlike some people, I've gotten over having to always be right. That's not "sidestepping", or "flip-flopping", that called *learning*.
The meta issue is still there: How do we verify incidents and hold people like A accountable without turning it into trial by internet?
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After all, how does shit spread so fast if it isn't promoted by the participants?
A is a well-known activist with a large contingent of friends and not-friends (and enemies, although that might be too strong a word) who pay attention to drama in A's online life. A, B & C don't have to promote info about a conflict for it to spread wide quickly.
Some people consider A a great activist for social justice. Some people consider A a toxic force in the community. Both of those groups watch for potential drama.
Also, there's a hell of a lot of posts occurring under lock about all this; the public doesn't see those exchanges, just the later public posts by people who have no apparent connection to A, B or C. They have no direct connection--but the LJfriend-of-LJfriend dynamic has spread info about the situation a lot farther than is visible from public posts.
to get A "punished" by hir community, I guess, or to deny A success because C could no longer claim a share.
Or to warn people, "A has srs issues and has caused substantial harm before; be careful before engaging." Also, "A's claimed virtues are at least partially hype, not reality. Pls consider before rewarding the hype."
(Which is not the same as "don't reward the hype." If someone wants to reward good talk instead of ethical actions, they're welcome to do so. But they should know what they're rewarding.)
Part 2: Meta
1) When does the fact that a person might well be an asshole necessitate trashing whatever they might try to accomplish for the good of the community, and why?
"Be an asshole": almost never. People can sort out assholery on their own, or not, and should calibrate their own assometers without needing public assistance.
"Is toxic/has caused harm"--if there's a reasonable likelihood the harm is going to occur in multiple future situations, that info should be shared. If the person is attempting to cultivate a reputation for being noble and righteous, data about past not-noble and not-righteous actions are relevant.
2) How do we call someone on shitty behavior without inviting complete strangers as well as their standard enemies to pile on?
We can't *prevent* strangers and enemies from joining in, but we can discourage them by focusing on the people as whole people, not as individual actions devoid of context. We remind ourselves (and strangers etc.) that nothing is as simple and cut-and-dried as tv dramas like to pretend. We keep insisting on context, on acknowledgment of a social framework that punishes seeking help and often rewards narcissism, and point out that a person who's fallen prey to those patterns is also a victim.
3) How do we keep people from bucket-crabbing (trying to drag back down) or coat-tailing on people's success in marginalized communities?
This is maybe the hardest. To prevent bucket-crabbing, we have to acknowledge that success when other people are still being hurt & oppressed is okay. And we have to find ways to do it without accepting climbing over others as an acceptable route to success.
4) How do we stop the knee-jerk stuff from stifling real discussion of problems and solutions, and not just marginalizing already marginalized people?
We allow space for the knee-jerk stuff to happen, and keep happening, and allow other discussions to get started/go on at the same time, and try to remember to keep those other discussions going when the current drama is no longer current. We allow individual situations to be used as examples of patterns, rather than (only) as problem-needing-solution; we consider whether any solution is transferable to other similar situations, or scalable to other sizes of problems.
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I know A tends to attract Drama, stir shit, and have an emotional roller coaster for a life. Even before this, I would not have wanted A as a roomie - to much drama. A reminds me of a roomie I had with BPD, only not under control.
The FoaF dynamic sometimes is pretty much an echo chamber, with a heavy distort. That's part of my main objection to the court on LJ, etc.
Person A may have serious virtues as an author and "attack dog forum warrior", without being a stable person. I know some authors whose stuff I like to read but have pissed me off personally.
The campaign against A doesn't look like a warning to others, it looks like a net lynch mob with pitchforks going after A to destroy what little stability (which isn't much) or success they have. Person A has serious emotional issues (paid subscription, even). This is almost designed to take someone who is moderately crazy and make them batshit insane. If it gets them help, maybe that's good, but otherwise there has to be a better way to bring someone up short on their behavior and warn others without it becoming a knee-jerk witch hunt.
-- Asshole/Toxic
Interesting breakout. To me, asshole is a continuum, including (at the extreme) emotional, physical and sexual abuse. Major league asshole is a person who is toxic/dangerous.
The problem with warning is that it can also be used as a weapon, so I would have to be very careful to include context. "Person G was kicked out of X con for stalking", "Person N has been accused by several exes of rape." "Person P has a restraining order against them because they reportedly hit their SO"
Yes, the defense against libel is truth, but to prove truth you still have to go to court. I can't say "X raped Y" or "X is a rapist" unless there has been a conviction. Y can say "X raped me", and I can say "Y says X raped hir"
I don't like predators roaming freely, but I'm not sure that net.court is the best place to tag and bag them.
--calling shit minus pile on
I like your approach. There has to be a disincentive for people to get wrapped up in being the "lone hero" with a fawning echo chamber.
Also, I really think we need to address the polar way we think about people - they are either "good" or "bad", and when someone moves from one category to another it is usually accompanied by a howling mob.
One thing I have noticed about some toxic relationships is that sometimes both sides are "stuck" in a pattern that neither can break. I've encountered it in toxic workplaces - a corporate culture turns decent people into roaring assholes, but take the people out of that culture and they are fine.
It's easy to say "get counseling", it's harder to tell someone where to get it. How do we as a community practice harm reduction in an era of budget cuts?
-- Success
Yes. Also, we need to learn to deal with success. It took me, personally, a long time to learn to accept a compliment or praise without self denigration. I am not unique. We either puff up in ego, or self sabotage, because we don't have healthy models for handling our own success, much less that of others. There is so much of this beaten into the feminist community especially - women in our society are not taught healthy ways to handle success and/or praise for accomplishments, and are socialized to envy and sabotage of other women.
--real solutions
I guess I have to agree, but I wish to hell the knee jerk shit didn't happen. It makes the various communities seem like a howling pack of right-wing neanderthals in grubby uniforms.
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That's not EVEN tossing in Politics, Cliques and other less savory bits of Con Culture....
Cheers,
Pat
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What the fuck, dude. Shame on you. You don't want to stomp on the accused, you don't have to-- nobody asked you to stomp at all.
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And I'm not a "dude".
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Person A posted a passive-aggressive denial, then deleted it. When I went and re-read the screencap, again, I was not impressed with any of the thought processes shown, and threatening suicide in a drama-waaaah denial doesn't enhance their credibility in my book either.
I feel sorry for B, not for A or C.
The various communities are still howling for blood, the outside enemies are making hay, and the anonymous jackals are having a field day.
However, there has started to be some dialogue, maybe, on adult ways to address this kind of thing, rather than taking it to net.court.
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You asked what it looked like to me now. I stepped back, ran through whole thing, and answered you, trying to be objective. YMMV, goes without saying, but some people need it said, apparently.
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I still don't like the witch hunt, and the spreading of crap all over. It won't help the situation, it won't really protect anyone in the future, and it won't be a wake-up call to A. IOTW, if those were the goals, it failed, miserably, from the start.
The meta discussion on how better to handle things like this is one that will probably go nowhere - people have much more "fun" vilifying people, obviously. f_fa is a classic example.
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Remember the "open source" boobs crap - public encouragement of what I consider to be (minor) sexual assault. How many of those piling on A thought that "open source boobs" was about sexual liberation and "sex positive" behaviour, rather than about sexual harassment - even though it didn't involve the consent of the person with the breasts (except in the sense of pressuring her that she was unliberated unless she consented).
Put another way, let s/he who is without sin throw the first stone.
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I knew I wrote this for a reason...
Rape, Abuse and Issues of Consent in BDSM (trigger warnings apply)
http://emerald72.dreamwidth.org/23258.html
Consent in BDSM is, or at least it should be as far as I'm concerned, an ongoing process of negotiation. It should never be taken for granted or assumed. Consent for one activity does not imply consent for another, and a person's enjoyment of a consensual situation where they are playing a role that to an outsider might look like abuse, does not, I repeat NOT, ever imply that person will therefore enjoy, or wish to be non consensually abused...
...Safe words are not some sort of magical, get out of jail free card, whose non utterance equates to continuing consent being given. There are a myriad of reasons why a Bottom or Submissive may not use a safe word, even when they have withdrawn consent, and wish for a scene to stop. As the Top or Dominant in control of a scene, it is your responsibility not to assume 'lack of a safe word having been spoken, equals automatic consent to keep going', and to check in with your Bottom/Submissive.
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