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Oct. 15th, 2013 07:35 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tylikJust a note, concerning my last post.
I'm pretty happy with the conversation that's going on there. (For a bunch of folks, I wish I had the internet doohicky that would allow me to send you chocolate in near real-time. Thank you.)
But it's hard not to notice that it almost entirely has gone over to talking about how to handle harassment in the current context.* Rather than my actual focus, which was what do you do, if anything, about people in the community, people in your social circles, who you know to have histories of sexual assault.**
It's a much harder question. I'm not pretending that I have an answer. A lot of folks, well, my life is arranged in such ways that I don't have to deal with them. (And, of course, I've been careful to arrange my reputation to be known as someone who is likely to hurt you if you try it.) And there are people where really, they seem do have learned something, and I haven't seen anything like that out of them in the last ten years, so maybe it's not a problem any more? I... don't really know if that's adequate.
I fear my own doublethink on this.
* And yeah, when the first response is, essentially "You were assaulted when you were a teenager? Well, what did *you* do?" well, yeah, apparently we're going to have to treat some ground that I'd kind of hoped was already covered.
** BTW, yes, I am using sexual assault for things like grabbing someone's boob or groin at social events without permission. Because that's what it is. I wonder how things would change if the standard to response was not to slap their hand away, and tell them off, and then studiously avoid them (perhaps with a word to the host) but to call the police. One suspects there would be a lot of grousing... but an awful lot less groping, real quickly. But this illustrates the difference between a social context that says this isn't okay, but implicitly accepts that this is going to happen, and one that really enforces this kind of stuff not being okay. I like to think this isn't the only way of going about it, but I think it's worth asking "Why wouldn't I do this?"
I'm pretty happy with the conversation that's going on there. (For a bunch of folks, I wish I had the internet doohicky that would allow me to send you chocolate in near real-time. Thank you.)
But it's hard not to notice that it almost entirely has gone over to talking about how to handle harassment in the current context.* Rather than my actual focus, which was what do you do, if anything, about people in the community, people in your social circles, who you know to have histories of sexual assault.**
It's a much harder question. I'm not pretending that I have an answer. A lot of folks, well, my life is arranged in such ways that I don't have to deal with them. (And, of course, I've been careful to arrange my reputation to be known as someone who is likely to hurt you if you try it.) And there are people where really, they seem do have learned something, and I haven't seen anything like that out of them in the last ten years, so maybe it's not a problem any more? I... don't really know if that's adequate.
I fear my own doublethink on this.
* And yeah, when the first response is, essentially "You were assaulted when you were a teenager? Well, what did *you* do?" well, yeah, apparently we're going to have to treat some ground that I'd kind of hoped was already covered.
** BTW, yes, I am using sexual assault for things like grabbing someone's boob or groin at social events without permission. Because that's what it is. I wonder how things would change if the standard to response was not to slap their hand away, and tell them off, and then studiously avoid them (perhaps with a word to the host) but to call the police. One suspects there would be a lot of grousing... but an awful lot less groping, real quickly. But this illustrates the difference between a social context that says this isn't okay, but implicitly accepts that this is going to happen, and one that really enforces this kind of stuff not being okay. I like to think this isn't the only way of going about it, but I think it's worth asking "Why wouldn't I do this?"
