Yesterday the New York Times asked the question: “Is it rape when you have sex with someone who didn’t tell you it was O.K., but told you it was O.K. earlier that night?”

Look, this is an important question. I really don’t want to dismiss the importance of considering the how the legal system defines and should define sexual violence, which obvious necessitates a discussion of what is and isn’t. I mean, I definitely love seeing this in the Times:

One reason this issue is so tricky is that it goes to the heart of how we define heterosexuality.

“There are still legacies of this idea that the male is the active pursuer and the female is the one who sets the limits,” said Ms. Kelly of London Metropolitan University.

In this world, as long as the woman is passive, she is consenting.

Ms. Kelly was asked by the European Commission to look at rape legislation across the European Union and suggest how law might be standardized. Her recommendation is to introduce nonconsent as the definition underpinning rape across the bloc.

That is pretty much what I was saying last week! So yes, obviously I am extremely invested/interested in changing legal definitions of rape.

But. But part of me really wishes that all of these discussions were not happening purely in the context of legalities. Because the frame of “is it rape?” is always going to be a legal frame—is what happened punishable under a given country’s/state’s legal code’s definition of rape? And sadly, this really narrows the discussion around sexual violence and its impact. What gets left out is: “did what happen feel like a violation?” What if the NY Times had just straight-up asked, “is it OK for someone to have sex with you if you told them it was OK before but hadn’t said anything this time?” That starts a much different conversation.

So here is where everyone freaks out! Because who cares what one person’s individual perception of an event was! We can’t talk about whether or not someone felt like they were assaulted or exploited or coerced or raped! We can’t talk about how what’s OK for one person and how it might be different from what’s OK for another person! Because feelings don’t matter proof matters! And if we go by feelings alone, innocent people are called rapists.

Believe it or not though, I really don’t long for a world where people publicly label one another rapists like it’s no big thing and legal cases no longer require evidence and lives are ruined, and so forth. But I do think that in some ways it’s ridiculous to even begin to take on the legal questions when we can’t even have a dialogue about how we want to be treated by our partners, what feels OK and what doesn’t, because from this kind of dialogue should come the norms that shape the legal system. But we can’t have the dialogue without being accused of calling people rapists, or “cheapening real rape” or “bringing the police into the bedroom.” So, catch-22 much?

In a lot of ways I don’t understand why the two conversations have to always be conflated. I have plenty of values, particularly around the way I treat people, that have nothing to do with the consequences of not following through on those values (i.e, I don’t try to be kind to strangers because I’m worried that being mean will get me arrested). Why can’t we talk about sex in a way that is values-based (ya know, besides here in our corner of the internet)? As in, talking about explicit, enthusiastic, affirmative consent as a positive end in-and-of-itself: this is something we should all value—a norm we should strive for—because it moves away from really antiquated, messed up ideas about sex and not just because maybe it will keep us from one day being accused of rape.

So if you ask me does “passivity”—or the absence of an explicit yes—equal rape, well no, I don’t necessarily think it does, and certainly not by our current legal standard.*** But if you asked if I think we should be aiming higher than passive consent, perhaps even in our legal system? Well, yes! And if you asked why? And if you asked folks: Is it important to you that that your partner cares whether or not you want to have sex at a given time? Or what the conditions of that experience are? Why? Do you expect them to ask? Do you want them to? If you’ve ever been merely “passive,” is that a signal of a particular mood or emotion or feeling on your part? Does that matter? Should it matter to the other person? This would maybe make for a more useful, and hopefully not panicked, fear-inducing conversation than “is it rape if…?” In fact, enough of this kind of conversation might eventually make it a lot easier for people to feel comfortable identifying rape and sexual assault, and for there to be a more inclusive consensus around that definition.

***Note: this is NOT what the Times article seemed to be asking though. One of my biggest problems with this piece was that it frames discussion around the Assange allegations, without addressing the specifics of the Assange allegations. Because having sex with with someone while they are asleep is a whole different story.

We fought for basic human decency for over a week. We fought, tirelessly, at great risk and expense, to make a mountain move. The mountain moved, like, three inches to the left. If you weren’t looking closely, you wouldn’t notice that it had moved at all. You definitely wouldn’t think to thank or acknowledge the incredibly hard work of the people who moved it. But we moved a mountain. We did the impossible. We went from just a random bunch of frustrated feminists, a random bunch of people on Twitter, to a force capable of changing the rape apologism in the narrative of one of the world’s biggest news stories.

That is what Sady Doyle has to say about Michael Moore’s appearance on Rachel Maddow, and his apology and even thanks to the anti-rape activists who have been pressuring him to apologize for his comments on the rape allegations facing WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. Read her whole post here.

To review, Michael Moore started out by laughing while calling the rape allegations against Assange a “so-called crime.” He told us to “never, ever believe” the story of the alleged victims.

That was a week ago.

And then, a week later, he said this:

Every woman who claims to have been sexually assaulted or raped has to be, must be, taken seriously. Those charges have to be investigated to the fullest extent possible. For too long, and too many women have been abused in our society, because they were not listened to, and they just got shoved aside… The older people here remember how it used to be. It’s not that much better now, it got a little better, because of the women’s movement made that happen.

He followed up by apologizing. And thanking the activists who challenged him.

He said thank you.

Thank you is better than sorry. Thank you is just about the best thing that could possibly have happened in this situation.

Thank you is real unity among progressives. It’s what we say when we’re all in this together, and we support each other’s activism, even if we focus on different issues sometimes.

I don’t know if Michael Moore donated to an anti-rape nonprofit. My hope is that he made a secret donation to some struggling rape crisis center in Idaho. But he did apologize. I think he really meant it, too. In the grand tradition of pretty much all social justice activism everywhere, we asked for two things and got one of them. 50% is about as good as it gets. In grassroots activism, if you get everything you were asking for, you didn’t ask for enough.

It was the important 50%. People on a major mainstream television network are talking about how important it is to take survivors of sexual assault seriously. In case you haven’t noticed, this is not what usually happens on the teevee machine.

So anti-rape activists just changed the national dialogue surrounding sexual violence.

And now, in response to the Assange case, the Talk About It/Prata Om Det project exists.

And as an outgrowth of Prata Om Det, there is We’re Telling, a new blog devoted to breaking the silence surrounding sexual assault (trigger warning–link goes directly to descriptions of sexual violence).

Three inches to the left, indeed.

————

See the Moore interview here.

So, the blog will likely be quiet for a few days as folks do their holiday thing and/or put in some self care time. But I wanted to take a moment to say a sincere thank you to everyone who supported SAFER this year, whether by making a donation, submitting their school’s policy, bringing us to their campus, volunteering and interning for us, telling a friend about what we do, re-tweeting and linking to our work, or even just reading this blog. As you all know, we don’t really get paid for much of what we do, so the folks who offer their support and encouragement are really the reward. And a great one at that.

I was reminded of how many awesome folks we have supporting us particularly over the past two months as we planned and to rolled-out our Winter Break challenge. We launched the Challenge on December 1, and we have already reached half of our goal for the break! At this rate, we can hopefully exceed our winter goal and put a big dent in our yearly goal of having 400 policies in the database. You can help us get there by taking the challenging and adding your school.

A lot of work went into making the Challenge happen. Erin, our unbelievably fantastic Campus Accountability Project coordinator took the lead, but she was supported by our partners at V-Day and her amazing interns, Erica and Suzy (we’ll miss you!). And we couldn’t process all of your CAP contributions without our dedicated CAP Review Team: Molly, Danielle, Laura, and Jes. Then there were the outreach volunteers who were total troopers, and took the time to help us with decidedly not-fun online research: Carmelina, Daria, David, Amy, Ishmet, Jerin, Stephanie, Brielle, and Nora.

And we definitely wouldn’t have gotten as many submissions this much were it not for all of our allies who blogged about CAP or tweeted about it, made space for it on their website, or forwarded along our press release. By name (because of the power of google) I can thank: The Line Campaign, Amanda at TBD, Hollaback!, Feministing, The Undomestic Goddess, Stop Street Harassment, AAUW, Greeks Against Sexual Violence, Jessica Valenti, Shira Tarrant, Change.org, CALCASA, Security on Campus, One Student, the NOW Young Feminists, Fighting with the Sky, and the NYC Alliance Against Sexual Assault. But I know there were more of you, particularly on tumblr, facebook, and twitter, who helped spread the word. Seriously, thank you. We couldn’t do it alone. (If I missed your blog post or website mention, please let me know. I want to give credit and also it’s helpful for us to know where we are on the web!)

Finally, on a personal note, thanks to the rest of the members of the SAFER team, including the rest of the Board, Erin, and the Board members who stepped down this year. What we do together is hard, and sometimes totally nuts, but we’ve had a totally impressive whirlwind year or two together and I’m so proud of us. You all impress me all the time. Thanks for everything you do, with love.

Enjoy the season everyone.

(TW)

Dear Mr. Moore:

Roger and Me changed my life. You probably hear that a lot, but it’s worth saying. Even now, whenever I hear Wouldn’t It Be Nice by the Beach Boys, I wonder where that man you interviewed is, and I feel the kind of sadness that makes me want to make the world better. When I first saw Roger and Me, I was 17 and still figuring out who I was. That movie planted some of the first seeds that eventually turned me into a social justice activist.

When I got to college and learned that Columbia University was responding to reports of sexual assault between students by ignoring and bullying victims, I knew that the powerless could force the powerful to engage an issue by using the media. I knew that the best way to get Columbia’s administration to deal with the epidemic of sexual violence on campus was by embarrassing the school until it was willing to talk to its students about the problem. I learned that, in part, from you.

Along with a lot of other people, I started a grassroots student group called Students Active For Ending Rape (SAFER), and by refusing to go away and refusing to be quiet, we won a sexual assault prevention program that continues at Columbia today.

Shortly after that, SAFER became a national nonprofit organization devoted to creating better campus sexual assault prevention and response policies nationwide. I was disappointed when you declined to give us seed funding, but I figured you had a lot of requests from a lot of important causes. I knew that you supported us in spirit. You were, after all, a progressive. You believed in justice and compassion. Of course you would fall on the side of the anti-sexual violence movement.

I’m sad to say I was wrong.

Last week, you donated $20,000 in bail money for WikiLeaks co-founder Julian Assange, who has been charged with rape. When you posted that bail, you said this on your blog:

For those of you who think it’s wrong to support Julian Assange because of the sexual assault allegations he’s being held for, all I ask is that you not be naive about how the government works when it decides to go after its prey. Please — never, ever believe the “official story.” And regardless of Assange’s guilt or innocence (see the strange nature of the allegations here), this man has the right to have bail posted and to defend himself.

I don’t know whether Assange is innocent or guilty, and I don’t think we can know, without hearing all the evidence. I simply think he should be given a fair trial, without assumptions. Of course it is unusual that he is being prosecuted. Rape charges are virtually never pursued. When I accompanied one rape survivor to the police station to report her assault, I remember very vividly how the detective leaned back in his chair, legs sprawled wide, while he listened to her describe how she vomited during the attack. As tears ran down her face, he put both hands behind his head and casually told her that she could pursue charges if she “really wanted to,” but that without physical evidence she didn’t have a case. As you might imagine, she “chose” not to press charges. In my experience, this is how rape cases usually end.

As you yourself note, it is very rare that rape charges are taken seriously and pursued by authorities. It’s almost certain that the charges against Assange would have been ignored in most cases. But rape charges should be taken seriously. They should be pursued. Political motivation has resulted in a rare case being taken as seriously as is appropriate, and the response from those of us who believe in social justice should not be to try to malign the alleged victims. The problem is not that the charges against Assange are being taken too seriously. The problem is that rape charges against nearly everyone else are not taken seriously enough.

In your statement, you reinforce our cultural unwillingness to take survivors of sexual violence seriously, and to hold perpetrators accountable.

First, you tell us that we shouldn’t believe the “official story” regarding these accusations. What you mean is that we shouldn’t believe the statement of the alleged victims. Without having access to the evidence, you encourage us to adopt the belief that these women are lying.

Second, you tell us that the facts of this case are “strange,” implying that there is something unbelievable about a rape case when a victim willingly consented to some sexual activity, or was reluctant to prosecute.

Psychologist David Lisak has been profiling rapists for years, and his work very clearly shows that the accusations in the Assange case are not “strange.” They’re in line with the way sexual violence usually happens. That is, it is usually committed by someone the victim knows, and it is usually committed by someone the victim did have some sexual interest in. These perpetrators play on the victims trust and perception that they are “good guys,” which in concert with a common tendency for self-blame, an expectation of official apathy, and a fear of community retaliation, often makes victims unwilling to pursue criminal charges.

Victims are not wrong to expect such things. In fact, here are the names of some other high-profile men who have been accused of violence against women:

William Kennedy Smith
Kobe Bryant
Ben Roethlisberger
Roman Polanski
R. Kelly
Isaac Brock
Mike Tyson
Charlie Sheen
Mel Gibson
Chris Brown

In every case, I have heard apologetics and denial. In every case, the majority of people I’ve spoken to have believed that the alleged victim was lying. In every case, the alleged victims were harassed and threatened. In every case, the alleged rapist/batterer continued in a successful public career. That’s because people have a hard time believing that someone who seems nice, or who does work they like, could be capable of violence. And because people have a perception that women are less trustworthy than men.

I believe in openness and transparency in government. I believe that many, many rapes have occurred in Iraq and Afghanistan that we could have prevented if we had more of the transparency that WikiLeaks promotes. Widespread rape is what happens when you have a war. As an anti-violence activist and a believer in democracy, I like WikiLeaks.

But, as someone who has spent a lot of hours listening to survivors talk about their experiences of sexual violence, I also know that “good guys” who do good work can do horrific things to other people. We can support WikiLeaks as a project without supporting the culture of disbelief and victim-blaming that currently exists when it comes to sexual violence.

And it is a culture of disbelief. This is not an isolated incident. In every community I have been a part of, I have seen the ostracism and harassment of women reporting sexual violence. The kind of vicious anger that is currently aimed at Assange’s accusers rears its head all the time. As a culture, we reflexively respond to people who report sexual violence with distrust and anger.

I could go on. I could give you a lot of statistics. I could tell you how low the false report rate is for sexual offenses. I could describe common psychological responses to sexual assault, and how they line up with the “strange” details of the Assange case. I could tell you some heartbreaking stories. But it is with sadness that I say I now question your ability to listen to a woman on this subject. Given the fact that you have almost certainly had a chance to read Jessica Valenti’s piece in the Washington Post, and Sady’s post at TigerBeatdown, and still have not responded (or provided the apology and $20,000 to an anti-rape organization being requested), I question whether you take us as seriously as you do men. I question whether you believe we can be trusted. So I will direct you to Men Can Stop Rape and Jackson Katz. Both offer education regarding sexual violence and its dynamics. I believe that you will be able to hear them in a way that you can’t hear us yet.

Yet.

The reason so many people are continuing to press this issue is because we believe in you. We know that every social justice activist screws up and shows their privilege sometimes, but that sometimes they learn and grow from those experiences. They become better activists, and better people. We believe that you have a good heart. We believe that while it might take some time, you will listen to us.

For now, I will save all those statistics. You’re not ready to hear them. But what I will say is this: believing in social justice means believing in social justice for everyone. Oppressions are interdependent. We won’t win universal healthcare until opposition to women’s reproductive freedom can’t be used as a tool to stop it. We won’t win social services until the racism that is used to defeat so many of these programs is addressed and done away with. We won’t pull the reins of power from corporations until those corporations are no longer able to gain government control by manipulating the public’s homophobia. Even now, when it comes to this issue, your failure to recognize the importance of responding to sexual violence is distracting people from the WikiLeaks cause. It is sucking up the energy of people who would otherwise be your allies. It is fragmenting progressives. That fragmentation will continue within our movement until all of us in the movement fully commit ourselves to working against each and every form of oppression. Until we stop minimizing and denying other people’s suffering because our pet cause is “more important.”

Everything you say you believe in depends on an end to all oppressions, including both imperialist war and rape culture. Those of us in the progressive movement challenge ourselves to understand and oppose all forms of oppression. We take the time to educate ourselves about liberation movements we aren’t directly involved in, and to understand how oppressions intersect. We do the hard work of unlearning our biases and challenging our unearned privilege, every single day. This is what the progressive movement stands for. We hope you will join us.

In love and struggle,
Ashley

See also: Sady Posts two, three, four, five, six, seven and counting (she’s not giving up, yo), Jill, brownfemipower (twice), Kate, Melissa, Harriet, Miranda, BluePlatypus, Dani, and Thomas. (Leave links to others in comments if you’ve got ‘em)

There comes a time in many a person’s life when they realize that there are some truly mindblowing cases of unnecessary suffering in the world. I imagine that most readers of this blog are familiar with said suffering, so I won’t spend too much time ennumerating it all. Suffice it to say, oppression: it sucks.

The question, once one has noticed this basic fact, is how to respond. Many admirable and very fun individuals decide that they will “bring it all down” and smash, destroy, etc. “the system.” I’m not talking about physical destruction. Of course, there is the occassional person who really thinks a brick through a window is the way to go, in terms of transforming extremely complex cultural institutions. But, usually not. Most folks interested in destroying systems of oppression don’t physically smash things, so much as they deconstruct oppressive ideas with well-reasoned arguments. It’s less dramatic, but probably more effective than creating a mild annoyance for some Starbucks employees.

This is important work. There are many harmful systems and ideas that could use some smashing. Understanding gray areas is always great, but some issues don’t really require much in the way of subtle thinking. Systems that sell children as slaves for the purposes of rape, for example. They are bad. It is true that the best way of stopping certain things is simply to deconstruct the reasons that they exist.

But what then?

When someone tells me that people pointing out oppression need to stop “playing the victim,” I really and truly want to bop them in the nose. Pointing out that victimization occurs is not the same as playing the victim. Shutting up about one’s own victimization is not the empowered opposite of playing the victim. It is simply being a victim, silently.

However, if Desmond Tutu has considered it the complete expression of his worldview to accurately describe the evils of apartheid and the underlying wrongness of racism, something certainly would have been missing. There is an element of victimhood in failing to propose an alternative, redemptive vision.

There are many important roles to play in creating a just, peaceful, and sustainable society. Some people explicitly do not see it as their role to “build a movement.” They do other things, like help people heal from the effects of oppression, or make us laugh at it so we don’t cry all day. Thank God or the Flying Spaghetti Monster, depending on your inclination. There have been many hard days that kind souls like these have helped us all through.

Still, the task of proposing alternatives to the current ways of doing things, and building enough power to institute these alternatives, remains. Everyone doesn’t have to do it, but someone does.

One of the defining qualities of living as a member of an oppressed group (or several) is the necessity of learning to critique dominant cultural narratives. If you don’t learn to do this, you generally end up a psychological mess. So we learn to say “no” over and over again–to critique everything, because pretty much every aspect of the culture is trying to silence us and subjugate us. If you get comfortably numb for 30 seconds so that car commercial can sink in, you end up damaged in one way or another. We say “no” to the car commercial, and “no” to the music video and “no” to the lefty white guy activism that shines a beacon of privilege so bright it’s a wonder they can still see to read Das Kapital. We tear ideas and structures down. We practice this every day, all day long, for our own survival. What we don’t practice, and of course what no one taught us to do because it could change everything, is building new visions and structures. And then when an opportunity to change society in a meaningful way rolls around, we’re more likely to be screaming about the imperfections of other social justice activists than building a strategy chart.

A lot of people shy away from starting a movement, or even joining a movement, because they are afraid it will be flawed. And they are right. It will. In fact, to save you some time worrying about it, here are all the ways any grassroots movement you build or join will be wrong:

- It will leave someone out.
- It will piss someone off.
- It will show your privilege.
- It will show the privilege of others in the movement.
- It will recreate kyriarchal dynamics.
- It will have structural flaws.
- It will be interpreted in the way most acceptable to kyriarchy.
- It will lack resources.
- It will be riddled with conflicts between competing ideologies.
- It will be full of human frailty, drama, and ego.

And here are all the reasons you should do it anyway:

- It will make someone’s life better.

In the end, this is about taking responsibility. In order for oppression to end, someone has to take responsibility for leadership. Someone has to find ways to hear a lot of similar yet different voices, and mold that into a coherent vision. They have to hold people to tasks. They have to make decisions, and do the grunt work.

Being a social justice leader sounds sort of noble or exciting in theory, but no one actually wants to do it. It means not being in charge, because a good leader reflects the wisdom of others more than they enforce their own views. It means having your flaws exposed and discussed. It means going door-to-door for eight hours, and losing the skin on your fingers to duct tape from all the posters you hang when no one else shows up. It means dropping your ego and publicly pretending to be best buddies with necessary allies for the sake of presenting a strong coalition, when you actually want to throttle them. It means being obsessed with tactics and strategy, and missing parties to send press releases. Most importantly, it means taking responsibility for whatever goes wrong in your movement. You can’t point fingers anymore. You can’t tear down someone else. If it sucks, it’s your fault.

It’s much more comfortable to position yourself as someone “tearing down the system.” It is much more comfortable to avoid leadership and responsiblity, and to criticize, than it is to propose a new way. To take responsibility. To build something. But someone has to do that work. Everyone doesn’t have to do it, but someone does. Is it you?