"Why don't you just punch the dickhead?" - violence as a response to sexual harassment

This article was sent to a group I'm involved with last week with a request that it be published anonymously. When I approach the topic of sexual harassment I am aware that almost every woman I talk to has already had a lifetime of experiencing this problem, and that they have a lot of feelings that come along with that. I'm aware that it is a shared problem, not an individual experience. I'm aware that most women that I talk to are angry – furious – about this problem. I’m aware that many people, of multiple genders, are drawn to the idea of violence as a response. That due to being offered a range of solutions that don't seem to help – from not leaving their house at night, to dressing differently, to engaging with an unsympathetic legal system – violence starts to look attractive.

I have been harassed by a man in a fairly large left-wing community organisation for a number of years. No-one has ever really doubted that this man was harassing me, at least not to my face, and I now have evidence that it's true. I have tried a number of strategies to deal with his behaviour. Over this time many people, who represent a broad cross-section of left-wing political ideology, have asked me why I don't just punch him.

I am so sympathetic to this suggestion, and the urge that underlies it. It is born out of frustration. It would be extremely satisfying to pummel every single man who has made women feel unsafe. This article will explore why I haven't gone down this path.

I'm no stranger to violence. I grew up in a world where violence was completely normal. People were violent to me, and I was violent to the other children. None of this seemed unusual to anyone or a cause for concern. Only once in my primary school years did I get a detention for kicking someone, when I was hurting other children all the time. I thought the boy who "told on me" was "soft" for doing so. I now reflect that he was new to the school and didn't really understand the culture of the place. This wasn't just my experience. I remember standing in line and the boy whose last name alphabetically came next to mine would tell these glorious stories about the latest outrageous thing he had done. His stories always ended with a belting from his Dad, which got a good laugh out of all the kids.  I remember having a laugh at Homer Simpson on the TV throttling his son week after week and thinking that he was like my Dad. "Why you little...!"

At the beginning of high school, I left that world. My parents sent me to a posh all-girls high school in the big city that they could barely afford. A one-hour train journey took me to a place where people had other (not better) ways of resolving their disputes. The violence I displayed in my early years of high school didn't go down well with my peers and that had a real effect on me. I distinctly remember the last time I violently attacked anyone. I was fourteen years old. We were playing netball at school in a bright, airy hall. I can still hear the shoes squeaking against the shiny gym floor and see the beams of sunshine lighting up the dust in the air. My good friend hit me in the head, probably intentionally. That action flipped a switch inside me. I gave out an animalistic scream of rage, then ran at her intending to take a leap that would see me take her down by the neck. In the milliseconds after I had started running at her I had an epiphany. I could seriously hurt her. She was my friend. I managed to trip myself and ended up on the floor. People teased me for it because it must have looked a bit silly, but I was secretly very glad that I had changed my mind. Even though I didn't really fit into that high school I am glad that I had the opportunity to be exposed to a different world and new ideas.

In the present day, the road I have taken to deal with the ongoing sexual harassment at this organisation is much harder than punching the perpetrator would have been. I have lost time and energy, I have left the organisation, and it has affected many of my personal and professional relationships. I definitely wouldn't condemn somebody who decided on violence in this situation. But, I think my choice of a non-violent route is worth explaining, as it brings in factors other than simple retaliation.

Sexual violence can take many forms and it can be complicated by many factors.

Oftentimes it's the perpetrator themselves bringing in as many factors as they can so that the person they're targeting feels confused, or like there's no clear course of action ahead. This is basic stuff.

In my case, the perpetrator is a good mate of a well-known activist who is very important to the organisation and to social justice causes. This was probably my main motivation for a long time for not taking more decisive action. Another motivation was my personal experience of people on the left being unwilling and unable to deal with this kind of situation in a good way. It seemed easier to put up with it. Another reason was that due to previous life experiences I didn't have a particularly strong expectation that I would feel safe. Another reason was the sympathy that I felt for this person as someone who has led a particularly hard life. I hope this gives you some insight into the complexity of the problem.

However, the whole time the option of being violent towards this man was open to me. It was suggested to me by a number of people. I even had such a conversation with a person from the organisation whose responsibility it was to take action to resolve this problem. In this case I said that I was seriously concerned that if this problem wasn't resolved then I would end up losing my temper and punching the perpetrator, but I didn't want to go down this route. They said that punching the perpetrator would be a good idea. Most other times it has been brought up without my input. The influential activist who is this man's good friend is often talking about people he doesn't like and making punching motions in the air. This doesn't mean that he necessarily would be fine with me punching his mate, but this and other factors have led me to believe that it's a tactic that he generally supports. This is an interesting point, that I will return to shortly.

The idea of hurting this man was is very appealing. It would certainly make me feel a lot better. It might also give him the message that I'm not a person he can bully anymore.

This man is smaller than me. He's frail, old and his hands are injured. It seems reasonably likely that if we were to have a physical fight then I would win.

Here are some complicating factors.

The first thing is that I'm not trained in martial arts. Maybe this is my failing. I am worried that if I released my rage and started trying to hurt this man that actually I could seriously injure him. This would not be a good outcome. Maybe in the course of the years this has been going on I could have started martial arts training and gotten to a point where I could reasonably safely injure him, but for various reasons including time and money I didn't.

If I did seriously injure this man, I would probably feel really bad. Regardless of the success of the tactic of violence in achieving my aims, there are probably people in the community who would condemn me for using violence, even if they had advised it in the first place. This is especially the case against a frail, old man. This is a man who habitually makes himself small. He shuffles, he fumbles and apologises. Among the creases and wrinkles you can see that he is marked by a long and hard life. I am imagining people's reaction as he looks up at them with a sorrowful expression and a black eye. Obviously not every perpetrator fits this description, but this is the situation that I am faced with. It's one thing to recommend violence to someone, it's quite another to look in the face of an old man with a black eye. It's a hard thing to look in the face of anyone who has been seriously injured and not feel something. This is violence. This is what people are advising me to do.

There could also be legal implications for myself. What if, for example, I punched him in such a way that killed him, or put him in hospital? I don't think that he would necessarily go to the cops if I put him in hospital, but there's probably some kind of mandatory reporting in this situation. In another situation a person might be up against a bully who's young and healthy, but you don't really know how a fist fight might go down. You can seriously hurt or kill someone without using much force. I recall the Queensland government campaign "One punch can kill". Alternatively someone might fall over and hit their head. You can also do a lot of damage to a person without using much force if you get in a wrestling match and end up strangling them. In all these examples a person might even seem fine in the short term and then die a few days or weeks later.

All of this seems like a lot of responsibility to put upon a person because they happen to be the victim of bullying.

My second major consideration was this man's unknown potential for violence in retaliation. He might have had some fighting skills I was unaware of. His demeanour and injuries suggest that he has known violence. He might come back at me at a later time with a weapon or a bunch of his angry mates. He might be as poor at fighting as I am and accidentally injure me in a serious way.

These two arguments don't get to the crux of why I didn't want to go down the road of fighting him, but they are practical things to consider.

My assumption that this man's activist friend is OK with violence in certain situations, and the fact that the person who is in a position of responsibility at the organisation said that I should fight the perpetrator, are interesting points to consider in light of their response to my requests for help.

The person from the organisation who is in a position of responsibility to deal with this situation is someone who I previously had a good relationship with. We enjoyed taking the piss, and always worked well together. She suggested once that I babysit her children. She uses a light hand to balance the formal and informal aspects of the organisation, but ultimately she has a lot of responsibility. I told her about the harassment when it had been happening for some years. I asked her to talk to the old man, and that's when she said that I should punch him. It's hard for me to know if she really thought I would punch him; whether, straight-faced, she was taking the piss; or whether she was just hoping the problem would go away. When I persisted, she said that she would talk to the old man. Ultimately that was an ineffective strategy. Not long afterwards, I lodged a formal complaint. She didn't exactly try to stop me from taking formal action, but became distant towards me. She also took actions that made me wonder whether she was trying to get in the way of the process – for example she didn't give me a copy of the organisation's sexual harassment policy when I repeatedly asked for it, even though it is in that policy that when a person lodges a formal complaint that they are given it.

The influential activist who is this man's good friend refused to be a part of discussions around finding a solution to this man's behaviour. He said that it was a matter simply between this man and myself. I wonder what he meant by that. In the past when the activist has discussed disagreements with other people he's often mimed punching as a solution, but with a cheeky grin. A familiar scene at the organisation was the activist yelling in an extremely aggressive way at other people. Even me once. When he was yelling at other people I would take myself upstairs and lock myself in a room. What am I to take from this? When he tells me that I should deal with the situation myself, is he recommending a route of non-violence? This is important to me because, while he didn't have a formal position of responsibility, as this man's good friend he's a person who's in one of the best positions to help resolve this situation well. By that I mean in a way that would have met my need for safety, and the harasser's need for personal growth within his community. I think his response was coloured by the very attitude I am hoping to explore in this article.

I think that the option of me fighting this man was a solution that would have put the responsibility on me alone as an individual who was being harassed. This would have ignored the larger systemic issue. What I have been looking for is a way for the organisation and community that I am a part of to come together and take responsibility for this issue. I would like to see more community accountability for this kind of behaviour. While I won't go into too much detail in this article, what I am imagining is a serious effort to bring about change. While an individual solution might have solved my problem, I am on the left because I am an idealist.

This is why I'm glad that in the end I didn't fight him.

If, in the best case scenario, I had punched this man the right amount and he wasn't seriously injured, and he then left me alone, I don't think that he would have learnt anything. The lesson would have been that power and brute force determines social relationships. I believe that he would have just found somebody weaker to pick on. He wouldn't have learnt anything about why what he did was wrong. He wouldn't have learnt that his community takes the issue of sexual harassment seriously. He wouldn't have had the feeling that other people were watching him and were going to make him accountable. All he would have learnt is that one individual (me) was not someone he could pick on.

I think that on the left we are trying to create something bigger and better than a world where brute force determines social relationships. To me, these kinds of behaviours, from punching a fellow activist all the way up to dropping a nuclear bomb, are exactly the kind of actions we need to get away from. I would much prefer that if there was a disagreement or wrongdoing then people come together as a community and find a way through it.

In situations like mine, which is on the micro scale of one individual harassing another individual, I want the left to work on strategies for the community to support the survivor, and ideally to support behaviour change in the perpetrator. The left has a long way to go before we get to that point, but I think that is a goal worth fighting for.

Earlier in the piece I gave a range of reasons why I found it hard to take more effective action against this man. People who are witnessing such a prolonged situation as the one I experienced might feel some exasperation. I think it's important to remember that a person on the receiving end of bullying shouldn't also have to endure repeated judgement for their handling of the situation. Bullying isn't easy to deal with. Bullies aren't acting in good faith. Their actions aren't a mistake. They're probably going to do everything in their power to avoid real change. Finding help is another difficult task. The actions of a lot of people who I've asked for help have given me the impression that they just want it to go away. Actually, that they just want me to go away. In this situation, the more that it should have been a person's responsibility to help me, the more they acted like I was an imposition. There were some people who were in the thick of it who wanted to help or tried to help, and there have been many people who are less personally affected by it who have been very supportive of me. Together we have so far been unable to overcome the inertia of the culture of the organisation to reach a satisfactory solution. If there was an easy solution to bullying that didn't require a lot of people coming together to take concerted action, then it probably wouldn't be such an insidious problem throughout every part of our society. Finding a solution to bullying can't just be on the shoulders of the person who is directly experiencing the problem.

So that is why I didn't punch this man, and I am proud of my actions. I hope that this road can be a little easier for the next person who wishes to travel it.

Read more...

Abusive attitudes: How society normalises men's violence towards women

Fox Smoulder

In Australia domestic violence has been consider a criminal act for close to three decades [1]. However, violence from an intimate partner continues to be a leading cause of preventable health issues for Australian women [2]. Some time ago I did some research trying find out if the reasons for this were those which I had long felt – the pervasiveness is at least in part due to the violence supportive attitudes held by our society as a whole. I looked at it through the frames of subterranean values and techniques of neutralisation [3]. Through exploring the apparent contradictions between criminalisation and widespread prevalence of violence, I find that gendered violence is not a consequence of individual men failing to conform to societal norms, but instead a consequence of underlying support for violence within dominant values of Australian society.

Matza and Sykes define subterranean values as values that “are in conflict or competition with other deeply held views but are recognised and accepted by many” [4]. Sykes and Matza argued that individuals who participated in delinquent behaviour used a range of self rationalisations, which they called techniques of neutralisation, deployed either before (in order to enable action) or after the act[5]. The techniques are:

• Denial of responsibility – the extent to which they could control their behaviour;
• Denial of injury – the extent to which the action causes “real” harm;
• Denial of the victim – arguments that action was right in the circumstances;
• Condemnation of the condemners – attack those who raise concerns over the deviant behaviour to shift focus onto the behaviour and motives of those who disapprove;
• Appeal to higher loyalty – rules of society take a back seat to the demands and loyalty to important others [6].

While there have long been brutal wife beatings in Australia previous to the feminist movements of the 1970's, matrimonial cruelty and wife killings were, to a certain degree, tolerated [7]. The women’s movement responded to domestic violence in assisting women to leave [8], setting up refuges and fighting the view that violence was an indicator of the woman's failure to perform as a wife [9]. The 1975–1977 Royal Commission into Human Relationships found domestic violence was commonplace in Australian homes and that the assaults on women often caused severe damage [10]. During the 1980s, under pressure from feminists, state governments enacted legislation that specifically criminalised domestic violence [11]. In addition, both government and non-government agencies have run a range of campaigns aimed at reducing domestic violence.

While domestic violence is prevalent in Australian society, surveys of the Australian public indicate that the vast majority of people express opposition to violence against women, and that this has increased over time. The 2009 National survey on community attitudes to violence against women (NSCAVAW) found that 98 percent of those surveyed believe that domestic violence is a crime, which had increased from the 93% of respondents who had participated in the 1995 survey [12].

Despite these changes, domestic violence continues to be a serious issue, with 40% of women experiencing violence from an intimate partner across their lifetime, and if anything it is becoming more prevalent in Australia [13]. In New South Wales (NSW) between 1997 and 2004, there was a sharp increase in the number of domestic violence incidents recorded by police: a 39.5% increase the number of reported incidents in Sydney and a 50.7% increase for the rest of NSW. These increases do not appear to be the result of an increased rate of reporting [14]. Summers and the women she interviewed, drew the conclusion that the growth in male violence within Australia is a means to maintain control of women in the context of the growth in economic independence and opportunities that women now have in Australian society [15].

Connell argues that modern societies such as Australia are characterised by a range of masculine gender identities and gender roles [16]. However while there are a variety of forms that masculinity can take, there are dominant forms of masculinity referred to as hegemonic masculinity. Connell’s use of the concept hegemony is drawn from the work of Gramsci, who argued that in class societies, ruling classes maintain their dominance through both coercive force and the “spontaneous” consent given by the mass of society to the direction given to social life by the dominant group [17]. This consent, referred to as hegemony, is given both by the prestige held by the dominant groups, developed as a consequence of being in a leading position, and through the ideas that normalise and legitimise their dominance [18]. Thus when hegemony is challenged, coercive violence will tend to be used on a greater scale until hegemony is re-established [19]. Connell argues that hegemonic masculinity enforces the dominance of a particular vision of masculinity over other existent masculinities within a society, but importantly “embodies the currently accepted answer to the problem of the legitimacy of patriarchy which guarantees the dominant position of men and subordination of women” [20]. When this dominance is challenged, then individuals benefiting from it will resort to violence to enforce and maintain their dominance.

This link between male violence towards women and the maintenance of male dominance is reflected in the results on the NSCAVAW which found large numbers of respondents, despite viewing violence against women as criminal, holding beliefs that excuse and or justify violence against women [21]. The main predictors of holding such views were being male and having low levels of support for either gender equity or equality. In addition to this finding, throughout the NSCAVAW there are a number of responses that follow closely the techniques of neutralisation.

Almost a fifth of respondents (18%) agreed that domestic violence can be excused in situations where a “person gets so angry they lose control” (denial of responsibility) as well as men being less likely to see all forms of violence towards women as serious forms (denial of injury) [22]. The survey included a number of questions around victim blaming attitudes (denial of victim). These included 13% of respondents believing that a woman often says ‘no when she means yes’; 5% believed that ‘women who are raped often ask for it’ and 12% of respondents with low support for gender equality, did not believe a woman could be raped by a person they are in a sexual relationship with. The survey demonstrated widespread disbelieving attitudes towards women making allegations, with 49% of respondents agreeing with the statement that “Women going through custody battles often make up or exaggerate claims of domestic violence in order to improve their case” (56% of men agreed with this statement). In addition 26% of respondents disagreed with the statement “Women rarely make false claims of being raped” (condemnation of the condemners). There were no survey questions which reflected appeals to higher loyalty, however, there was evidence that participation in highly masculine contexts such as sporting sub-cultures, all-male university accommodation colleges and the military are predictors of violence supporting attitudes [23].

It is clear that there are a range of attitudes that are widespread within Australia that help to maintain the pervasiveness of violence against women [24]. At the same time these attitudes coexist with norms opposing violence in general and towards women specifically. Frames of neutralisation and subterranean values allow an understanding of how individuals are able to simultaneously hold attitudes that both oppose violence and justify and normalise that violence. This is because the violence-supporting attitudes emerge out of other, deeply held, socially acceptable norms. This would suggest that efforts to further to reduce both the support for and prevalence of violence supporting attitudes need to challenge not just these attitudes, but the norms from which violence emerges from, in this case the idea that men should be dominant over and have access to women [25].

Endnotes

1.   Ludo McFerran, Taking Back the Castle: How Australia is Making the
      Home Safer for Women and Children. (Kensington, NSW: Australian
      Domestic Violence Clearing House, 2007).
2.   Bob Pease and Susan Rees, ‘Theorising men’s violence towards
      women in refugee families: towards an intersectional feminist
      framework’, Just Policy, 47 (2008), 39.
3.   Jayne Mooney, ‘Shadow values, shadow figures: real violence’,
      Critical Criminology, 15 (2007).
      David Matza and Gresham M. Sykes, ‘Juvenile delinquency and
      subterranean values’, American Sociological Review, 26 (1961).
      Gresham M. Sykes and David Matza, ‘Techniques of neutralization: a
      theory of delinquency’, American Sociological Review, 22 (1957).
4.   Pauline Savy, ‘Culture’ in Brian Furze et al (eds.), Sociology in
      Today’s World, (2nd edn., South Melbourne: Cengage Learning
      Australia), 53.
5.   Matza and Sykes, ‘Juvenile delinquency and subterranean values’,
      716.
6.   Sykes and Matza, ‘Techniques of neutralization: a theory of
      delinquency’, 667-669.
7.   Colin James, ‘Media, men and violence in Australian divorce’,
     Newcastle Law Review, 10 (2008), 56.
      Christine Coumarelos and Jacqui Allen, ‘Predicting violence against
     women: the 1996 women’s safety survey’, Crime and Justice Bulletin,
      42 (1998), 1.
8.   Suellen Murray, ‘‘Why doesn’t she just leave?’: belonging, disruption
      and domestic violence’, Women’s Studies International Forum, 31
      (2008), 65.
9.   Murray, 67.
10. James, ‘Media, men and violence in Australian divorce’, 59.
11. McFerran, Taking Back the Castle: How Australia is Making the Home 
      Safer for Women and Children, 2.
12. Australian Institute of Criminology, The Social Research Centre, and
      VicHealth, National Survey on Community Attitudes to Violence 
      Against Women: Changing Cultures, ChangingAttitudes – Preventing
      Violence Against Women, (Melbourne: Victorian Health Promotion
      Foundation (VicHealth), 2010), 7.
13. Kylie Weston-Schueber, ‘Looking out for ‘our women’: cultural
      background and gendered violence in Australia’, James Cook
      University Law Review, 14 (2007), 139.
      Anne Summers, The End of Equality: Work, Babies and Women’s 
      Choices in 21st Century Australia, (Milson Point, NSW: Random
      House, 2003), 78.
14. Julie People, 2005, ‘Trends and patterns in domestic violence
      assaults’, Crime and Justice Bulletin, 89 (2005), 3.
15. Summers, The End of Equality: Work, Babies and Women’s Choices
      in 21st Century Australia, 78-79.
16. R.W. Connell, Masculinities, (2nd edn., Crows Nest, NSW, Allen &
      Unwin, 2005), 77.
17. Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, tr. Quentin
      Hoare and Geoffrey N. Smith, (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1971),
      12.
18. Gramsci, 12-13.
19. Gramsci, 210-211.
20. Connell, Masculinities, 77.
21. Australian Institute of Criminology, The Social Research Centre, and
      VicHealth, National Survey on Community Attitudes to Violence
      Against Women: Changing Cultures, Changing Attitudes – Preventing
      Violence Against Women, 8-9.
22. Australian Institute of Criminology, The Social Research Centre, and
      VicHealth, 8.
23. Australian Institute of Criminology, The Social Research Centre, and
      VicHealth, 17.
24. Australian Institute of Criminology, The Social Research Centre, and
      VicHealth,
25. Connell, Masculinities.
      Mooney, ‘Shadow values, shadow figures: real violence’.


Bibliography
Australian Institute of Criminology, The Social Research Centre, and
     VicHealth, National Survey on Community Attitudes to Violence
      Against Women: Changing Cultures, Changing Attitudes Preventing
      Violence Against Women, (Melbourne: Victorian Health Promotion
      Foundation (VicHealth), 2010).
Coumarelos, Christine and Allen, Jacqui, ‘Predicting violence against
     women: the 1996 women’s safety survey’, Crime and Justice Bulletin,
     42 (1998), 1-23.
Connell, R.W., Masculinities, (2nd edn., Crows Nest, NSW, Allen &
     Unwin, 2005).
Gramsci, Antonio, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, tr. Quentin
      Hoare and Geoffrey N. Smith, (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1971).
James, Colin , ‘Media, men and violence in Australian divorce’, Newcastle 
     Law Review, 10 (2008), 49-68.
McFerran, Ludo, Taking Back the Castle: How Australia is Making the 
     Home Safer for Women and Children. (Kensington, NSW: Australian
     Domestic Violence Clearing House, 2007).
Matza, David, and Sykes, Gresham M., ‘Juvenile delinquency and
     subterranean values’, American Sociological Review, 26 (1961),
      712-719.
Mooney, Jayne, ‘Shadow values, shadow figures: real violence’, Critical 
     Criminology, 15 (2007), 159-170.
Murray, Suellen, ‘‘Why doesn’t she just leave?’: belonging, disruption and
     domestic violence’, Women’s Studies International Forum, 31 (2008),
      65-72.
Pease, Bob, and Rees, Susan, ‘Theorising men’s violence towards women
      in refugee families: towards an intersectional feminist framework’, Just
      Policy, 47 (2008), 39-45.
People, Julie, 2005, ‘Trends and patterns in domestic violence assaults’,
     Crime and Justice Bulletin, 89 (2005), 1-16.
Summers, Anne, The End of Equality: Work, Babies and Women’s
      Choices in 21st Century Australia, (Milson Point, NSW:
      Random House, 2003).
Savy, Pauline, ‘Culture’ in Brian Furze et al (eds.), Sociology in Today’s 
     World, (2nd edn., South Melbourne: Cengage Learning Australia),
      49-76.
Sykes, Gresham M., and Matza, David, ‘Techniques of neutralization: a
      theory of delinquency’, American Sociological Review, 22 (1957),
      664-670.
Weston-Schueber, Kylie, ‘Looking out for ‘our women’: cultural background
     and gendered violence in Australia’, James Cook University Law
      Review, 14 (2007), 129-160.

Read more...

SWP Rape Allegations and Lessons for the Left

- Lisbeth Latham

Trigger Warning: description of rape apologism, victim blaming, bullying survivors and a detailed outline of the handling of rape allegations in the British SWP 

For those not aware, over the past two years a scandal has been unfolding within the British Socialist Workers Party. SWP is the mother organisation of Solidarity and the founding organisation within the International Socialist Tendency from which Socialist Alternative traces itself, and is the largest far-left organisation in Britain. This scandal has resulted in hundreds of members resigning from the SWP (including 90% of its student members) over the handling of rape and sexual harassment allegations against former SWP National Secretary Martin Smith dating back to 2010. In this piece I argue that the SWP’s experience has important lessons for the left in general dealing with problems of misogyny and particularly sexual predators within the left.

The case 

from sovietgoonboy.wordpress.com

In 2010, a young woman (W) made allegations against the then general secretary of the SWP, that Smith (known throughout the process as Comrade Delta), following the ending of a relationship had continued to harass W. One section of the leadership immediately began to harass W and her supporters. Other sections of the leadership placed responsibility on whether action would be taken against Smith on W’s shoulders.

Based on the harassment she experienced W resigned from the SWP in late 2010. However, based on these allegations the SWP’s Central Committee moved to remove Smith from the position of national secretary. At the 2011 national conference, where this decision was formally endorsed, Smith and the central leadership acted to downplay and trivialise the allegations, suggesting that hostile forces outside the organisation were using the allegations to damage the SWP. Smith’s speech announcing his stepping down was met with a standing ovation including footstamping from the audience and chants of “workers united will never be defeated”. Although removed from the national secretary position, Smith continued as a member of the CC and was heading up the SWP’s union and anti-fascist work, which as central activities of the SWP meant that Smith continued to play an extremely prominent public role in the party.

In Autumn 2011, W rejoined the SWP. As a consequence of the SWP’s condemnation of George Galloway’s rape apologist remarks re: Assange in mid-2012, she became more confident that the SWP would handle her case properly and an approach was made by W to take a dispute against Smith further, and that her allegation was rape. The Disputes Committee hearing was highly problematic:

• W was made to wait for four hours prior to being heard by the DC – without being told what was going on;
• The DC read out a “legal definition” of rape and said that this would be the benchmark; 
• While Smith was given W’s allegations and statement in advance to prepare his response, W was not given Smith’s material in order to be able prepare; 
• The DC’s questioning of W was inappropriate, asking why she had gone for a drink with Smith, detailing the nature of her relationship with him, and her other relationships and sexual history. 

from sussexasn.tumblr.com

The DC’s “verdict” was that the accusation of rape was unproven. In the wake of the hearing W was subjected to bullying from her “comrades” in the local branch. This largely included being ostracised and being treated as if she didn’t exist – when she did try talk to talk to members she was told by one member “it is not appropriate for me to speak to you” and by another that she was a “silly girl” and that “14-year olds get groomed not 19-year olds”. Some members started holding meetings in the cafe area of W’s work despite her request that they not do this.

At the same time a second member (X) came forward with allegations of sexual harassment against Smith. X had a meeting with the DC following which she was told her evidence was not relevant. During the hearing X was asked questions about her drinking habits and whether she could have misconstrued Smith’s behaviour as he was a “friendly man who often bought her coffees”.

Under the SWP’s disputes process any DC decision goes to the national conference and supporters of W began organising to challenge the DC report. In the lead up to the conference, which was in January 2013, four SWP members were expelled for “factionalism” based on a Facebook chat where a discussion occurred over whether to form a faction – and it was the decision to not form a faction that was used as a basis to expel these members. In the end, a small faction was formed with the intention of articulating a statement calling for changes in how the SWP handles rape allegations. The CC and supporters of Smith organised to limit the ability for the faction members to be elected as delegates (in the British SWP delegate elections are based on a winner-takes-all scenario, with different sides putting forward slates of delegates).

In the DC session at the Conference the report presented a very sketchy outline of the proceedings: that W had made an allegation against a CC member “Delta”, and that they had concluded that the allegations were not proven. In the discussion, members were barred from discussing the detail of the allegations or the hearing and W was barred from attending the session, despite requesting that they be able to attend. One DC member informed members present at the session that the case was very difficult because Smith and W presented very different stories and none of the witnesses saw what had happened. Despite this, the report was passed by a thin margin of 239 for accepting, 209 voting to reject and 18 abstentions.

Following the conference, the CC moved to close down discussion. Paid full-timers were told to toe the line or they would lose their jobs. Despite this, and the SWP’s bans on factions outside of the pre-conference discussion period, members started organising for a new conference. Ultimately, while this push was successful in forcing an emergency conference, opposition forces were heavily defeated and a wave of resignations began. Another wave has just occurred, after oppositionists who remained in the party were unsuccessful in trying to force the most recent national conference to adopt an apology from the party to both W and X and to block Smith’s supporters along with Alex Callinicos and Charlie Kimber, the party’s current national secretary, from being re-elected to the CC.

In the meantime, X and her supporters continued to push for X’s case to be heard, which the CC resisted and wanted to put off until 2014. X was removed from their full-time position in the SWP centre on the basis that it would improve office dynamics. Despite the efforts of the CC to protect Smith, however, pressure mounted from within the organisation and also from outside, with more and more people becoming aware of what of had happened as a consequence of a range of leaks. Not only did the right-wing media attack the party, but a large number of prominent left-wing activists publicly distanced themselves from the SWP. Under this pressure and with X’s allegations still looming, Smith resigned from the SWP in July 2013. It has emerged that a range of prominent SWP members had been seeking to find ways to help Smith, and he had secured a funded PhD place in Social Work at Liverpool Hope University, where a SWP member is a senior academic. Following Smith’s resignation the CC agreed to have a DC hearing into X’s allegations, where it was found that Smith had a case to answer, but no action would be taken unless he rejoined the organisation – which hardline supporters are now rumoured to be pushing for. Despite Smith’s resignation his supporters still accused X of being an MI5 agent (British domestic intelligence) and argued “we aren’t rape apologists unless we believe that women always tell the truth – and guess what, some women and children lie”, which received a round of applause during a session at the conference.

This case brings together a number of threads that get tangled together and encourages a view that the problems were specific to the SWP – particularly how it interprets and applies the concept of democratic centralism and the specific problems associated with how the SWP handled the allegations. This tends to result in a view that the problems in the SWP are a consequence of either the political regime in the SWP, the SWP’s hostility to feminism or a necessary consequence of handling a rape allegation internally.


It couldn’t happen to us 
There has been a common refrain from a section of the left that this could not happen to us. To anyone who thinks this, my response is that it probably has and if it hasn’t, it definitely could. Any conceit that it couldn’t will only make it harder for people who have been assaulted in your organisation to raise their experiences because you are already in a mindset of denial.


 The SWP undoubtedly has an extremely problematic internal life and structure. These include a large apparatus with considerable authority, which is detached from the lived experiences of the rest of the membership, with access to information which the majority of members don’t have, along with the time to think about the work of the organisation in a way in which most people who are working full-time and do the bulk of their political work in their spare time do not. However, this is the reality in all political organisations that have some form of apparatus – it has been recognised as a key feature of the tendency towards bureaucracy identified by social theorists such as Weber, Michels and Gramsci more than 100 years ago.


The SWP's regime
The SWP’s approach to internal democracy is also problematic, as there are a number of features that make communication between members and fights for organisational change difficult. These include: limits to the forming of factions outside of pre-conference discussion periods; the limited number of preconference discussion bulletins produced – normally three – which particularly limits the ability of the oppositionists to respond to criticisms of their position from the leadership. The leadership is not limited in this way as they receive contributions as they come in and so can respond in the same bulletin as the original statement, which undermines the impact of any statement or rebuttal by an opposition member, being immediately countered in the readers mind, while creating the impression of the leadership as almost omniscient. The leadership also has the added advantage of being able to legitimately communicate its views to the membership almost at will through the medium of the organisation’s Party Notes bulletin.

However, most far-left organisations have similar organisational rules, although there may be some differences regarding how and when factions can be organised, how many pre-conference bulletins will be produced and who is able to contribute to and what is able to be included in the organisation’s regular membership newsletter.

More generally the SWP, like much of the far-left, values bullying and non-consensual behaviour. Such behaviour is central to much of the political activity, discourse and interactions both within the organisation and with the external world. Most people who have had their names on a contact list from a left political organisation will be able to tell stories of receiving unwanted phone calls which continue well after they made it clear they weren’t interested in participating in the organisation – often the person won’t have even known they were putting their name on a contact list having simply signed a petition (which was a contact list masquerading as a petition). Bullying behaviour only becomes a problem when there is a falling out between the leadership and the bullies. At which point the leadership will either suddenly “discover the bullying” or produce the dirt file they have already been keeping on the individual/s in question, depending on the particular internal culture of cynicism in that organisation.

Feminism and the SWP

from revoltingpleb.wordpress.com

It is undoubtedly the case that the SWP’s long history of hostility to both feminism and any form of autonomous self organising by people sharing an oppressed identity made it easier for sexist and misogynist arguments to be mobilised by the SWP’s leadership and its supporters. It made it much easier for oppositionists to be denigrated as “creeping feminists” and succumbing to “movementism” as Kimber and Calinicos argued in their International Socialism piece on the politics of the crisis in the SWP written prior to the most recent national conference.

While much of the far-left does not necessarily share the SWP’s public hostility to feminism, autonomous organising and intersectionality, they do share elements of it particularly when you scratch the surface. The old Australian Democratic Socialist Party (which I was a member of), for instance, while supporting the right for people sharing oppressed identities to organise autonomously in the movement did not support the idea of such organising within the DSP. This was based on the idea, shared with the SWP, that the organisation is “opposed to fighting against the oppression of women and is democratically organised” – so it’s not necessary to have such separate organising – however, as a number of oppositionists in the SWP pointed out, this ignores the constant impact on an organisation’s membership of living a deeply sexist society. Moreover, a number of organisations that were “shocked” by what happened in the SWP wanted to keep criticism focused on the SWP regime rather than get distracted by “side issues” such as rape and sexism. The Communist Party of Great Britain, publishers of the Weekly Worker, the socialist equivalent of the News of the World, ran a number of charming articles aimed at combating this feminist error, the most prominent being one entitled ‘SWP and feminism: Rape is not the problem’ which attacked feminist writer Laurie Penny for her criticisms of the SWP.

Case should have been taken to the police
A number of commentators have argued that the complaint should simply have been taken to the police and no effort made to handle the matter internally. This response is problematic on a number of levels. First, many of those making these statements refuse to accept that W had agency in making a decision to not go to the police. I have no problem with people talking about how the SWP’s attitude to the police and their desire to protect the organisation ¬– attitudes shared with much of the left – would create a difficult environment in which to go to the police, however, there are very good reasons why an individual might decide to not report a rape to the police:

• Previous negative interactions with the police;
• Knowledge or experience of how women who report rape are treated by the criminal justice system
• Knowledge or experience of poor outcomes of rape cases taken to the police 

Most importantly, it is the choice of a survivor to act in their own best interests in meeting their own needs and it is not anyone else’s place to judge that.

The discourse around the case and the need to go to the police reflect some problematic attitudes to police in general, and specifically around the investigation of the rape. Implicit in the idea that people have to report a crime and the suggestion that an internal investigation would contaminate the police investigation is the idea that rape investigations are like episodes of CSI, where the case is dependent on forensic evidence, when in fact, with cases where consent is central, the case turns on what people say and who is believed. While it is very true that discussions about events can contaminate people’s memories, a lot of things will do this – that’s why it is important when something happens to someone, if they want a clear record of it, to write it down at the time.

These arguments demonstrate significant levels of both delusions of and reliance on the criminal justice system to not only deliver justice to survivors but to take responsibility for the question of disciplining members. Anyone who knows anything about the way rape is handled by the police and the courts should know that this confidence is not well placed. Even if you don’t, you would expect that revolutionary socialists with a Marxist analysis of society and an understanding of how women’s oppression is central to capitalist domination should also know that the ideas legitimising this domination are central to bourgeois hegemony. Thus, ideas normalising rape and violence again women are wide spread and will act to undermine the ability to obtain justice.

This Marxist analysis of society and understanding of the relations between women’s oppression and capitalist domination should also make it clear that the question of whether an accused perpetrator should be in a left organisation should not simply be based on whether there is a “guilty” verdict. We must take into account, if the “not guilty” verdict is based on being “innocent”, often such a verdict could occur due to lack of evidence or the accused creating sufficient doubt as a consequence of rape apologism or victim blaming. If this is how a person was found “not guilty” then should that person still remain a member of a left organisation? I would think not. In addition, what happens, as in so many complaints made to the police about rape and domestic violence, the party chooses not to proceed with the allegations?

In both the SWP internal discussion and some of the broader discussions there has been easy and confident mobilisation of rape myths, victim blaming and anti-women stereotypes. Dave Renton, in a critique of the SWP’s handling of the allegations against Smith, indicates that at the conference (when Smith stepped down as national secretary), a number of the delegates formed the view that the allegations were based on a jilted lover being unhappy. Renton blames this on the way the leadership characterised the allegations. While there is no doubt that the leadership’s framing of the allegations was disgusting and disingenuous, that these members could so readily dismiss the allegations based on the idea that “it must have been a jilted lover”, speaks volumes about the attitude of a section of the SWP’s membership to women.

What way forward?
The left has to attempt to create safer spaces for women and anyone who experiences rape. An important part of this is to adopt a zero tolerance to rape and to empower all members to raise concerns about rape and sexual violence and for such concerns to be pursued in whichever jurisdiction the survivor chooses.

This requires the establishment of robust and transparent mechanisms for handling allegations of violence. We know that a major problem with the way in which rape is handled in the courts is the extent to which survivors are put on trial. 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. This not only has an awful impact on the individual survivor, but on all survivors, both past and future, and their ability to feel supported or like they belong. On the flipside, it sends clear signals to predators and potential predators that predatory behaviour will be explained away and provides strategies for getting away with it.

Far-left party members don’t want to find that rape has occurred in their party, as it may be possible that the predator would have to leave when predators are often seen as valuable to the party (many predatory attributes are valued on the left). Such a finding would also damage the organisation’s reputation. This problem is magnified if the person has played a prominent role and/or the organisation has defended them against allegations. Importantly, it also demonstrates the extent to which the participation of survivors is both not valued and taken for granted.

We need mechanisms that fundamentally turn these dynamics on their head. 


How should this be done?
First, be clear that internal processes are not legal or quasi-legal processes. Second, prioritise the creation of left organisations and social movements as safer spaces and limit the space within which predators can operate. This means not just starting from the framework of believing survivors, but also acting against members who attempt to build support for predators, particularly if this support is based on perpetuating rape myths, victim blaming, or negative stereotypes of women. It is also important to act against any member, particularly leading members who discourage members from bringing complaints, in whichever jurisdiction that they choose.

As a general pattern, the left needs to adopt an approach which makes it clear that they are consistent opponents of violence against women and not simply when opposition to said violence lends itself to anti-system arguments. The exclusion of predators and would-be predators (which is what most enablers and apologists are) is not a loss for the left – it will make the left and the social movements a stronger, safer and better place for building a new world.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 

This article originally appeared in issue #3 of the Dealing with an Unsafe Left zine. Check them out on tumblr and facebook.

                     

Read more...