I've written this blog in response to a previous discussion of the safer spaces policy at the NYC Anarchist Bookfair 2012, and why I'm not convinced we need to be too preoccupied with the possibility of false rape accusations.
TRIGGER WARNING: sexual violence
Great piece. The thread on the "kafkaesque" letter made me cringe. I tried to articulate in that thread why I thought people were missing the point and worrying too much about the potential for false accusations in such a system while basically ignoring the real abuse and violence that occurs within our movement, but I'm not sure how I did. Anyway, I wholeheartedly agree. The whole false allegation thing is a pretty ridiculous fear. The letter doesn't condemn or publicly call out the person. It also seems totally ridiculous to object to anonymity for the victim. How else are you going to ensure people's safety? I really hope that anarchists start to take this problem more seriously and deal with these problems instead of whining about "kafkaesque" letters and how perpetrators are "innocent until proven guilty".
Thank you! I really appreciated your posts on that thread.
As an aside, outside the bookfair while people were gathering from a demo, another friend of mine saw a guy she'd known to say "hi" to, and saw him confronted by some women for being at the bookfair when he'd been asked not to. He maintained that he was outside the bookfair, not at the bookfair, but left soon after. In my experience, having the confidence to confront someone in that kind of situation is actually really difficult, and I personally would find that a lot easier if I knew a formal request for that person not to be there to back me up would make it a whole lot easier. But it's interesting to see how the process worked in practice, at least in one instance.
I must say I agree with this blog post and Tasty Brain. Let's say for a minute that there are false accusations that occur (although I've never heard of one), it seems to me that the amount of false accusations and actions taken falsely against accused activists are completely dwarfed in comparison with the amount of rapes and sexual assaults that occur in our community without repercussion. I think we can afford to trade a false accusation every once in a blue moon for some actual progress on creating safer spaces in our communities.
Of course, we all know about that time that Bash Back broke into someone's home and beat the guy with a baseball bat, but everyone knows that Bash Back is just completely bat shit insane.
YES. Good post.
I also think there needs to be more recognition of exactly how fucking difficult it is to even get to the point you can write the kind of letter above, let alone become some kind of crazy power-mad group purging all the men. We're a tiny scene. Even if the safer spaces group aren't perpetrators (I hope they aren't), it is likely that any wider group they are part of will include either perpetrators or their uber-defensive friends who think that the perpetrator 'isn't like that', is 'a nice guy' or perhaps 'just a bit pushy' (all quotes from men I know when confronted with the fact that one of their friends has done something they don't like and they don't really want to think about).
So this letter is not evidence of some kind of power play by women, but is more the first step and one that can only be achieved through hard work and struggle against, for instance, the attitudes seen on the 'kafkaesque' thread. Which, by the way, I did not respond to because I didn't feel like it was a particularly safe space for a woman let alone a survivor of sexual violence. Nice work boys.
NB WE DO NOT WANT TO PURGE ALL THE MEN WE WOULD JUST LIKE TO PARTICIPATE IN A SPACE WITHOUT THE RISK OF SEEING THE PERSON WHO RAPED OR OTHERWISE ASSAULTED US, SOMETHING WE ALREADY HAVE TO TO LIVE WITH ON A DAILY BASIS WITHOUT WALKING REMINDERS, ALRIGHT?
Good shit, Ramona! Thanks for taking the time to write this. I was pretty disturbed when reading that thread. It was enough to make me not want to come on here for a while.
Well, since this seems to be the long awaited pro-active thread to discuss ways and processes of dealing with sexual assault. Let's get the ball rolling. In the original thread I linked to an article written by a really good friend of mine that's included in a zine called "It's Down to This", that's available here: http://www.indybay.org/uploads/2012/01/26/itsdowntothis.pdf
Maybe ppl can check it out and see what they think.
Also, I don't live in the UK but I'm sure there must be some people in the scene/movement or connected to it, working in Rape Crisis Centres and otherwise you can contact and will still have a radical approach and view to things.
I'll PM you in a while with regards footnote 4. I may have some contacts for you.
**
hey Ramona, thanks for this post. I hadn't heard of the NYC letter before. I'm not around activist spaces or events much at this point. I think if I had just read the letter/policy of the NYC bookfair I would have had a kneejerk reaction against for the kinds of due process reasons you mention here. Your post has changed my mind, and I appreciate that very much.
I agree with this very much- sexual violence is endemic in society and as such will occur everywhere- how we handle these situations is the test for our ability to think and organise and I have no problems with people taking this on. Mistakes will be made and it will be a torturous process but there is no simple clear cut solution for complex and messy human behaviour. Having a structured response will not be enough to eliminate interpersonal violence and intimidation but it does force the issues into the open and we can learn from the success and failures and unforeseen consequences of our interventions.
Ramona, thankyou for this thoughtful blog entry. It's energising to read.
Hopefully i can respond more usefully at later date but more immediately i felt i needed to respond to this:
@shorty
It is hard for me to ignore that in the other thread you told me to
In my observation the OP often starts a discussion that shifts and moves in a number of directions and takes a number of (sometimes disagreeing) perspectives. Quite often people (& i was not alone in doing so in that thread so i do not really understand why you singled me out) criticise the way that people are responding to the subject/s in hand and sometimes even say (which i didn't) that the whole thread should be put in the bin.
At no point did i say or do i believe that that
I don't see why my criticisms should lead to the expectation that i should initiate a thread
I also saw the letter as attempting to respond to a variety of types of abuse and harassment & didn't assume that it was solely about sexual assault.
Initiating a thread kind of obliges you to follow it and respond to the people who post on it. It obligates you to think about the subject of the thread. You know nothing about my life or current circumstances to presume that i would be willing, or able to do that. As it happened i just didn't feel like doing it, partly because the atmosphere and prevalent focus on the other thread (not peoples opinions in and of themselves) didn't inspire me with hope that starting another thread would be a very useful experience for me. As you have read a number of other people also felt unhappy with the way that thread generally went.
That said i appeciate your desire to start a constructive discussion and also the link which i read during my participation in the other thread. It is a thought provoking piece and i am still turning it over in my mind.
Rob Ray
There is a safer spaces policy which outlines the grounds that somebody would not be welcome to attend the bookfair:
There's ample evidence that this isn't a case of some unnaccountable clique who are empowered to tell anybody they feel like not to attend without good reason.
**
Thanks for the post, I've re-read the thread as well. I think the focus on the idea of false accusations is not representative of the discussion as a whole but it is probably the most important problem (there was more of it than I remembered) and one I didn't really know how to argue against.
To my mind the problem wasn't that people would make false accusations of rape, it was that it was completely unclear who the safer spaces team were or who they were accountable to, if anyone. To be honest I never actually looked for that information so I've no idea if it was available, but it is good to know that the safer spaces team were available, although not sure what they'd actually do at the book fair.
To be honest I think the letter greys the water too much and the language reminds me of the language used when the council, the estate agent, the tax office, your boss does something to you leaving you powerless. I'm not sure how to fix this and obviously a lot of thought had gone into the letter but I thought that by openly suggesting that it might be nothing it undermined itself as well as recalling the nothing-speak of those in power.
jef costello
I don't have a clue what this is supposed to tell us.
Otherwise I think the OP made a fantastic post. It's quite clear that "due process" and safe spaces are not mutually exclusive, from the poster's account of the NYC bookfair group (and I tbh I think the talk about shadowy cliques is paranoid nonsense).
:(
I'm not talking "shadowy" anything, I'm talking about the very real phenomenon of small anarchist groups staffed primarily by self-selecting volunteers sometimes excluding people for bad reasons - hell libcom admins have made really controversial decisions enough times and that's completely open.
Right, that really is it, any more complaints and I'll just delete the post, I REALLY don't want this to degenerate into an argument about a related but not core issue.
In fact fuck it I'll do that anyway (I'll leave this one up as notice for future reference). As a request, can future posts not focus on my stuff but on the OP please.
**
@dohball
My sincerest apologies, and I didn't meant to single you out, it was obviously a heated thread with tempers frayed. Perhaps instead of placing the onus on you to start a thread, I should have said "If someone is willing to start that thread ..."
There's no way of me knowing that, it's an internet discussion.
It's also for these reasons I didn't think trying to turn the thread into that discussion would be productive.
I'm still critical of the letter, it's lack of commitment and I think that "perhaps a hint at the kinds of processes the recipient may be able to engage in should they want to clear all of this up would be useful" is an understatement.
But if we can let bygones be bygones maybe we can contribute to some suggestions and experiences around processes of accountability, as currently and as Ramona points out "we might not be able to deal with these issues through mutual contacts and informal channels as we currently (ineffectively) do, and we are going to need to find ways to do this". (One of my worries is that in terms of trauma and (sexual) assault well meaning but ineffectual methods can sometimes do more harm than good, in terms of mental and emotional healing/care, amongst other things.)
I think it's important because most of the time what people call an "accountability process, restorative justice, or any of the other models of dealing with abuse" are not "beyond the excommunication model" but actually blurred into it to become one and the same.
Really good article. I did try and read the thread but could not frankly be bothered after about a page.
@ shorty, many thanks for your apology and PM - totally appreciated.
yes definetly up letting bygones be bygones and getting back to more important subject at hand.
cheers, dohball
I was thinking about this post and wanted to come back and comment, I haven't got time right now to read all the subsequent discussion, sorry if I'm repeating a point already made. What I wanted to say was, let's say for the sake of argument that we were to concede the point, that this policy might be subject to abuse (ie, false accusations might happen). Even then, I think the policy is better than not having it. No policy = abusers present and make survivors and their loved ons uncomfortable or absent (all the crap that goes on now that Ramona talks about). Policy that's occasionally abused = some people are unfairly not allowed to attend the bookfair, but survivors have recourse in order to safely be able to attend the bookfair. That is to say, I think that this policy even if abused would be better than its absence.
I may be overthinking this and I'm not trying to suggest that any actual claims made have been false, just trying to take on the sort of "we should have due process" objection. (Also wanted to say, the post talks about how people say "let's beat up the abuser" but no one actually does so - actually abusers do sometimes get beaten up in anarchist milieus for this, at least in the US, there was an incident of that in New York's insurrectionary milieu in recent memory. That's niether here nor there for the post but I thought it was worth mentioning.)
Just to say that I agree with most of the points Ramona makes in this post. However, I think it's a bit out of order to quote my comment (“if you say you have a principle of believing the accuser by default, and giving them anonymity, then that will encourage loads of false allegations.” ) in a post about sexual assault, therefore implying my comments were about sexual assaults, whereas they weren't in the slightest - my point was about allegations made by anarchists about other anarchists in general. Many of which are outright false or grossly distorted, hence us not permitting them on libcom.
About sexual assaults specifically I recognise that the much bigger problem is nonreporting rather than false reporting, and would never have said anything otherwise.
To be honest, seeing that the "safer spaces policy" was actually about sexual harassment, assault makes me feel much happier with the letter in general, as this wasn't clear initially and seeing how stupid so many American politicos are I wouldn't have been surprised if it was about a clique that didn't want people who had disagreed with them in a meeting to turn up.
Soapy
yeah, I agree with this post as well.
Which is why my comment quoted above wasn't about false sexual assault allegations (which I've never heard of in the UK) but was about allegations in general (of which there are lots about all sorts of things)
Steven., point noted, I've now edited the quote out of the original article and added a footnote (I love footnotes) explaining.
To clarify, I was not intending to pick out particular responses or users and misread the context of the quote I used, sorry. [/Hari]
Some really interesting responses that I'll get back to soon, am away atm.
Cheers Ramona
I agree, in general, that people talk nonsense about other people all the time. But do people talk nonsense about people, then ask that they be excluded from events? We pretty much have a similar process for the London Bookfair, though AFAIK people are told personally they aren't welcome rather than being sent a letter. Is there any known incident of someone making a malicious complaint about a trivial incident to the organisers?
posi
Well I think a lot of people on this site would think the complaint about Aufheben being at the bookfair last year was "a malicious complaint about a trivial incident".
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I like Ramona's post and wrote a reply to it but it got a bit out of control. It was heading to 1,000 words and I still hadn't said everything I wanted to say. So I might work on it a bit more and put it up as a blog post. Plus I want to protect the identity of some of the people in the cases I discuss so I might not put it up at all.
But I just want to say two things.
1. I think on the question of false accusations, innocence, guilt and process. A big problem is that, from my experience, the only time a collective process happens is when people have already decided that someone is guilty. This is problematic in three ways. (a) The obvious one - what if someone accused in a process isn't guilty? It's problematic to just assume guilt at the start of a process. But, what happens when it isn't decided that someone is guilty? Then from my experience no process happens. Which brings me to the other two big problems. (b) People who have had things happen to them don't get it dealt with. (c) People who have been accused of things don't get it dealt with so the accusation hangs over them.
2. I really just want to echo Tart's post. I think it sums up my feelings on this reasonably well:
This has been reposted on anarchistnews.org http://anarchistnews.org/content/safer-spaces-false-allegations-and-nyc-anarchist-bookfair
If there's one thing to be said for anarchistnews, it makes libcom look good.
People on anarchistnews calling this "left-wing fascism" and saying "COINTELPRO subtext is written all over it" make me cringe at some of the people in the world who call themselves anarchists.
georgestapleton
Totes diff. obv. Public political dispute.
Part of the reason for that is anonymous posting. There are a million and one assholes who post there (and not just there!) who are obviously not anarchists. There are about three or four actual content-filled comments worth reading and possibly responding to, but, as is the case with every comment section after an article, you have to plod your way through a load of dross to find them. I usually just bypass anything with fewer than three sentences.
radicalgraffiti
What an utter cluster fuck. I wouldn't expect any less from Anarchist News.....
Good blog post ramona.
And yeah sure we can all point fingers at anarchist news because its an easy target with its open posting policy but i am still absolutely disgusted by a lot of the behaviour on that original thread.
I've been thinking a lot lately about these kind of processes and I do sort of agree with the "just do something" sentiment. I've been sexually harassed and assaulted by other activists and not once was the process afterwards (if there was one) even close to satisfactory. I've also witnessed many female friends being victimized and often ending up having to leave organizations themselves because it was the only way to get distance from the perpetrator.
However, I do think that false allegations could be a real problem. The incidence is incredibly low. But from what statistics I've seen it's similar to false reporting of any other crime (which is also incredibly low), this wasn't including cases that were found "not guilty" but only proven false allegations.
I personally have seen two women make false allegations of domestic violence against partners. I know this because I was living with them and witnessed the incidents involved and later heard them telling versions of the stories which were either vastly exaggerated or completely false. In one case I think it was a sort of revenge after a break-up and in the other I think the woman had psychological problems. I've also seen men do it but it was generally in the context of trying to cover up there own violence which I think falls into a whole different category.
I knew one women who made rape allegations against several men over the time I knew her. I originally believed her and went to a lot of effort to support her in every way I could. However it eventually became apparent that she was actually having some kind of psychotic episode as her allegations became more and more extreme and eventually involving supernatural elements. I don't know if some of the accusations were true or if they were all false. But a number of them were clearly complete delusions.
All these women were/are my friends. I had every reason to believe them. So when I say that I believe the allegations to be false it's not without a lot of thought and 100% certainty.
And I do think that cliques are a real issue. A friend of mine was accused of basically being a rapist by such a clique because he was going out with someone they didn't want him to (also a friend). His supposed victim was going out with him quite willingly and was extremely angry about the accusations. But despite this it kept going until he was driven out of the group.
I do realise this is just four incidents and pales in comparison with the number of real assaults and harassment I've witnessed/heard about. And maybe it's unusual to have witnessed so many false claims, but I don't think so.
Also I am concerned that if it is known that there is a process for barring people from various events that just involves writing a letter to the organizers, and where there is no right of reply, then it would be very easy for the state to abuse this.
two comments on emma's thoughtful post:
Emma2012
1: the number of assaults certainly exceeds the number of false accusations. but that is irrelevant to the reality of the victimization of people falsely accused. too many posts in these two threads suggest that since the number of false accusations is smaller, they can be ignored, as if victims of a certain type should just suck it up.
2: no, it's not unusual to have witnessed a number of false claims.
it goes without saying that no victim of sexual abuse should ever have live with the torment of seeing the attacker left unaccountable anywhere, but especially in a milieu which is working to minimize differences in social power.
Petey, I don't think anyone is saying false accusations should be ignored. I've had a loved one falsely accused of assault by an abusive partner, to the police, resulting in massive stress and expense. That's a huge problem and not something to pretend is acceptable. I do think that "you can't come to the anarchist book fair" is really, really mild as these things go. If the safer space policy was a "kick the ass of whoever is reported" I wouldn't support it, but all it says is "you can't come to this short event."
Personally if the choice is between the current arrangement where abusers get to push victims and survivors our, or a situation where some false accusations happen but more survivors can attend, I think that's an acceptable though unpleasant tradeoff. I'd say that's true even if there were equal numbers of people affected either way (as in, if there was one false accusation made for every survivor who could more comfortably attend), because in this case I think the punishment (unable to attend anarchist bookfair) is milder than having to deal with a former abuser. And I think it's really unlikely that there would be this kind of one-for-one frequency. False accusations happen, but less frequently than assault and harrassment do.
Not really related but I'm unconvinced that anarchists can actually do meaningful accountability processes to handle this stuff. Part of what I like about this safer space policy is that it's just trying to make survivors comfortable and welcome and isn't trying to handle everything else to do with this stuff. At least some of this (the aftereffects of abuse and assault, let alone meaningfully working with abusers in a restorative way) seems to me way, way beyond what anarchists are able to happen. We might as well try to do amateur surgery, this stuff is about as complex as that in my opinion, and should be treated with similar level of seriousness.
Ramona - thanks for the post. Really good, and I want to express some of kind of respect for you being open about being a victim too. I think thats really impressive.
I think I wrote that inadequately but I hope you get what I mean.
Does anyone have a link to libertarian workshops/training on dealing with abuse, processes for dealing with it, restorative justice, best practices etc. I would really appreciate any links. Thanks heaps.
Simon
Hey simono,
There's some really good resources and links here. Support New York facilitate accountability processes, the New York based Coalition for Safer Spaces have some good stuff. Philly's Pissed have a lot of really good resources, although they're no longer active and direct people instead to Philly Survivor Support Collective. I'm sure any of these groups would be happy to talk to you further about any other questions or resources, I hope that's helpful!
While all these are true, I think my biggest criticism of trying to handle a situation like this is that it is the sort of thing which is going to be ineffective.
Why? Because someone who reads this letter and decides not to attend a meeting as such is more likely to be someone more to the innocent side of the gray area, at least that is. I do understand that these people would be a small minority, and I imagine most who received this letter attended anyways. And those who do attend the meeting despite this letter would almost universally be the ones who should be out.
Either someone is banned or not. Half measures never work. And a sexual offender or rapist who gets this letter isn't going to be deterred, because it asks them not to come but implies that there won't be any real consequences if they do. Why? Because, as difficult as it might be to accept this, sexual offenders and rapists are human beings too, with their psychologies and pschological justifications. Especially in radical communities, most probably a majority of them don't see themselves as sexual offenders or rapists, and it is not difficult for them to justify theirr actions, with the whole predominant patriarchal mentality.
The fact that the writer of the original post witnessed a sexual assult and the fact that this letter was produced in the bookfair itself, creating a dispute, also mentioned in the original post, clearly demonstrates this in my opinion.
So what is the alternative?
This may well be true in the US - it certainly isn't true to the same extent in Turkey. An extreme example is the PKK, who has banned its male and female members from entering any sexual or romantic relationship, to the point of punishing them for "the adultry of the eye", in other words looking at each other - there's always been rumors from former members that it's a very different story for the leaders . Evidently, most of the left has no such attitude, but on the level of membership, men who do sexually assult or rape women in these groups do in an overwhelming majority of the cases, at least get kicked out. Of course, patriarchal attitudes are extremely strong - probably a lot stronger than the American radical millieu when it comes to language and mentality. Again, obviously all this is a result of Stalinist/Trotskyist, top to bottom disciplinary practices, which tends to bend substantially when it comes to the leaders.
I don't think kicking them in the head would solve anything either and attempts to. But the fact is that deterrance is effective. I'd say a clear ban of known offenders, a serious warning about anyone who intends to sexually or physically assult anyone and an active work towards being able to identify and kick them out in such events would be a better way to deal the situation.