Playing the Devil's Advocate

Spot on. Great post.

I could come back to this but it's not even really useful or worth it. This has run it's course.

The reason behind my devils advocacy and general persistence comes from a place where I see a lot of unquestioning orthodoxy in anarchism at the moment. It's not that I am un sensitive, more that I am asking questions people are afraid to ask because they are worried to do is is to instantly be accused of misogyny (which is accurate a lot of the time). You're right, it's a very sensitive and triggering subject, but I don't think this should be used as a justification for not harboring discussion and debate. I think a lot of people, especially men, would feel the same un ease with the unquestioning acceptance of certain positions like they are beyond challenging but afraid to say it because everyone would think they are doing so because they are sexist, rather than they just want to understand better.

And now a bunch of people are going to down vote this and call all of the above basically 'BUT TEH MENZ' etc.

If anything, rape culture is the unquestioned orthodoxy in anarchism.

When you play devils advocate, that is arguing against someone for the sake of it, it come across as hostile and as if you are trying *not* to understand their position. It is possible to ask difficult questions in a sensitive way. Eg "I know there are extremely low rates of false accusations, but I still am worried that if we automatically believe the survivor we would run the risk of committing injustices against innocent people. Can you please help me understand better?"

Also tbh I'm just not sympathetic with the argument that men aren't asking questions because they're intimidated. Two reasons:
1. How ever uncomfortable men may feel in the discussion, they are still feeling way less uncomfortable than any survivor reading or commenting on the thread.
2. The entire discussion (and pretty much every other discussion on this topic) was dominated by questions about false accusations. We rarely get a chance to discuss anything else.

Also... I think you might have interpreted my comments about a lack of empathy for survivors as being aimed at you personally. They weren't. It was more a general observation. I wrote it after having written quite a few posts on the "Politics of Denunciation" thread (which is currently taken down) trying to get people to see things from the survivors POV. I realised after a while I had hit a brick wall. Frankly I felt kind of icky about it. Like almost begging people to have some empathy and getting a totally blank response. I'm finding it hard to express this... But it feels almost like a display of power or something.

This is the same kind of hyperbole that endeared everyone to the beloved Mike S.

Also, complaining about a bunch of contrived reactions and then framing these imagined arguments as internetz cat speak trifle. Solid.

Great, post, Fleur. This is one of those subjects that doesn't really very likely to yield anything interesting by playing devil's advocate, probably not any more so than a discussion in which one presented pro-fascist arguments for the sake of playing devil's advocate (not saying you're a fascist, croy! Just that I'm doubtful as to how constructive playing a contrarian role in this case is).

I think this is really key. We don't even need the other purpose of the DA: "test the quality of the original argument and identify weaknesses". this place, and that thread, are/were just not the appropriate place for it considering the subject matter. Its too bad (a tragic yet all too familiar event really) that a discussion which should have been about how to support survivors turned into a debate about false accusations , etc.

When people are openly suggesting beating the shit out of some one based on some one else's word alone we need some questions.

Thing is, I've seen serious retribution happen exactly once. In my whole life. And I actually thought it was fair enough under the circumstances. Whereas the victim has to repeatedly move house, move city, is ostracised, blanked, excluded, blamed, threatened, stalked, beaten up again, persecuted, has threats made on the phone to her five year old kid,, is just generally treated like shit in various ways...... well, I've seen that fucking hundreds of times.

And no, I'm not advocating that anyone should beat the shit out of someone just on my or anyone's say so. I am saying that I don't think, based on a lifetime's experience, that too much retribution on the abusers is the biggest problem operating here. I'm not saying that's a non-issue or that nothing could go wrong or that I don't care anyway if it does. I'm saying that I see the hundreds of victims getting treated like shit, and the attackers getting away with it, on a massive scale, and I think it's worrying that the default response is nearly always to worry about if men were wrongly accused or that the case is "messy".

Weird how no one plays devil's advocate when people suggest beating up fascists. I'm not suggesting people beat up rapists but rape isn't something that someone accidentally does, it is a violent assault, usually committed on someone with less social power than the rapist.

Fleur, such a cracking post as always.

EmC and bounce, mad props and solidarity.

this is exactly right. People never seem to get too worried about the possibility of "false accusations" against possible fascists. And from personal experience I don't know of any people who've been beaten up after being falsely (or even genuinely) accused of a rape, but I do know of people who have been accidentally attacked by anti-fascists.

See also: scabs. In the discussions we have had about picketline violence, no one has ever express concern that a non-scab might accidentally be beaten up. This only crops up in discussions about sexual violence by men against women. And I think people should have a good think about that.

On top of that, as Fleur pointed out, it wasn't even something which the article or any posters were actually saying should happen. Everyone specifically said that anarchist organisations should not do that. But I can totally understand how some survivors could want, and would be totally justified in wanting, violent retribution. Similarly a lot of males who have been attacked by male bullies, for example, may also be justified in wanting violent retribution also. However, even though this sort of thing is very common, it doesn't seem to attract the same sort of fear has the former. Again, I would urge some people to think about why that is…

People are just repeating the same arguments. I've never felt that comfortable with anti fash violence when it's not provoked or defensive, I don't think it's helpful, I think it's more risky than it's worth, and I think it plays into fostering a macho culture with anti fascism which is a lot of the reason why I haven't gotten to involved in it (as well as all our opposition to it seems to amount to is static shouting matches in our own groups engaging with no one and literally walking into kettles).

About revenge violence, it is most definitely implied by logic. If you believe some one by default (which is what people are suggesting), and at the same time are basing your actions around what the survivors want, then if a survivor wanted some one to beat the shit out of the accused rapist then people would do so without question. That's literally a perfectly logical conclusion borne of those 2 practices being held simultaneously. I am deeply uncomfortable because it seems really irrational. People have said I am being un necessarily contrary, I would say the same thing about certain principles of the already existing justice system. I asked the questions for those reasons. I don't think we are going to get very far if we are content with letting revenge beatings (how often they happen is irrelevant, the fact it is possible that it could happen is more my point) go just because it's supposedly less amoral if the person getting beat up is a shitter person.

I'm pretty much done now.

no it's not: this is a strawman. Where do you suppose this legion of violent anarchists is, who goes around beating the shit out of people "without question"? And as has been pointed out several times, no one has advocated anarchist organisations do this - quite the contrary in fact.

TBH I think this is relevant. Unless we're talking about the real world, what's the point? If we are talking about the real world, which is what I'm interested in, then you can see how many women are subjected to sexual or domestic violence or harassment in the activist scene (a whole bunch) and aren't properly supported if/when they complain about it (again, a whole bunch), and how many falsely accused men have been subjected to punishment beatings (I have heard about a maximum of one single possible case in the US, but don't really know much about the details).

It's not a strawman. Woman A comes to members of organisation X and says "I have been raped by Y member of organisation X". People are suggesting that said members of organisation X should believe her without question because statistically most accusations of rape are true. What's being suggested, instead of innocent till proven, is, as well as this default belief, victim support based our the victims wishes. Therefore if the victim so wished that members of organisation X should go and beat the shit out of the other member of organisation X she is accusing, why would they not do it. Firstly, she has definitely been raped in their eyes because they believe her by default rather than not. Secondly, the support for said people should be based on what they want. What justification could they have for refusing?

I'm afraid it is…

Firstly, the article was talking about women who were themselves members of organisation X. And that being the case, the article, as well as the posters below it, suggested that such support from the organisation should extend to excluding Y from the organisation and/or or its spaces or events.

No one suggested that the organisation should physically attack them: this is a strawman.

this is getting a bit silly. The point of that article was saying that the concept of "innocent till proven guilty" should apply when someone's liberty is at stake. Excluding someone from a particular anarchist organisation or space is not depriving someone of their liberty. Physical attacks are different kettle of fish. Having a policy of supporting survivor-led doesn't mean that you have to offer yourself up to perform potentially-imprisonable acts.

For example, on libcom, our policy is for our actions to be survivor-led. Which means we take action against perpetrators guided by what the survivors have requested. Which can extend to warnings, post editings, banning, etc. It doesn't mean that we are going to go out and beat people up or murder people on demand.

Edit: crossed with Steven.

Except everyone's been saying that organisations should not go round doing punishment beatings? Like, categorically, explicitly, repeatedly, and quoted extensively above.

When feminists talk about rape culture, they're talking about a culture where the bodily integrity of a hypothetical man trumps that of any number of real women.

So was I

No ones advocating the violence on an organisational level, but like I said earlier with my flags comment, there is no clear line between violence perpetrated by an organisation as an organisation (which is as vague as it sounds) and violence perpetrated by people on their own free will. Numerous people said, at the same time as not endorsing it as a party line as such, they would not blame people for doing it and turn a blind eye to it. Because the line is vague, you still have the possibility which bothers me.

It doesn't bother me because I don't care about survivors whose cases were genuine. It bothers me because it is an easily preventable thing by having a formal rule which specifies just how far people are meant to go with victim centered support and what they will and will not do for them, or even just a rule that says that if anything is controversial then there has got to be discussion about it. Yet it's let slide because no one wants to say "well beating up accused rapists is may well be less bad than other violence because they are rapists but it's still not desirable or effective, and the only other situation is one even worse where the rapist isn't actually a rapist". It's a lot easier to not address the possibility and let it slide.

There's already a lot of formal rules against beating people.

er, yes there is.

Individuals in organisations and their friends do things all the time, which are nothing to do with the organisation. Including things which may be violent, like get into fights. For example, if a member of Solfed was getting robbed and they defended themselves, possibly with friends, this isn't something the organisation should condemn. But I don't think it would be a good idea for the person to go to a Solfed meeting afterwards, and get a motion passed to seek out the robber and give them a punishment beating.

mate, the article which sparked this discussion contained the following policy suggestion, and this is what people were agreeing with:

this is what is meant by survivor-led support. Nothing in there about punishment beatings

There is nothing in there but there's nothing there to exclude it. If it is the survivors desire why not, according to this article?

And why do we need to make it overly explicit that we shouldn't extend our support to beating people? Well because as numerous people have admitted, if it happened to one of their friends we would be strongly tempted to fuck whoever did it up VERY badly. Then you could say well, that's friends, we are dealing with political comrades, that's different. Well, if we are to adopt as a formal position to believe them by default, on top of generally giving a shit about fellow human beings, why should it?

On the physical retaliation thing, I don't think at present this is an actual problem. That said, organizations are not perfect things, and you can't wait around for a 'perfect' policy that imagines every possible scenario before implementing it. If its broken, then you change it. But what we're talking about is a hypothetical scenario of which I've never heard actually happen VS real scenarios that do and are happening.

In the other thread I mentioned that physical retaliation sometimes does happen in these situations. I don't think the way I threw that out there was helpful, so I'd clarify that where I do know of these situations where this happened the scenarios are very different from what we're talking about such as:

1) an activist scene with little policy on responding/preventing an occurrence of sexual violence, so the response of physical retaliation is an informal response in an informal organizational scheme. Very different from what we're talking about.

2) People acting on behalf (but without consulting) survivor(s) outside of any formal organizational mandate or process. This is not only different from what we're talking about, but the complete opposite of what the original article this thread was split from was advocating.

3) The accused perpetrator refusing to engage in beginning a formal accountability process, openly hostile to it and the survivor(s) or continuously violating what was agreed in said process. Basically the last resort after numerous efforts to make a constructive and formal process work have been exhausted. Again, different from what the article was advocating.

I very seriously doubt the hypothetical put forward: a survivor comes to a formal process and requests physical retaliation as the first response, and then the organization does it, has actually ever happened. Or if it has, is anything but a tiny minuscule percentage of the results of said processes. I think this isn't a realistic concern. And it pales in comparison to inaction from an organization and/or members of an organization actively enabling and defending perpetrators, of which there are countless accounts. This is where the playing 'devil's advocate' in this way is problematic, it muddies the waters and prevents action being taken on stuff that is actually a problem, based on a scenario which you would be hard-pressed to find a real world example of.

This organisational/personal distinction is a false dichotomy. Sure, some one wouldn't carry out the violence as a party line. They would do so with friends/members outside of the organisation. But the thing is they wouldn't even know it had happened if that member hadn't of come forward to the organisation looking for support, guidance and possible consequences. It's not like they heard about the accussation on the grape vine from some random woman, the woman, was a member of the organisation, came to the organisation about it wanting consequences specific to the organisation, which these members of the organisation, heard because they were in that same organisation. Does no one else seriously see how that makes the distinction very murky.