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Title: Silent No Longer
Author: Anarchist Affinity
Date: March 17, 2014
Language: en
Topics: sexual assault, critique of leftism
Source: Retrieved on January 18, 2021 from https://web.archive.org/web/20210118081440/http://www.collectiveaction.org.au/2014/03/17/silent-no-longer-confronting-sexual-violence-in-the-left/
Notes: By Rebecca. Published in The Platform Issue 1. Content Warning: Experiences of sexual violence and victim blaming.

Anarchist Affinity

Silent No Longer

In 2012, a member of the UK Socialist Workers Party (SWP) came forward

saying she had been raped and sexually harassed by the former National

Secretary of the organisation, Martin Smith. The internal

‘investigation’ which followed demonstrated a number of common ways in

which sexual violence is ignored and those who experience it are

demonised. Some of the members of the Disputes Committee chosen to

investigate the claim were close friends of Smith. The woman who had

come forward was questioned about her sexual history and alcohol use.

She was made to feel that members of the Disputes Committee thought she

was “a slut who asked for it”. The Disputes Committee concluded that the

accusation that Smith had raped and harassed her was “not proven.” Four

members of the SWP who discussed their misgivings about the Committee’s

decision on Facebook were expelled from the group. The woman who had

accused Smith was not allowed to attend the SWP’s conference to contest

the Disputes Committee’s decision. The SWP’s response to this case

resulted in hundreds of members resigning. Meanwhile, Solidarity (an

Australian affiliate of the SWP) labelled the SWP’s investigation of the

rape claim “scrupulously fair”.

While there was a significant outcry amongst people in left-wing circles

about the way members of the SWP responded to sexual violence within

their group, there was little reflection on the fact that many other

left-wing organisations respond in a similarly toxic way. The lack of

internal democracy within the SWP certainly hindered the efforts of

those seeking change within the organisation, but informal social

processes influenced by misogynist ideas about sexual violence can be

just as destructive to the lives of sexual violence survivors.

Gendered violence is a key way in which women’s oppression is maintained

in our patriarchal society. In Australia, 1 in 5 women and 1 in 20 men

over the age of 15 have experienced sexual violence since the age of 15

years [1]. Violence perpetrated by men is the leading cause of

preventable death, disability and illness in women aged 15–44 [2].

Aboriginal women, poor women, women of differing abilities, and sex and

gender diverse people are significantly more likely to experience sexual

violence.

All too often, survivors of sexual violence are greeted with disbelief,

anger, and defensiveness when they should be believed and supported.

This happens in left-wing groups, our social movements, our friendship

circles, our workplaces, and countless other places in society. While

most left-wing groups and movements share a stated opposition to sexism,

this does not make them immune to the misogynist assumptions which

underlie victim blaming and which often come up when people are

confronted by sexual violence committed by their friends or political

comrades.

I was raped by someone who was involved in the Melbourne anarchist

milieu in 2010. It was a horrible, frightening experience, made worse by

the fact that it was someone who I had trusted as a friend and a

political comrade. I was lucky, though. The friends, family members and

people in the anarchist milieu I told about my experience believed me

and the person who assaulted me is no longer welcome in many of

Melbourne’s political spaces. I know too many people who have had

similar experiences, but who have been called liars, ignored, lost

friends and comrades, or been forced to remain silent. I can’t imagine

how much harder it is for people who’ve survived sexual violence, and

then been treated like this by those they thought they could trust, to

keep on going.

When someone tells their friends or political comrades that they have

experienced sexual violence, there are a number of common responses.

Sometimes survivors who come forward are completely ignored. People who

know the person who perpetrated sexual violence will say that they

‘don’t want to take sides’ and want to remain ‘neutral.’ Survivors are

told that confronting a perpetrator of sexual violence will cause

division in the movement or organisation. The personalities, political

beliefs, lifestyles and appearance of survivors of sexual violence are

scrutinised in minute detail. Survivors of sexual violence are called

‘crazy’ or seen as too emotional. If a survivor speaks out about

violence they will often be presented as vindictively trying to wreck a

perpetrator’s reputation. Perpetrators are frequently defended as being

a ‘good person’ or a ‘good organiser’, as though this should excuse

their violence. People attempt to justify their inaction by saying that

they don’t want to act based on ‘rumours’ and that we should presume

that a person accused of perpetrating sexual violence is ‘innocent until

proven guilty.’ Some activists tell survivors not to go to the police,

because of their role in supporting state oppression, but all too often

provide no alternative forms of support.

These attitudes are used to justify a status quo within the left and

within broader society in which the interests of those who perpetrate

sexual violence are prioritised over those who are survivors of sexual

violence. Part of the problem with many responses to sexual violence is

that we have absorbed various legalistic ideas from state criminal

‘justice’ systems which are sexist and are used to justify legal

inaction. For instance, the idea that we shouldn’t rush to judge a

person accused of committing violence and should instead presume that

they are innocent. This flawed idea is used by many to argue that we

should not take the word of survivors when they tell us they have

experienced sexual violence. However, as Lisbeth Latham comments in a

recent piece on the SWP, “If we think of the refrain ‘people accused of

rape are innocent until proven guilty’ then the opposing logic also at

play is that those marking allegations of rape ‘are guilty of lying

about the allegation until proven innocent.’ Defendants and their

supporters (both legal and extra-legal) focus their energy not on

proving innocence, but on undermining the credibility of the survivor.”

We need to reject the state’s narrative about how we should deal with

accusations of sexual violence.

It is crucially important for us to point out that when we perpetuate

these ideas about sexual violence we are making a political choice which

has disastrous consequences for survivors of sexual violence. We know

that false accusations of sexual violence are incredibly rare. We know

that forcing survivors to jump through endless hoops by demanding they

provide ‘proof’ before we listen to and believe them is incredibly

harmful and makes it extremely difficult or them to speak out about

sexual violence. We know that our continual inaction allows perpetrators

to continue abusing people within our communities with impunity. And we

know that how we respond to sexual violence currently is killing our

political organisations and movements, and frustrating their capacity to

challenge sexism, racism, capitalism, and other forms of oppression and

exploitation.

So, here’s what I think needs to happen: We need to make a political

choice to believe survivors of violence. We need to bring gendered

violence out into the open by treating survivors with trust and

compassion, rather than hostility. We need to take people at their word

when they tell us that they have experienced violence, including

gendered and sexual violence, without requiring them to tell us about

every little detail of what happened. And more than this, we need to

make a choice to prioritise survivors in our political work. This means

that we should have survivor-centred responses to sexual violence –

where the needs and desires of survivors determine our response. We need

to be open to excluding people responsible for sexual violence, at the

discretion of the survivor, from our political spaces, or ganisations,

and movements. And we need to be prepared to support survivors in

engaging with the people who harmed them through accountability

processes, if that is what they’d like to do. Most of all, though, we

need to make it a political priority to actively support sexual violence

survivors through all of the personal and political challenges that come

in the aftermath of being assaulted.

Asking a perpetrator to leave an organisation or political space on the

word of a survivor is often a point which divides people within the

left. We have to remember that people are not entitled to be involved in

our political spaces. Many of us would accept the need to reject an

active Liberal Party member who wanted to join a radical political group

based on their oppressive ideology. We need to be open to taking the

same approach to those whose actions are a form of violent oppression.

In my experience, knowing that I am unlikely to run into the person who

raped me at a political space has made a world of difference to my

ongoing recovery, especially in environments where I know I would be

supported by those around me if I did see him. Asking someone to leave

our spaces does not deny them their freedom or safety. But if we refuse

to ask perpetrators to leave our spaces we are effectively risking the

safety of survivors and forcing many survivors to self-exclude.

Moreover, as women are a significant majority of sexual violence

survivors, not dealing with sexual violence has the effect of

reinforcing women’s oppression in our movements.

Gendered violence does not occur in a social vacuum – any response we

make within our organisations and movements will be limited in scope. We

will never be truly safe or free from violence while we live in a

society fundamentally shaped by white supremacist capitalist patriarchy.

Excluding perpetrators from our spaces can enable survivors to feel

relatively safe in our movements, but it doesn’t prevent sexual violence

from being committed in the first place or in other areas of society. To

create a society in which sexual violence is no longer a tool of

misogynist and racist oppression we need structural systemic change – in

short, a revolution.

An essential part of fighting rape culture involves identifying these

structural systems of oppression and exploitation which allow people to

perpetrate sexual violence with impunity. We need to fight the dominant

ideologies which suggest that some people deserve to be victims of

violence, and bear responsibility for the harm that is done to them –

whether because of their clothes, race, gender identity; or because they

are a refugee, poor, in prison, or a sex worker. Yet it is not enough to

merely struggle against sexism and sexual violence at a structural or

ideological level. If we are ever going to build the collective power

required to challenge these systems of oppression we must make a

committed effort to challenge violence and other actions which reinforce

oppression within our political organisations, our social movements, our

friendship groups and all other areas of life.

Why would anyone believe talk of a post-revolutionary society without

sexism if we cannot support survivors of sexual violence in our midst

and take a stand against those who perpetrate gendered violence among

us?

There are tentative signs of a growing movement against sexual violence

on the left. In 2004, three women were raped at a large punk festival in

Philadelphia in the US. The concert organisers established two

collectives to support the survivors and hold the rapists to account.

The collectives became Philly’s Pissed and Philly Stands Up which

continued this work for a period of six years. Organisers of the 2012

Toronto and New York Anarchist bookfairs asked people who had been

accused of sexual violence, and who were not actively engaging in some

sort of accountability process, to not attend the events. Closer to

home, groups like A World Without Sexual Assault and Stepping Up in

Melbourne have provided support to survivors, facilitated accountability

processes, and run awareness-raising workshops.

We need to continue to build on these political gains in our organising

in Melbourne. One new project that that I am excited about aims to bring

together collective wisdom about how organisations can respond to sexual

violence in a way which genuinely supports survivors. This website

resource will also gather together ideas about how tools like grievance

collectives can be used to confront other oppressive behaviour, such as

racist or sexist conduct. We will be inviting anarchist, socialist,

social justice, environmental and other activist groups to commit to

acting in accordance with this advice. As part of this commitment,

groups will need to run workshops where their members can discuss

practical ways they can avoid perpetuating destructive responses to

sexual violence and avoid reinforcing systemic oppression. (If you’re

interested in getting involved in this project, contact Anarchist

Affinity and we’ll pass your details on to the organising collective).

Conclusion

For too long sexual violence survivors have been sacrificed at the altar

of ‘movement building.’ This approach has a massively destructive impact

on survivors, but it also prevents us from creating the kind of

movements that we need. We must create social movements which build the

revolutionary collective power of the working classes to confront all

systems of oppression and exploitation. But to do this we need to start

practicing what we preach. We need to challenge misogynist attitudes

about sexual violence within our midst and create enduring structures

which allow us to support survivors and hold perpetrators to account.

Only then can we genuinely claim to be fighting for anarchism and social

justice.

Resources

‘What is rape apologism?’

Em BC, ‘Misogyny and the left – we need to start practicing what we

preach’

‘Betrayal – a critical analysis of rape culture in anarchist subcultures’

[1] Australian Bureau of Statistics Personal Safety Survey, 2006.

[2] VicHealth (2004) ‘The Health Costs of Violence: Measuring the burden

of disease caused by intimate partner violence.’