Sexual assault, things we do, and who we are

[cos]

I considered locking this to friends-only, but I think it's important and I want people to link to it and re-share it and that's not going to happen unless it's public. Please read it, and share it

Comments

[cos]

Good thought. I'm at work right now, and don't access fetlife from work, but I'll post it there when I'm home.

[aroraborealis]

This black-and-white thinking is harmful, and it's in play across the board, not just in personal relationships.

It's this kind of thinking that made a lot of smart people say a lot of dumb things around the Julian Assange and Roman Polansky sexual assault cases: people have a hard time saying, "I like and value [some aspect of] this person's work, and therefore, I value him, and therefore, I can't/don't want to think of him as a horrible person, and I'm not capable of holding both elements in my notion of him simultaneously, so she is a lying bitch."

It's a big problem.

[jered]

I don't have time to write something longer right now, but we're having pretty much identical issues in the Burning Man community. Every time we try to have an honest discussion about how things aren't just black and white and we need to talk openly about that, some do-gooders swoop in to shush the whole thing "out of respect for the [victims|accused]".

[drwex]

At the BARCC training they presented the notion that interpersonal behavior always falls on a spectrum between clearly acceptable and clearly unacceptable. We can all agree that the spectrum exists, but for each person any given interaction will fall at different points on the spectrum. The trainers emphasized that behavior isn't isolated incidents - that problematic interactions are part of a pattern - and that each of us can see when things are tending toward the unacceptable end. The emphasis then is not on individual acts but on shifting patterns of behaviors.

Which is to say I don't disagree with your formulation, but that I'm trying to change my way of thinking to use BARCC's model and maybe that model will help you too.

ETA: And I have to say that this whole thing is fantastically difficult to approach as a Person With Major Privilege because I'm not sure whether I'm doing well or just waving my privilege around and getting away with stuff.

[cos]

Thanks, that is a useful addition. Also, though, see the edit I just added at the bottom of the post.

> ETA: And I have to say that this whole thing is fantastically difficult to approach as a Person With Major Privilege because I'm not sure whether I'm doing well or just waving my privilege around and getting away with stuff.

That's part of why I wrote this. I worry that when I make a mistake people won't tell me, and I want it to be easier for them to tell me.

[drwex]

I went back to your post and saw this add which I'm quoting here as I imagine you might make further edits as the conversation develops:

my real emphasis is the distinction between talking about actions and how to change them, vs. labeling people and treating actions as identityAgain to refer back to the BARCC training, the entire workshop was pretty devoid of labeling. The focus was on actions and responding to actions, contextualizing actions, seeing people in relation to actions, and so on. On the one hand that discourse avoids labels and as such can be significantly more nuanced

[cos]

It's not the label as much as it is the idea of identity, but labels give identity. What I'm saying here isn't that labels have no value; I'm saying something more similar to the opposite. Labels have power (through suggesting identity), and in this context we've been applying that power in a way that is sometimes actively harmful.

[mzrowan]

Fantastic post! I'm going to incorporate the gist of this into my next Welcome Party intro talk.