One of the worst things you can do to the victim of an offence is to blame them for it. Of course, it’s done all the time, but that doesn’t make it okay. But while you can’t call a victim responsible for the offence they experienced, does that make the victim completely free of blame? No, it doesn’t. Victims do have responsibilities.
Let’s take the case of a hypothetical victim of sexual harassment. Now, there are some assholes that would be quick to say that the victim had it coming… maybe because of the way ze dressed, or maybe just because ze were friendly and smiled. But anyone whose colon doesn’t run through their brain can see that’s nonsense. No matter what the behaviour of the victim before the offence, offence is offence; it’s just plain wrong. The perpetrator doesn’t get a free pass just because the victim dressed or acted slutty, or “open” – from the perpetrator’s perspective – to being violated.
But all of what I’ve just mentioned refers to the period before and during the offence. There is no behaviour the victim can undertake before or during the offence – aside from explicit, non-withdrawn consent – that will make it morally sound to blame them for what happened. None. Not even if a scantily clad, girl with a shirt that says “fuck me, I’m horny” were to walk into a crazy party full of inebriated, brain-dead jocks at the Kappa/Sigma/Rape-a fraternity – all of whom are on bail for a previous gang rape under identical circumstances that the girl knows all about – and willingly drinks herself into a stupor… not even then would she be in any way responsible, or deserve any portion of the blame, were she to be sexually assaulted. Because as long as those guys were morally-adult persons, they should know that without explicit, sober consent, any sex would be rape. And if they aren’t capable of figuring that out, they shouldn’t be in a fraternity, they should be in a zoo, or some other institution where they can be properly controlled and monitored like any other human who is criminally incapable of knowing right from wrong.
But let’s talk about after the offence. At this point, the offence has happened – for which the victim carries no responsibility, of course – but does the victim now have any responsibilities?
In fact, ze does.
If you’re the victim of an offence, you have a responsibility to report it to the proper authorities, and see that justice is done. If you don’t, then you still have no responsibility for the offence you suffered… but you do have moral responsibility for any future offences suffered that might have been prevented had you spoken up. Let me make this crystal clear with an example. Say Amy was raped by Joe. No matter what the circumstances surrounding the rape, Amy bears no responsibility whatsoever for it; Amy is the victim, and she is completely blameless. But let’s say, after the rape, Amy decides – for whatever reason – not to report it. Some time later, Joe rapes Betty. Now, of course, Betty is completely without any responsibility for her rape (and obviously for Amy’s as well)… but what about Amy? If Amy had reported Joe, and seen to it that justice was done, Joe wouldn’t have been able to rape Betty. Did Amy have a responsibility to report Joe? Yes, she did. We all have a social responsibility to report crimes, and see that justice is done. It’s part of our responsibilities as citizens, and as members of society. Amy failed in her duty as a member of society when she did not report Joe, and so she bears partial moral responsibility for Betty’s rape. Amy still bears no responsibility for her own rape, but, Randian bullshit aside, society requires that people care more about themselves when considering whether to take or not take actions.
And yes, certainly there are often penalties for doing the right thing. Women reporting rape or sexual harassment, in particular, can have a hell of a time of it. I’m not unsympathetic to that. But that doesn’t excuse failing in your duty to do the right thing. And the hard fact is that every person that refuses to do the right thing because of some penalty or another makes it that much harder on everyone else in the future who wants to do the right thing. Everyone has the responsibility to do the right thing, even when it’s hard. That’s what morality is. It’s not always easy to be moral. But it’s always right.
Now, you may disagree with my position. You may disagree that it’s too harsh to expect people who have suffered an offence to report it when the costs of reporting at so high. You may think it’s unfair to put the blame on past victims for the suffering of future victims, even though the past victims could have prevented any future offences. Fair enough, maybe I’m wrong. This is something we can have a discussion about. But I don’t think any sane person can argue that – returning to the example – Amy would be a complete fucking dick to go public and decry the fact that there’s so much rape in the world… claiming solidarity with Betty… and that it’s so terrible that no one puts a stop to it. Again, to be crystal clear: Amy has suffered an offence, and done nothing, which allowed the offender to offend again – with Betty. Amy has no right, whatsoever, to pretend that there’s something wrong with the rest of the world that the same kinds of offence keeps happening, and she certainly has no right to cast judgement on the rest of the world for the fact that Joe gets away with repeat offending.
In case you were wondering why I’m discussing all this now, it’s because of the latest freethought shitstorm. At the recent Women in Secularism conference, Jen McCreight of Blag Hag made an offhand comment about the fact that there was a back-channel information track about some popular freethought speakers who were complete assholes to women at conferences. Her comment started a lot of people talking, and she eventually made a post about it. Now, let me be clear about this: I have nothing but respect for Jen McCreight, and for how she’s handled the situation up to this point. By her own admission, she has never personally experienced any of the bad behaviour, so it’s only logical that she’s unwilling to pursue any further action. Yet, despite that, she has come up with some very good ideas for how to handle the problem, and already there have been improvements. She’s my hero right now! She heard of evil shit going down, so she stepped up and said something about it – even though it wasn’t being done to her personally – and is following it through. And, yes, she’s suffering for it. She’s already being hounded by that whackjob from ERV, which is exactly the kind of nasty backlash she expected. Yet she continues to stand up and do what’s right, and I, along with every other decent person in the freethought movement, have her back.
But then there are those who could have spoken out ages ago… but didn’t… and now want to ride on McCreight’s coattails and cast judgement on the world they couldn’t be bothered to try to fix.
Case in point: Stephanie Zvan of Almost Diamonds, who posted, in a post titled Zero Intolerance:
Q: Do famous atheist speakers really act like assholes to women?
A: Yes.
Q: Really?!
A: I said, “Yes.” I’ve experienced some of it, in front of witnesses. I’ve talked to other women who’ve experienced it personally. I’ve talked to conference organizers who have strategies for minimizing the damage when they have to invite one of these men to one of their conferences.
Also, did you just express “skepticism” over this? It’s a completely uncontroversial statement. Unaccetable gendered behavior exists. Our movement is not immune. Men don’t become immune to bad behavior just because people like how they speak or write or organize. Yes, it happens.
What the fuck?!? You’ve experienced it? In front of witnesses? And we’re first hearing about this now? Because of Jen McCreight!?!
You know what? Men don’t become immune to bad behaviour because they’re good speakers, but the do become immune to the consequences of their bad behaviour when people like you don’t fucking speak up about the bad behaviour!
And I’m not alone in seeing this, and I’m not alone in being outraged that there’s a special privileged girl’s club who whispers in the back channels about the assholery that goes on, then whines in the public sphere that there’s so much assholery that goes unpunished. Behold as Zvan gets confronted by a justifiably upset woman:
It’s all well and good to advise “networking behind the scenes,” but I don’t have a fucking network, and that’s part of the reason I feel like going to conferences might be good for me. But if I have to network behind the scenes to be safe at conferences, then I have to already have what I’m looking for to be safe.
Maybe I’m being selfish about this. Maybe I’m too angry. But I’ve been abused enough in my life. I am not about to set myself up to be abused again, and it makes my eyes tear up and my throat constrict to think that going to these conferences means going to interact with people who everyone else may know is abusive but won’t warn me because I don’t have connections.
And Zvan’s response to this plaintive rebuke? To get on her soapbox and lecture about what should be done, while saying This is a genie that isn’t going back into the bottle. It’s a problem that’s gone public in a big way, and it’s going to stay there.
Yeah, you know why it’s gone public? Because Jen McCreight made it public. Not you, Zvan. Jen McCreight. McCreight made it public, and what were you doing, Zvan? You were one of the people keeping the fucking genie in the bottle!
It completely boggles my mind that someone like Zvan can have the gall to lecture the world on what the right thing to do about a certain kind of crime is, after they’ve been the ones covering it up for so long. It boggles my mind that people like her can stand up and talk about how much privilege everyone else has, but not see their own, and how they’ve abused to the detriment of women who aren’t as socially-connected as they are, and want to go to freethought conventions.
No, it doesn’t just boggle my mind, it makes me fucking angry. I’m glad to see that the cover over this conspiracy of silence has been lifted, and for that I want to see Jen McCreight get full props and respect. I want everyone to jump to her defence when the inevitable misogynist assholes (like Abbie Smith) start taking potshots at her. But for all those back-channel bastards who have been keep this secret from everyone but their privileged friends, leaving all the other women who go to freethought events to be thrown to the wolves, then having the fucking gall to cluck their tongues and intone dramatically about how bad the atmosphere at these events can get: Fuck. You. All. You are part of the problem. You know why Catholic priests and Jerry Sandusky and their kind got away with raping kids for so many years, because of the complicity of people like you, who knew about the shit going on, but kept it secret within the privileged circle.
Here’s what I’d like to see. I don’t want to see lists of names published with only hearsay about past incidents. But from now on, anyone who witnesses this bad behaviour… report it. Report it to the event organizers, and if they won’t do something about it, report it to someone who has enough integrity and public standing to shame both the jerk and the event organizers. Those who have been harassed in the past, if you see one of the jerk’s names on the speakers’ list for a future event, contact the event organizers with your story. Demand that the jerk either be taken off the speakers’ list, or, if that’s not possible, that ze be escorted at all times by a chaperone – basically treated like a fucking sex offender. And anyone who gets pulled aside and given some secret back-channel information about evil shit going on that no one else but the select few are privileged to, fucking slap the person telling you about it, tell them that they are part of the reason the problem continues to exist, then go to the event organizers and tell them that this person has important information about event attendee safety that they’re offering only to a privileged few. And again, if the event organizers don’t do something about it, go public, via someone who has the courage and integrity – and platform – to do something about it. Don’t forget to name the person who was keeping this important information secret. And finally, once all that has been taken care of, I’d like to see all those fucking privileged few who were in on the back channel information to step forward and apologize to the freethought community for their part in allowing the shit to continue so long.
No more keeping harassment and misogyny as a dirty little secret in this community. If you don’t have the courage to step forward and speak out about it when it happens, then you don’t get to fucking play the heroic martyr suffering because of it. Find someone who does have the courage and platform to do the right thing, and make a change, rather than bemoaning the status quo.
(And if I sound a little angry right now, it’s because I’m harbouring an innocent victim of a fucking monster right now, whose situation is analogous to what’s going on in the freethought community, actually. There was also a secret, privileged back-channel of important information she was not privy to, and because of it she suffered for years, until someone finally let her into the club a few days ago. Just as in the case mentioned above, had any of the people possessing this privileged information gone to the cops years ago, this person wouldn’t be in the situation she’s in now, with no home, no money, no job, no nothing. Thank you fucking very much, sisterhood of silence.)
Are you seriously berating Stephanie Zvan as a bad ally because she didn’t report being harassed, despite the fact that the problem was no — and what she’s advocating for now is — a formal framework for reporting harassment?
Yes, I am. If she’d reported it before now, we might have had a formal framework being set up long ago, instead of more women harassed because they didn’t have Zvan’s inside track.
Well said, Indiana.
You don’t know me. I’m just an FTB reader and have been following this issue for a while. Not any kind of conference bigwig. Just a feminist and atheist and a person who thinks people have been too fearful about doing the right things for too long.
So what do you think of the proposed harassment policies?
Nance
Well, I’m not a conference organizer either, so I don’t know whether these new policies are actually new, or just the same policies that have always existed, but louder, and actually enforced. I’m not really keen on the idea of speakers’ unions, because that just seems like a mechanism that can be used to quash legitimate dissenters from the groupthink, along with jerks. (You wouldn’t think that would be a concern among freethinkers, but I don’t doubt that my name is being dragged through the mud for daring to question the moral fortitude of the FtB elite. The presence of Thibeault in the comments pretty much guarantees to me that that’s going on.) Also, a speakers’ union is probably going to end up being just the same damn back-channel nonsense, now made legitimate. No, I’m never keen on the idea of concentrating power in the hands of a privileged few… and especially in this case, when they’ve already demonstrated their moral failing on the subject.
I think the most important change is not actually the procedural details of conference organization, it’s the fact that everything’s public now, and people are talking about it. That is what is really going to make it harder on the jerks, and easier on the potential victims – especially those potential victims who weren’t privileged enough to be part of the secret support network.
But if you were to ask me what I would do – what steps I would take – if I had the power and clout? I think what I’d do is get one of the big organizations – like CFI in Canada, for example – to start maintaining a speaker database (ideally as part of a collection of tools that can be used by conference organizers). When a speaker behaves badly at a conference, and reports are made to the conference organizers, they should duly register all the complaints with the database. At the same time, private attendees should also register their complaints – possibly assisted by the conference organizers when they make complaints to them. Then when the next conference organizer is planning their speaker list, they can check with the database to see what kinds of issues have been had with this speaker in the past. This wouldn’t be an open database, of course. The only people who can get information about the behaviour of a given speaker are representatives of a conference that speaker has been invited to attend. So basically, the procedure is: The conference planner asks a speaker to attend, but notes that their attendance is conditional on the results from the speaker’s database, so their acceptance must be accompanied by permission to retrieve information about them. The speaker agrees to attend, and informs the database holder that they give the conference planner permission to view their info. The conference planner views their info, and if there are any red flags, discusses them with the speaker. If they don’t get satisfactory explanations, or if the speaker refuses to agree to allow their info to be checked, the speaker can be declined (or, if the conference planner still really wants them, they can be escorted at all times by a chaperone).
With that system in place, the next step is to get the conference organizers to trumpet loudly the fact that a functioning reporting system is available, so if anyone is harassed by any speakers, they should not hesitate to talk to a conference rep.
I think this balances privacy concerns, worries about slander lawsuits, and the safety and comfort of conference attendees. The database could, of course, allow anonymous reports to be filed, along with reports with a name and contact information. And speakers, while they don’t have control over what information goes in the database, have the ultimate decision about whether to allow someone to see their database info. (I suppose they could also have the power to put challenges to reports in their database, so a conference planner could see a speaker’s defence against the recorded charges as well. That way, if there’s like one or two reports – or a bunch by the same person – the speaker could defend themselves against being harassed by false reports. On the other hand, if there are a bunch of reports by different people, their defences would probably ring hollow.)
As I said, I’m not an event organizer, so maybe this isn’t a good idea. For me, the big change, the thing that will really help people, is getting the word out, not hoarding among your friends.
No, the presence of Thibeault means I followed the pingback in Stephanie’s post, and was agog that you’re blaming a rape victim for other potential victims, for not reporting to a non-existent support structure.
You’re more than welcome to your opinions, but there’s only one name being dragged through the mud here. It ain’t yours.
But if it makes you feel any better, I’ll disengage now. Keep blaming and slurring the victims all you like. You’ll get no further resistance from me.
“Non-existent support structure”. What specious bullshit. The reason I’m chiding Zvan is because there was a support structure, but only for a privileged few. And no one opened it up to the public until McCreight – not even a victim herself, mind you – outed it. That “non-existent support structure” crap doesn’t stand; she had a support structure. It’s the rest of us, the little people, who didn’t.
(And incidentally, “blaming a rape victim for not using a non-existent support structure”? Really? Is that the straw man you people are going with? What I spoke out against was not reporting when a support structure exists. In the rape analogy case that you’re distorting, that was obviously the justice system. I didn’t stress the point that a reporting system has to exist before one is obligated to report because it seemed so obvious a child could figure that out, but alright, fine – I guess I should have made that more clear. Obviously if no reporting system exists, then no one can be blamed for not reporting, duh. But when one exists, one is obligated to use it to protect future victims. (And, relevantly, one is also obligated to inform other victims and potential victims about it, rather than keeping it to oneself and one’s privileged circle.))
I came to this article as a track-back from Stephanie’s article, and I have to say I agree with you. Well said.
I tried to narrow down some names by asking for those speakers who are gentlemen, and was told by other commenters that it wasn’t helping and I should be banned from further posting.
It’s much easier to be comfortable with a secret being kept if you’re one of the ones that knows the secret.
“For me, the big change, the thing that will really help people, is getting the word out, not hoarding among your friends.”
Thanks for expanding on your thoughts, Indiana. And, yes, openly talking about this so even the average attendee could get a clue that this might be an issue if she does a search on these conferences while planning to attend one — I imagine that will be a big help.