TW: Rape, domestic violence I want to talk about solutions

I want to discuss options for dealing with gendered violence in Leftist societies and organizations. If we don’t believe in prisons, what are the possibilities for dealing with people who commit acts like these? I know a lot of people support a very “guilt on accusation” model of dealing with these thing and straight up killing people accused of this stuff or banishing them immediately and completely, and as a survivor I have some sympathy for that outlook, but I also know that as a survivor my abuser/rapist used allegations of abuse against me to isolate me and further his control over me and so I honestly think that in order to protect victims due process and having some sort of burden of proof is a necessity.

Additionally, banishing someone from one community without followup work allows them to move on to another community where no one is aware of their behavior and even if we do our best to keep people informed it doesn’t seem to me to address the root of the problem (meaning why it happened in the first place). I’m not sure if every perpetrator is irredeemable… and I mean if we believe in prison abolition and the like, don’t we sort of have to believe in the possibility of redemption for people who’ve done truly terrible things?

I also see accusations of rape and rape apologism getting thrown around a lot in radical spaces and people dealing with them in a variety of ways that don’t seem to do much to actually fix the problem. I also see people who have no experience dealing with situations of sexual violence being called rape apologists for being unsure in dealing with said situations. I’ve also seen COINTELPRO people use allegations like these to destroy and discredit organizations and people (it’s funny the only place an allegation like that is likely to destroy someone’s life is in leftism, everyone else is peachy)

Also I think sometimes people get all torches and pitchforks while ignoring the survivors actual wishes and that seems fucked up to me, and I also think that there are issues when notions of radical consent bump up against ideas about how everyone whoever violates consent is undoubtedly and unquestionably a monster. I mean like, I know that when I was younger I got drunk and had sex with a lot of other people who were also drunk… and like that was fucked up, but I don’t think I’m a monster. I think because we live in a society where people aren’t taught about getting good consent and in fact are taught the exact opposite a lot of the time, a lot of people who aren’t monsters have failed to practice good consent.

I’m not in a good place, I’m very triggered right now and am disassociating a bit because I’m dealing with a good friend being accused of rape by their rapist and having their entire life destroyed because of it and it reminds me of what happened to me and how toxic and unnuanced the left can often be about stuff.

IDK what to do about any of this because obviously sexual and domestic violence and ignoring survivors is a huge issue.

I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what the right solution is.

Also I Think That Drunk People’s and Adolescents’ ability to consent to sex is a lot like their ability to consent to get a tattoo

It won’t turn out as an awful traumatic thing you regret for the rest of your life in every single case, sometimes you actually did want to get a full face tattoo of spiderman’s mask and you’ll be incredibly glad you did it, but we don’t let drunk people and teenagers get tattoos because there’s a great enough risk that their decision making is compromised (by alcohol or the power an adult has over a kid or whatever) that we make them wait until they’ve slept it off, or until they’re a little older to do the thing, because we just can’t tell if it’s the booze/awe/desire for adult approval talking or them, and it would be unethical to take the money and do the tattoo. This is the same reason an adult who has sex with an adolescent, or a person who has sex with someone intoxicated is at best extremely irresponsible and unscrupulous, and at worst actively malicious and taking advantage of someone in a vulnerable position.

And so like even if Lori Maddox is completely psychologically unscathed and really enjoyed losing her virginity to Bowie, it was still utterly wrong and fucked up of him to have sex with her, similarly, no matter how much you still love the ink your cousin’s shady friend gave you when you were 14, he was still a bad dude. She doesn’t have to be damaged for him to have done something really really bad by putting her wellbeing at risk like that.

I had sexual experiences as an adolescent with people older than me that I regard as consensual even now, like they didn’t damage me, I had fun, but it was still wrong for the people older than me to agree to do that with me.

Like sometimes drunk people and adolescents do give genuine consent, but the problem is there’s literally no way to tell the difference between legit consent and not-actually-consent, so you just shouldn’t go there. You see what I mean? And even if it turns out fine, and the person turns out fine, you were still putting them in danger and that’s still very fucked up.

Basically my point is: A: If consent is blurry, then it doesn’t count, even if it turns out later it was real consent and B: Even if a victim comes out unscathed the perpetrator still did something very wrong, like it doesn’t matter that she says she had fun, even if that’s true, even if she’s not covering up some damage done by the incident, it doesn’t make what happened ok

(Yes I also do know that alcohol is a blood thinner which result in problems with tattooing, but you see my point)

A Little Scenario

Let’s say you live in a society where driving is hugely important, until you do, you’re a nobody, a total loser, so of course combine with how nice it would be to get to go places you want to go, you’re desperate to drive.

However, in this society driving is also a fraught and somewhat taboo activity. Driver’s ed is just an explanation of the working of an internal combustion engine, and a series of photos of injuries from car accidents. Your parents maybe explain how the suspension works, and tell you not to do it till you’re 30 and married.

In movies and tv the driving scenes are often obscured in weird ways, and give either no advice or directly terrible advice, like saying the best thing to do on icy roads is go as fast as you can, and that red means go, and yellow means hurry up on traffic lights, and that the break is located under the middle of the back seat and that headlights should only be used during midday.

Let’s also say in this society, you’re considered an absolute MONSTER if you hit somebody with your car… unless it was an accident, or they had a reputation for maybe not paying a ton of attention to traffic lights, or were out after dark, or were wearing insufficient reflective tape and foam padding, or didn’t look each way before crossing the road long enough, or were too close to the edge of the sidewalk, or had maybe irritated you at some point in your life, then it wasn’t really hitting a person with your car.

Now, this is a society that makes it easy for people who want to murder someone with their car to get away with it, and get forgiven, but also a society where a lot of people will unintentionally hit pedestrians without meaning to because there’s no cultural mechanism for teaching safe driving. It doesn’t mean they’re monsters, but they did immensely harm another human being, and that cannot be downplayed.

Now consider consent? Do decent people fuck it up? Yes. Does that mean they didn’t do something horrible and destructive? Nope. What do we do about it? Teach people how consent works.