For more than a year now, the Perth sf/f community has faced a situation in which a woman who was sexually assaulted (who I will call L) and the man who publicly admitted to doing it (who I will call T) both wanted to attend the annual science fiction convention (known as Swancon). For numerous reasons, none of them surprising to anyone who has been paying attention to the world, L did not press charges, but still didn’t want to share a convention space with him for a weekend.
So a group of well-meaning, although ultimately misguided, people tried to put the responsibility onto the governing board to somehow prevent T from attending so that she could attend in peace. It’s this aspect of the issue that I wish to discuss. For a long while, a range of options were raised, discussed, and none received widespread support. Should T be banned, and if so for how long? Could the committee simply refuse to sell him a membership? Would it be possible to arrange a “time share” in which they each attended on alternate days? More constitutionally-minded people argued (I believe correctly) that, as an incorporated body, there were limitations to the constitution that needed to be addressed, but that these changes must not be rushed in order to deal with one case, given the potential for future abuse in any new power hastily granted to the board. Change, even if it was possible, must happen with very careful consideration of how any new rules would work in all situations, not just the one they were faced with at the time.
And so things got more difficult. Friends and supporters of L (although not L herself) began to express disappointment at the inability of the board to “do something”, although what that something was was never articulated. I’m full of sympathy for their distress and anger. But at the same time, I find this attitude (commonly aimed at governments, public servants, companies… any visible sources of power) incredibly frustrating. It’s misplaced anger, an attempt to focus blame, but it’s unnecessary, ineffective, and especially in situations like this, where members of the board are also members of a small community, it’s unfair. Seth Godin wrote about “The false solace of vilification” and I think it’s a relevant point here.
I want to reiterate that I really do sympathise with the friends and supporters who felt this way; they were interested only in helping someone who deserved support and help from the entire community. I simply want to examine the context in which the events unfolded.
Because this was a failure, but it was the community’s failure, not the board’s. This never would have been a problem in need of a solution if T hadn’t felt that there was enough reasons to attend in the first place. After he admitted what happened, how was there ever enough support and friendship for him that he wanted to come at all?
This, I think, is the point at which law and personal ethics need to figure out who’s responsible for what. Calling for changes to the rules of justice in order to better secure rape convictions can sometimes be, as Skepticlawyer argues, “to make the perfect the enemy of the good”. While making sure that victims of sexual assault can see justice done is an incredibly important aim, it mustn’t be done at the expense of due process and fairness. Laws and rules are blunt instruments, and creating them to deal with one situation, however clear cut, may lead to disastrous consequences later. And to a large extent the problem isn’t the justice system anyway, so much as it’s the personal prejudices, weaknesses and ignorance of the people who make it up, i.e. the community, in which victim-blaming attitudes are still far too common.
And on the other side of the coin, we need to recognise that there’s no contradiction between making it both legally and morally difficult to refuse employment and housing etc. to people who haven’t been convicted of any crime, or who have served their sentence; while still maintaining the right, and in some cases a duty, to refuse to accept certain people into one’s small community. Perhaps if admitted rapists were shunned on the same level as people who are simply rude or unpleasant to talk to, then we wouldn’t be in such a mess.
I’m not the only one who believes this, and so in the last week a number of members of the community have stood up and made it clear that T isn’t welcome in their community, and that they don’t appreciate his refusal to walk away and let his victim reclaim some level of normalcy. For the moment, it appears this has been successful. It’s just terribly sad that this wasn’t the first response.
As already stated, the perpetrator admitted to what he was accused of and claimed to be remorseful for his actions. Given that the facts aren’t disputed by anyone, I’m not going to entertain any commentary on the specific case that names or tries to attack anyone personally involved. Keep it civil or take it elsewhere. While I don’t know either L or T, I am involved in the community and know many of the people on various sides of the debate.
What I want to know is if T has admitted to his actions, assuming that he is suffering some guilt now isn’t it beholden on him to walk into the cop shop and surrender himself?
Great, great post, Anna.
Sometimes it isn’t difficult or problematic, though, to use rules to restrict people’s rights, and vilification doesn’t have to enter into it.
The working with children checks, police checks and prohibited employment declarations that exist across the various States do just this: restricting the employment of individuals, even unconvicted ones, who pose a risk to children, in child-related industries.
It seems to me that a community, or a governing body of a public sphere, or any constituted source of power (as you’ve put it) has the obligation to maintain a sense of security for its members according to their expectations. Is that unreasonable?
Just a quick aside…a lot of nightclubs and other venues of the like can refuse people at the door because of dress or because the place is too full or “just because.”
Why can’t that tactic be used at Swancon if this guy is known?
I mean it’s a small community and cons are more intimate in some way than bars. Surely they have the right to just refuse entry.
(Slight bias here, having been assualted in the past I totally understand the dread when you come face to face with your assailant in a normally safe environment.)
Fantastic post, Anna.
It’s so hard if you have to face up to someone who has assaulted you. But sometimes the best way to deal with it is not via the law.
I hope that the response of the SF community makes the guy think about what he’s done and that it deters him from ever doing something like that again.
tssk, it’s a complicated issue for various reasons, mainly because it isn’t just a case of buying a ticket for the con, attendees pay a membership fee to an incorporated body for a year. The solutions to that involved either transparency of decision-making, which puts the victim and the board members in a really horrible position, or a secret vote of the board to which no appeal was possible. Neither of those solutions were ideal.
People have been working on a solution and it looks like they may have one, but the motion moved at last year’s AGM says that there needs to be a period of consultation then it has to go to this year’s AGM to be voted on, which would have been too late to fix this problem now.
Not to mention that no solution is foolproof if the guy had enough support in the community.
With all sympathy for the lady involved, but wouldnt any attempt to deny this tool entry leave the organisation open to legal problems?
Not limited to unfair treatment, discrimination, and if the allegations (unfortunately thats how they would be treated in a court, without a conviction slander?? (perhaps a legal brain could clear that up for me?)
Youd hope the bloke would have enough shame not to turn up, but apart from denying him entry to certain sections of the event, how could you stop him??
Perhaps I’m under a false impression but following on from what tssk said, I presume this has all ready been done.
Typically speaking, society does not believe in atonement through redemption and only SEEM to believe in punishment, punishment, punishment but for the sake of humanity we need to allow others an attempt to redeem themselves (even if that goal is unattainable).
So the first question that needs a clear answer is, “Has the sexual assault charge been dealt with by the law?”
Ouch. Difficult then for all concerned. I’ve had to deal with a similar issue in the past with someone I knew was abusive (only physically as far as I know) but loads of people thought he was a great guy.
Made things very complicated socially (easy for me though. He just wasn’t allowed past our front door.)
Still I’ve since read regarding the situation above that the offender has agreed not to turn up.
Not surprising really.
Hard not to buy into this one, which I guess was the response of L’s friends. Had I been there I might have joined the fray and supported her. From this distance tho’ isn’t it obvious that once she had made a decision not to take legal action, which essentially means it became a personal issue, she had also now to deal with any fall-out or consequences from that decision. Even if T has admitted guilt, one wonders about the group mentality here. Surely this is now a personal and private matter and neither party or others should be making it a communal issue. Both of them have to act out of their own sense of the right thing to do, not what the group decrees. And the group has to butt out whether they approve of either party’s behaviour or not.
Nonsense. There are plenty of times when we shun people who are obnoxious, or whose attitudes and sensibilities don’t suit us, or whose conversation we don’t care for, or whose attitudes we think are repulsive. Someone who has admitted that he sexually assaulted another person is surely a prime candidate for being shunned.
I agree that the legal pathway is difficult for the victim as it stigmatises and can retraumatise but if he has admitted the offence then wouldn’t accepting an AVO be one pathway to resolve this? It would have to include a “no proximity” clause and I don’t know enough about the legal processes to comment further.
As to the matter of past criminality: the Polish went through a phase of decommunisation (and some other old Eastern bloc countries also adopted this method) whereby the post-communist government gave citizens the opportunity to “out themselves” if they had ever ratted anyone to the communist security forces (don’t know the name of the Polish organisation but it would be the equivalent of the Stasi). After the expired period, and the following clause was well advertised, they opened the secret police files to public scrutiny so that people who suspected they had been ratted could inspect their files and find out who had ratted them, what they had said and so on. Those people, the victims of political persecution, were then able to report their betrayers to the Polish state authorities and any who had not outed themselves as rats were then barred from state employment for a period (or maybe indeterminately, I don’t know).
It appears to me an interesting way to allow people the opportunity to take responsibility for their wrongful conduct and impose sanctions for the wrongful conduct but more importantly for the failure to be honest about it when it was possible to do so without economic and political sanction. They would, of course, have had to face their victims if they took the honest pathway of admission.
It probably doesn’t apply in the case of sex assault but it could inform the general issue of being responsible for one’s actions.
An AVO is an interesting solution, Paul Nolan – that way, he can’t come anywhere near her, and thus he can’t come to the convention. That way, it’s her personal choice, and she has control of the situation.
A couple of things: an AVO may be the best solution here (not knowing all the details, of course), so that’s a useful suggestion. Likewise, letting private organisations discriminate more readily may also be a good solution. Even laws that are superficially very attractive (like civil rights laws barring discrimination on the basis of race, sex, etc) can have their downsides. It’s something of which every legislator should be aware: the law of unintended consequences.
If he was remorseful then he wouldn’t put L or the group in that situation – he would volunteer and publicly commit to not going knowingly anywhere that she was to be.
That he hasn’t done this means in my book that not only is he a dickhead and a shit but that he isn’t remorseful at all.
Being sorry isn’t just doing a grandstand with words on a TV show. It involves actions consistent with being sorry.
Unfortunately theres far too much of the crocodile tears of mea culpa around these days without any action.
As a side note I’ve had to work out, a while back, how to cope with the fact that two people who insisted on being given night shift in a small place could be accommodated. The both had taken out a court order that the other couldn’t be within 3 metres of them. Yet both wanted the same shift and wanted to make it my problem. Bastards.
Anyway it was easily solved.
From this distance tho’ isn’t it obvious that once she had made a decision not to take legal action, which essentially means it became a personal issue, she had also now to deal with any fall-out or consequences from that decision.
This is how it may play out in practice, but (what reads like) your unquestioning acceptance of that frame is depressing to say the least. Someone who has obviously opened the odd newspaper in the last few decades might have been assumed to have more awareness about the possible motives for not taking legal action. As Anthony N. says, rape victims are often “stigmatised and retraumatised” byu the process. What was she wearing, OMG she had a few drinks, maybe she wasn’t a virgin, maybe she knew him, pretty soon it’s all about him and she’s the widcked witch of the West. Man’s life ruined etc etc. It’s not for everyone and it doesn’t mean we should all be nice to your attacker now. Sorry if I’ve misread you.
Being sorry isn’t just doing a grandstand with words on a TV show. It involves actions consistent with being sorry.
Wordy-wordy-word.
Surely discrimination on the grounds of behaviour is not a prohibited action? Of course, the real question is community support and that’s not solvable by rules or laws in the short term. Community-leading laws take a while to gain acceptance and a commercial enterprise can’t usually afford the loss of support that entails.
In my experience there’s often a gulf between admitting the offense and accepting responisibility for it. It’s common enough to hear “I pushed them into sex but they liked it afterwards” followed by “no harm no foul” or similar sentiments. Victim blaming is very easy in that situation – not laying charges is seen as consent. I’m inclined to say that until the abuser accepts punishment of some sort there’s no real acceptance of responsibility. Which makes changing behaviour harder to the point where I think it’s unlikely. Getting the community to accept both the punishment and the redemption is tricky, but equally necessary.
I would not want to be on that committe, however.
I absolutely agree, FXH. It’s why I used the words “claimed to be”. If he was genuinely sorry he’d leave her alone and find a new community.
I guess I’ve had a bit more time to digest the content of the original post which is actually quite shocking and agree now with F-X Holden @14 that his intention to attend the conference in the face of her distaste at or fear of his presence goes to his lack of remorse and contrition. Therefore to his character. Thence to the avenue of taking the matter up with the ruling body of the convention. What a conundrum. In the end I take the vic’s side on this but also understand the limitations of the governing body’s authority in ruling him outcast.
Anna I’ve looked up the Swancon website. The 2010 convention goes for 5 days, from 1 to 5 April. Was L planning to be at it every one of those five days? I would be doubtful of that. Surely if T claimed to be , as you have said, remorseful, L or her friends could have told him the times L intended to attend the convention and extracted his agreement not to be there at those times.
Her friends seem to be seeking to exclude T from the convention as a punishment outside the law and trying to impose the enforcement of that punishment on the Convention’s organisers who are completely unqualified for that role.
Since there has evidently been no attempt at seeking recourse from the law, such as seeking an AVO, this is running very close to vigilantism.
Deborah @ 10 I don’t think I was suggesting that T could not be shunned by those in the group who loathe his behaviour, that again is their personal choice. But if this sf/f group has a constitution, rules and membership fees etc. which he has not technically breached then Anna is right to air this as a real dilemma for their board.
To quote her
“So a group of well-meaning, although ultimately misguided, people tried to put the responsibility onto the governing board to somehow prevent T from attending so that she (L) could attend in peace. It’s this aspect of the issue that I wish to discuss.”
I hope I simply expressed an opinion which supported the perspective that it is misguided to put responsibility for taking action on the governing board. Group organisations cannot take a stand on issues like this for any member who is not willing themselves to take a stand, for whatever reason. Unless of course the assault took place on the group premises or at a public function and rules were clearly flouted which makes it an organisation problem.
Members of that group showing solidarity with someone they care about is another question. My preference is for the individuals involved to search their own conscience on how best to behave when it’s clear their behaviour is disturbing to more than one of their community. Incidentally my opinion would not exclude an approach by someone of standing within the group to the offender privately to put a particular point of view on L’s behalf if requested to do so by her. Again that would be her initiative and her taking a stand. That could well have happened in this case since T has reportedly decided not to attend the function.
As much as I feel for “L”, she chose not to pursue legal redress against T. That choice, however understandable, has consequences. Society has a system for punishing wrongdoers. It’s called the courts. Anna’s argument is basically, the rules don’t apply here because when it comes to rape the law is broken. That may be so, but what you’re supporting is a vigilante society and trial by mob.
GregM, it’s held at a hotel, and the majority of people remain there for the entire duration.
Munroe, I don’t think you’ve actually read the post carefully, but I’ve let that comment through anyway because it’s a point that could do with repeating. People actively choose to not hang around with rude people, with offensive people, with anyone that they don’t like. The fact that when they do that with an admitted racist gets called vigilantism is basically the whole problem.
No-one’s trying to get him run out of town, or out of his own home. They are simply saying that they don’t wish to be in the same room as him if he insists on coming along, and refusing to “be polite” as if being an admitted rapist is simply as embarrassing as wearing a funny cape or Spock ears.
He (the alleged offender) may also be one of these people who thinks that being sorry and remorseful is enough, and that he should therefore be forgiven. This attitude is very widespread and very damaging, because it allows people to ‘grandstand’ as FXH says and not take personal responsibility for their behaviour.
I do think equating exclusion with vigilante behaviour is false. It’s not. It’s discrimination. Despite certain laws in place since the 1960s, not all discrimination is bad. I’m not suggesting the body in question should hurriedly rewrite its articles of association (as Anna says, that’s also bad), but letting private bodies choose the company they keep (even if that means, sometimes, that the company in question is all male, or all female, or all [insert characteristic here]) may actually be a good thing. It would make things like this less vexed.
I saw that point, and I agree they’re not doing anything illegal. What they are doing is performing social ostracism on a perpetrator because a member of their community “reported” a crime. That is the only reason for the action. It’s not because he’s rude or offensive in public. Therefore, it’s small scale vigilantism.
He admitted the crime. And how is raping someone not an enormous social solecism? (As well as being, well, a crime.)
Perhaps I’m out of date, Anna, but aren’t I can’t imagine that funny capes and Spock ears are embarrassing at a con. The presence of an admitted rapist, however…
I am moved to wonder if the dissuasion involved any of L’s beefier friends offering to remove T from the con to a quiet location where they could explain things to him.
Of course it is. And I never said there’s anything wrong with vigilantism. In fact, given that the community obviously has no faith in society’s legal apparatus then it’s the only remaining course of action.
Anna is that really true? My internet search says that the All Seasons Hotel in Northbridge where the convention is to be held has 94 rooms so reasonably would hold 188 people who would remain there for the entire duration. I doubt very much that the convention organisers would go to such bother for such a small number. I think that the majority of those who plan to go to the convention, most of whom I expect would live in Perth, would come and go over the five days.
I’m sorry to say that this seems like a case of vigilantism to me.
SL, L’s friends excluding T from their company is,as you point out, discrimination and from what Anna has written is entirely lawful and on the facts Anna has given is something I would wholly approve of. The law does not require you to keep the company of people, who, on the basis of their behaviour and for the reasons Anna has given you have cause to) despise. If they want to shun him, and on the facts Anna has given, they have every reason to do so, they should do so.
But to lay the burden of excluding him from a five day convention on an organising committee of the convention which could not possibly have the resources, and which does not have the responsibility to make a due and diligent enquiry into his wrongdoing which the law would require them to do if they did not want to risk a defamation action, is vigilantism.
I doubt very much that the organisers of a sci-fi convention would be so rolling in money that they could afford what L’s supporters demand.
On Anna’s account T should be thoroughly ashamed of himself. L’s friends should be ashamed of themselves as well.
The claim about ‘vigilantism’ seems strange, given that normally implies acting to impose retribution when the state does not, or pre-empting state action. It’s surely separable from choices people make about whom they want to associate themselves with.
Similarly, ‘discrimination’ appears to me to be somewhat wrong in this context as – in the legal or human rights context – it normally applies to stigmatisation and unequal treatment based on attributes of a person (eg. race, sex, sexuality, etc.) rather than differential treatment based on what a person has done. To return to the fact that the sexual assault admitted is a crime (regardless of whether charges have been pressed), it doesn’t seem to make any sense to me to suggest that bearing the consequences of having committed a crime – to the degree that such consequences are commensurate with the seriousness of the offence – constitutes or could constitute a form of discrimination.
Thinking laterally here, why not get everyone at Swancon, including your protagonists, to stay in costume (with full face mask) and role play accordingly at all public events? Like a masked ball which gives people a perfect way to politely cut eachother dead or ignore other cliques without the usual attendant social friction. And y’know it’s not like SF fans are above a bit of cosplay anway.
And, who knows, if certain folks chose pointed characters (eg: Jabba The Hutt, Warrant Officer Ripley) and cosplayed accordingly it might well prove surprisingly therapeutic.
“I’m sorry to say that this seems like a case of vigilantism to me.”
Well GregM, very few are naturally born as gentleman. In most cases, you learn it, usually through your upbringing and peer pressure from your communities. If I was the remorseful male protagonist in this story as limned above, I’d be bending over back and forwards not to make other party feel worse. Maybe he could look on not Swanconning this year as a penance. And one less painful than wading through another Peter F Hamilton doorstop.
Mark that is the very point of the post and to which I am engaging.
Anna has explained that Ls friends are seeking to have the organisers of the Swancon sci-fi convention exclude him from attending on any of the five days of that convention, where it is hardly credible, despite what Anna says, that L would be for the whole time of the convention. That is retribution where the state has not been involved (by L’s choice, which I respect)- and that is vigilantism and a grossly unreasonable imposition on the Swancon organisers.
On the other hand in my last post I made perfectly clear my support of L’s friends right not to associate with T. They are perfectly at liberty to express their condemnation of him by shunning his presence.
skepticlawyer wrote:
Last time I looked, it was still perfectly legal (and socially acceptable) to discriminate against jerks through social exclusion. Skepticlawyers “anti-pc” kneejerk isn’t even in the ballpark. Sporting clubs do it on a regular basis despite our supposedly onerous anti-discrimination legislation, I don’t see why an SF convention committee would react any differently except through inexperience. Marks comment above is spot on here.
Nabs, the issue here is not T’s behaviour. That’s a given.
The issue Anna raises is what is the correct response to it. Just because he is, as FXH calls him, a dickhead and a shit, doesn’t give writ to others to lower their standards to his level.
So what do you suggest then GregM? The intervention of the State? Zapped by the Death Star? Unplugged from the Matrix?
Ms Winter has given us a complex and messy (as real life so often is) scenario as a thought exercise while perhaps hoping to crowdsource some useful advice. Obviously my suggestions should be excluded here.
How do you suggest the situation should be handled?
I followed the links including the one marked a ‘number of members of the community’ which led to Rape in Fandom onJim C Hines website, and found within the discussion the following post by ‘squirrel monkey’
“I also think that people often try to present sexual harassment/assault at cons as an exception, but there are aspects of con culture that enable it — such as tolerance of ‘quirks’ — even if those include standing very close to women and staring, reluctance to speak up against frankly creepy behavior, the fact that some fans still see women as those mysterious, alien creatures… and the very hookup culture that exists at some cons. Yes yes, consenting adults etc, but when people go to cons expecting sex and feeling entitled to it, please don’t tell me that it doesn’t make them more likely to behave in an aggressive or threatening manner.”
This raises the question of whether having admitted to committing a sexual assault, the offender should be excluded from the Sci Fi con, not just for the sake of the victim, but to other potential victims of his unsavoury behaviour.
One of the points that almost extinct breed, the reasonable right-winger, often makes is that by relying too much on the state we let civil society atrophy, leaving it too weak to effectively tackle problems the law can’t deal with.
I think this is an example that supports their case. The law can’t deal with this, without a massive overhaul of the way sexual assault is prosecuted which will not happen quickly. Doing it through the intervention of the formal organisation (a sort of mini-state) is probably also impractical. However, we are so reliant on such things that we don’t feel able to take the other option – for all L’s friends to shun T, and for them to actively spread the word to everyone else about who T is and what he did. At this point the environment should become so hostile to him he would take no pleasure in showing up.
We need to be willing to do this in other circumstances as well. We can’t send senior managers of tobacco companies or baby milk formula manufacturers to prison, but we should all make them such social pariahs that they have to seriously consider the costs of what they are doing.
Word, Feral Sparrowhawk. Word indeed.
Vigilantism, sexism, social solecism, sexism. There are all sorts of isms around this “issue”. Rape is a crime, whether between those known to each other socially, married couples or strangers on a dark street at night.
It’s also the ultimate violation of personal privacy which goes well beyond the act of physical violation of one’s body. I’ve noticed that even the most caring and vehement supporters of the victim often forget this. Even now we are intruding on L’s personal space and from the highest of motives.
I see that the Rape in Fandom site withdrew at her own request L’s letter outing the perpetrator so that others might not suffer her fate. I can imagine what might have been her state of mind and motives for doing that.
There was no internet in my day, but during the seventies and early eighties the rape issue was well and truly canvassed by the community at large, legislators, politicians, police and by activist feminists like myself. There was as much publicity and unsatisfactory outcomes as we still see today, though I must say there is a vastly different community atmosphere. Yet for all that and for all the counselling available for the individual concerned it surely must be the same horrible personal invasion not only by the rapist but even by loving friends, the world at large and by one’s own internal self examination and unreasonable reproach.
I am loathe to describe myself as a victim, however in the early eighties at the height of my career, I suffered what I considered an assault, not quite rape, since I was unusually strong and he somewhat senior to me. It was followed by sexual harassment of an extreme kind from this very prominent citizen over several months. On the verge of breakdown I eventually went to one senior administrator in the Education Department whom I trusted and held in high esteem. I laid before him a formal complaint, outlining chapter and verse, dates and likely witnesses. My letter sat on his desk between us after he had read it. There was a long silence before he pushed it back across to me and said. “I want you to think very hard about this before I act on it.”
I was bitterly disappointed with him. I grabbed my carefully prepared letter and left. For a long time I raged and assumed that the patriarchy had once again triumphed. There were a lot of other angry thoughts as well.
Interestingly the unwanted visits to my home stopped immediately as did the phone calls to my office as well as the letters. Once I had breathing space I began to have some awareness of what I had almost done to myself, my family, particularly my almost adult children and my life in general.
It was many years before I came around to feeling gratitude for that return of my letter – I can’t say it was a refusal to act. Thinking about Anna’s ‘dilemma’ and the story of L this evening I wondered how my health would have stood up to the impact of ‘action’. Would I still be alive today? Would I have the uncomplicated and loving relationship I enjoy with my family? Would I have the peace of mind I so cherish?
Like many women I have other life stories which I haven’t shared. Yes, I do believe that rapists should be arrested and tried. How we do that and help their victims to be strong as witnesses we still haven’t worked out properly. Not sure how relevant this is to the thread, but it’s the first time I’ve written about it in hindsight. I’ve never spoken of it.
Patricia #41. Thanks for sharing. Do you think the unwanted visits stopped due to a quiet effective word in the ear of the perpetrator from the one who returned your letter?
“We can’t send senior managers of tobacco companies or baby milk formula manufacturers to prison”.
Speaking as an ex-baby and current smoker I find it hard to get up a head of steam over your exact examples here, But I think I understand your overall point to be that leaders of companies that knowingly do bad should be socially ostracised. Absofuckinglutely. But if they have broken laws aimed at preventing pain, suffering, loss of income and death, then prison should certainly be on the menu of sanctions for such behaviour.
But what triggered this post is something outside the jurisdiction of the law of the land (as no formal charges have been laid). Instead it’s nasty fuckup within a self-defining community.
Basically my point is – oh fuck it the whole thing sounds too messy for long distance judgements. They should just leave Mr T alone in a room with a bottle of whiskey and a Proton Blaster Mk IIV.
Its pretty easy to suggest solutions when the truth is 100% known. But the actions of the organisers by their actions will set expectations for what happens in future cases where they may only be 90% sure of what happened. Or only 60% sure. And it won’t be limited to just rape, but cases of assault or perhaps even theft. I think by taking official action they risk end up having to be both judge and jury for a lot of future disputes, something they’re probably not qualified (or want) to do.
We have an established legal system resourced and designed to handle such cases. Social exclusion as decided by individuals of the community, rather than a group decision seems to be the way to go here. And individuals can decide what they consider to be reasonable (eg how long do they exclude the person for – even rapists get out of jail eventually).
btw I think its a different situation if the assault occurred during an event organised by the community. I’ve attended conferences where people have been expelled very quickly for acts which clearly made other people feel very uncomfortable but far less heinous as rape.
Excellent post, Anna, and one which resonates with my own experiences of broadly similar situations. It’s also another example of the old “hard cases make bad law” dilemma.
Clearly, the members of the organisation as individuals and as part of “the community” have an ethical duty to ostracise T (at least until he has shown genuine remorse and made genuine restitution) and to show empathy for L, and on the basis of the facts as outlined by Anna that is probably the most effective course of action that could be taken.
Any kind of formal sanctioning of T by the organisation (e.g. expulsion, exclusion from the conference) clearly must be done in a way which complies with the law, with the organisation’s own constitution and with the principles of procedural fairness, and the more serious the allegation against the individual, the more important it is that these benchmarks be satisfied. GregM is right to point out that T would at the very least have an arguable case against the organisation if they were not sufficiently satisfied.
Further, to quote Anna, “Change, even if it was possible, must happen with very careful consideration of how any new rules would work in all situations, not just the one they were faced with at the time.” QED hard cases make bad law (and bad rules of non-state organisations).
I too think that an organising committee should be careful about taking on this kind of responsibility, because of the future consequences and the fact that they don’t have the experience or the formal structure to properly adjudicate these issues.
I certainly think that “L”‘s friends are well within their rights to ostracise “T”, though I wonder if part of the reason some of them have approached the committee is that some of “L”‘s friends refuse to do this. In my experience of these situations amongst friendship groups (sexual assault and assault), friends are surprisingly reluctant to take sides even when the facts are clearly known.
But if a group with some kind of social or formal power acts to punish an individual for a crime because the law can’t, won’t or hasn’t been asked to, then that’s vigilantism. I don’t think that’s ever going to work out well for anyone except the victim (maybe – and not necessarily then either).
Not necessarily, and in some cases definitely not. To take an example, suppose a university student is alleged to have committed a sexual assault or indecent assault on university premises. The police may decide not to prosecute because of the difficulty of proving beyond reasonable doubt that a criminal offence has been committed, yet it may nonetheless be possible that a university disciplinary panel could find, to the standard of proof required by such an internal tribunal, that the student has committed a breach of relevant university statutes, regulations or policies, and therefore suspend or expel the student. That is not vigilantism.
Patricia @ 41 well said.
Does L not want T to attend the conference?
Or does L want T to remain out of sight?
Unless L wants T to leave the state, one of them is going to have to develop new interests or they are going to have to live together in the same community eventually.
L is exerting the power of excluding T from the group. She will lose or he will realise this eventually.
But if a group with some kind of social or formal power acts to punish an individual for a crime because the law can’t, won’t or hasn’t been asked to, then that’s vigilantism.
sg, are you suggesting that hundreds of sporting, professional and other organisations across the world are all vigilantes? If so, I think that might be a bit of an overstatement. Surely the law is not the only standard of ethical behaviour in society? Isn’t that why different groups have rules governing the acceptable behaviour of their membership?
Sorry to ask the obvious Anna but what form did the “T’s” public admission take?
Because the whole notion of this thread seems to be predicated on the idea that “T” is actually a rapist who has managed to evade prosecution. and the whole thing seems to me to contradict the legal presumption of innocence upon which all of our laws are based.
Was this a case where the sex was not deputed but the existence of consent is despited?
Because if it is then you may be right that T has made admissions about the sex but he was denying that it was “rape”, the classic and most problematic rape accusation scenario that boils down to “he said she said”
Nana Levu @38: a really good point which I suspect is being shunted aside by the discussion about whether or not T should be officially or unofficially shunned.
The Perth sff community holds quite a few formal and informal events with a more relaxed attitude to sex, hooking up and physical contact than prevails in the wider community. I haven’t really been a card-carrying member of the community for a while – I think the last Swancon I attended (one of two) was in 2001 – but I think it’s possible that these events, including but not limited to Swancon, are putting some community members at greater risk of sexual assault due to the way they’re run and the way they’re perceived.
Iain, he wrote about it on his LJ, and was clear that she said no and he went ahead anyway. In this case there’s no reasonable doubt, but as Chris points out, an official response needs to keep in mind that not all cases will be that clear.
sg, sadly I think you may be on to something.
“LJ” ?????
Paul and dj, good points, but I think there is a difference between those situations and this. The offences being punished in those cases are generally assumed to be offences that occurred within the professional purview and oversight of the organisation, e.g. a sexual assault happening on university premises, some kind of breach of the sporting rules managed by the club. If for example the sexual assault had occurred at the sf conference, it would be different (though as others have pointed out, the committee may not have the skills to manage even this – universities have specialists devoted to this kind of problem, or should have). The breach of sporting rules usually occurs in front of the judges (referees and other players) and the penalties for that are clearly described.
Even in less formal situations – for example, at martial arts clubs where behaviour gets out of hand and people need to be banned – the activity occurs within the club, and the informal procedures are enacted by someone who has generally been (rightly or in many cases wrongly) assumed to be or appointed as a final arbiter of “the line”. So everyone knows what they’re up for when they join the “community” (a word I am very uncomfortable with, incidentally).
That’s not the case when something which happened in peoples’ private lives is brought into the confines of the organisation.
Also, it’s worth noting that whatever his admissions on his lj, this person still deserves the right of appeal and defense, which is the least he would get in a legal trial. I somehow doubt this can be done fairly in a convention committee, especially if the case has been brought by what is essentially (for all its righteousness) a pressure group external to the two people involved. I doubt that he is going to get a fair hearing, even if the case is cut-and-dried. The only way that he can be fairly excluded from the venue is for her to take legal action, either AVO or criminal charges. Then he gets a right of reply, the committee remains safe from claims of bias, incompetence, corruption etc, and – admittedly, in an ideal world – she gets redress.
Just for posterity, I want to make it clear that that last paragraph isn’t intended to mean that I doubt her account or think the event didn’t happen, wasn’t that serious, etc.
Further to this, and Anna’s last point #52 (and hinting that my hypothetical $47 may not be so hypothetical) my friends and I at a certain university in 1994-95 found our efforts to deal with a serial sexual harasser (who was later discovered to be a serial rapist) constantly hindered by the sentiment that “R’s not a bad bloke, he just has a problem with women, that’s all“.
No, clearly it isn’t vigilantism. Schools can expel students who misbehave, without recourse to law, just their own rules. Nightclubs can exclude people just because they’re looking unfashionable.
I’d say that having chosen to not take the taxpayer funded (and thus community supported) legal option L has settled the matter. There is no place for “private discrimination”, that would lead to vigilantism and of course chaos. If the reasons for not pursuing the matter in the courts are that powerful then others should accept that as a personal decision and not start a campaign of extra-judicial retribution. Leave it to the courts, it’s the only safe way.
“that a university disciplinary panel”
Do you think it’s reasonable analogy? I mean do you think that an SF convention organising committee would have the same expertise as a university? I would probably have more respect for the decisions of the latter.
Helen, what rules of the convention board has the man breached in this case, that would render the situation similar to a school? Who invested the convention board with moral authority? When he joined this “community”, did he do so on the fair knowledge that they would be policing his behaviour, criminal or otherwise? Which behaviour are they going to be morally obliged to police, and who will decide? If a bunch of serial rapists take over the board, can they choose to exclude women who “disrupt the community” by making “false claims” of rape?
Nightclubs aren’t a fair analogy – there are lots of them, they aren’t a “community”, and people go to a particular nightclub at least partially on the basis of the appearance of the people inside, so the exclusion is kind of the same as if you were to exclude people who hated sf from joining sf communities. Also the excluded nightclubber can (usually) go somewhere else.
“Schools can expel students who misbehave”
I think you’ll find they have delegated power. I doubt that the organising committee is in a similar position. Anyway you want to spin it it’s star chamber stuff and I don’t think we want a return to that do we?
sg thanks for clarifying what you meant.
The general point I was making in my comment #47 is that all manner of organisations, both public and private, have rules and behaviour codes that their members are supposed to abide by, internal procedures for securing compliance and investigating non-compliance, and sanctions for non-compliance, and that provided such rules and associated procedures are themselves lawful and satisfy standards of procedural fairness, seeking compliance with them and seeking redress for non-compliance through the relevant procedures is not vigilantism.
It is probably true that a University panel will usually be able to draw on a deeper store of legal knowledge and corporate memory than an SF convention organising committee, but this doesn’t detract from the main point I was making.
Anna
could you please post the text of those admissions so that we can judge for ourselves exactly what he admits and what he contests about the allegation?
@Iain Hall
A picture perfect JFGI moment, but since I’m feeling expansive today, here you go.
sg #54, you’ve raised a quite important point, which is about the limits on what the governing board of the SF convention can do to address the consequences of an incident which occurred outside its jurisdiction. An analogy in this case (forgive me, but universities are the organisational environment I’m most familiar with) would be with what a University could or couldn’t do if two students who were the alleged perpetrator and alleged survivor of an assault at the previous year’s Schoolies want to enrol in the same first year tutorial. I think that in such a case we would be getting into uncharted legal waters.
” … Perhaps if admitted rapists were shunned on the same level as people who are simply rude or unpleasant to talk to, … ”
*
I think they are, at the very least, shunned on the same level as rude or unpleasant people.
*
Tssk at # 1. said: ” .. What I want to know is if T has admitted to his actions, assuming that he is suffering some guilt now isn’t it beholden on him to walk into the cop shop and surrender himself? .. ”
*
I don’t know how the law and police procedure work in WA, but I assume it is pretty similar in principle to here in NSW. In the absence of a reported complaint of sexual assault, the police could do little other than make a record of the incident, based on whatever information the alleged offender provides. If he discloses sufficient evidence to sustain a sexual assault charge, then an officer would make a report of the offence and would then be duty bound to ensure that the alleged victim is contacted and given an opportunity to make a complaint. In the case described, if the victim did not wish to pursue the matter, then it is unlikely the police would proceed, because it would more than likely fail at court, in the absence of evidence from the victim. Then again, in NSW at least, sexual assault is one of those offences, (including murder, and assaults where the victim sustains injuries that amount to grievous bodly harm), where police may proceed in the absence of a victim’s complaint, so theoretically, a zealous prosecutor or officer of the DPP could proceed against the alleged rapist, but there are filtering systems in our court system, flawed that it might be, that would probably see the case being withdrawn. I write this as an ex-NSW Police officer, and I hope it helps, but in all the circumstances, little would be achieved in any way by the offender (in this particular case as described), surrenderng to police of his own accord.
And as most tutorial enrollments are now managed online (as opposed to the paper signups pinned to the office door in my yoof), the two people in question would likely not know until they both fronted up to the tutorial in question that they were destined to be in the same room together for the rest of the term.
Thank you (not) for giving me legal nightmares!
As a relevant link of general interest in the anti-harassment stakes generally, here’s SF-convention-specific The Con Anti-Harassment Project, which aims to have all cons take 3 major steps:
1. Establish a policy against verbal and physical harassment/assault
2. Articulate their policy clearly in con promotional literature and webistes (so that (a) attendees feel safe and mutually respected and (b) harassers cannot claim ignorance that their behaviour is unacceptable)
3. Act on their policies when complaints occur with swift, transparent and accountable investigation and deterrence procedures.
Obviously such policies can only address behaviour which takes place actually at the con venue, which was not the case with this particular sexual assault. Looking at the SwanCon website, they certainly have not Articulated any anti-harassment policy clearly for the edification of attendees. Since “T” has said he no longer plans to attend, the point is moot, but I’m surprised that after this situation has been rumbling along for months that SwanCon still doesn’t even have an anti-harassment policy published.
Looking another level deeper, at the WASFF constitution and bylaws, I note that they have the option to expel members for various detrimental behaviours, and I would judge that a damn fine argument could be made that sexual assault is a detrimental behaviour under the bylaws.
Since membership of SwanCon appears to be technically separate from membership of WASFF even though WASFF appears to be the ultimate organising body for SwanCon, I’m not sure whether that would be enough to bar him from attending SwanCon. Be nice if it could be tackled that easily though.
Paul @ 64: “the limits on what the governing board of the SF convention can do to address the consequences of an incident which occurred outside its jurisdiction.”
I’d be very surprised if their constitution didn’t include a “bring the organisation into disrepute” type clause. It doesn’t appear T has kept the matter private. He’s written about it publicly on the internet, and quite possibly (? though it’s immaterial) injected the name of the convention into his accounts of his sexual misconduct.
In which case, the committee or board can expel T’s membership. They’ve just clearly, it seems, not voted do so.
And, no, that’s not vigilantism. It is not the role of the committee to punish members for misconduct outside their jurisdiction. It’s their elected duty to manage in the best interests of the organisation, and that of its membership. As was discussed on the hoon-related thread a week or so ago, a membership/license is a privilege, and T can be found to have blown that privilege.
To Anna’s broader point: Would I prefer the members alone to do the shunning, and not get the committee involved?
My initial response is no – as suggested by sg, it’d take just a few of T’s friends who are members, and have decided to ‘stick by him’, to convince him maybe to attend anyway. You’ll be right, we’ll be there, we’ll look after you etc.
It’s not guaranteed to be effective – and it could provoke a messier situation whereby the shunning becomes hounding, and leads to an unpleasant or distressing time at the convention for many other members who may be only tangentially involved (ie. through virtue of a shared membership), and any members of the general public in attendance.
(And that would be vigilantism)
@Phillip
Only by people who accept that what happened was “really rape”, and sadly, amongst acquaintances, it’s all too common that people don’t believe it. They make excuses for the rapist because they simply don’t want to believe that someone they knew and believed was a generally decent and trustworthy colleague/neighbour/peer could actually do something like that. That they wouldn’t have somehow “known” that the rapist was a wrong’un and thus could never have enjoyed their company, so if they have enjoyed the rapist’s company in the past and never ever felt that the rapist was a wrong’un, then somehow it’s the accuser that has got it wrong, because that means that they/we didn’t get it wrong about this person we know, and it’s more comfortable to think that the accuser has misunderstood/misremembered than that the accused actually is a predator in our midst.
tigtog, there’s a values statement being developed now and it’s been put to the members for consultation. There are also rules for banning/revoking membership being developed and debated, and both should probably be presented to this year’s agm.
However, I’d really prefer that we didn’t get too much into the specifics of this case, plenty of people are already doing that. It’s more the wider issue I wanted to write about here.
ETA: the rules you point to in your comment refer only to members of the board.
the “bringing the convention into disrepute” angle seems a little tenuous to me, and dangerous too. What if “false accusations” of rape (in or out of the convention space) were seen as “bringing the convention into disrepute”? And how does a sexual assault occurring outside the convention bring it into disrepute? The assaulter can reasonably point out that the victim should take him to court if she wants redress, and that if she doesn’t connect two unrelated things then no-one is being brought into disrepute.
if the “disrepute” angle were acceptable, then presumably ANY accusation of a crime committed in the past, with sufficient evidence, could be taken as “bringing the convention into disrepute”. For example, under these rules Bill Clinton could not reasonably be allowed to attend the convention; nor could that actor from Red Dwarf who was accused of rape; Barack Obama too, I presume. Arthur C Clarke was accused of paedophilia, etc. blah blah.
My point being that what gets policed and by whom is a very fraught business when you’re talking about judgements made by an elected board. If these judgements are confined to actions within the convention, then judgements don’t get passed on peoples’ lifestyles. But as soon as you broaden their remit to a general moral duty, you’re going into very dubious territory – and when I think of all those beardy 40-something know-it-all misogynists in the SF/role-playing world, I don’t like the vistas that open up before me.
The only type of policing I think the board could do using out-of-convention info might be about safety, but even this is dubious. Should they deny all ex-rapists, ex-violent-assaulters, and ex-thieves from the con? Even the ones who have done their time? What about people with a history of schizophrenia? should they ban ex-alcoholics from the convention cocktail party? What about banning the beardy role-players from the all-you-can-eat salad bar, in everyone’s best interests? What about Body Odour issues?
Where should this policing stop?
sg, my point was that T has publicly admitted to raping one of the other members of the same organisation. It would be for the board to determine *in this particular instance* whether or not their organisation was brought into disrepute by this, and by allowing T to continue as a member.
It would not have had to set a precedent for anything, and if enough members disagreed with their decision, they could have voted out the board. If they chose to do nothing, they might also have been voted out (all moot points now in this case).
tigtog @ 68: “Since membership of SwanCon appears to be technically separate from membership of WASFF”
No, it’s one and the same thing.
Anna, I just tracked down the rules tigtog was quoting from (8.4 is pretty much what I was expecting), and they do appear to apply to all members – full, associate, life, guests etc.
But, sorry, enough specifics!
No such thing as an “ex rapist” or and “ex violent assaulter”. Or even “ex thief”.
You’re right Nick, my recollection was wrong.
I guess it’s a pretty fine line that I’m asking people to adhere to and I won’t be policing it that strictly. But I questioned whether to post this at all because I’d prefer it not become about defending or criticising the board or the con.
“No such thing as an “ex rapist” or and “ex violent assaulter”. Or even “ex thief”.”
Good point, well made. As was FXH’s about verbal apologies versus genuinely living one’s contrition.
‘Criminal’ describes, vaguely, a way of life. Someone can stop being one.
The label ‘rapist’ attaches for life to anyone who commits rape. As is common, our language is here teaching us a lesson about our thoughts and feelings, and about the way we have constructed our species’ society. Some crimes are acknowledged right at the level of vocabulary – rape, murder, treason – as being beyond redemption. The rapist must acknowledge that they have no hope for a ‘clean slate’, and must live the rest of their lives differently due to the fact that they are a rapist, and will always be one.
‘T’ has only recently (if at all) come to this realisation.
No, I’m not wanting to do that, Anna!
I know virtually nothing about this, but I can imagine many reasons why the board might not have wanted, in actuality, to proceed down the path I suggested, and to have to exercise that kind of discretionary power.
Reviewing and building upon the current regulations – and giving all members the chance to vote on any changes proposed – would seem to me, by far, to be the fairest and most sensible decision for the organisation.
casey and FDB, if you’re playing with semantics then fair enough, but if you’re trying to make a point about the fundamental nature of people and the judgements which should be made about them, then it seems to me you’re being very harsh.
“if you’re playing with semantics then fair enough, but if you’re trying to make a point about the fundamental nature of people and the judgements which should be made about them, then it seems to me you’re being very harsh.”
So, does a murderer at some stage become an ‘ex-murderer’?
If not, why not?
This guy is a class A arsehole without any redeeming attributes. If he had a shred of decency he’d clear out of this poor woman’s life. If he turns up someone should take him somewhere and nail him to a tree.
well fdb, it’s sloppy language I know but the sense in which I meant “ex-” in that comment was “did it once but will never do it again”. I think of “rapist” as meaning someone who is willing to commit the crime of rape again in the future given the opportunity, similarly a murderer. So criminal justice-wise, once they’ve done their time they’re no longer a “murderer”, though obviously having murdered someone they are still technically a murderer. I meant these terms in the looser sense of their intention, admitting the possibility that a committee might judge someone who had once raped someone to be a risk of doing it again.
I don’t think that’s how civil society is meant to function.
And no, Adrien, noone should take him somewhere and nail him to a tree. That’s vigilantism. If L wants T punished for his act, she needs to go to the police.
“I don’t think that’s how civil society is meant to function.”
What I’m saying is that our language tells us more about our society than does a crass surface reading of the common law.
To follow SG, I’d liken it to being a taxi-driver or a christian – just because you’ve done it once doesn’t mean you’re still one after you’ve not done it for ten years. It’s a matter of attitude, someone who still lives by rantback radio and drives everywhere might still be a taxi-driver when they die, at least mentally, while someone who retired after 50 years might stop being one the next day.
So I think it is with criminals – once someone decides to stop being a criminal and consequently stops committing (most [1]) crimes, they’re not a criminal any more. They might be in prison, but that’s a different thing.
[1] I say “most” because of course almost everyone breaks laws every day because that’s how our legal system is constructed. I have just spent an edifying couple of weeks driving a lot on holiday (I don’t normally drive at all) and it struck me how very hard it is to avoid criminal negligance while driving for any period of time. Not the habitual scofflaw stuff of speeding, tailgating, failing to indicate and so on, but the nastier “failure to pay proper attention” type stuff that negligence is made of. It’s just very, very hard to concentrate on driving for very long at all. The road toll testifies to that (the lives one, not the dollars one).
We seem to be drifting back to the premise that the only remedy is a legal one. If the T’s of our society were subject to the full weight of public opprobrium for their confessed crimes, that itself would be a punishment and if it were the customary response, a deterrant.
A prefix is placed at the beginning of a word to modify or change its meaning. So I guess, SG, I would be interested to know what meaning of the words “rapist”, “assaulter”, etc you wanted to modify and change with those prefixes?
I explained that above, Casey.
You are using the analogy of being a taxi driver and a christian with being a rapist?
???!!!
Oh geez, I’m wondering what the surivors of rape (and there will be a few) who are reading this are wondering right now…
SG, honestly.
how amusing. I was just cooking dinner thinking about your last post, Casey, and guessing that by the time I got back to the computer you’d have accused moz of comparing being a rapist with being a taxi driver. Bingo!
Where is it written that analogy is not allowed in feminist discussion?
Look, and sigh, to make an analogy the two things have to be similar. You saying being a taxi driver and being a christian is similar to being a rapist? It doesn’t work grammatically FFS. Further, in q post about how personal ethics can step in where the law has not been taken up as an option regarding a survivor of sexual assault, its quite simply disrespectful to taxi drivers, christians and importantly, rape surivors.
Anyway, the bit you should concentrate on SG is the ending of my comment where I quoted you demolishing your own argument about how your use of prefixes made no sense, “technically” as it were.
No, “look”, and “sigh”, moz clearly wasn’t saying the two things are the same. You just invented that claim so you could be outraged.
As for my comments, I made it clear above that I stuffed up the language. Here, let me spell out what I was trying to say:
rapist= did it before, will do it again
ex-rapist= did it before, won’t do it again
not-a-rapist= never done it
same for thief, murderer. In my comment I was questioning the role of the board in acting on safety grounds to exclude people who have committed a crime, and asking where such a role might stop and who gets the right to make this judgement.
I also kind of assumed that your comment (“no such thing as an ex-rapist”) might mean you think that once someone has raped someone they will always be willing to do it again. i.e. reform is not possible. Hence the following question about whether you’re being a pedant or trying to say something particular about the future state of rapists.
did it before, won’t do it again
That is a judgement noone can make.
maybe su, but “will do it again” is a judgement it’s dangerous for a committee to make. That’s what prison, etc. are for.
I’ve been following this discussion across the net with real interest, as I was directly involved – but particularly this thread, as it’s been one of the most thoughtful I’ve seen.
I was one of the people who made the call out to say that T should be excluded – it was my post that first said, strongly: “Don’t come, you’re not welcome”, and asked the rest of the community to echo that call.
Was it vigilantism? My first instinct was to say “No, it’s not. This was OK, it was justified”. But maybe it is more complicated than that.
But I think I’m OK with that. I thought at the time what we had was a clear failure of process, and I still do. It’s not an issue easy to deal with for a small body like the one we have, and I don’t think there’s anything wrong with a community sending a clear message about the boundaries of acceptable behaviour.
But the question it raises is, how was what we did different to, say, the Daily Tele hounding people who’ve done their time? Is it just a matter of degree, or is there some other material difference?
And I don’t really know – this was a really clear case, which made it easy to do. And I stand by the actions we took – they achieved their goal, at the end of the day, which was to ensure T didn’t show – but I don’t know if I’d be as supportive looking at this from the outside.
I think it’s OK for communities to say “Don’t come, you’re not welcome” in cases as clear as this, but where does that stop, and how and where do you draw that line? I dunno. I think we got it right, but I don’t know that I wouldn’t feel differently looking at it from the outside, or if it was a more complicated example.
And maybe that is the answer – maybe sometimes things are the right way to do them, but you should never feel 100% comfortable with it afterwards.
“No, “look”, and “sigh”, moz clearly wasn’t saying the two things are the same. You just invented that claim so you could be outraged.”
Invented? You are being tedious. And you are causing me to stray into areas not under consideration here. But I have a right of reply. I think you will find that I never anywhere said suggested Moz said the two things were the same SG. You have misrepresented what I said. I said he used an incorrect analogy. That’s what an analogy is SG – it likens two things. But they have to be similar for the analogy to work. To use the word “liken”, as Moz did, is to make an analogy. As you can now see, there is no invention and we can move on from the basics. Now let me propose why Moz’s does not work. In no way does working as a taxi driver and then stopping that job or being a Christian and no longer believing in christianity, in no way is it similar to being a rapist and no longer raping. The lack of similarity and the jarring dissonance lies in the very gravity of act of rape and the long road out of the disordered pathology of a rapist’s mindset into recovery, and comparing that to the far more commonplace existential angst of falling out of a christian belief or simply, changing a job. And also the dissonance lies in the violence done to another in the act of rape which is missing from the other two examples which Moz chose for his analogy.
Now I think we can move on from that.
We’ve been through the prefixes. And how an ex-murderer is in fact, technically, a murderer. Good for you. In future you might want to use the word “reformed” as your modifier. A reformed rapist. A reformed thief.
“I also kind of assumed that your comment (“no such thing as an ex-rapist”) might mean you think that once someone has raped someone they will always be willing to do it again.”
You kind of inferred? My initial response was actually a point based on the obvious, as you yourself admitted (a person who murders is still technically a murderer).
Now, beyond your inferences, I never said a person who has committed a crime cannot reform. They can. It is difficult but can be done. If they want to. But as FDB says language has a lot to say about what is insoluble and what is not in our culture. The act of rape and murder and theft for that matter are so serious that one cannot dissolve the bonds between the act and the person who committed the act in a way, say one can dissolve a relationship with another (ex partner, ex friend). It is reflective of the depth of violence and the fracturing of psyches, and communities, that take place in the lives of both the victim/survivor and the rapist and those around them. We may be inclined to acknowledge change is possible in the word ‘reform’, but the prefix ‘ex (meaning former in this instance) is not appropriate. One can never be a former rapist when one has raped. One cannot be a former murderer. It makes no sense. But one can be a reformed rapist. And one can be a reformed killer.
SG, you infer a lot. You may wish to ask me what I mean rather than trusting your unsubstantiated inferences. You may not wish to smear me on the basis of your inference which has nothing to do with who I am or what I believe. That way your “kind of inferring” might not lead you into stereotyping me as an outraged feminist who believes there is no possibility of reform for perpetrators of sexual violence. It is not a part of my personal belief system that change is not possible in some circumstances. You might be interested to know that I am intimately acquainted with both rapists and survivors and have spent much time with people on the question of rehabilitation, reform, and recidivism in this area.
Apologies Anna. This is a fine post, one of your finest, which caused me a great deal of soul searching not related to SG”s comments at all. I have been thinking about it all day. Cranky Nick, one of my worries was the fine line between the personal ethics of shunning which I think is appropriate and the fear of that slipping into some kind of spontaneous vigilantism, had T attended, (and I read your post and it was some of your comments there, that I had in mind when I was worrying about it).
Casey @95
and I read your post and it was some of your comments there, that I had in mind when I was worrying about it
I’m honestly not sure which ones you’re referring to, Casey. I was pretty mindful of the need to not make any physical threats in there, and I think I walked the line pretty carefully.
No I’m sorry. My apologies. You were above reproach. What I meant was, reading about how tight the community was, the level of support for L (fantastic), her comments, her fears, comments on other LJ’s, the heat in it all, I worried that a measured shunning could possibly slip into something else again on the ground at the con. That was all I meant. How to control human emotion on the ground. Some of the comments around the LJ’s were very angry about it, from what I read. But I still think your approach was the best regardless. And as it turned out, it worked without any need to worry about the possibility of a measured shunning shifting quite quickly into something else.
jesus Casey, could you be more patronising and sneering if you tried? Comment 78 clearly sought clarification and you say “you may wish to ask me what I mean”? Then you, of course, clarify that you think exactly what I assumed you did – that a rapist is very unlikely to reform, as is a thief (wtf?) or a murderer (wtf?). You aren’t speaking from a statistical standpoint there are you, Casey?
su says at 91 that “won’t do it again” is a judgement noone can make. But you clearly have, haven’t you? Even about something as trivial as theft. It’s no surprise to me then that you lend support to extra-judicial methods of punishment – after all, if we are to assume that the person who committed the crime will always be interested in doing it again, we might as well punish them pre-emptively and continuously, right?
I don’t quite know why, but I have a visceral reaction to “organised shunning”, whether of thieves, rapists (ex- or not, ha!), paedophiles or murderers. Maybe because the “organised” part of it speaks to my suspicion about what the word “community” really means; maybe because until recently that “organised shunning” was primarily reserved for transgressive minorities, and probably still mostly is; maybe because any such organisation requires someone to take the lead and establish themselves, outside of any formal structure, as a judge over others. In this case it may have been preferable to doing it through the committee; but it seems to me like the effort spent in “organising” this shunning might (note I say might, not knowing the facts of the case) have been better spent in aiding the victim through the courts, or pressing for necessary change to the criminal justice system.
Maybe T is just socially inept and needs a little help with learning how to associate with people. Maybe he has been living in a sci fi fantasy and needs help getting into the real world? Maybe L is also socially inept and needs to understand how the real world works.
@Nana Levu
What a very odd comment about people whose personalities are unknown to you. Stereotyping SF/F fans much?
Well it just seemed the whole discourse was not moving people in a positive direction and I thought maybe it needed a different approach. In fact the last time I was privy to such a discourse about rape and how to approach it was in 1970s in Papua New Guinea where local and expatriate students at the Univeristy of Papua New Guinea were negotiating new freedoms and clashing beliefs.
It calls to mind a line from one of John kasaipwalova poems, “Locking their arms in the glistening moonlight, while they sailed apart in their dreams”.
If you go back to Tom’s #51 comment on my #38 there is a hint that there may be a potential for a clash of cultures operating at ssf cons.
Tom says, “The Perth sff community holds quite a few formal and informal events with a more relaxed attitude to sex, hooking up and physical contact than prevails in the wider community….. it’s possible that these events, including but not limited to Swancon, are putting some community members at greater risk of sexual assault due to the way they’re run and the way they’re perceived.”
I don’t see any logical connection between a “clash of cultures” and speculation about people being “socially inept”.
It strikes me that looking at a comment about unconventional sexual practices and inferring “socially inept” about the participants is one big stretch.
To assume that the culture around unconventional sexuality in the Perth sff community necessarily has anything to do with either L or T seems another big stretch, and speculation about their social skills seems entirely unrelated and irrelevant.
“ needs to understand how the real world works” also smacks of “bend over, sister, and suck it up”, but it could just have been poorly expressed.
On the contrary I would say the essense of a ‘clash of cultures’ is being ‘socially inept’ in a differing social situation.
SG: “su says at 91 that “won’t do it again” is a judgement noone can make. But you clearly have, haven’t you?”
It means what it says, noone can say whether or not anyone will commit an offense the first time let alone whether they willreoffend. The unknown is just that. My point was that if society was not so quick to, as many people have pointed out above, excuse and minimize the crime of rape and were not too embarrassed (to put the most generous interpretation) to confront the people who publicly boast about assaulting women who are too drunk or incapacitated to consent then we would be in a society where the public shame of an act acted as a brake on behaviour. I find it extraordinary that you think that someone who has confessed to a crime should not be confronted and informed that he has transgressed. Because he has, and not just against a single individual. An offense against one person is always also an offense against society. That is the basis of our law.
“we might as well punish them pre-emptively and continuously, right?”
FFS this is a reaction to an assault he has already committed. Stop mischaracterising both the situation and my argument.
Sg, sorry if you found me patronising, but that’s some rarified air you breathe in making that remark. Count up the descriptors you threw my way last night and consider. You think I’ve just said that rapists are cardboard cutouts that can never rehabilitate? Whatever. Keep on wilfully misreading me and misrepresenting what I said, to suit yourself. My intent is clear. What I actually said was – That perpetrators of violent crimes (rehabilitated or not) cannot erase their connection to those acts regardless of contrition and rehabilitation. Just a fact. Won’t happen. Language itself attests to it and enfolds a person in the insoluble. Some things are irrevocable in life and one must learn to live with the consequences of one’s acts for a life time, even if they have completely renounced those acts.. The crime still attaches to them. You can get upset with that but you too easily dismiss why that is. The psychological dimensions of violence and it’s ability to forever change lives are such that there can be no exit from that. It’s a scar upon many lives including the perpetrator’s. As for your wanting to liberate a rehabilitated perpetrator from her/his crime with your prefixes – consider how stupid it sounds to say “oh, he/she is an “ex-rape victim” Do we ever describe people as “ex-survivors” of rape? No. They carry it for life. If you think that’s all wrong on a thread which acknowledges the seriousness and irrevocability of the crime and takes into account the personal ethics of a community group taking up the load where the instrument of the law, or the ruling body of that group acting, is not going to be the best option, well then, too bad.
And why are you retreating back to positions that have already been dealt with in the original post. She chose not to go through the courts, so to say you are more interested in seeing the community helping the victim through the courts system is, well, odd.
su, I wasn’t arguing with your position, just contrasting it with Casey’s.
Casey, I’m not trying to “liberate a rehabilitated perpetrator” with prefixes. I think that’s pretty clear and there’s no point in being outraged about it. My point at comment 77 (and the follow up attempt at clarification) was simply intended to be that once someone has done their time for a crime, assuming they will do it again and acting to exclude them on the basis of their history is not right.
Also, recidivism rates for rape are low – variously placed at between 10 and 40% in Australian studies – so I don’t think your claims about the difficulty of rehabilitating rapists are really very valid.
It’s really clear all through this thread that I have been trying to highlight the dangers of empowering a committee to make pre-emptive judgements. Thus my arcane construction of the prefix. I’m not building a formal model here or anything, and I would have thought that was pretty clear, for example, in a comment which began with “I know it’s sloppy language but…”
I’m not “retreating back” to positions dealt with in the original post, either. I’m saying that I don’t think L (or anyone else) should be able to forgo the criminal justice system because it doesn’t suit them (whether or not their reasons for this are strong, as in rape cases), and then substitute the punishment with whatever community-level ostracism or violence they think they can arrange privately.
I don’t say this because I think the crime committed is insignificant or the perpetrator doesn’t deserve punishment. I say it because the community as a whole is not well served by this kind of take-it-or-leave-it attitude to its formal structures. If every woman chose not to brave the courts, but instead to get her friends and brothers to “punish” the rapist, the courts would never change; and there would be some rather lawless acts going on.
Which isn’t to say her friends and supporters shouldn’t informally ostracise someone they don’t want around. It’s also not to say that she/they or the committee can’t act nicely to ask him not to go to where she is. But that’s very different to asking the sf “community” to construct its own judicial procedures. And yes, this does give the perpetrator a lot more power than he deserves – but that’s what happens when you eschew the formal systems for constraining his power.
su, I wasn’t arguing with your position, just contrasting it with Casey’s.
???There is absolutely no connection between my position and a belief I assume you attribute to me that there can be no reform. Will/Will Not is a claim of absolute certainty. Unless you think you have godlike powers of mind reading and foresight this is a claim you cannot make. You can only ever speak in terms of a balance of probabilities. When a parole board decides to release someone they do not say they will not reoffend but that on the balance of probabilities, they are unlikely to.
But I’m not outraged SG. You imagine things that are not there. In among your rather good points though there is this:
” I’m saying that I don’t think L (or anyone else) should be able to forgo the criminal justice system because it doesn’t suit them (whether or not their reasons for this are strong, as in rape cases), and then substitute the punishment with whatever community-level ostracism or violence they think they can arrange privately.”
That’s an extraordinary thing to say, using L as the example there.
I think it should have been abundantly clear from the opening post that L herself is not privately arranging community-level ostracism, violence or anything of the sort.
No su, I think I understood your position. I was contrasting it with a claim that there can be no reform.
Casey, perhaps you could clarify what’s extraordinary about it? Or what you think the alternative should be?
See Paul Norton’s comment. Or follow the links and read what L has to say herself. Or follow the links and see how the community acted on it’s own and what it actually arranged.
To clarify: You understand you smeared and misrepresented L and her motives and her actions in that comment?
But just let me get my my popcorn before you begin your retreat from that, using the the word ‘outrage’ etc etc etc, as you go.
” I was contrasting it with a claim that there can be no reform.”
Again, I made no such claim. You may want to be more careful in how you misrepresent what people say.
SG – And no, Adrien, noone should take him somewhere and nail him to a tree. That’s vigilantism. If L wants T punished for his act, she needs to go to the police.
.
Please don’t take that literally. It’s an expression of feeling not an actual suggestion. I am firmly committed to the rule of law and modern justice but emotionally, when it somes to sexual assault, I’m oft inclined to be positively paleolithic.
SG Do you believe that society has any role, by its attitudes and responses, in ensuring that the behaviour of certain individuals does not infringe upon the freedom and safety of others or do you think it cedes all of that role to institutions? If the latter then I don’t believe that is Civil society as we know it and that a society that did cede all of that responsibility to institutions would be in danger of becoming, if not already, a totalitarian state.
casey, you clearly think that reform for rapists is very difficult, and the violence done to themselves, the other and the community is “the insoluble”. The statistics don’t bear you out.
As for my comment that “misrepresented and smeared L”, how does the use of a normative “should” do that? I don’t think that Paul Norton should be able to get away with murder. Have I smeared Paul Norton?
I am aware that L is not the one arranging the community-level ostracism. But if she chooses to forego the criminal justice system, and her friends arrange a community-level punishment for her victim, then the situation I described above is what eventuatess. I don’t think that this should be allowed at a community level regardless of who organises it.
i.e. we should all be able to make our judgements about what crimes we will or won’t commit on the assumption that the punishment for the crime will be that which occurs in an ordered community. We should also live safe in the knowledge that any attempts to punish us – whether for crimes we did or didn’t commit, or for crimes we have or haven’t admitted to – occur through a system in which we have the ability to defend ourselves fairly. In this case T did commit the crime and did admit to it, but that doesn’t mean that L or L’s friends or L’s “community” should be able to choose the manner, style and severity of his punishment. Again this is a normative “should” so please don’t accuse me of smearing L.
I think it would be nice if you compared your internet comment style with others. You claim that you’re not outraged but you seem very quick to infer the worst about my comments without any attempt to clarify. I posted a comment inquiring as to yours and FDB’s meaning. Perhaps you could try the same instead of accusing me of smears and misrepresentation. Whether it confirms your theory or not, it would at least be, you know, polite…
I remember two con related stories of late that are somewhat related to behaviour. I heard on Hack last year that someone turned up at a con as a ‘purple tentacle beast’ and was using that as an excuse for trying to fondle. He was ejected by Optimus Prime and a Jedi I think.
ALso there was some sort of nasty harrassment incident at PAX a year or two back where they threw someone out. I can’t find anything on the incident but I did find this at
http://www.sequentialtart.com/article.php?id=1546
Philip @ 66. So legally if someone walks into a police station and admits a felony they aren’t even held? That is odd. (Although in one sense anyone admitting to a crime at a police station is either contrite or mentally disturbed in which case they might be held if only for concrens for their own safety.)
Thanks Cranky Nick for contributing to the thread. As you said, it was easy in this case as the alleged offender had publically declared himself guilty.
I still think the guilty party now has the resonsibilty of turning himself into the police, getting treatment and seriously think about moving interstate. Not due to community pressure. The truely contrite would do nothing less.
Thanks Anna for the post and all for an enlightening thread.
sg, while I share your “visceral reaction” to “organised shunning” and “whatever community-level ostracism or violence they think they can arrange privately”…
…I wonder, can you see your way to agreeing that you have made a category error by lumping in the proposed treatment of T with acts of vigilantism? Nobody is advocating vengeance, threats, intimidation, harrassment, tarring-and-feathering etc. Those are simply not on the table, and *if* anybody carried them out they would be committing actionable offences themselves. I’m sure we all agree on that.
Surely the conveners of a convention can refuse entry to a person who has confessed to attacking one of their members, just as a publican can turn away a past troublemaker, even if they turn up clean and sober at the start of Happy Hour? There are civil duties of care that apply to hosts and event organisers, and I’m sure T can be excluded on that premise alone, sans “organised shunning” or any of the other hypothetical extra-legal outrages you are worried about.
I agree with your sentiments concerning the civil notion of criminals who have served their time being free of further punishment and given access to rehabilitation. But the onus for doing the work of rehabilitation is on the perpetrator, and by seeking to retain entry privileges to an organisation one of whose members he has attacked, he is clearly not prepared to do the work of rehabilitation at this stage (nor, might I add, has he served any time).
Can I also suggest that serving time through the justice system for a crime does not provide “absolution” of the Christian variety, whereby confession and penance somehow magically erases sin and leaves the perpetrator’s soul spotless?
I would venture to suggest that the basis of our criminal justice system, and its attitude towards past offenders, is more akin to the ancient Jewish doctrines of teshuva (and do not encompass Christian notions that sin can be erased): teshuva holds that forgiveness and penance are to be sought and encouraged, and that offenders should make recompense and some day hopefully seek and win forgiveness from the victim (and that the victim retains an absolute prerogative as to whether and when to grant forgiveness, if ever) *but* that none of this ever erases the sin. What’s done cannot be undone. I would encourage you to see notions of time-served more in this light.
In any case, since T has not shown true remorse by voluntarily excluding himself from the community in which he caused the offense, he is not a candidate for forgiveness at this time. Besides, I’m sure you’d agree that a self-confessed rapist whose punishment takes the form of exclusion from a sci-fi con is getting off very lightly indeed. I don’t think T is worthy of, nor do I think T’s actions deserve, your advocacy in this case.
su, I do think that society has such a role to play, so for example I think it would be reprehensible if L’s friends were to continue to blithely invite both of them to the same events, or to expect L to just “deal with it” and play nice around T, etc. But I also think that
a) becoming a criminal doesn’t suddenly remove all your rights as a person, you still have the right to defend yourself against a claim or, in this case, to make representations as to the severity of your punishment (and no system is in place to do this, though it’s trivially obvious that the punishment is not severe enough)
b) community organisations need to be very careful about the level of moral judgement they apply because they have a responsibility to more people than just the victim of this crime, and they can be captured by groups opposed to “progress” just as easily as the opposite.
In this case we’re talking about a sf community which I strongly suspect is very easily vulnerable to capture by quite reactionary sexist men. If this situation were being played out in a pagan community then the organisation would be vulnerable to capture by sexually predatory men who would be able to commit all sorts of nasty deeds through ostracism and shaming.
I think I said above, it’s good if the “community” can ask him to not attend the conference and get him to agree. But it’s not so wise in my opinion for L and/or her friends to try and force an official position on the con organisers. If they want T to have his life restricted on an official or semi-official level, I think they should go to the courts; and since L doesn’t want to do that, there should be a limit on what kind of official or semi-official restrictions can be applied to the criminal.
Let’s try another angle to see if we can illustrate what might be at stake. Most of us, at least those of us below a certain age and above another certain age, will have lived in at least one shared household where one of the residents’ financial unreliability, poor contribution to household tasks, behaviours towards other tenants or some combination thereof caused the other sharemates to ask them to leave the household (or, in one case I was familiar with, to end the lease and move into another address without informing or inviting the nonfeasant sharemate). Except in extraordinary circumstances, the nonfeasant sharemate would not have broken any law or done any act or omission which the courts could act upon, yet I think we would all agree that the others in the household would be within their rights to ask them to leave.
…there is such a limit. T can’t be excluded on the basis of race, gender, sexuality, religion, age, dis/ability, etc…
…T also cannot be subjected to intimidation, harrassment, threats, assault, defamation, slander, etc…
…up to those limits, it’s entirely the hosts’ prerogative who attends the convention.
I really don’t see the problem here (I mean that sincerely and I’m not trying to talk down to anybody. I just think that T’s exclusion is already well accommodated in existing civil and extra-legal conventions and structures, and hardly constitutes an outrage against civil liberties, the dignity of the individual, etc…)
Mercurius, I agree with you that on safety grounds or the grounds of the peace of mind of the victim that T could probably be officially excluded, but I don’t think the organisation should do such a thing informally – they should have an official policy about handling such things. Also an AVO would presumably achieve the same outcome, though I don’t know anything about that sort of stuff.
I don’t believe in sin and I don’t ascribe magical community-level effects to particular crimes, so I do think that once someone has done their time (in reasonable cases, obviously) they need to be left alone and assumed to be an innocent (inasmuch as any of us are).
I agree this isn’t vigilantism in the classic sense and it’s all pretty trivial, but it is on the continuum of such things. I’m also aware that this year T could be excluded on the grounds of L’s safety; but if the right people get on the board the following year, L could be excluded on the grounds of false claims and harassment. And the subsequent brouhaha would cause irreparable damage to a “community” which largely has no direct stake in the issue.
Mercurius, just a side topic but on the Christian Church magically absolving sin. Different churchs have different standards but if I had confessed to a crime such as the one in this example my old parish priest would have not only given me ten Hail Marys, he would have also consoled me about showing contrition to the victim by going to the police. He probably would have even offered to drive me. Of course different churches have different reactions and I think the ‘magical’ absolution is the sign of a lazy or deaf priest.
We were taight back at Catholic school that while God loves us and will forgive any sin, it is still beholden on the truely penitent to put things right. I can’t just throw a cricket ball at your window and run to church and be untouchable. The truely contrite would do their ten Hail Marys AND offer to apologise,clean up the mess and either repair or replace the window. The problem with the Catholic Church at least is that it can drill in too much that all are sinners and can leave some thinking “oh well. I guess if I’m already judged I can do what I want.”
Having said that teshuva does sound like it’s more in synch with my moral system.
Back on topic, I found the rules of PAX posted here.
http://blog.newsarama.com/2008/09/15/revisiting-convention-rules-and-boycotts/
There’s also a little note saying if you break the rules you will be asked to leave without refund.
Simple!
@123 sg I think your last hypothetical is fanciful. As they say “…and if my aunt had balls, she’d be my uncle”.
The claims aren’t false, the perpetrator has admitted wrongdoing, and exclusion from a conference on safety grounds isn’t harrassment. You’re jumping at shadows.
“casey, you clearly think that reform for rapists is very difficult, and the violence done to themselves, the other and the community is “the insoluble”. The statistics don’t bear you out.”
Okay I will try one more time. I think you are conflating 2 things I have spoken about. First, I used the rehabilitation of an offender to indicate how an analogy did not work. That’s where it started. You seized that and ignored the context I was using that in and my other comments where I said I believed reform was possible. So, to clarify what I think regarding rehabilitation: It that it depends on the person. If we are talking about a serial rapist with an anti social personality disorder with a long history of rape, then yes it is very difficult. If we are talking about, say, a young person who gets in with a group and falls into the collective identity of the group which commits a rape, then yes it is quite possible to intervene and for rehabilitation to be successful. But there are so many variables that it is quite difficult to say what is possible and what is not. Which is why stats don’t much interest me. 10% to 40% is quite a variable isn’t it? Makes it almost meaningless. But I’m not arguing with you on it. I agree with you rehabilitation can most certainly take place with some people.
So when I say it is insoluble, I am not talking about condemnation of an individual. I am working at a philosophical level and linguistic level. I am thinking of Dominic La Capra and Blanchot and the effects of historical trauma and loss and the theory of that. All I meant to say was that an event happens, and it cannot be wiped from memory because its effects reverberate down the years into the collective consciousness of a community. The person may never rape again, but in the victim’s mind, the person remains the rapist forever. In the community’s eyes the person is a rapist because the person once raped. Forever. There has been an historical loss which cannot be recouped. It can only be mourned. In that respect the rapist is tied to the act and cannot be untied. That is all I mean by that. It’s just a psychological truth. And that historical loss, is reflected in language which does not accommodate an exit and that is why the prefixes jarred. Is that fair to the reformed rapist who never rapes again? Well, that’s not what I was looking at. I was looking how language functioned really and how it did not accommodate an exit for a crime like rape.
As for the rest, well, another example of inappropriate commenting on your part would be:
“L could be excluded on the grounds of false claims and harassment.”
Don’t you see that it is inappropriate given the known facts of the case?
Call me impolite by all means, but I don’t understand how you don’t get that.
tigtog@102: I wasn’t commenting about unconventional sexuality, although that’s an aspect of this community. Just broader than usual opportunities for sexual, romantic and physical interaction. I think those opportunities are expected to arise at Perth sff events and that consequently the community equivalent of the “toolie” crops up.
The question I think should be posed is whether, in effect, an unsafe environment has been created because of the appeal of these opportunities.
To cut it down to the bleakest minimum: whether some people wanting a chance to get laid has resulted in some other people being put at risk.
I’m sure other communities have parallel issues.
mercurius, when I made that final part of my comment I was thinking of a brouhaha at an American con a few years ago, where men started handing out badges that said “Yes you may feel my tits” or something, and when some women protested about this quite a few men on the scene were quite outraged. It seems entirely plausible to me that a sf, pagan, goth, punk or hippy “community” could go entirely the wrong way on an issue like this. I suppose also the womens space brouhaha in Sydney all those years back is an example of how a “community” can be torn apart by debates about exclusion and inclusion.
Casey, who assigned you the role of internet policeman to be sorting through my comments for reasons to be outraged? With the right people on the board, L’s claim doesn’t have to be false for her to be accused of making a false claim. It’s not inappropriate given the known facts of the case for me to imagine that, for example, T’s friends could stack the board and have L excluded. As Mercurius observed, it may be impossible; but it would hardly be the first time in history that a rule envisaged to aid a victim was turned against her or a similar victim at a future time, would it?
Please try to pay attention to what I’m actually saying and, maybe, just maybe, try reading my comments without a preconceived idea of who I am and what I’m saying. It might help you to comprehend the actual substance of what I’m writing.
But sg, given that the perpetrator admitted guilt and this has circulated throughout the whole community, and everybody knows this, and its a small community, it’s quite impossible that any future board, no matter how stacked by his friends, could feasibly suggest her accusations are false and exclude her – after he himself admitted to it on the internet. Publicly. So it’s not very likely, that scenario.
But really, how many times would you like to use the word ‘outrage’ on this thread. Certain people here have started taking bets on how many times you are going to say it.:)
Unlikely and inappropriate to consider are two very different things, are they not, Casey? Perhaps you were too busy gambling on my choice of language to pay attention to what I wrote?
You’ve been so busy nitpicking my language to see whether or not I toe the party line on rapists that you have completely failed to address whether powers of community-organised ostracism might be more likely to be used against women, survivors and transgressive minorities than for them. In the process you’ve constructed an interesting theory of social sin which justifies never forgiving a rapist or allowing them to live in peace, so I can see that you wouldn’t want to follow this logic too far. After all it is convenient for your illiberal view of crime, rehabilitation, and vigilantism, but it doesn’t change the reality of the misapplication of informal powers, and the dangers of using them in small “communities”.
The misuse of informal social power is the reason I’m suspicious of this word “community” and what it really stands for, and the reason I’ve been commenting here. But perhaps you’re used to moving in a community which only ever agrees with you? Your gambling habits certainly suggest as much…
Dear LPers,
Having read the admission, over at our place we have now come to the conclusion that this is properly left to the courts. The admission, in short, is so plain that the DPP could prosecute on the strength of it alone. I suspected this was the case when reading it myself, but have been fortified in my view by a more senior member of the bar.
The relevant comments are at the end of this thread, which has been closed:
http://skepticlawyer.com.au/2010/03/01/law-society-and-good-behaviour/
Thanks Helen. I’d just like to repeat my request that we stick to the issue I wrote about and not the actual case itself.
Okay, I’m going to ignore the last line there cause you seem upset. I want to repeat again you have misrepresented everything I have said here. Particularly in these lines:
“In the process you’ve constructed an interesting theory of social sin which justifies never forgiving a rapist or allowing them to live in peace, so I can see that you wouldn’t want to follow this logic too far”
My word, where did I advocate that a (and I am assuming you mean a reformed one) rapist should never live in peace? or should never be forgiven???? Can you point to where? You keep on repeating these untruths as if somehow saying it repeatedly makes it true. You seem to be stuck on it, as if that’s what you want me to believe. And I do not believe that at all. I have said many times that I do believe in the possibility of rehabilitation, depending on the the individual, so what is your problem? And when did we speak of forgiveness? We did not. You have conflated things and added things which were not spoken about. I specifically told you that my comments did not address the issue of ‘fairness’. I was speaking of history and language and memory and trauma, and community, and how violence wounds to such a degree that the act and the actor are bound together into living memory. There is no judgement in that, I did not address the ethics of that at all, but that seems to have escaped you too.
Now onto the subject at hand where you have misrepresented me also and lectured me without having read what I said on the matter. Up there up thread you will see me saying to Cranky Nick something along these lines:
I think informal community action in this instance is appropriate but I worry that it may get out of hand on the ground. In this instance it worked by keeping the guy away. But I would have worried that, human emotion being what it is, it might possibly have turned to vigilantism at the con. That said, with the courts not an option, with an abhorrence I have towards making bad ruling decisions on the run by the board, this seems to be the best option in the quagmire of issues that that this dilemma has raised.
Which means: I don’t like it, it scares me cause it might get out of hand, but its all that can be done for the victim in the circumstances as far as I can see.
Which really means. Good post Anna, tough post Anna, but I agree with you.
When the Dennis Ferguson thing happened in Sydney, when bad law was made on the run, when vigilantes drove him out of his home, I thought it was a poor reflection on our community in that we were unable to accommodate our own beliefs and practices where crime and rehabilitation were concerned. I considered that when a human being is convicted of a crime, and does time his time, we as a society should stand by our own stated beliefs and practices and laws which say that he is then free to live where he wants in peace (within limits where Ferguson and children are concerned). It was kind of disgusting to see people chanting outside of his house and to watch a govt fold and make retrospective law on the run. You are correct that minorities are left vulnerable where vigilantism is given free reign and conferred with official status by the bad law which can result.
However, that said, an SF community is different to this scenario. And I believe that the personal ethics of the community in this instance worked for the good of the victim and an outcome was achieved where by no one was hurt.
Unless you believe T should have been able to attend the con as well as L. Do you btw?
Anyway thanks for the discussion, SG, if that’s what you can call it. Could you please stop misrepresenting what I have said here? Thanks.
I’m sorry Casey but what you said is carefully-constructed waffle, plausible deniability through poetry. You can quote it back to me as much as you want but it clearly requires interpretation, and if you can’t write something clearly enough to be interpretable in its own right, you can’t complain when people “misinterpret” it.
The “act and the actor are bound together in living memory” sounds to me like “the rapist can’t be forgiven”, and if you don’t like that maybe you should try some kind of slightly less elaborate phrase. While you’re at it, you could get rid of all the other language implying that rape is a sin, rather than a crime, and imagining some kind of special magical power which attaches it visibly to the person who did it, and permeates through the community. This kind of magical ideation enables you to pretend you’re saying something reasonable when really you’re either saying nothing at all, or trying to construct an elaborate fantasy in which the crime always needs to be remembered, and has near-infinite corrupting properties. Which it doesn’t. Nor, in fact, does the criminal – particularly considering we’ve established that in general the majority of rapists reform after punishment. The act and the actor are, in fact, quite easily separable and no amount of feminist poetry will make this not the case.
Moving onto the issue of whether I believe T should have been able to attend the con, it’s abundantly clear that I think it better that he didn’t, and that I think he shouldn’t have been able to – but that I think that “shouldn’t” needs to be approached very carefully if done outside the law. given that L has chosen not to prosecute, I think the best that can be hoped for is that her mates approach this T and ask him not to attend, and avoid forcing any kind of public decisions on the part of community reps, organising committees, etc. For all the reasons I have repeatedly stated. Outside of a formal legal process, it seems that L’s friends would get to determine the severity of T’s punishment, which in this trivial case might seem fine but which in general I’m uncomfortable with. Not to mention that the consequences for T could be very serious if it turned into a big public stoush within the community [I'm pretty certain you're going to leap on this as evidence that I care more for T than L].
The SF scene are not bound together by any moral ties that are special to them, except inasmuch as strange night-time con activities might require special rules. They’re bound by the same moral ties as the rest of us, and attempts to construct, for example, a community in which one can choose not to go the police and then have ones mates choose what punishment to mete out to the offender, need to be looked on very carefully. The fact that they’ve come to a fairly trivial form of payback is very convenient for the discussion, but we don’t want to lose sight of what could happen, either through L’s friends tender mercies or through the actions of a third actor in the community.
That’s my last thought on the matter.
“The “act and the actor are bound together in living memory” sounds to me like “the rapist can’t be forgiven”, ”
See, what this means, incredible as it sounds, is that Ivan Milat, to use am well known example, and the sexual assaults and murders he committed cannot be unhooked from each other in the public consciousness. The violence done to is so serious that it binds him forever in the public’s mind with what he did. Even if he reformed and lived a model life forevermore in jail, he would always be associated with what he did. He would remain a murderer.
Now that’s not hard. It’s basic. And its getting tedious. So please, again. Do not misrepresent what I said.
Tom #28 some people don’t want to hear you. It is as though they accept all the myths in ‘Women who run with the wolves’, but close their minds to the fact that ‘Coyote Dick’ is one of those myths.
I don’t know enough about specifics and I’m not sufficiently invested in the sff community to comment any further, but I’m certainly not arguing in a “this was bound to happen” / “blame the victim” direction. I do hope the Swancon organisers won’t treat this assault as anomalous, and will come up with an effective policy response as well as a specific response.