“I want to know what happened in that room when they were making a decision that changed my entire life.”

Julie, an undergraduate, says she will never understand why the Administrative Board decided in its closed deliberations in the Forum Room on the third floor of Lamont Library to allow the student who sexually assaulted her to remain on campus.

Julie, who has been granted anonymity by The Crimson because she fears retaliation from her perpetrator, initially felt optimistic about the College’s response to her sexual assault. After reporting the rape, Julie felt encouraged by the responses of Harvard University Police Department and the Office of Sexual Assault Prevention and Response. Assured that there was significant evidence to build a case against the perpetrator, Julie took her case to the Ad Board.

In light of this, she said, the Ad Board’s ultimate decision not to require the perpetrator to withdraw was particularly disheartening.

Paola, another College student who was sexually assaulted on campus, also found OSAPR to be a helpful resource. Yet she expresses deep disappointment with the way that administrators respond to students coming forward with experiences of sexual assault. “They question the event so much and ask if you were in the wrong so many times that, after a while, one begins questioning if it even happened,” she writes in an email to The Crimson.

… In light of recent attention surrounding the issue of sexual assault, Paola writes, “Students are talking about it more and being increasingly sensitive about the subject. People are realizing that it happens a lot on campus and they are fighting more visibly to end our rape culture. They are more open to conversations on the matter and are not afraid to stand up for other students who have suffered abuse. I feel in a more supportive atmosphere now than I did my freshman year.”

In contrast, she writes that she believes the administration “is still a bit more antiquated and hostile.”

Even as students advocate for what is, to many, much-needed culture shift, frustrations remain for those who have already been the victim of a sexual assault.

The worst frustration among these, according to Julie, is the knowledge that she is not the only person on campus to have an experience of this kind. “What hurts me the most is to find out that there are so many cases like mine here.”

[TW] Rape Culture

During his “We Saw Your Boobs” song Seth MacFarlane listed off women who’s breasts he’d seen in their movies. As if this isn’t grotesque enough four of the instances he listed were scenes of rape or the character was raped during the movie:

Hilary Swank in Boys Don’t Cry.
Jodie Foster in The Accused.
Jessica Chastain in Lawless.
Charlize Theron in Monster.

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One in six female Princeton undergraduates said they experienced “non-consensual vaginal penetration” during their time at the University, according to an unpublished survey from 2008 — as in five years ago — that was recently leaked to The Daily Princetonian. The numbers suggest that rates of sexual assault and sexual harassment on campus may be significantly higher than the rates at which they are actually reported or adjudicated. But they’re on par with national averages, which is likely why Princeton didn’t think the report was worth publicizing. If we pretend elite college students aren’t sexually assaulting their peers, the rape fairy will make it all disappear.

According to the survey, more than 28 percent of female undergraduate students reported that they were touched in a sexual manner or had their clothes removed without consent. About 12 percent said they were forced to receive or perform oral sex, and an additional 14 percent were said they were victims of attempted forced oral sex. Another 6.2 percent of female undergraduate respondents said they experienced attempted non-consensual vaginal penetration.
 
Of the 809 female undergraduates who filled out the undergraduate female survey, more than 120 answered affirmatively to the statement, “A man put his penis into my vagina, or someone inserted fingers or objects without my consent.”

This is the best discussion available today on the interaction between Marxism and feminism written by a contemporary Marxist writer, Sharon Smith:

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INESSA ARMAND, the first leader of the women’s department of the 1917 Russian Revolution, made the following observation: “If women’s liberation is unthinkable without communism, then communism is unthinkable without women’s liberation.” That statement is a perfect summary of the relationship between the fight for both socialism and women’s liberation—neither is possible without the other.

And the Marxist tradition has from its beginnings, with the writings of Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, stood for the liberation of women. As early as the Communist Manifesto, Marx and Engels argued that the ruling class oppresses women, relegating them to second-class citizenship in society and within the family: “The bourgeois sees in his wife a mere instrument of production…He has not even a suspicion that the real point aimed at [by communists] is to do away with the status of women as mere instruments of production.”

 … While a socialist revolution does not automatically liberate women, it creates the material conditions for doing so. And it is through the process of revolution at every stage, from first to last, that revolutionaries, in the tradition of the Bolshevik Party, have a crucial role to play in combating oppression, not only from above, but also inside the working class. There is no substitute for this process. Marx made this clear when he argued: “The revolution is necessary, therefore, not only because the ruling class cannot be overthrown any other way, but because the class overthrowing it can only in a revolution succeed in ridding itself of all the old crap and become fitted to found society anew.”

If the role of revolutionaries is indispensable, then it is also the case that we will be most effective not by minimizing the challenges we face in fighting sexism within the working class, but by acknowledging them and, on this basis, developing a strategy that aims to throw the weight of the entire working class behind the goal of women’s liberation.

It is nearly impossible to find any article on the internet about a woman or group of women (regardless of the particular topic) without seeing an attendant stream of comments ranging from, at best, crass objectification of the woman as to their perceived “fuckability”, and at worst, outright verbal ejaculations of sexual violence and misogyny.

New Delhi, India (CNN) — In an incident eerily similar to a sexual assault that sent shock waves worldwide, Indian police say a woman was gang-raped over the weekend by seven men after she boarded a bus at night.

Police arrested six suspects, including the bus driver, after the alleged Friday night attack in Gurdaspur district in Punjab.

A manhunt for the other man was under way Sunday.

Just like a gang rape in New Delhi that sparked international outrage last month, the new attack occurred after the woman got on a bus.

The bus sped past her stop, police said. By that time, the woman was the only passenger.

The bus driver and his helper then took the married 29-year-old woman to an undisclosed address where five others joined the two men and raped her throughout the night, police said.

A revolutionary organization cannot win nor hold the trust of women that it can be truly used as an instrument in the fight for their social emancipation from oppression if women do not even have confidence in that organization to take sexism seriously as an internal matter. Not only will women feel alienated from such a party, which will appear as something they have no real control and ownership over, but it also will not properly train male comrades in how to wage a bitter fight against the ubiquitous and insidious forms of sexism which hold back the struggle in our workplaces, schools, and communities.

And any struggle that has as its aim the total transformation of the existing social relations will not succeed without the total and complete participation of, and leadership by, the female half of the broad population in general and the working class in particular.

It has come to light this week that the internal Disputes Committee within the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) held a hearing to address a rape case involving a young female party member and a senior male member. The accused was ruled not to have raped the complainant. The Disputes Committee reported back to the party conference on Saturday 5 January, where the issue was discussed. A transcript of this discussion has been leaked and published online.

That it was deemed appropriate to deal with such a serious issue outside of the criminal justice system is in my view bad enough, particularly considering that the worst punishment the accused could apparently have faced if found guilty of rape was his expulsion from the party. But the details of the Disputes Committee hearing, as evidenced by the transcript, make matters even worse.

To summarise, the Disputes Committee members all knew and/or were friends with the accused and five out of eight of them were serving or previous members of the Central Committee, of which the accused was apparently also a part. None of them knew the young woman (referred to as “W”). W is reportedly “incredibly traumatised by the hearing”. According to a party member who spoke up for her at the conference:

She was questioned about why she went for a drink with him, her witnesses were repeatedly asked whether she’d been in a relationship with him […] she was asked about relationships with other comrades including sexual relationships.

She felt she was being interrogated and felt they were trying to catch her out in order to make her out to be a liar. She did not accept the line of questioning, saying ‘they think I’m a slut who asked for it’. […] she feels she’s been treated as this non-person.

The transcript also indicates that W “was expected to respond immediately to the evidence that [the accused] was able to bring - she never got to see it in advance. He had her statement for weeks before she appeared in front of the panel.”

Another woman has also come forward with accusations against the man. She says she has been removed from her party job and told her presence would “disrupt the harmony of the office”.

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SWPFeminist // Posted 12 January 2013 at 14:30

I’m in the SWP and I’m not going to try to the defend the disgusting way in which the DC handled themselves and this case. I just want to let you all know that a lot of SWP are absolutely disgusted at the way this has been, including a CC member being booed out of a meeting. The CC has made absolutely no effort to submit a statement after all the press attention. The reason so many of us are staying in is because W is staying to fight, which I think is incredibly brave and I feel I can’t really justify leaving if she’s not.
We’re trying to get a recall conference at the moment so we can tell them all what we think of their stupid kangaroo court and hopefully rid ourselves of these thoroughly unpleasant people who have found themselves in charge. Please show solidarity with the people in the SWP who are making a stand against this awful little clique at the top.

I’ll understand if you have no sympathy, I just wanted to let you know that there is a substantial resistance to this.

for womens’s liberation! // Posted 12 January 2013 at 16:31

This whole horrible story goes against everything the SWP stands for and be assured that the vast majority of SWP members are deeply committed to women’s equality and are sickened by what is happening in this case… men have been kicked out for harassing women as the default position normally. That is why so many women remain in the party and why there is hope of change. On the issue of the police I am fully in support of those sisters who decide to go and those who decide they cant face that whole process as well and I am not sure that we should have a position that says everyone must go. I felt worse after and got no justice myself

Laura // Posted 12 January 2013 at 18:53

Just to clarify, I wasn’t implying that W should have gone to the police - I support women in doing whatever they think is best for them in terms of reporting or not reporting. But I think it was totally inappropriate for such a serious crime to be dealt with by a group of the accused’s friends and workmates.

Not My Comrades

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Apparently credit belongs to Suzy X. thatsucia.tumblr.com

MSNBC | Joe Scarborough’s Unbelievable Misogynistic Denial of Chauvinism

How often does a conversation go like this? Hopefully less and less these days, but the pattern nonetheless remains pervasive in our society:

Woman calls out man for obvious sexism; man flips out at woman in a sexist manner with the righteous indignation of a spoiled child; woman grudgingly acquiesces to man’s belligerence and apologizes for DARING to challenge him …

[UPDATE: Also, see this post from Richard Seymour - http://www.leninology.com/2013/01/crisis-in-swp.html as well as http://nathan-akehurst.blogspot.com/2013/01/notes-on-swp-crisis.html]

I feel I just have to say something about this, because it’s tearing me up inside just how horrible this whole thing seems.

Rape culture and sexism permeate our entire society, and I know that it’s impossible for any organization which exists within the toxic wasteland of misogyny known as capitalism to be 100% immune to the corrupting influence of this environment. This is true of any social organism, be it political, cultural, etc; radical, reformist, revolutionary, etc.

I know I shouldn’t be surprised that something like this could happen on the left. But still, I feel like I just want to go off and puke and cry and be like, “Why?! Why?! WHY??!!”

I guess, as this article states, “‘The issues of democracy and sexism are not separate, but inextricably linked,” writes Walker. “Lack of the first creates space for the second to grow, and makes it all the more difficult to root it out when it does.” He’s talking about the SWP, but he could be talking about any part of the left right now, in its struggle to divest itself of generations of misogynist baggage.”

Or, as Karl Marx wrote, “[T]he revolution is necessary therefore, not only because the ruling class cannot be overthrown in any other way, but also because the class overthrowing it can only in a revolution succeed in ridding itself of all the muck of ages and become fitted to found society anew.”

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[Also see, Tom Walker’s, “Why I Am Resigning from the SWP”]

What does the SWP’s way of dealing with sex assault allegations tell us about the left?

By Laurie Penny | Published 11 January 2013

How do we deal with sexual violence on the left? Here’s a case study.

The Socialist Workers’ Party, for those who aren’t familiar with it already, is a political organisation of several thousand members which has been a prominent force on the British left for more than 30 years. They are at the forefront of the fight against street fascism in Britain, were a large organising presence in the student and trade union movement over the past several years, and are affiliated with large, active parties in other countries, like Germany’s Die Linke. Many of the UK’s most important thinkers and writers are members, or former members.

Like many others on the left in Britain, I’ve had my disagreements with the SWP, but I’ve also spoken at their conferences, drunk their tea, and have a lot of respect for the work they do. They are not a fringe group: they matter. And it matters that right now, the party is exploding in messy shards because of a debate about sexism, sexual violence and wider issues of accountability.

This week, it came to light that when allegations of rape and sexual assault were made against a senior party member, the matter was not reported to the police, but dealt with ‘internally’ before being dismissed. According to a transcript from the party’s annual conference earlier this month, not only were friends of the alleged rapist allowed to investigate the complaint, the alleged victims were subject to further harassment. Their drinking habits and former relationships were called into question, and those who stood by them were subject to expulsion and exclusion.

Tom Walker - a party member who walked out this week in disgust - explained that feminism “is used effectively as a swear word by the leadership’s supporters…. it is deployed against anyone who seems ‘too concerned’ about issues of gender.”

In a brave and principled resignation statement published yesterday, Walker said that:

“… there is clearly a question mark over the sexual politics of many men in powerful positions on the left. I believe the root of this is that, whether through reputation, lack of internal democracy or both, these are often positions that are effectively unchallengeable. Not for nothing have recent sex abuse allegations in the wider world focused on the idea of a ‘culture of impunity’. Socialist Worker has pointed to the way that institutions close up to protect powerful people within them. What is not acknowledged is that the SWP is itself an institution in this sense, with its instinct for self-protection to survive. As previously mentioned, its belief in its own world-historic importance gives a motive for an attempted cover-up, making abusers feel protected.”

Members are now leaving the organisation, or being expelled, in large numbers after the case came to light at the party’s conference and transcripts of the discussions were leaked online.

The writer China Mieville, a longstanding member of the SWP, told me that, like many members, he is “aghast”:

“The way such allegations were dealt with - complete with questions about accusers’ past relationships and drinking habits that we would instantly, rightly denounce as sexist in any other context - was appalling. It’s a terrible problem of democracy, accountability and internal culture that such a situation can occur, as is the fact that those arguing against the official line in a fashion deemed unacceptable to those in charge could be expelled for ‘secret factionalism.”

Mieville explained that in his party, as in so many other organisations, the power hierarchies which have facilitated problems such as this have been controversial for a long time.

“Many of us have for years been openly fighting for a change in the culture and structures of the organisation to address exactly this kind of democratic deficit, the disproportionate power of the Central Committee and their loyalists, their heavy-handed policing of so-called ‘dissent’, and their refusal to admit mistakes ,” he told me.  “Like the current situation, a disaster catastrophically mishandled by the leadership. All of us in the party should have the humility to admit such issues. It’s up to members of the SWP to fight for the best of our tradition, not put up with the worst, and to make our organisation what it could be, and unfortunately is not yet.”
 

The British Socialist Worker’s Party is hardly atypical among political parties, among left-wing groups, among organisations of committed people or, indeed, among groups of friends and colleagues in having structures in place that might allow sexual abuse and misogyny by men in positions of power to continue unchecked. One could point, in the past 12 months alone, to the BBC’s handling of the Jimmy Savile case, or to those Wikileaks supporters who believe that Julian Assange should not be compelled to answer allegations of rape and sexual assault in Sweden.

I could point, personally, to at least two instances involving respected men that have sundered painfully and forever friendship groups which lacked the courage to acknowledge the incidents. The only difference is that the SWP actually talk openly about the unspoken rules by which this sort of intimidation usually goes on. Other groups are not so brazen as to say that their moral struggles are simply more important than piffling issues of feminism, even if that’s what they really mean, nor to claim that as right-thinking people they and their leaders are above the law. The SWP’s leadership seem to have written it into their rules.

To say that the left has a problem with handling sexual violence is not to imply that everyone else doesn’t. There is, however, a stubborn refusal to accept and deal with rape culture that is unique to the left and to progressives more broadly. It is precisely to do with the idea that, by virtue of being progressive, by virtue of fighting for equality and social justice, by virtue of, well, virtue, we are somehow above being held personally accountable when it comes to issues of race, gender and sexual violence.

That unwillingness to analyse our own behaviour can quickly become dogma. The image is one of petty, nitpicking women attempting to derail the good work of decent men on the left by insisting in their whiny little women’s way that progressive spaces should also be spaces where we don’t expect to get raped and assaulted and slut-shamed and victimised for speaking out, and the emotions are rage and resentment: why should our pure and perfect struggle for class war, for transparency, for freedom from censorship be polluted by - it’s pronounced with a curl of the upper lip over the teeth, as if the very word is distasteful - ‘identity politics’? Why should we be held more accountable than common-or-garden bigots? Why should we be held to higher standards?

Because if we’re not, then we have no business calling ourselves progressive. Because if we don’t acknowledge issues of assault, abuse and gender hierarchy within our own institutions we have no business speaking of justice, much less fighting for it.

“The issues of democracy and sexism are not separate, but inextricably linked,” writes Walker. “Lack of the first creates space for the second to grow, and makes it all the more difficult to root it out when it does.” He’s talking about the SWP, but he could be talking about any part of the left right now, in its struggle to divest itself of generations of misogynist baggage.

Equality isn’t an optional add-on, a side-issue to be dealt with after the revolution’s over. There can be no true democracy, no worthwhile class struggle, without women’s rights. The sooner the left accepts that and starts working the enormous stick of priggishness and prejudice out of its collective backside, the sooner we can get on with the job at hand.

Just want to take a minute to point out that the extent to which the prevalence of rape in our society has recently begun to draw a bit more attention from a wider number of people is entirely owing to the brave survivors of rape who have come forward unapologetically with their stories and have defiantly challenged the attempt by those in power to paint them as the guilty party.

From the SlutWalks, to Amherst, to Steubenville, and the countless others …

Our strength comes from our overwhelming numbers in united, mass struggle for social justice and against sexism, misogyny, and oppression in all of its forms.

Jerry Sandusky, AP Images / Lizzy Seeberg, courtesy of the Seeberg Family

Two storied college football programs. Two rape scandals. Only one national outcry. How do we begin to explain the exponentially different levels of attention paid to crimes of violence and power at Penn State and Notre Dame?

At Penn State, revered assistant coach Jerry Sandusky was raping young boys while being shielded by a conspiracy of silence of those in power at the football powerhouse. At Notre Dame, it’s not young boys being raped by an assistant coach. It’s women being threatened, assaulted, and raped by players on the school’s unbeaten football team. Yet a sports media that’s overwhelmingly male and ineffably giddy about Fighting Irish football’s return to prominence has enacted their own conspiracy of silence.

As unbeaten Notre Dame prepares to play in tonight’s national championship game against Alabama, the sports media has chosen not to discuss the fact that this football team has two players on its roster suspected of sexual assault and rape; two players whose crimes have been ignored; two players whose accusers felt harassed and intimidated; two players whose presence on the field Monday night should be seen as a national disgrace. 

The main reason this is taking place is because their accusers are not pressing charges. One cannot, because she is dead. 19-year-old Lizzy Seeberg, a student at neighboring St. Mary’s College, took her own life after her claims of being assaulted in a dorm room were met with threats and indifference. The other accuser, despite description of a brutal rape, won’t file charges “absolutely 100%” because of what Seeberg experienced.

 … But the cone of silence that surrounds a company college football town is not enough to understand why Penn State’s rape scandal was front-page news the second the Sandusky scandal went public and Notre Dame has been largely protected by the press. The only answer that makes sense is that raping women has become “normalized” in our culture while raping little boys has not. The only answer that makes sense is that the rape of a young boy sets all sorts of alarms of horror in the minds of the very male sports media, while the rape of women does not. The only answer that makes sense is that it’s been internalized that while boys are helpless in the face of a predator, women are responsible for their assault. The accusers are the accused.

According to government figures, women in the U.S. are more likely to be the victim of rape than to develop breast cancer (i.e., 1 in 5 versus 1 in 8, respectively). So why then the silence on this epidemic of sexual assault, compared to the number and variety of massive “pink ribbon” events, walks, fundraisers, and the like addressing the trauma of breast cancer? I think it’s because rape forces one to grapple with the reality of a social disease which is rooted in the institutionalized sexism which continues to pervade our society.

Also, I’m done with the term “date rape,” which serves to make it seem like a rape which happens between two possibly intimate acquaintances is not REALLY rape, and therefore deserves a qualifying prefix. In actual fact, “date rape” is the most common form of rape (as opposed to the myth of rape as something that usually happens when a stranger with a knife jumps out of a dark alley).

From the government’s Center for Disease Control 2010 report, National
Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey:

Nearly 1 in 5 women (18.3%) and 1 in 71 men (1.4%) in the United States have been raped at some time in their lives, including completed forced penetration, attempted forced penetration, or alcohol/drug facilitated completed penetration.