Response to Solidarity's "Statement on Sexual Violence and the Left"

A response to A Solidarity Statement on Sexual Violence and the Left

The statement from Solidarity regarding sexual violence in the organized Left is a welcome start, but it fails to go far enough in taking a meaningful stand on the issue. While we commend Solidarity for reflecting internally on how they can better deal with sexual violence, we call on the organization to deal with the Progressive Labor Party’s defense of rapists more seriously by publicly rejecting working with PLP. By doing so, Solidarity would be able to live up to their own statement, which claims that their “commitments to fighting sexism and patriarchy demand that [they] dedicate time and resources to combating rape culture [and] supporting and listening to survivors.” Thus far, they have failed to listen to the survivor in question here regarding the kind of support she has asked for.

In the initial public statement exposing Seth Miller as a rapist and castigating PLP for defending him, this blog issued a general call for PLP to be excluded from all activism and organizing spaces. This constitutes the bare minimum both of support for the person harmed by Seth and of the measures that must be taken to help prevent further harm. Refusing to work with PLP is not only a statement of solidarity against rape and rape culture, as well as a way to put pressure on PLP; it is also a practical safety issue, as the presence of an organization like PLP that harbors and defends rapists would make any organizing space unsafe for others.

The fact that Solidarity and PLP do not currently work together organizationally makes it a particularly low-risk issue for Solidarity to take a stand on. We understand that Solidarity is comprised of a diverse group of activists belonging to various traditions, who may not agree on all things but share some basic political principles. We therefore call on Solidarity to make refusal to work with organizations that actively harbor and defend rapists something that all Solidarity members can agree on.

“We Are Proud of our Record”: Administrative Complicity and Campus Rape Culture at UCLA

Part Two in a series on rape culture at UCLA.

Earlier we provided a short timeline of rape-related events at UCLA over the last few years. This list reflects only the small number of rapists and rape apologists who ended up in the news, but as we are all aware, the number of sexual assaults and rapes reported to police is substantially smaller than the number of rapes that are actually committed. We won’t rehash well-known—and, unfortunately, often challenged—statistics about rape under-reporting, except to point out that this under-reporting is a serious symptom of both rape culture and white supremacy. It is no different for UCLA, which also has a well-documented history of racist, sexist attacks against women of color.

Rapes go unreported because victims are left with the burden of proof, and that burden can result in unbearable shaming, blaming, retaliation, and trauma, all of which are often equally as awful as the experience of being assaulted in the first place. Women of color face even further limited access to legal interventions because of a whole host of historical and structural forces. Court systems are material locations of white, male supremacy and are therefore untenable solutions for sexual assault and rape.

All of these problems with rape reporting are replicated at UCLA because of the violent rape culture sustained by our campus administration. Anti-rape education at UCLA consists of telling women how to avoid assault. No one is telling men not to be rapists. People who speak out against rape and try to shift the conversation to changing men’s behavior are retaliated against with repressive bullying from misogynistic students who are “insulted” by the insinuation that their classmates could be rapists. One professor in a life sciences department routinely opens his lecture by having a female student handle an unidentified substance in front of the whole class—the student is only informed that the substance is semen after she’s already held it in her hands. Academic departments consistently tell students who have been sexually assaulted that they should be careful not to ruin the lives of their assailants by spreading dangerous “rumors.”

We know that campus administration treats instances of rape as exceptional circumstances without acknowledging the extent to which misogyny and sexual violence are part of everyday life on our campus. UCLA administrators fail to understand rape culture’s pervasiveness. Instead, they’ve said that they’re proud of their rape record because it shows students are more comfortable reporting rapes to campus police than at other universities. According to these administrators, UCLA has fostered a safe campus climate with regard to sexual assault responses due in large part to hiring a woman to head up the UCLA police department. UCLA has provided zero qualitative or quantitative evidence to suggest that there is correlation between a woman chief of police and higher rape reporting figures. To suggest that we should somehow celebrate the campus’s high reporting percentage misses the point: UCLA has a rape problem.

UCLA’s argument is designed to dodge a much more terrifying possibility: that more reported rapes than average also means more unreported rapes. Reported rapes figures always only scratch the surface of actual incidences of rape. UCLA doesn’t want us to ask the question: if this many are being reported, how many more remain unreported?

It is obvious that UCLA has a rape problem. So what are we going to do about it?

Glaswegian anti-rapists get roughed up by SWP thugs

Excerpt from  “THIS IS A TAX DEMO, WHY DON’T YOU GO BACK TO YOUR RAPE DEMO” from A Thousand Flowers

Glaswegian activists show us how to deal with rape apologists! The SWP physically attacks our Scottish comrades for shutting down the speech of a key SWP player in the coverup of a rape committed by an SWP leader.

Dave Sherry was invited to speak in his capacity as UNITE Scottish Federation of Housing Associations branch secretary, but one of his other roles is as a member of the Disputes Committee of the SWP which it has emerged has delivered a “not proved” verdict in the case of senior party member Martin Smith raping a teenage member of the party. It has also taken it upon itself to “rule” on several other rape cases. That Disputes Committee, and all in the SWP who have lined up to support it and silence internal dissent against its decision to even entertain holding its own rape trial, let alone come to the decision that they “didn’t think that Comrade Delta [Martin Smith] raped W” (Candy U, Disputes Committee member, from leaked transcript of an SWP conference), is a Committee of rape apologists. The ins and outs of that case and the other rape cases the SWP Disputes Committee have felt it appropriate to try to cover up, and the droves of activists who have left the SWP as a result, have been discussed extensively elsewhere. (There is a round up of almost every article written about the current SWP crisis here if you’re so inclined) 

When Dave Sherry took to the megaphone to speak to the crowd, a group of activists (from a variety of backgrounds and affiliations, or none) booed him. We shouted “rape apologist”, because that’s what he is. We disrupted his speech because he does not have a right to speak for any progressive movement. His uninterrupted presence would have been an indication that we condone the things he has done, and we don’t, and we shouldn’t. We started when he spoke and we finished when he finished. 

[...] 

They were shouting at us to shut the fuck up, to leave the Bedroom Tax demo and “go back to our rape demo”, telling us we would be arrested for telling the truth about Dave Sherry’s involvement in a rape conspiracy. We were called “middle class” for you know, thinking rape is a problem that shouldn’t be swept under the carpet. Josh Brown (Glasgow SWP Organiser) was repeatedly giving us the fingers from the middle of the speakers platform – while Sherry spoke next to him, while wearing a stewards’s bib, and while most of the crowd probably had no idea what was going on – but they say we were the ones making a mockery of the demo?? Funny that.

[...] 

Dave Sherry should never have been asked to speak at such an event, which is far too important to be used as a vehicle to re-establish the credibility of deeply uncredible and frankly dangerous people and organisations. We need to keep this up, and provide no platform to the SWP (but in particular actual Disputes Committee members such as Sherry). It’s appalling to see supposed “socialists” assaulting and screaming at young women speaking out against a rape cover-up, but in a way at least they are ready and willing to show their true colours – it should become clear to all who needs to be avoided for the safety of activists and the health of our movements.
 

This is how rape apologists should be treated. 

A Solidarity Statement on Sexual Violence and the Left

A Solidarity Statement on Sexual Violence and the Left
from the Solidarity Committee on Interpersonal and Sexual Violence

April 16, 2013

The organized left, both socialist and anarchist, has been faced with the problems of rape and other forms of interpersonal violence in our movements in a particularly intense way in the past few months. Over 120 members have publicly resigned from the British Socialist Workers Party following repeated actions taken by the Central Committee to demean and silence survivors and their allies while failing to hold aggressors accountable. In the aftermath of Occupy, traumatic events that occurred within encampments and in related social and political scenes are now being widely discussed and debated. The topic of rape has momentarily broken out of the wall of silence in broader society as well, with widespread public discussion around cases such as the gang rape of a woman on a bus in Delhi in December and the Steubenville, Ohio “rape crew.”

This heightened discussion of and attention to the topic of rape is a good thing for the left if we take this opportunity not only to call out the problem of gendered violence in the world, but to get our own houses in order. A case which came to our attention in December, involving an anarchist activist who was raped by a longtime friend and fellow organizer who was a member of the Progressive Labor Party, exposes a disturbing level of resistance to acknowledging and confronting issues of sexual violence. We highlight this case here in response to a call for support from the survivor and her close allies; we think it is important for the socialist left to take a stand.

With the support of allies, the survivor brought this case to the PLP and demanded that the aggressor be held accountable. After an initial meeting with the survivor and her allies, the PLP stalled on follow-up with the survivor and her allies for months, never providing support for the survivor, clarity as to whether they were taking her report seriously, transparency around their process, or agreeing to meaningful, concrete accountability for the aggressor, at times demanding “conclusive proof” of rape from the survivor, at times admitting the aggressor’s culpability.

The survivor and her allies, frustrated by the stonewalling, eventually released a public statement about this matter. The PLP responded by accusing the survivor and her allies of behaving as “informant-provocateurs” while claiming to fight “sexism, patriarchy, and misogyny in every aspect.” This letter did not include any reflection on what had gone so wrong with their own process that a survivor would feel the need to take the difficult step of releasing a public statement.

We do not criticize the PLP’s process here from a position of superiority, but from the standpoint that the question of sexual violence needs to be addressed by the left urgently and seriously. When we engage in victim-blaming, silence survivors, and ignore or dismiss charges of sexual violence, we are feeding the rape culture within our organizations and movements. When we shield an aggressor from accountability processes that might be uncomfortable or disruptive and instead facilitate an aggressor's return to a “normal life” as quickly as possible, we send the message that the comfort of aggressors is more important than the safety and healing of survivors. These tendencies, far too common on the left, create an oppressive environment for survivors and for groups of people who are regularly exposed to sexual violence, including women and LGBTQ people.

Our commitments to fighting sexism and patriarchy demand that we dedicate time and resources to combating rape culture, supporting and listening to survivors, finding ways to hold aggressors accountable for the trauma they have inflicted upon others, and educating each other on consensual sexual relations, not only in the world but in our own intimate relationships and movement spaces. We do not see any possibility of building genuinely socialist, radical, or revolutionary movements if these movements refuse to address fully and respond to accusations of sexual violence, do not actively oppose gender and sexual oppression, or push to the margins women, LGBTQ people, and survivors of sexual violence.

Reflecting on the PLP case, the SWP case, and others has led us to begin a process of reflecting on our own organizational practices for dealing with rape, sexual harassment, domestic violence, and other forms of interpersonal violence. These instances occupy our attention for good reason – if poorly handled or ignored, they bring out all of the worst features of an organization’s functioning, and groups can easily degenerate under the weight of our own failure to confront matters in a forthright, healthy manner. At the same time, rape culture and gendered violence constitute a pervasive, all too “normal” everyday cultural and organizational backdrop that we need to undo if we are to create organizationally healthy, feminist spaces that reflect the kind of liberation and justice we want to see in the world. We hope others on the left will take up these questions as well.

---------------------------------------------------------

Response to Solidarity from the Cassandra Solanas Collective:

The statement from Solidarity regarding sexual violence in the organized Left is a welcome start, but it fails to go far enough in taking a meaningful stand on the issue. While we commend Solidarity for reflecting internally on how they can better deal with sexual violence, we call on the organization to deal with the Progressive Labor Party’s defense of rapists more seriously by publicly rejecting working with PLP. By doing so, Solidarity would be able to live up to their own statement, which claims that their “commitments to fighting sexism and patriarchy demand that [they] dedicate time and resources to combating rape culture [and] supporting and listening to survivors.” Thus far, they have failed to listen to the survivor in question here regarding the kind of support she has asked for.

In the initial public statement exposing Seth Miller as a rapist and castigating PLP for defending him, this blog issued a general call for PLP to be excluded from all activism and organizing spaces. This constitutes the bare minimum both of support for the person harmed by Seth and of the measures that must be taken to help prevent further harm. Refusing to work with PLP is not only a statement of solidarity against rape and rape culture, as well as a way to put pressure on PLP; it is also a practical safety issue, as the presence of an organization like PLP that harbors and defends rapists would make any organizing space unsafe for others.

The fact that Solidarity and PLP do not currently work together organizationally makes it a particularly low-risk issue for Solidarity to take a stand on. We understand that Solidarity is comprised of a diverse group of activists belonging to various traditions, who may not agree on all things but share some basic political principals. We therefore call on Solidarity to make refusal to work with organizations that actively harbor and defend rapists something that all Solidarity members can agree on.

“We are proud of our record”: A Brief Timeline of Rape at UCLA

The University of California, Los Angeles has historically ranked highly among universities nationwide for the quality of its academics and research programs, but the university also has the honor of ranking first among universities for reported rapes.

In 2010 the Center for Investigative Reporting noted that UCLA had more reported rapes on campus than any other UC campus. That year 36 rapes were reported to campus police, which accounts for about 1 reported rape per 1000 students. Second place went to UC Davis which trailed behind UCLA with .74 rapes per 1000 students, or 23 total reported rapes.

That same year NPR covered the CIR report and interviewed then public policy director Daniel Carter about why UCLA’s ranking was so high. Carter explained that the UC Police Department has created a campus climate that makes students more comfortable with reporting sexual assaults.

Fast forward to 2012. Business Insider created a report on the country’s most dangerous campuses based on information gleaned from FBI statistics on violent crimes and property crimes. UCLA ranked #1 on BI’s list. UCLA Director of Media Relations Phil Hampton got pretty defensive about the article. He’s quoted as saying

"Safety is a priority at UCLA, and we are proud of our record. UCLA police take reports of crimes committed not only on university-owned and university-operated properties both on campus and off, but also crimes committed in neighboring off-campus areas where UCLA police have concurrent jurisdiction with other law enforcement agencies. Our students feel safe. To conclude that UCLA somehow is dangerous is a reckless mischaracterization of data."

Even more recently, UCLA athletic director Dan Guerrero hired notorious rape apologist Steve Alford as the new men’s basketball coach. This anonymous petition with documentation outlines how Alford intimidated basketball player and rapist Pierre Pierce’s victim in order to silence her and force her to find and “informal” solution to this “interpersonal problem.”

On April 12, 2013 the UCLA student newspaper reported that Alford publicly apologized for his statements in defense of Pierce. Alford’s apology came in the wake of news reports about UCLA water polo player Hakop Kaplanyan’s “alleged” rape and arrest.  The Daily Bruin reports that Kaplanyan was arrested and suspended from the university, but is in the process of appealing his suspension because he wants to continue attending classes.

And finally one month ago UCLA student Paul Meyer tried to rape and murder a woman at a frat party on campus.

The Anatomy of a Cover-up: How Organizations Respond to Patriarchy and Reinforce it

Excerpt from "To the Victor Go the Toils"

The more public face of the cover-up is the broad participation in a predictable narrative of apologism and a defense of the person called out. The steps taken by his supporters to construct these narratives often look the same–speak to the merit of the comrade who has been confronted and maybe gather others who have not been hurt by his actions to do so. Assist in any logic that allows him to seem like the victim of the survivor, including viscous and inaccurate depictions of the survivor’s behavior. Shift the scrutiny onto the survivor or the feminist grouping at large, or thoroughly examine their methodology to see if there is fault there. If there is a political fall-out, blame the women for having caused polarization and division. Some form of this narrative emerges, with every case, as part of the cover-up–in order to complicate, distract from or question the accusations. 

[...] 

Survivor stories are rarely made up and our starting point has to be believing and supporting the survivor. Once you go down the road of disbelief and questioning, however, the logic of rape and abuse apologism is inevitable. In fact, in our society this apologism is simply common sense and anybody without an explicit political understanding and critique of this apologism will most likely fall into these same patterns. 

[...] 

There have also been concerns raised about the “complexity” of these issues, as though abusive and patriarchal acts are somehow complex. This reasoning is reminscent of the conservative discourse in the 1990s concerning sexual abuse during the Anita Hill hearings, that “there was a grey area.” During this time even liberal feminists responded that actually power is pretty “black and white.” This “complexity” idea takes the varying concerns for both the survivor and the abuser and places them on the same level. In London, an investigation was carried out to determine whose story was accurate. In Portland the same, and we are asked to consider whether survivors should be “in charge” of an accountability process, and whether there is a tension between survivor support and abuser accountability. Inherent in both cases is an even handed approach that places the survivor and the abuser on the same level. As with all “even-handed” approaches, it cannot help but reinforce the dominant forms of oppression in our society. There also seems to be an underlying concern, in both cases, that the survivor is reckless and erratic and just might bring all of our good work down if we let them. It is hard not to see this sort of attitude as patriarchy reproduced in our movement.

Another girl dead after being gang-raped

Audrie Pott committed suicide after three classmates gang raped her while she was unconscious. These monsters photographed their violence and shared them around, resulting in their arrest several months later.

http://news.yahoo.com/3-teens-arrested-assault-girls-suicide-024221519.html

There is no doubt that gang rape of teenage girls is not new or increasing in numbers, but social media has made evidence easier to come by. Social media also multiplies the violence and humiliation inflicted on their victims, when their peers live vicariously through the rapists by viewing and celebrating the images of rape. These women might have survived their rapes, had rape culture not exploded the violence of the rape into an experience re-perpetrated by their classmates repeated endlessly in the hallways of schools and on facebook and twitter.

The term "victim" here is a deliberate choice over the preferred but imperfect term "survivor". These women are not survivors but ended their lives in order to escape the daily violence, domination, and threats that their classmates were causing.

Finally, how many women of color are driven to suicide by the violence of rape, yet their tragic stories are not told, their perpetrators are never named, and there is no public outcry for justice. 

Rehtaeh Parsons is Murdered by Rape Culture

Excerpted from "Rehtaeh Parsons is Dead" by Alexandra 

Survivor support is crucial, and undoubtedly the vicious bullying Parsons was subject to after her rape drove her to such drastic measures. But unless we are resigned to rape as an inevitability, we have to intervene before violence ever occurs. 

Last night, when I mentioned to my roommate that I was working on this article, she told me she wanted action. She didn’t want just another essay pointing out how terrible rape is; she wanted something to do about it. She’s right. Instead of wallowing in injustice, let’s finally wake up from the delusion that we have any more time to waste. Rape culture kills. Rehtaeh Parsons is dead and we are in a state of emergency. 

Organize your neighborhood or school against rape culture: run consent education workshops and recruit participants to pledge their stance against violence. March, demonstrate, to publicly prove to all that those who inflict violence on others will not be supported or included by your community. Every time a publication runs a piece promoting rape culture, write a letter in response. Reject slut-shaming and victim-blaming of all forms. Loudly. Model respect for others’ bodily autonomy and stand up for your own in everyday situations to promote a culture of consent. Intervene if you see a dangerous situation developing, and teach others to do the same. Combat the transmission of rape culture from one generation to the next: teach kids to be better than we are. Don’t invite rapists to your parties (I can’t believe I even have to say that, but I do). Make sure survivors in your area have somewhere to turn for justice and support, and to stop their rapists from re-offending. If this resource doesn’t exist, create it. Refuse to tolerate speech that promotes rape; speak up even–no, especially–when to do so would be rude. Listen to a survivor when no one else will.

Rapists and Abusers Called Out

Names are named on "Rapists and Abusers Called Out".  It welcomes your report.

Project Unbreakable

Photos of survivors holding quotes from their attackers.

Strong, beautiful, tragic, and enraging.

Woman burns her rapist to death

Excerpt from the Hindustan Times

During interrogation, the woman said she extracted revenge for her rape.

Police said Thakur, father of four girls, had been accused in dozens of cases of eve-teasing and harassing women. His younger brother had recently come out of jail in a case of outraging the modesty of a schoolgirl, two years ago.

As the comments say, "Bharat ratna! Shabash" भारत रत्न! शाबश 

If only rapists were caught and dealt with as swiftly as this woman.