The thing that keeps getting lost in the kerfuffle
I've been watching the Lefton party response play out, and I keep thinking the same thing over and over: the stink about cops is a derailment of the very necessary discussion of an incredibly serious problem that happened at the party, which is that David Judah Sher, a known rapist/abuser whose MO includes picking up people at parties just like
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Yes, he has a big house, yard and pool. And yes people get drunk and naked in the pool and sometime sex, or group sex breaks out in the livingroom.
BUT he is =known= to have been with a Tipsy girl and then used various social engineering skills to get them DRUNK to the point of passing out and then carrying them off. He has done this to several people. Date rape is never OK. Learning that No Means NO, ASSHOLE. is something that most people figure out.
He never has. And people simply keep an eye on their female friends when they go to his parties.
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wut? The Poly Pool Parties are advertised on various social media as a 'safe adult play space'. There are no guards, cops, lifeguards, security walking the place to make sure shits ok. Hell, the home owner probably would not allow it as it might cramp his style. When i have pointed this out to local californian's the general response is "Well, its Aiken, he's like that, what can you do" or variations on the theme.
"East Bay Poly Folk" is San Francisco code for "PEople who allow rapists to rape because it's easier than saying or doing anything about it"
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Is the concern with naming names that people will sue for libel, if the cases they've been involved with did not include police reports? (Which can be hell for the person making the report, because cops and prosecutors engage in a lot of sex-negative suspicion, and then even if you get to trial a defense lawyer will do even worse.)
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Awesome! (head/desk)
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The circles of people who may reject me because I accuse him of such things, already have.
And I don't have already stepped back from them.
It's hard because there are people whom I interact with well, (which would be the basis of a possible friendship, in other cases) and that makes me sad.
If Person Q, is someone I have a lot in common with and we get along, BUT the person in question has the minor problem of a bit of a blindspot when "My Kin is a Rapist" comes into play... Uhh.. Yeah. That's a hard limit.
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(I know this is a public post, I just figure it'd be polite to ask first.)
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No worries at all.
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In the case that prompted this post, the details are available on public LJ posts, plus public FB posts simply stating their name and that they are a rapist and abuser, specifically for the purpose of disseminating that information as widely as possible. The survivor has made their wishes quite clear, and that's how I came to the conclusion to name the person.
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What you say is weird and disturbing. I'm surprised that any females go to the party at all, given its known risks.
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1) Denial ain't just a rivah in egypt
2) don't want to rock the boat
3) don't really believe the 3+ women who have had negative experiences (Well #1 is hysterical #2 is a drama queen #3 is unreliable #4 was REALLY drunk, etc)
4) "I don't like spreading unpleasant rumors"
5) "Why can't everyone just get along?"
6) It can't be as bad as all that or someone would have said something already
7) "yeah, well, maybe, but we want to keep the party rolling, so we don't talk about that sort of thing.... (And if you keep talking about it, you will be removed from several party invite lists as a Drama Queen and become a social pariah)
7b) yes, the rapist is not a social pariah, the people who are trying to WARN PEOPLE ABOUT THE RAPIST become social pariahs. Welcome to everything I *hate* about the Bay Area. It's also about the ONLY thing I hate about living here, except rent costs, but Holy shit is that one aspect of life around here REALLY FUCKED UP.
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I've never known the rumor mill to not work effectively. (But what do I know about this case?)
that one aspect of life around here REALLY FUCKED UP.
Ugh. But is the oh-so-liberal Bay Area significantly worse than the rest of the country on this?
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It is MUCH more common/easier to point to someone and say "that is a person who is a bad person who does bad things" out east.
So much easier to walk to someone and say "Hey, WTF? What was that the other night?"
One of my East Coast friends who moved out here before me described it as saying "Everyone has a social face, you may know someone for years and never get past their social face"
You have to remember: in the Boston Area, Winter is a Thing. You generally only allow people in your house whom you could stand being trapped/snowed in with for 2-3 days. That shit never happens out here (ok, once every 200 years)
there is NEVER a weather situation that if you walked out, naked, that you would DIE within... less than 72 hours around here. So people tolerate a lot more bullshit.
There is a "I will believe your bullshit, if you believe my bullshit" as a basic level of community around here. And on top of that is the weird Passive-Agressive made into an art form crap that goes on as well.
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You need your kin as much as they need you - when the wagons circle, they're the only ones you have to circle them with. When you need to survive the winter, they're the ones you can turn to (and vice versa). You live and die by your kin. And as you mentioned, this is the traditional way of social life in New England. Note that these aren't just people you like, you can like people who aren't kin. These are people you give a certain special consideration to.
So what happens when the perp is your kin?
You get what happened at Readercon, where a possibly over-aggressive anti-harassment policy designed specifically for someone who is decidedly an outsider (as in, a particular individual) suddenly had to be applied to kin. . . and the concom failed to pull it off. (It was eventually properly applied, but only after a significant degree of tossing out the old guard - the people who felt like the perp was still their kin).
And you get what happened here, where a perp was welcomed into a party space and quietly asked to leave rather than pre-banned - that is the way you treat kin who did something completely beyond the pale but you can try to pretend to reasonable doubt unless enough people speak up. It's a terrifying real-world implication of that old saw about friends who you'd help move bodies.
In both cases the community at large overrode kin status, which is the safety valve on this particular approach. But as you can see, that's a really hard thing to do - it takes significant effort and causes a whole lot of anguish and social fallout, and that's when the victim/survivor is really strong and has solid allies/kin on their side. Someone who doesn't have those advantages is completely screwed, and *perps know this* and target those people specifically (in this case the victim/survivor is not from around here; the perp underestimated both her personal strength and her ability to build a kin network in time). This system is clearly broken.
At this point the people I can consider kin are the ones saying we need to stop treating someone as kin when another person steps forward and tells us about how they raped, physically assaulted, or sexually harassed that person - you still want to investigate the report, of course, but you absolutely must not be thinking of or treating the perp as kin while doing so. People who aren't willing to do that are not people I can trust to have my back, be it during a blizzard or at the beginning of summer. Sadly that untrustworthy list has gotten a lot longer this week.
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- you still want to investigate the report, of course, but you absolutely must not be thinking of or treating the perp as kin while doing so-
Some people exaggerate, are drama queens etc. But... If someone is insane enough of a drama queen (histrionic personality disorder) then they have probably lied about other things previously.
Anyone who comes forward to about an allegation of Sexual violence, improper behavior, what ever - 97%+ of the time they are not exaggerating, and what 60%+ of the time they are merely are one of many.
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How sad is that?
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