shieldfoss:
argumate:
ms-demeanor:
argumate:
mitigatedextras:
argumate:
the wave of harassment allegations leads to amusing levels of tension in the discourse about whether men are “inherently” more aggressive or high libido
warm take on this discourse
“wider distribution” hypothesis applied to sexual harassing behavior – small number of “super-harassers” responsible for majority of harassment, mean level of sexual harassment is relatively low, women more average, therefore most super harassers are men
no idea if this take is true
spiders Harvey
Of the 1,882 men in the total sample, 120 (6.4%) met criteria for rape or attempted rape. A majority of these men, 80.8%, reported committing rapes of women who were incapacitated because of drugs or alcohol; 17.5% reported using threats or overt force in attempted rapes; 9.2% reported using threats or overt force to coerce sexual intercourse; and 10% reported using threats or overt force to coerce oral sex. […] .
Of the 120 rapists, 76 (63.3%) reported committing repeat rapes, either against multiple victims, or more than once against the same victim. In total, the 120 rapists admitted to 483 rapes, or 4.0 rapes each. However, this average is somewhat misleading. Since 44 of the 120 rapists admitted to only a single rape, the 76 repeat rapists actually accounted for 439 of the rapes, averaging 5.8 each (SD=7.7), significantly more than the single-act rapists (t=-4.1(118), p<.001). The median number of rapes for the repeat rapists was three. Figure 1 shows the frequency of rapists who committed single and multiple numbers of rapes.
The data also revealed that these 120 rapists did not confine their violence either to the sexual realm, or in many cases, to adults. Table 2 shows the numbers, percentages, and total number of acts of different forms of interpersonal violence committed by these men. A majority of these men, 70 of the 120 (58.3%), admitted to other acts of interpersonal violence, including battery, physical abuse and/or sexual abuse of children, and sexual assault short of rape or attempted rape. Including their 483 acts of rape, these 120 individuals admitted to a total of 1,225 different acts of interpersonal violence.
To provide an additional perspective on the relative level of interpersonal violence being committed by these repeat rapists, we compared the total number of acts of violence committed by non-rapists (n=1,754), single-act rapists (n=44), and repeat rapists(n=76). Non-rapists committed a mean of 1.41 acts of violence, compared to a mean of 3.98 for single-act rapists, and a mean of 13.75 for repeat rapists, differences that were statistically significant (F(2,1871) = 46.67, p<.001).
So I know this study is from 2002 but it’s kind of the seminal study on this sort of thing. Also all of this information was collected from men who had never been caught as rapists, so that’s fun. Also:
A majority of the undetected rapists in this sample were repeat offenders. Almost two-thirds of them raped more than once, and a majority also committed other acts of inter-personal violence, such as battery, child physical abuse, and child sexual abuse. These repeat rapists each committed an average of six rapes and/or attempted rapes and an average of 14 interpersonally violent acts. Within the universe of 3,698 violent acts that the 1,882 men in this sample were responsible for, the 76 repeat rapists by themselves accounted for 1,045 of that total. That is, representing only 4% of the sample, the repeat rapists accounted for 28% of the violence. Their level of violence was nearly ten times that of non-rapists, and nearly three and a half times that of single-act rapists.
The evidence that a relatively small proportion of men are responsible for a large number of rapes and other interpersonal crimes may provide at least a partial answer to an oft-noted paradox: namely, that while victimization surveys have established that a substantial proportion of women are sexually victimized, relatively small percentages of men report committing acts of sexual violence (e.g., Rubenzahl & Corcoran, 1998). In this sample of 1,882 men, 76 (4%) individuals were responsible for an estimated 439 rapes and attempted rapes.
So you know that thing where there’s someone in your DND group or intramural softball team or book club who you don’t leave alone with new members, or members of a particular gender, or who someone warned you about when you joined, or who a bunch of people have creepy stories about? That’s Spiders Harvey. This is a thing that happens.
Hey-o, another problem is that Spiders Harvey tends to isolate victims so they can’t talk to one another and realize they weren’t alone. With literal Harvey Weinstein this has started to break down, but this is true in your life as well.
Have you had a creepy interaction with someone in a group you’re part of? Talk to other people about it. Ask if it’s happened before. Report it to the group leader if you have one.
I had no idea that a dude in my social group who kept pressuring me into touching him and calling me a bitch when I wouldn’t had groped other women until I blew up about it and stories started coming out.
I had no idea that the dude who shot upskirts of me was doing it to other women in the group until I found his website where he had published the pictures and I saw two of my friends there as well.
There’s this intense pressure not to talk about this stuff, this feeling of “I don’t wanna rock the boat” or “I was stupid, I shouldn’t have let this happen to me” or “God, it’s not serious, relax, don’t be so uptight” but holy shit please talk about it.
As much as it fucking sucks please talk about this shit, tell your friends, tell people around you, and believe people when they tell you that something has happened to them.
If a creepy fucker in your friend group has groped someone and gotten away with it they’re probably going to do it again. And again. And again. Don’t let them. Tell someone what has happened, believe people when they report a problem, keep an eye out for sexually abusive behavior, and boot them the fuck out if it’s clear they’re a Spiders Harvey.
Everything is awful. Keep yourself safe.
Australian journalist Tracey Spicer called for reports of harassment in local media and received reports from 500 women naming 65 men, so that’s a solid 8:1 ratio even before you consider that probably half of those women were naming Don Burke in particular.
So you know that thing where there’s someone in your DND group or intramural softball team or book club who you don’t leave alone with new members, or members of a particular gender, or who someone warned you about when you joined, or who a bunch of people have creepy stories about? That’s Spiders Harvey. This is a thing that happens.
…no, I don’t?
Every time I hear about this kind of thing in the news, I wonder what hell groups other people are members of.
For anyone who is generally unfamiliar with this concept, it’s called the missing stair and it was coined by @pervocracy – read more about it here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missing_stair
As to what groups I’m part of – lots!
Places where I’ve specifically seen this be a problem are: newsrooms, hacker conferences, the philosophy wing of my college humanities building, D&D groups, a loose group of regulars at a coffee shop, kink groups, the local industrial and goth scene, a high school art group, comic shops, maker spaces, DC/2600 meetings, aaaaand roller derby (actually you know what, all women’s sports I’ve ever been close to that have men coaching have had this issue with some of the coaches in the league).
I think that’s it.
Do you want some theories? I have some theories!
A) Let’s be controversial right of the bat – this shit is more prevalent in geek spaces. Geeks are more used to feeling powerless and less aware of (or give lower priority to) social norms. This allows abusers to take advantage of people who are already unsure of their standing in the group or in their lives AND take advantage of the “I dunno, maybe this is normal, this doesn’t seem TOO weird” line of thought for somewhat off-kilter behavior.
ALSO MOTHERFUCKERS AND I HAVE A SERIOUS ISSUE WITH THIS – Geeks are unwilling to ostracize members of the group (at least overtly). That’s why some of this shit gets extremely toxic: if you speak up about someone hurting you you are being bad and mean and they just don’t understand social norms, why are you trying to exclude them? Gross. Gross gross gross. So sometimes what you’ll see is someone repeatedly just “not understanding social norms” until the people hurt by this leave the group for their safety, which allows the abuser to stay, and the surrounding folks who don’t want to ostracize anyone can safely say they didn’t push out the abuser over “drama” and the other people chose to leave and weren’t forced out.
There are comic shops and game shops that I don’t go to because “that’s just how he is” and “you have to be patient with him, he doesn’t socialize a lot” and “well we can’t just make him leave, he’s been around forever” are phrases that get thrown around too much.
B) This shit is extremely difficult to get rid of in casual groups that don’t have a formal hierarchy.
But we’re egalitarians, but it’s a meritocracy, but it’s not fair to have one leader.
I don’t care, write yourself some bylaws. The issue I’m currently having with 2600 meetups is rooted in this. No one is in charge, the meetings are open to the public, and we don’t have a posted harassment policy, so no one has the authority to say “hey, this abusive person is banned.” If you try to bring it up to the group as a whole (“hey, this person doesn’t listen when women specifically tell him not to touch them, let’s not have him around”) you get the “maybe he doesn’t know social boundaries” thing and a lot of wishy-washy dithering about how a ban would be enforced and nothing ends up happening. And then I have to be the asshole who says out loud in front of him and new attendees “hey, don’t be alone with this guy, and if you don’t want him touching you make that clear” and it’s building to a fight and I fucking hate it.
A long time ago I was on a board for a college group and we had to remove an elected member (it was a journalism group and we discovered that the norcal VP had plagiarized several of his articles, a clear violation of our ethics). Up to that point there had been no policy in place for how to remove someone but we had a hierarchy in place so that we could write a rule and vote on it and create a policy for how to remove someone and what they could be removed for. It was *such* a fucking relief.
Some makerspaces I know have a bit of a hierarchy, with keyholders having more say-so than regular visitors, but getting rid of (minor, like just groping not rape) abusers is damn near impossible in something like a D&D group or a book club where everyone casually gets together and no one wants to be the dick who says “you gotta go, you’re a problem and we want you out.” It’s *hard* to pull a Mean Girls in a casual context. It’s incredibly difficult and counter to all of our socialization to look a person in the face and say “we decided we don’t want to be around you anymore, don’t come back.” That’s hard to do when breaking up with a romantic partner, it feels even worse to do it to someone who is basically an acquaintance. There’s a level of intimacy there that makes it difficult to have that conversation in a group that otherwise isn’t very intimate.
C) Having a harassment policy or code of conduct in a group is vital to getting rid of people who do this shit.
So for a very very long time the DefCon code of conduct was “don’t be a dick.” That’s it. That was the whole code. Seems like you’d have a lot of leeway but it’s broad enough to be useless.
Because otherwise we should have used it to ban Cap’n Crunch decades ago. “Don’t be a dick” doesn’t include things like giving teen boys “energy massages.” Is a piggyback ride “being a dick?” What about asking someone to do pushups. What if the person asking you to do pushups is extremely famous in the scene and was foundational to creating the scene?
Cap’n Crunch was the very first thing I was warned about at my very first con when I was a wee little teen in 2005. He was known to be creepy around teen boys and young men even back then. Because I was a smoker I was assigned Draper Duty – if I saw John Draper talking to a teenager I was to go over and talk to the kid while smoking to chase Draper away. Draper hated cigarette smoke and it was the one surefire way to keep him from asking the boy in question back to his room for an “energy massage.” Boys who attended the cons were told to come ask me for a cigarette if Draper was bugging them.
That was in 2005. He finally got banned from DefCon this month. Proactively, before the con, of course, when there’s a ton of discourse about sexual harassment and how to respond to it.
DefCon says they couldn’t ban him before because they had rumors but no specific complaints against him. Their policy was nonspecific – it didn’t define “being a dick” well enough to include “rubbing your boner against teenagers while getting piggyback rides from them” as being a dick.
This was a policy that was so broad as to be useless (the current DefCon Code of Conduct isn’t much better).
So institute a code of conduct for your game nights. Put one together for your derby bouts. Buy hosting, put up a wiki, make sure the link to the code of conduct is easily findable and prominently linked on the homepage. And then enforce your code of conduct evenly. Woman who hugs people even if they say they’re not really into hugs gets the same warning as guy who “jokingly” blocked someone’s exit. Woman who feels like it’s okay to grab someone’s boobs gets the same ban as guy who feels like it’s okay to grab someone’s boobs.
D) Everything is awful and sometimes you can’t get away. (AKA why Shieldfoss’s statement can be read as victim blaming)
Every time I hear about this kind of thing in the news, I wonder what hell groups other people are members of.
Hi this has happened to me at…………literally every job I’ve had except my current job (which has different issues, like a boss who has threatened to fire me if I get pregnant).
At my last job I was sexually assaulted by a coworker (grabbing my ass in front of customers, holding me against a door demanding I kiss him) who “everyone knew about” and by my boss, the owner of the coffee shop, who two other employees then told me had approached them for sex (he got drunk after a breakup and as I was hugging him to comfort him he started forcing my head and hands onto his penis).
The moment I was signing my noncompete to work at my first real newspaper job my Editor In Chief introduced me to the paper’s film critic, who wouldn’t let me stand and instead held me in the chair and massaged my shoulders while greeting me (and I do feel that it’s pertinent to point out that I was 20 and this was a man in his 50s). For five minutes. While he looked down my shirt from behind. My boss obviously knew this kind of thing happened because *she watched it happen* but it was a reporter who told me not to stand next to the film critic at parties or staff meetings.
Now look. I am aware that this happens to me an unusual amount. From the informal polling of my friends I am aware that I have a higher-than-typical number of creepy, awful, assault-y interactions under my belt (if you’re interested in reading about revictimization this article itself isn’t great but links to several actually good studies – it’s all extremely sad and I don’t wanna talk about it). I’ve even been assaulted by women and queer folks and realize this isn’t an exclusively cis straight male issue (though yes, more straight men have done shit like this to me personally than other women or queer folks have).
What kind of groups am I hanging out with? Shooting sports groups and hackers and geeks and comic nerds and musicians and athletes and boring fucking office workers and coffee shop employees. I am hanging out with normal groups of normal people. That’s the really horrifying and upsetting thing about this avalanche of assault accusations, the dawning and ongoing realization that people who do awful things are normal and likeable and friendly and funny and they make things you like. Fun people who do things you like do awful things that would make you sick to your stomach.
It’s painful and awkward to tell a friend you’ve known for years not to come back to your monthly potluck because you heard that she touched someone inappropriately last month so instead whispers and rumors get started and suddenly a stair is missing. Everyone who’s been around knows to hop over it and you can have a good time, but new people have to be warned and there’s always the possibility that something awful is going to happen later.
What kind of groups am I hanging out with? Pretend that instead of spiders harvey or that random hacker it’s your brother you’re hearing the accusation about, or your mom, or your dad’s college roommate whose kids you were raised with and are best friends with, or your best friend, or your spouse. How easy is it to clean up the group when the problem is the person who founded the group, or is someone who has been coming for years but their accuser is a newbie? How easy is it to clean up your group when you like the person accused better than you like the accuser?
The film critic at my job who held me in a chair and stared down my shirt was someone who almost everyone thought was a perfectly nice guy. The employer who put my hands on his penis is a dad now and happily married and still owns a coffee shop where he’s adored by the people in that small town. The hacker who published photos of my ass and my underwear had provided security for conferences for over a decade and was trusted by the organizers of the conferences to help keep attendees safe – I was just some new chick stirring up trouble but he had helped them clean puke off their clothes and gone to their kid’s birthday parties.
This discussion came up a few weeks ago and I brought up the importance of making your own safe spaces and relentlessly policing them and this is *why* that is so important to me. I’ve never been assaulted in my punk band that is me and three other people, one of whom I’ve known for fifteen years. I’ve never been assaulted in the bi ladies art group that meets once a month and colors in the park. It’s goddamned amazing to know when I hang out with these little groups that I’m going to be safe and not scared at least for a little while.
But these aren’t the groups I get to be around all the time. The hacker scene has become a part of my job. Other jobs have been places where I’ve been assaulted. I thought derby would be safe but it wasn’t so I left. I thought D&D would be safe but it wasn’t so I left. I thought the comic shop would be safe but it wasn’t – you get the picture.
I’m sure @shieldfoss didn’t intend to blame victims of assault for making bad choices and choosing to be where assaulters are but that’s kind of how this “who are you associating with” attitude comes off because a) it’s hard to avoid rapists – statistically they’re more common than trans folks and folks with celiac disease and if you interact with enough people realistically you’re just going to be around a rapist at some point and b) sometimes it’s not a choice. Sometimes it’s your boss or your coworker or someone you have to network with in your field or a family member or the spouse of a family member who most people would honestly feel too awkward to challenge. I would *fucking love it* if you could say “Tom grabbed my ass and pulled up my shirt in front of customers, I’d like to make sure I’m not scheduled with him anymore” and not fear some kind of punitive change to your scheduling. It would be goddamned amazing if saying “James asked me to allow myself to get groped in front of witnesses because he didn’t believe me about my assailant” didn’t mean walking away from a group of friends you’d spent ten years building relationships because they think you’re just stirring shit.
There’s only so much you can retreat. There are only so many times you can back away. It’s tremendously upsetting to me that I’ve just accepted a certain amount of grabbing, catcalling, fondling, and attempted rape is what I have to put up with if I want to keep doing things that I enjoy doing (going to conferences, going to metal festivals, going to parties, going to monthly tech meetups) or keep doing things that I have to do (go to work, pump gas, buy groceries). It is exhausting and upsetting and I am so goddamned tired all the time.
(all of that by the way ties into the revictimization thing – you become resigned to it and get worse at asserting boundaries and accept that this is a part of life which is why some of you reading this may have noticed I’m something of a grind on this topic, gotta keep making the point that this is not normal, this is not something that you should accept, this is something to stand up and complain about even if that does mean you lose basically everyone you thought was a friend goddamnit)
I’m very happy for you if your friend group and all of your acquaintances doesn’t include at least one creepy person who just kind of gets overlooked. Keep up the good, work, exclude the creepy rapey people.
But please recognize that doing so is legitimately difficult for a lot of people.
When I was 10 I had a friend whose older brother was a child rapist. At 20 he’d been convicted of raping his step-sister and had spent time in prison for it. I didn’t know that at the time – I just went over to my friend’s house and we played in the pool and had sleepovers. Her parents never left us alone with him. They knew he was that missing stair, but he was their fucking son. They didn’t broadcast warnings or throw him out of the house, they just made sure he was never alone with his sisters or their friends ever again. And given my history I kind of wish I’d known about it so I could have made that choice myself but, fuck, I get not broadcasting that. I get trying to manage that secret and hiding that history.
That guy who put pics of my ass online? He gave one of the guys in the group his first car. He has worked with a dozen guys in the group and gotten at least five of them jobs. It’s fucking difficult to weigh “person who has been generous to me and helped me find work when I was in a tough spot” against “who is this girl again?” and I really do see why people go “well I don’t want him hurting people but I don’t want to hurt him either, we’ll just keep the problem from happening again.” In some ways it’s actually kind of admirable and I can respect that the people in that middle position are taking up the weight of trying to keep people safe and happy.
But, fuck, it doesn’t work and it sucks. It’s tacit approval, it’s saying “I’ll let you get away with it just this once” which just encourages them to get away with it again.
I’m going to say it again: everything is awful, keep yourself safe.
Please believe people who report abuse, please enforce your own boundaries, please recognize that some people have a difficult choice between “saying something about abuse” and “paying rent” and you can’t make that choice for them. And please, if at all possible, kick assault-y rapey people out of your groups, and support people who do the difficult work of saying “you aren’t welcome here anymore.”
Ugh. That became an awful lot of wordvomit. Not mad at anyone in this particular conversation, just so goddamned tired all the goddamned time.
That sounds terrible. It’s a completely different world to the one I live in where I know literally zero people who there are rumors about through my entire family, hobby groups and work environment.
I dunno, maybe I’m just a top tier introvert who people don’t tell things to but that
it doesn’t sound right either.
Maybe it’s a Scandinavia/America thing, where my boring bourgeoisie life just is not at any scale comparable to how things are in Average America but that sounds wrong too.
I dunno, maybe I’m Good Groups Georg and my experience shouldn’t be counted.
Urocyon's Jaunts 2.0 
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