(en) Australia, The Platform #1 - Silent No Longer: Confronting Sexual Violence in the Left by Rebecca Winter ~ CookingFood.Org

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.

Content Warning: Experiences of sexual violence and victim blaming. 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

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?

Endnotes

(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.?

*This article is from "The Platform: No 1, paper of Anarchist Affinity
Related Link: http://www.anarchistaffinity.org/