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Deep in the comments of a recent rehash of an old discussion, I had an epiphany that some of the people I was trying to talk to might never have witnessed or considered the sorts of consequences I was concerned about for others and had experienced myself. This is my first attempt to drill down into that particular detail, but it probably won’t be my last.
Following up on "Soft No"
Nov. 14th, 2022 04:26 pmThis weekend I attended an event with a lot of art and parties in a hotel. A few hundred people I know were there, among hundreds more strangers. Over the course of the weekend I asked many people if they wanted to do various things, ranging from get lunch together to explore an art room to play with rope to share a bed. I got plenty of “yes, let’s do it”, and we did the thing and that was great. I got some “yes, at this specific future time”, and most of those led to doing the thing, which was also great. I got some “no”, although significantly less than I got “yes”, and I feel good about that ratio as well. That leaves the final category, the one plenty of you are tired of hearing me post about, but the one that bothers me the most and handling differently would possibly improve my life the most.
I got at least a dozen “maybe later” or “maybe tomorrow”, mostly to more intimate requests (rope, cuddle, sleepover). No, I didn’t ask anyone about sex. No, I wasn’t asking random people inappropriate things. These were people I had spent an hour or more talking to at the moment in question, and had known for months to years prior.
For at least most of those responses, I was 95% confident or better that they actually did want to do the thing, and that asking again an hour or day later would have led to a genuinely enthusiastic interaction. As frequent readers of my posts can probably predict, I didn’t ask again. My social circles contain dangerously many people who advocate a standard of enthusiastic consent where “maybe later” is a “soft no”, a “soft no” is a “no", and asking again after a “no” is a consent violation. Most of those people are hypocrites, not practicing what they preach, and not holding their friends or most strangers to those standards, but occasionally still applying them to strangers or people they don’t like. This is becoming an intolerable aspect of my social interactions, and I’m preparing to make drastic changes. I’m hoping this last(?) plea for insight will draw any novel insights before I make some decisions.
I would very much like to hear from some of the people who advocate this model of consent. Especially if you follow it, but also if you don’t and can explain why. I’m also open to feedback from other people, but I could do without more of the “just don’t listen to those people, their opinion doesn’t matter” that litter my posts on this subject. Their opinion does matter, when they control my access to people and spaces that I enjoy, when people I know and love trust their problematic conclusions on the subject of consent without question, or when those conclusions spread through games of telephone to otherwise damage my reputation and ruin my life.
I got at least a dozen “maybe later” or “maybe tomorrow”, mostly to more intimate requests (rope, cuddle, sleepover). No, I didn’t ask anyone about sex. No, I wasn’t asking random people inappropriate things. These were people I had spent an hour or more talking to at the moment in question, and had known for months to years prior.
For at least most of those responses, I was 95% confident or better that they actually did want to do the thing, and that asking again an hour or day later would have led to a genuinely enthusiastic interaction. As frequent readers of my posts can probably predict, I didn’t ask again. My social circles contain dangerously many people who advocate a standard of enthusiastic consent where “maybe later” is a “soft no”, a “soft no” is a “no", and asking again after a “no” is a consent violation. Most of those people are hypocrites, not practicing what they preach, and not holding their friends or most strangers to those standards, but occasionally still applying them to strangers or people they don’t like. This is becoming an intolerable aspect of my social interactions, and I’m preparing to make drastic changes. I’m hoping this last(?) plea for insight will draw any novel insights before I make some decisions.
I would very much like to hear from some of the people who advocate this model of consent. Especially if you follow it, but also if you don’t and can explain why. I’m also open to feedback from other people, but I could do without more of the “just don’t listen to those people, their opinion doesn’t matter” that litter my posts on this subject. Their opinion does matter, when they control my access to people and spaces that I enjoy, when people I know and love trust their problematic conclusions on the subject of consent without question, or when those conclusions spread through games of telephone to otherwise damage my reputation and ruin my life.
Today’s insight into my analysis of interpersonal risk and reward involves being a houseguest, a differently intimate sort of interaction than I usually focus on. I am hopeful that this different context for what is really the same issue will help someone understand it who previously hasn’t.
Sam and I took a flight together. Upon landing, Sam invited me to crash at Pat’s place. I trust Sam, so even though I’ve only met Pat once before and they weren’t there to welcome me, I accepted, and went to sleep in one of Pat’s guest rooms. Come morning, Sam was gone and incommunicado, but might have been back later. Pat was around, and we greeted each other. I asked if I could stick around for a few hours to do my day job. So far this is a perfectly normal experience in terms of friends and +1s crashing at each other’s homes, one I’ve been on both sides of multiple times in the past, and I think most of my friends will recognize.
Pat’s response was “I need to get [the guest part of the house] reset for an airbnb guest and then I have to leave soon”, and then they turned away from me and back to making their coffee. That was where everything went off the rails, both in terms of common expected responses, and in terms of my personal [perception of] risk in proceeding. It’s that risk that I want to walk you through next.
I predicted a 20% chance that Pat wanted me to leave and an 80% chance that they’d have been fine with me working in a different part of the house while they were gone and I was waiting for Sam to come back. Further, in the case where they wanted me to leave I predict a 50% chance they would give me a straight answer if I asked and a 50% chance they would take my followup as creating enough social pressure or obligation for them to let me stay even though they wanted me to go. And in that worst 10% case, there’s a decent chance that they would tell someone, and a small chance that person either repeats it badly or are themselves the sort of person to take misleading irresponsible leaps in paraphrasing communication, and a bunch of other factors and weightings that I can elaborate on if necessary… All of which leads to my probabilistic prediction that this choice would lead to about five people being told for the first time, and perhaps hundred more not for the first time, that [TRIGGER WARNING, this is about to take an unexpectedly intense turn] I am a rapist. And since that is an outcome I would prefer to avoid, I packed up and left the house.
Now Sam thinks I’m weird and awkward and ignorant of social norms and unable to read interpersonal signals, or at least a bit more of those things than they already thought, and is less likely to invite me to their friends’ homes. I knew that outcome would happen, and nothing about it surprises me. If I had a dollar for every time someone accused me of missing signals that I didn’t miss… I wouldn’t need to borrow nearly so much to buy a house.
What I need from you is either to convince me that I’m wrong in my predictions, or in my weighting of the harm/benefit of the various outcomes, or to stop being and/or associating with the people who do the game-of-telephone thing and mis-judging of these and other sorts of situations and all the other cognitive failures that have led to this state of affairs.
"One of his biggest demons is his sex monster. His desire for erotic connection tends to get him into trouble. A lot. Folxs have posted their experiences with that side of him. For such an empathetic creature, he sure has a hard time understanding if he should keep going in intimate situations."
Take a moment and let your imagination wander, brainstorm some things you think that quote might be about. Really, I'd like you to stop here for at least 10 seconds before reading further and see what you can come up with.
( Read more... )
Take a moment and let your imagination wander, brainstorm some things you think that quote might be about. Really, I'd like you to stop here for at least 10 seconds before reading further and see what you can come up with.
( Read more... )
I was recently confronted by someone who proposed a utilitarian viewpoint valuing only people's happiness, calling it Good to make people happier and Bad/Wrong to make people less happy, with some inconsistent distinction between "upset" and "hurt" as categories of unhappiness. They were of the opinion that my aggressive and controversial approach to important sensitive topics like consent was not only net-negative, but that there were actually no good effects at all, even ignoring the bad effects. It has been a few years since I wrote something on the subject, so maybe it's worth revisiting, with a slant toward discussing the mere existence of the positive effects rather than their relative weight compared to the negative effects or the responsibility for those effects. In this post, I am going to elaborate on some of those effects, but first I want to call out some factors that are common to many such effects.
First, it may not be obvious to some people, but when I am arguing with someone about one of these controversial topics, it is not usually my goal to convince them to change their mind. These arguments happen in [semi]public forums, and among the audience there will always be some people closer to the fence than the people vocally engaged on either side. It may help to consider it like a political debate; the two candidates are not trying to convince each other of anything, they are trying to convince the [undecided, usually] voters in the audience. Changing the mind of even one of those people is an effect, as is simply making them aware of my position at all, and most of the people mentioned below were only ever spectators in those discussions.
Second, I cannot know every effect that my actions have. However, I can observe some effects, and predict or extrapolate from there what the effects I cannot see might be. If someone comes to me to privately respond to a public discussion, it is very unlikely that they are the only person thinking whatever they are thinking. Unfortunately this observation is biased toward positive responses, as I expect people with negative reactions to approach me much less often. However, that isn't a problem in this specific context, where I am illustrating any gross positive effect, without the need to consider net or negative effects.
Finally, some of the outcomes described below are at least partially based on prediction and confidence, compound probability and evaluation of likelihoods. If an outcome is not just plausible but probable, and the scenario repeats many times, I am comfortable acting as if that outcome had come to pass at least once, even if I will never be able to confirm it.
On to the Good...
Around the time I was becoming vocal on the subject of the nature of consent and consent violations, there was a serial date rapist and drugger-of-women active in the Atlanta area EDM/rave scene. He was unwelcome at some venues and in many homes, but otherwise free to continue acting. Some of his victims disclosed their rapes to me. Some of those victims told me, explicitly, that they were coming forward to me, and only to me, because of my vocalness and [uncommon, rational] opinions on the subject. I used that information to coordinate with other victims and the police to put him [back] in jail. I am confident in predicting that a double digit number of rapes, the ones that he would have committed had he remained free, were averted by this chain of events, and I count that as significant positive change in the happiness of those potential victims.
More generally, there are mental health benefits to be found in providing an outlet for disclosing violent trauma at all. Of the dozens of other women who have come to me to discuss their experiences with consent violations, many have told me that they chose me because of how they see me interacting in discussions on the topic. Giving them that opportunity, where no other extant approach had done so, would likely increase their happiness in at least some cases.
There are men who have come to me to confess that they did something in the past that my posts have convinced them was a consent violation. Some of them are thankful for this, and profess an intent to avoid that behavior in the future. I cannot know how many of them are being truthful or succeed, but I am comfortable predicting that of at least one of them. If those changes take place, some of them would lead to their partners less often feeling violated.
More broadly, there are people who have come to me to tell me that they had entirely dismissed the idea of modern consent culture due to the impossible and hypocritical standards of the people they had seen promoting it. I was, for some of those people, the first person they had seen give any model for consent that could be used to avoid violating consent. This opened them up to the idea that at least some modern consent culture ideas could be useful in improving their behavior. Whether their behavior actually improved or not, and whether that improvement made their future partners happier, is not certain, but again I am comfortable predicting that it has happened in at least one case.
On a closer personal level, I have had friends and colleagues and sexual partners whose connection to me was initiated or strengthened by my views and approach to these topics. People who explicitly thank me for doing what they cannot, often out of fear of the same repercussions that they see me facing. I like to believe that at least some of the people who choose to remain connected to me are enjoying some part of the experience, and I am certain that at least some of them would have never become so close to me if I were a different version of myself. Their (and my, for that matter) enjoyment of those relationships is a positive effect.
I have friends who have been in relationships with serial consent violators, some of whom I have attempted to intervene with. When I approached them about the situation, they explicitly told me that they were listening and weighing my counsel specifically because of my vocal views on the objectiveness of consent violation, where they had dismissed feedback from people with subjective and unpredictable ideas of what consent means. Based on this feedback, some of those relationships ended. While I may have made them unhappy by sharing this information, that is outside the scope of this post. Once they had the information I gave them, I am comfortable concluding that their choice to end the relationship was intended to, and hopefully did, improve their own happiness.
Similarly, I have friends who have considered relationships with serial consent violators, dismissing warnings on the subject from the people I described in the previous paragraph. Following a similar train of thought, my warnings were heeded where others' were not. I am comfortable predicting that at least some of these people were happier without that potential partner than they would have been with them, and that my warnings would have been dismissed with all the others if I thought and behaved as they do.
A friend of mine is authoring a book and blog on the subject of consent violations, mediation, community response, etc. Based on my vocal and unusual views, they came to me to request an interview to gather my insights. I do not know what they will do with this information, but I do know that they did not seek this level of detail from some people less like me in the ways in question. I am comfortable assuming that they think having this information from me can help them help other people, and given their profession they seem more likely to be right about that than I am. Even if they disagree with me and will only ever use my contributions as a negative example, my being vocal and aggressive about my position is what led to them seeking and acquiring those contributions.
I know people who have been inaccurately accused of consent violations. Not "falsely", because that phrase has a specific meaning in our culture. By inaccurate, I mean that there is no dispute about the events, only about the conclusion of what label to apply to them. These people felt able to speak to me and confide in me because of the content and intensity of my position on the subject, and I know that some of them were less sad and felt less isolated after having those conversations.
I'm going to stop here. There are a lot more examples of positive effects that I could bring up, but this is already running a bit long. Next time I write at length on this subject it will probably be about net good and ratios, and I'll bring up some other positive effects in the context of specific negative effects. I would appreciate feedback on any of these examples. I want to understand how so many people either don't see/predict/understand these positive effects, or do but don't attribute them as I do.
This post contains topics known to be traumatically triggering to some people.
This post is meant to give some context to many of my other posts about communication, right/wrong, sexual consent, worry, blame, etc, for people who have joined these conversations in the last 2-3 years and/or aren't aware of some of the history of their own local community.
All of the mentions here of "community" refer to the local strongly overlapping meta-community of burners, social dancers, social drug users, [neo]hippies, etc.
Multiple friends of mine in the Atlanta community were given drugs of dubious composition by a local predator (W) and then pressured into having sex with them. I personally observed W initiate sex with an inebriated friend of mine at a party while that friend was saying "no", which we (the sober and/or responsible partygoers) quickly put a stop to. An aggressive campaign of information gathering and sharing, led by myself, resulted in W being mostly to completely banned from most local public and private parties and venues, and then their return to prison. This campaign involved some tough decisions about how strongly to insist that victims share their stories and how hard to push when seeking information. W is out of prison now, and I still manage a Facebook page where people occasionally share information about his new okcupid and facebook profiles, what clubs he's hunting at now, etc.
A friend of mine was forcibly raped, by a person who regularly hosted large social gatherings in their home in Boston (X). This was not nearly that person's only such offense, just the one I knew the most about. Years of quiet "back room" discussions that I knew about, and surely years more that I didn't, had failed to put a significant dent in this person's access to people to further harm, or to dissuade people from attending their parties. Everyone who discussed the issue agreed that it was a serious problem.
Two acquaintances of mine (Y and Z) from Boston had sex at Burning Man. Some time later, it became known in the Boston Burner community that Z considered the interaction to be nonconsensual, and the label "rapist" began to be applied to Y. Over the course of months, both people told their story to friends and/or to Facebook groups. The unusual aspect is that the stories matched. As near as I can tell, and I put significant effort into pursuing details I might not have had, there was no dispute about any action or activity that took place between them that night. The only distinction that was made known was that one of them went home thinking (or later realized) it was a negative and nonconsensual experience and the other thought the opposite. A vocal minority of the community supported the label of "rape" based on Y having not verbally asked for consent for the various interactions (which Z also did not ask about). Another minority, silent out of fear of the same sort of reprisal I frequently choose to endure, disputed the label based on Z having initiated the sexual act.
I have said it before and will repeat it again. The moment I realized I couldn't figure out what Y had done wrong, that was the scariest moment of my life. I was struck with the realization that I might have been raping people for years, unknowingly. And I couldn't tell how to avoid it without doing things that almost no one was suggesting that I do (such as me asking for consent before someone else did something to me).
After that, it only got worse. The discussions prompted by these situations brought to my attention that a large and vocal minority of the people surrounding me were of the opinion that no matter what I did, how careful I was, there was no way I could be sure I was having consensual sex. This left me with the fear that those people were correct, that I might actually be committing rape with no way to avoid it other than avoiding sex (if that was even enough). It also left me with the fear that they could or would use their social power to ruin my life, or even just make it significantly less comfortable or safe, if they decided I had committed rape based on this impossible-to-honor definition of theirs (regardless of whether it was accurate or not).
For years, I was of the [non secret] opinion that the Boston community was doing itself a disservice by treating Y as bad as, or even worse than, X. This extreme level of dissonance suggested a serious lack of ability of the community at large to figure out and take action on problematic actors. Later, Y died. I brought that opinion up again, and was once again shouted down. However, around the same time and in a way that I refuse to believe is coincidental, the community finally started to take serious action about X.
The above lays the groundwork for a lot of the discussions you've seen me have. There are, of course, a thousand more pieces of context, which continue to accumulate even now, but these three and the conversations about them sparked almost everything that has come since.
When you see me talking about "appropriate" and "acceptable", for actions like "flirting" or "hugging", that is me applying a filter. I am actually trying to figure out things about consent and sex, without further alienating (for my benefit) or harming (for their benefit) people who don't want to be, or can't stop themselves from, talking about consent and sex. Of course, I am *also* trying to figure out the literal subject of the discussion; I do care about flirting and hugging in an acceptable fashion, those aren't just analogies.
I hope this gives some context to discussions that might have otherwise seemed hypothetical, edge case, straw man, etc.
This post is meant to give some context to many of my other posts about communication, right/wrong, sexual consent, worry, blame, etc, for people who have joined these conversations in the last 2-3 years and/or aren't aware of some of the history of their own local community.
All of the mentions here of "community" refer to the local strongly overlapping meta-community of burners, social dancers, social drug users, [neo]hippies, etc.
Multiple friends of mine in the Atlanta community were given drugs of dubious composition by a local predator (W) and then pressured into having sex with them. I personally observed W initiate sex with an inebriated friend of mine at a party while that friend was saying "no", which we (the sober and/or responsible partygoers) quickly put a stop to. An aggressive campaign of information gathering and sharing, led by myself, resulted in W being mostly to completely banned from most local public and private parties and venues, and then their return to prison. This campaign involved some tough decisions about how strongly to insist that victims share their stories and how hard to push when seeking information. W is out of prison now, and I still manage a Facebook page where people occasionally share information about his new okcupid and facebook profiles, what clubs he's hunting at now, etc.
A friend of mine was forcibly raped, by a person who regularly hosted large social gatherings in their home in Boston (X). This was not nearly that person's only such offense, just the one I knew the most about. Years of quiet "back room" discussions that I knew about, and surely years more that I didn't, had failed to put a significant dent in this person's access to people to further harm, or to dissuade people from attending their parties. Everyone who discussed the issue agreed that it was a serious problem.
Two acquaintances of mine (Y and Z) from Boston had sex at Burning Man. Some time later, it became known in the Boston Burner community that Z considered the interaction to be nonconsensual, and the label "rapist" began to be applied to Y. Over the course of months, both people told their story to friends and/or to Facebook groups. The unusual aspect is that the stories matched. As near as I can tell, and I put significant effort into pursuing details I might not have had, there was no dispute about any action or activity that took place between them that night. The only distinction that was made known was that one of them went home thinking (or later realized) it was a negative and nonconsensual experience and the other thought the opposite. A vocal minority of the community supported the label of "rape" based on Y having not verbally asked for consent for the various interactions (which Z also did not ask about). Another minority, silent out of fear of the same sort of reprisal I frequently choose to endure, disputed the label based on Z having initiated the sexual act.
I have said it before and will repeat it again. The moment I realized I couldn't figure out what Y had done wrong, that was the scariest moment of my life. I was struck with the realization that I might have been raping people for years, unknowingly. And I couldn't tell how to avoid it without doing things that almost no one was suggesting that I do (such as me asking for consent before someone else did something to me).
After that, it only got worse. The discussions prompted by these situations brought to my attention that a large and vocal minority of the people surrounding me were of the opinion that no matter what I did, how careful I was, there was no way I could be sure I was having consensual sex. This left me with the fear that those people were correct, that I might actually be committing rape with no way to avoid it other than avoiding sex (if that was even enough). It also left me with the fear that they could or would use their social power to ruin my life, or even just make it significantly less comfortable or safe, if they decided I had committed rape based on this impossible-to-honor definition of theirs (regardless of whether it was accurate or not).
For years, I was of the [non secret] opinion that the Boston community was doing itself a disservice by treating Y as bad as, or even worse than, X. This extreme level of dissonance suggested a serious lack of ability of the community at large to figure out and take action on problematic actors. Later, Y died. I brought that opinion up again, and was once again shouted down. However, around the same time and in a way that I refuse to believe is coincidental, the community finally started to take serious action about X.
The above lays the groundwork for a lot of the discussions you've seen me have. There are, of course, a thousand more pieces of context, which continue to accumulate even now, but these three and the conversations about them sparked almost everything that has come since.
When you see me talking about "appropriate" and "acceptable", for actions like "flirting" or "hugging", that is me applying a filter. I am actually trying to figure out things about consent and sex, without further alienating (for my benefit) or harming (for their benefit) people who don't want to be, or can't stop themselves from, talking about consent and sex. Of course, I am *also* trying to figure out the literal subject of the discussion; I do care about flirting and hugging in an acceptable fashion, those aren't just analogies.
I hope this gives some context to discussions that might have otherwise seemed hypothetical, edge case, straw man, etc.
Trigger warning: consent, rationality, emotion, subjectivity
I learn the details of another friend's experience of sexual assault approximately once per month. 8-15 times per year for the last 6-8 years.
I’m opening with that because I want it to make an impression, and to sink in. I have come to suspect that this piece of information, or its absence, is highly relevant to others’ accusations that I engage in hyperbole and hypotheticals, chasing edge cases and straw men.
How many victims’ stories do you know, to the level of detail of knowing who assaulted them, what was said before/after, and what happened between them? I anticipate that the average answer to that question among my social circles is 2, the average among people reading this post is around 5, and the average among people responding to this post will be around 10. I can’t even answer with certainty; the dozens have started to blur together over time. I predict the number would be much lower if I asked how many of the accused you’ve heard as much information from.
If you have been drawn into a discussion about consent and community, violations and rules, right and wrong, and it was a single event, or just a few, that got your attention, you’re probably not well equipped to be making decisions and drawing conclusions. As terrible as it sounds to say it, and the impetus for the trigger warning on this post... this applies even if that single event was your own experience. Until you know the common and uncommon threads connecting a dozen rapes in your community, you aren’t qualified to say which causes are most likely, or which solutions most appropriate. You don’t have the perspective to understand which interactions were and were not consensual, or seemed consensual or not to the participants.
When someone accuses me of engaging in hypotheticals on this subject, I am most often making vague statements with the goals of protecting a victim’s identity and/or consolidating the common factors of multiple real events.
When someone accuses me of setting up straw men to argue against on this subject, I am most often referring to a significant number of real people whose views and/or behavior are detrimental to our community and safety.
There are other people who have more perspective than I do. People with more information, more experience, and/or more education on the subject. Trauma counselors. First responders. Educators of those groups. Reformed rapists. Etc. I’m not saying I’m the most qualified person to handle this topic. I’m just saying that on one important axis, I’m probably more qualified than you.
Finally, I am left to speculate on why I have all of this information. It’s obviously not my caring nature or interpersonal appeal or conversational savvy that’s drawing people to tell me these things. I have said it in the past, and I’ll repeat my hypothesis here. I expect that my public engagement on this subject, and my attempt to remain rational and fair, is what convinces so many people to confide in me. I maintain the principle that having more information about a problem makes me more effective at solving it, and I also think that being able to tell their story is good for victims, so I am doubly motivated to keep doing what I’m doing on this front, until someone convinces me that it’s hurting more than it’s helping.
I learn the details of another friend's experience of sexual assault approximately once per month. 8-15 times per year for the last 6-8 years.
I’m opening with that because I want it to make an impression, and to sink in. I have come to suspect that this piece of information, or its absence, is highly relevant to others’ accusations that I engage in hyperbole and hypotheticals, chasing edge cases and straw men.
How many victims’ stories do you know, to the level of detail of knowing who assaulted them, what was said before/after, and what happened between them? I anticipate that the average answer to that question among my social circles is 2, the average among people reading this post is around 5, and the average among people responding to this post will be around 10. I can’t even answer with certainty; the dozens have started to blur together over time. I predict the number would be much lower if I asked how many of the accused you’ve heard as much information from.
If you have been drawn into a discussion about consent and community, violations and rules, right and wrong, and it was a single event, or just a few, that got your attention, you’re probably not well equipped to be making decisions and drawing conclusions. As terrible as it sounds to say it, and the impetus for the trigger warning on this post... this applies even if that single event was your own experience. Until you know the common and uncommon threads connecting a dozen rapes in your community, you aren’t qualified to say which causes are most likely, or which solutions most appropriate. You don’t have the perspective to understand which interactions were and were not consensual, or seemed consensual or not to the participants.
When someone accuses me of engaging in hypotheticals on this subject, I am most often making vague statements with the goals of protecting a victim’s identity and/or consolidating the common factors of multiple real events.
When someone accuses me of setting up straw men to argue against on this subject, I am most often referring to a significant number of real people whose views and/or behavior are detrimental to our community and safety.
There are other people who have more perspective than I do. People with more information, more experience, and/or more education on the subject. Trauma counselors. First responders. Educators of those groups. Reformed rapists. Etc. I’m not saying I’m the most qualified person to handle this topic. I’m just saying that on one important axis, I’m probably more qualified than you.
Finally, I am left to speculate on why I have all of this information. It’s obviously not my caring nature or interpersonal appeal or conversational savvy that’s drawing people to tell me these things. I have said it in the past, and I’ll repeat my hypothesis here. I expect that my public engagement on this subject, and my attempt to remain rational and fair, is what convinces so many people to confide in me. I maintain the principle that having more information about a problem makes me more effective at solving it, and I also think that being able to tell their story is good for victims, so I am doubly motivated to keep doing what I’m doing on this front, until someone convinces me that it’s hurting more than it’s helping.
Previous post: http://sparr0.livejournal.com/77436.html
Last month I heard the following rumor about myself from a bay area acquaintance:
"[a friend who runs a camp at a large event] let me know that someone had complained to him that you were insufficiently respectful of sexual consent boundaries [and that's why you aren't welcome to join his camp]"
( Read more... )
I still don't have enough information to confidently say what I think has happened. I continue to seek information on all of these fronts. This line of inquiry has spawned numerous side quests, all of which I hope to follow to completion in order to make amends, better myself, help others better themselves, or help others make informed decisions about me. Posting this, and following those leads, means I can never again know if an accusation is new or based on the same thing as this round of rumors or even just based on someone having read this post. I can live with that, if it means doing something good with this information.
(cross posted to Facebook, Livejournal, Google+, Fetlife)
Last month I heard the following rumor about myself from a bay area acquaintance:
"[a friend who runs a camp at a large event] let me know that someone had complained to him that you were insufficiently respectful of sexual consent boundaries [and that's why you aren't welcome to join his camp]"
( Read more... )
I still don't have enough information to confidently say what I think has happened. I continue to seek information on all of these fronts. This line of inquiry has spawned numerous side quests, all of which I hope to follow to completion in order to make amends, better myself, help others better themselves, or help others make informed decisions about me. Posting this, and following those leads, means I can never again know if an accusation is new or based on the same thing as this round of rumors or even just based on someone having read this post. I can live with that, if it means doing something good with this information.
(cross posted to Facebook, Livejournal, Google+, Fetlife)
Firefly 2016
Jul. 6th, 2016 02:20 pmSummary
This was my first net-negative experience at a burn or con. The things I learned will have positive value in the future, so eventually I can look back and say this weekend was worth it, but I don't know how long that will take. I've finished burning a lot of bridges and made some new friends. Firefly is still the best regional burn I've been to, despite its flaws, and I'll probably return if they let me.
The Good
I got to spend some part of a couple of days camping with some of the people whose company I enjoy most. This is a welcome reprieve from what has been mostly solitude on the west coast. There were friendly conversations as well as good hugs and cuddles. Due to some things mentioned in sections below, there's a good chance I'll get to spend more time with those people fwen I return to Firefly.
( Read more... )
This was my first net-negative experience at a burn or con. The things I learned will have positive value in the future, so eventually I can look back and say this weekend was worth it, but I don't know how long that will take. I've finished burning a lot of bridges and made some new friends. Firefly is still the best regional burn I've been to, despite its flaws, and I'll probably return if they let me.
The Good
I got to spend some part of a couple of days camping with some of the people whose company I enjoy most. This is a welcome reprieve from what has been mostly solitude on the west coast. There were friendly conversations as well as good hugs and cuddles. Due to some things mentioned in sections below, there's a good chance I'll get to spend more time with those people fwen I return to Firefly.
( Read more... )
Mothers vs corpses, bodily autonomy
Jun. 3rd, 2015 11:41 amOur society refuses to take organs from a corpse without the person's consent, even when it would save multiple lives. We refuse to take blood or bone marrow from an unwilling donor, even when it would save a life or cure a disease.
However, we are quite willing to subject a woman to months of pain, risk of injury or death, and mental trauma in order to preserve the life of one fetus.
This analogy has been a commonly occurring meme in pro-choice internet discussion communities recently, and it's an amazingly good one. It's so good that my powers of devil's advocacy are failing me. I need someone more creative than me, or a real anti-abortion advocate, to answer this question for me...
Why does a corpse have more right to bodily autonomy than a pregnant woman? Why do we give the dead body more rights than we give the living person?
PS: No arguments here about whether a fetus is alive, please. That's another issue for another thread. For the purpose of this discussion, I will concede that a fetus is a living person.
However, we are quite willing to subject a woman to months of pain, risk of injury or death, and mental trauma in order to preserve the life of one fetus.
This analogy has been a commonly occurring meme in pro-choice internet discussion communities recently, and it's an amazingly good one. It's so good that my powers of devil's advocacy are failing me. I need someone more creative than me, or a real anti-abortion advocate, to answer this question for me...
Why does a corpse have more right to bodily autonomy than a pregnant woman? Why do we give the dead body more rights than we give the living person?
PS: No arguments here about whether a fetus is alive, please. That's another issue for another thread. For the purpose of this discussion, I will concede that a fetus is a living person.
Consent is important to me. I have multiple people in my life who have been in situations that ended badly, even life changingly, over issues with consent. Like many things, I've put more thought into this subject in a few years than most people will in their whole life. Like many things on that list, talking about this in depth is a social taboo, despite not talking about it leading to very negative outcomes.
( Read more... )
I hope this gives you some insight into my thoughts on the matter of consent, both in general and as applies to my current and potential relationships.
( Read more... )
I hope this gives you some insight into my thoughts on the matter of consent, both in general and as applies to my current and potential relationships.
