Feminism

[Gormongous]

It's clearly a useful way to describe a very real and frustrating phenomenon (that I'm sure I've been guilty of myself) but like a lot of jargon it seems like it's often overused to the point where in many cases it's simply being used as stand-in for its root word, "explain."

 

I think maybe words wear out a lot faster now just thanks to the existence of the internet. Millions of conversations are happening simultaneously with no cultural arbiter. I can't really think of any non-technical word that hasn't experience a substantial amount of dilution and drift over the past twenty years.

 

If they're even the least bit punny, they'll wear out five times as fast, too.

[Bjorn]

So this blogger claims that the story about Max was known to at least a small group of people back when it happened, and gets into the culture of Groucher, which apparently (either at the time, or even up to now) claims that there has NEVER been a rape or sexual assault on campus.  Yeah, no pressure there to be the first person raped on lovely Groucher's campus.  That's fucking nuts for a college to claim that.

 

This is probably one of the better balanced looks at the situation. 

 

If nothing else, the whole thing sounds plausible.  There are, statistically, many tens of thousands of men who have, probably when they were in high school or college, sexually assaulted a woman.  They didn't necessarily do it with intent.  They may not have even recognized it for an assault, taking silence as consent.  That doesn't make it less wrong.  It doesn't mean it caused less harm.  But there are a lot of men out there that did it.  And women who have never said a word.  All of us likely know men who have sexually assaulted someone.  Some of those men are probably people we like.

[Argobot]

Looking back on some of my college relationships, there were definitely instances of questionable consent that left me feeling very uncomfortable. I'm sure that if I talked to any of the men involved, their perception would be completely different from mine and I wouldn't be surprised if they never even noticed a problem. I can't really fault them for that though, because as that Medium article points out, young people are never really properly taught what consent or a healthy sexual relationship means, which is one of the reasons why we continue to have these kinds of problems.

 

I'm glad that more people are talking about the nuances in this CAH situation because when I initially heard about this story, the reaction I commonly saw was "Why is the Internet protecting a known rapist?!" which is a few million degrees higher than where the conversation has currently landed. Labeling someone as a rapist is about as useful as calling someone a racist: you feel momentarily satisfied but you've also put that person on the defensive and almost guaranteed that they won't listen to anything else you have to say.  I'm not excusing anyone's actions and I'm not saying that shitty behavior shouldn't be called out. There are just more constructive ways to talk about complex issues that might actually produce a good outcome, instead of entrenching both sides further into their own, limited viewpoints.

[SuperBiasedMan]

There are, statistically, many tens of thousands of men who have, probably when they were in high school or college, sexually assaulted a woman.  They didn't necessarily do it with intent.  They may not have even recognized it for an assault, taking silence as consent.  That doesn't make it less wrong.  It doesn't mean it caused less harm.  But there are a lot of men out there that did it.  And women who have never said a word.  All of us likely know men who have sexually assaulted someone.  Some of those men are probably people we like.

 

This is why I'm inclined to take the allegation as more likely true than false, just the fact that the possible victim has a more accurate definition of rape than Max. Max could possible know in his head that he did act in questionable consent, but think "That's not rape, she just regretted it later." or whatever other absolution fits for his situation.

 

Given all that, I'd generally expect things like this to be true unless the accused seemed to be much more genuine and open and had a proper definition of rape in their head. I don't take it as he's clearly guilty but I err on the side of guilt, particularly since he responded to her in such a passive aggressive manner with the post.

[tegan]

I'm dumb and don't have anything of value to contribute, but I just realized today that I don't think I can watch this classic Simpsons episode anymore without cringing about how relevant it is to modern rape culture.

 

[Erkki]

Situations like that rape accusation usually seem complex, but to me it always feels weird when people think they have to "make a decision" on which side to stand. I don't know, I still believe only courts can make those kinds of decisions -- and yes, they can err as well, but I'm not sure if there is much value to each individual who hears about the case to start deciding whether the guy is a rapist or not based on what they've read on the Internet so far.

[Twig]

In some cases, there's a bit of a moral quandary about whether or not you're comfortable supporting the future endeavors of the accused. That's, of course, a personal matter, but it's still a very real concern for some people. That's probably where that comes from, if I had to guess.

[Erkki]

Oh yeah, sorry, I forgot that part.

[tegan]

Also, given how courts have traditionally handled rape accusations, I think it's pretty fair for someone to want to make a stand and demand change.

[anthonyRichard]

There's a problem of terminology that has really unfortunate history/associations.

There's the strong historical (and current, to a lesser, but still too-great) tendency to downplay sexual assault and victim-blame and talk about what is and isn't 'legitimate' rape. So to combat that, we've taken a hard line. All sexual assault is rape and all rape is rape, and that is that. The reasons for this position are clear and understandable.
But it's also not a good idea, I don't think.
Person A forcibly assaults someone, physically overpowering them or threatens them to comply despite clear unwillingness.
Person B misunderstands consent and causes the victim to feel uncomfortable/violated before deciding to stop and leave the situation of their own volition.
Both of these people have done something wrong, clearly. But they are not the same. They have hugely different implications as to their plausible future behavior and potential rehabilitation. Person B didn't know they were doing something wrong and just needs to be convinced of how consent works and will plausibly stop doing it wrong. Person A is a clear and present danger to society and needs to be sequestered from the general population to prevent further harm. Conflating these two seems at best unfair, and at worst dangerously irresponsible.

Temkin is being accused of being Person B, but a lot of moralizing I'm seeing online is treating it as the former, or something close to it. Because of the language conflation, it's almost impossible to talk about the Person B with any kind of nuance and not slide into the assumptions and invective more appropriate to the Person A, either unknowingly, or to avoid the appearance of trivializing or downplaying it. The moralization around the term 'rapist' exclusively takes on the assumptions of Person A. I don't see that changing, not even a little bit, so using that term for the huge range of behaviors associated with sexual misconduct seems like a bad idea.
I'm not talking about being fair to the accused either (although that should be a concern, if a minor one). It has dramatic implications for personal risk assessment and for policy-making. American universities in particular are becoming increasingly convinced of a rape epidemic, and are crippled by mismatching moral panic and solution-seeking for disparate kinds of aberrant sexual behavior.

Anyway, to be clear, I'm not trying to say that what Temkin is being accused of isn't that bad, or that we should all just chill out, or anything. I guess I'm saying that if we really take sexual assault seriously in terms of a problem to be solved, then the rhetoric and moralization around rape as we currently understand it seems to be problematic, that's all.

 

As a side-note this is actually pretty terrifying to post. I've been seeing people getting called rape-apologists and all sort of horrific things for merely suggesting that the situation seems unclear and maybe too early to definitively judge.

[Merus]

If she feels it wasn't sexist, then it wasn't sexist. I might find it sexist, but I am not the target of the act. Oppression might be systemic and impersonal from a theoretical standpoint, but as a day-to-day reality, a subjective approach is the only one that's consistent and tolerable to me. I know it might not satisfy others the same way.

 

How does this work in the case of Not Always Right-style customers claiming racism because the staff aren't doing something unreasonable for them?

[miffy495]

Looking back on some of my college relationships, there were definitely instances of questionable consent that left me feeling very uncomfortable. I'm sure that if I talked to any of the men involved, their perception would be completely different from mine and I wouldn't be surprised if they never even noticed a problem. I can't really fault them for that though, because as that Medium article points out, young people are never really properly taught what consent or a healthy sexual relationship means, which is one of the reasons why we continue to have these kinds of problems.

 

I'm glad that more people are talking about the nuances in this CAH situation because when I initially heard about this story, the reaction I commonly saw was "Why is the Internet protecting a known rapist?!" which is a few million degrees higher than where the conversation has currently landed. Labeling someone as a rapist is about as useful as calling someone a racist: you feel momentarily satisfied but you've also put that person on the defensive and almost guaranteed that they won't listen to anything else you have to say.  I'm not excusing anyone's actions and I'm not saying that shitty behavior shouldn't be called out. There are just more constructive ways to talk about complex issues that might actually produce a good outcome, instead of entrenching both sides further into their own, limited viewpoints.

 

Yeah. I've only ever been in one serious relationship, but looking back across the seven years, I can certainly find instances of questionable consent. When we were teenagers, she was uncomfortable making her feelings clear, and I was too much of a typically-socialized teenage boy to realize what that discomfort meant until after the fact. There were certainly numerous times when we were very drunk as well, and some of the results were regrettable. These are not things that I'm proud of, but to deny that they happened would have resulted in my refusal to grow as a human being and realize that I was hurting someone I love. Instead, we talked about it, sorted our shit out, and grew our relationship. Now, this is a much easier feat to accomplish when you're in a relationship with someone and can talk openly about sexual things, but I'd hope that the majority of "person B"s (as anthonyRichard puts them) would be in a similar place if they were able to talk about it in this way. Who knows? The men involved in those encounters may have realized after the fact as well, we just rarely are asked to consider it as a serious thing.

 

Unfortunately, as you said, Argobot, the general reaction seems to be the kind of thing that is only going to put Temkin on the defensive. I have no basis for saying that he is a guy who would reflect and change his behaviour if it were brought up to him in a different way, but I hope he is. I suspect that Temkin is guilty of doing something sketchy, that it would likely be categorized as person B behaviour rather than person A, and hope that he grows. I am not optimistic about this though, if he gets his back against the wall.

 

As an aside, I must confess that I'm happy that I bought all my CAH sets before this surfaced so that I don't have to worry about wanting to buy them later and supporting worst-case-scenario Temkin.

[James]

This is probably one of the better balanced looks at the situation.

That seemed pretty spot-on to me. Thanks for the link.

[Problem Machine]

I'm saved from the trouble of having to order my thoughts on this topic by Patricia Hernandez writing all this out better than I could have possibly hoped to.

http://kotaku.com/cards-against-humanitys-creator-said-the-wrong-things-1605542083

 

I guess the only thing I have to add to that is, um, maybe it's a good thing to think sometimes about the ways we can hurt people we care about terribly without ever noticing. This is a topic that goes beyond sex, but obviously due to the level of intimacy involved the exposure of the participants makes the hurt created last longer, but even without that ...

 

You know, sometimes I wonder if it's possible to be a person without hurting other people. All we can do is try to not make it worse where we can.

[Stuart]

Here are other write-ups on the Temkin thing.

 

http://rapacityinblue.tumblr.com/post/91487926533/bokhyllen-dezlet-maxistentialist-this-is

 

http://auntiepixelante.com/?p=2282

 

http://lilithbell.wordpress.com/2014/07/12/rapists-arent-monsters-and-thats-why-theyre-scary/

 

http://www.themarysue.com/cah-sexual-assault/

 

https://plus.google.com/u/0/+RyanMacklin/posts/21LDUmHhE1Q

 

http://kotaku.com/cards-against-humanitys-creator-said-the-wrong-things-1605542083

 

All of them important reads. I purposefully didn't link the RockPaperShotgun article on it because it felt mansplainy, non-confrontational, and jokey. 

 

What's eerier about this is how very little people are talking about this. Specially those closest to Temkin like the Giant Bomb guys (specially Dave Lang and Patrick Klepek) and other CAH people. It's all around weird and pretty disgraceful and cowardly.

[Gormongous]

How does this work in the case of Not Always Right-style customers claiming racism because the staff aren't doing something unreasonable for them?

 

I can't really answer that properly, having never experienced it myself in two years of customer service work, which is partly why I keep talking about theoretical standpoints as functionally useless to me, but I'd probably do my best to understand and respect their feelings of discrimination while asserting the limits of my ability to help them overcome them.

 

If you're talking about claims of racism made in bad faith, I can't really answer that properly either. I guess I'd say that I'm in a sufficient position of privilege that taking every case of discrimination seriously is not a substantial inconvenient to me, so why not? Speaking of:

 

Here are other write-ups on the Temkin thing.

 

http://rapacityinblue.tumblr.com/post/91487926533/bokhyllen-dezlet-maxistentialist-this-is

 

http://auntiepixelante.com/?p=2282

 

http://lilithbell.wordpress.com/2014/07/12/rapists-arent-monsters-and-thats-why-theyre-scary/

 

http://www.themarysue.com/cah-sexual-assault/

 

https://plus.google.com/u/0/+RyanMacklin/posts/21LDUmHhE1Q

 

http://kotaku.com/cards-against-humanitys-creator-said-the-wrong-things-1605542083

 

All of them important reads. I purposefully didn't link the RockPaperShotgun article on it because it felt mansplainy, non-confrontational, and jokey. 

 

What's eerier about this is how very little people are talking about this. Specially those closest to Temkin like the Giant Bomb guys (specially Dave Lang and Patrick Klepek) and other CAH people. It's all around weird and pretty disgraceful and cowardly.

 

I liked parts of the RPS write-up, but it definitely did seem like an attempt to force a "teaching moment" upon people who own and like Cards Against Humanity. Its utility to the victim and her allies is very limited.

 

The more I read people's opinions, the more I'm inclined to side with the victim, not just because of my feminism, but because of the apology itself. Who gives an apology that almost literally says, "There was a failure to communicate. It's understandable. Also, I could sue her for making public said failure to communicate, but I won't." It's someone who does not believe in their own apology. No great loss as far as I'm concerned with him, Cards Against Humanity was always just Shitty Apples to Apples.

[Problem Machine]

The more I read people's opinions, the more I'm inclined to side with the victim, not just because of my feminism, but because of the apology itself.

"This guy's apology wasn't good enough so he's probably a rapist"?

Ugh. There's not a need to 'take sides' here. There's not a need to decide that one or the other of these two human beings are definitely wrong and therefore evil. It's entirely possible to hurt someone without meaning to, so then jumping to the position that he's definitely person A, THE RAPIST, based on one apology written right after being told that he might be everything that he stands against might be a bit fucking hasty!

 

Max Temkin probably doesn't need more defenders. He probably has plenty. But I'm sick of the mindset of good and evil, wrong and right, of taking sides. To me it stinks of being afraid to face the real lesson here -- it's entirely too easy for lines of consent to blur and to BECOME the guy in the position Max is in now. Even in a perfectly egalitarian society, communication will never be perfect, and humans will continue to ACCIDENTALLY rape each other. The question is what happens then, and how and how well the victims can heal.

 

I would like it if he wrote another post addressing criticisms leveled at his first post. I think doing so may make him a better and more ethical figure in the here and now -- but no matter what, it's not possible to rectify the mistakes of the past, and whether he's a well-spoken feminist now or not has NO BEARING on whether or not he violated someone's person in the past. Pretending otherwise is... let's just go with insulting.

[Bjorn]

"This guy's apology wasn't good enough so he's probably a rapist"?

 

I agree that taking sides is not a necessary action here, and is too often a default reaction.  But that's a gross and unfair characterization of what Gormongous wrote, particularly when you think about how incredibly shitty that post is (I'm not going to grace something that includes threats and intimidation as an apology).  Trying, to contact someone (twice!) who has said your name gives them panic attacks?  Who does that?

 

 

based on one apology written right after being told that he might be everything that he stands against might be a bit fucking hasty!

 

He had time to try and contact her and have a conversation with his lawyer.  He had some time to think about what he would write publicly.  It's perfectly fair to take a hard look at that and draw your own conclusions. 

[Gormongous]

I agree that taking sides is not a necessary action here, and is too often a default reaction.  But that's a gross and unfair characterization of what Gormongous wrote, particularly when you think about how incredibly shitty that post is (I'm not going to grace something that includes threats and intimidation as an apology).  Trying, to contact someone (twice!) who has said your name gives them panic attacks?  Who does that?

 

Thank you, Bjorn.

 

I didn't mean to say that I was taking sides, even though that's literally what I said. I more meant that I became much less sympathetic towards someone who discovered that he might have raped someone ten years ago when I read him gaslighting his accuser, threatening her with legal action, harassing her through Facebook and email, and then ending his "apology" to her with a public request that everyone be nice to him because he's having a hard day. All those are human reactions, but in sum they make for a pretty terrible portrait of a human being who, as Bjorn pointed out, had twenty-four hours and the advice of a professional legal counsel to figure out how to respond to a sudden and unpleasant reminder about events that he clearly has no problem remembering.

 

Actually...

 

To take a cue from Miffy, I have not always been good at communication and consent. When I was younger, I was smart and charismatic (and also unkind) enough to push my girlfriends around quite a bit, so while I don't think I've ever been guilty of outright sexual assault, I have definitely been guilty of less-than-perfect consent with more than one woman. Later on, I have contacted all these women, at least the ones I could find, and apologized for what I did. Most forgave me (or said they did) but a couple told me to disappear from their lives forever, and I've respected both. It's been a hard thing, but I am accountable for my actions and do what I can to make right. That's rape culture and how to deal with it, not by writing a self-righteous post about how something's not really your fault.

[Problem Machine]

Which is why I certainly expect better of him and hope he will do better now that the inadequacies of what he wrote have been brought to his attention. I just would like people to, as much as is possible, approach this from a place of empathy, rather than a place of "fuck this rapist and his shitty game" or "fuck this girl and her tarring of a cool guy". Neither of those are humane approaches.

 

Honestly, I kind of wonder if getting legal consultation might not have made the end message worse. Saying things like 'complete fabrication' is really shitty person-to-person, but also potentially the sort of thing a legal expert might well advise.

[Gormongous]

Which is why I certainly expect better of him and hope he will do better now that the inadequacies of what he wrote have been brought to his attention. I just would like people to, as much as is possible, approach this from a place of empathy, rather than a place of "fuck this rapist and his shitty game" or "fuck this girl and her tarring of a cool guy". 

 

Noted! I think we substantively agree, it's just semantics.

 

Also, complete non-issue, but I meant that Cards Against Humanity is Shitty Apples to Apples in terms of the content discussed in the game, not the quality of the game itself, although I'm not the biggest fan of party-style games anyway.

[anthonyRichard]

Another way to look at the ostensible legal threat is to consider that Temkin is a successful public figure, who very obviously has access to lawyers. If I publicly accused someone like that of something serious and potentially libelous and he responded with protestations of innocence and didn't explicitly take lawyers off the table, I would maybe be pretty worried. In that light it seems more like a clumsy attempt to be considerate than a veiled threat. This seems just as plausible as the other interpretation, and there's no evidence to favor either.

I do hope he comes back in a week or two and posts something more considered & constructive.

[SecretAsianMan]

Man, I go away for 2 days and look what happens.  I've just read the last couple pages of this thread and the only semi-meaningful thing I can say that hasn't already been said is that I was unaware of the term mansplain until now.  And I'm possibly more confused now than I was when I didn't know it existed.

 

I also agree with Problem Machine and dislike the tendency of internet arguments (outside of this forum) to deal in extremes.  "If someone has possibly done something bad, then they are definitely evil and will be for all time.  Unless they did a thing I like in which case the inverse is true and the accuser is the devil and should be treated as such."  Neither of those positions is constructive if you ignore everything you don't like.  Not accusing anyone here of doing this, in fact quite the opposite.  Discussions like these make me unbelievably thankful that the bastion that is this forum exists.

[Bjorn]

Another way to look at the ostensible legal threat is to consider that Temkin is a successful public figure, who very obviously has access to lawyers. If I publicly accused someone like that of something serious and potentially libelous and he responded with protestations of innocence and didn't explicitly take lawyers off the table, I would maybe be pretty worried. In that light it seems more like a clumsy attempt to be considerate than a veiled threat. This seems just as plausible as the other interpretation, and there's no evidence to favor either.

 

It may be clumsy, but part of the problem with what he wrote (and that's all we have from him right now) is that he didn't explicitly take legal action off the table.  He said he didn't want to do that, but not that he wouldn't.  Which is one of the things that makes it a threat. 

 

Actually, the more I've thought about that part, the less I buy it.  Like, I'm not even sure that his lawyer would counsel that EXCEPT as a strategy for shutting her up, not because they could win.  When I was still in journalism, I was involved in two stories where a libel suit was a possibility (including one that involved a regional public figure and sexual harassment).  There were conversations with the paper's attorney, and I've had some training and education in thinking about defamation from a journalism perspective.  I'm no expert, but I'm not clueless about it either. 

 

A defamation case requires that you prove the allegations were false.  Temkin is no more able to prove the accusation false than the accuser is able to prove it true.  The only way to prove it false would be to find statements by her directly contradicting her claims.  What other evidence could you present?  For a public figure, you also have to prove actual malice, that the person acted with full knowledge that it was not true or with reckless disregard for the truth.  Again, short of finding evidence that she contradicted herself, can you imagine proving actual malice in this case?  Ultimately taking legal action would most likely be messy, ugly and inconclusive, serving only to hassle the accuser, not to achieve clarity or clear Temkin's name.  This looks to be different from the Connor Oberst case, where the accuser had a trackable history of making up stories online under different names (I am not super familiar with the Oberst case, just passingly.  If I'm wrong about that, please correct me).

 

So if that is the reality of a libel case, why would he bring it up at all?  Would a lawyer describe this as a "clear" case, without a whiff of evidence to actually use?  Or is it a "clear" case of being able to use wealth and the legal system as a weapon against someone less powerful than you?

 

Out of curiosity, is anyone seeing any talk about this on their personal social networks?  A lot of my friends are big fans of CAH.  Most of them are both big into nerd culture and passionate about feminist and social justice issues.  And I haven't seen a post one about this at all.  I posted about it last night, and got no response from anyone. 

[syntheticgerbil]

Yeah, that's what really annoyed me most about his post where he actually felt he had a libel case, besides the fact that he felt it was appropriate to just preemptively throw out there. Big man. Too much time has passed to really disprove either side, so how could he get the victim's claim thrown out as simply libel? It's her word against his.

However that's sort of the reason I don't want to get into thinking about this much. I'm also not the biggest fan of Cards Against Humanity anyway, so if this ruins the game for everyone, no big loss. It's a drinking game anyway and I find it just as effective as Apples to Apples in that the hilarity is pretty hit and miss unless you are super super drunk. Last time I played Cards, I wanted to leave the game and do something else, because I had heard and read every card so many times that I just find it boring at this point.