On Change and Accountability
2011 22 Dec
This was written for and originally published at Role/Reboot, where I became the Sex + Relationships Section Editor on December 15, 2011. For more of the Role/Reboot Sex + Relationships section, click here.
Do we actually believe that people can change? If so, how do we want them to show us they’ve changed? Is absolution possible? Who decides the answers to these questions?
I very rarely weigh in on Internet Scandals. This is partly because I’ve got lots of stuff to write that I believe has longer-lasting value than the latest flavor of the moment. It’s also because I have much less time and patience for internet flamewars than I once did. I seem to recall that at some point flamewars were kind of … fun? But these days they just feel predictable, tiring and unproductive.
As it happens, though, I unintentionally found myself in the middle of one this week. I feel exhausted and trapped by the whole thing. But I hope I can dim the flamewar into a lantern to illuminate issues that actually matter.
Specifically, I interviewed Hugo Schwyzer, a prominent writer on gender issues, who identifies as a male feminist and teaches gender studies in southern California. Hugo has a very complicated history that includes incredibly problematic behavior: drug addiction; compulsive and destructive sexual behavior, including sex with his students — and one attempt, over a decade ago, to kill both himself and his girlfriend during a drug binge. He has since, in his own words, “cleaned up”; chosen sobriety; recommitted to his religion; confessed his history; and attempted to make amends to the people he feels that he wronged.
Because of Hugo’s history, a lot of people really don’t like him. When I posted the interview at Feministe, one of the top feminist blogs, the comments exploded. Pretty soon, the comments had nothing to do with the interview at all. Some commenters were making amateur psychological diagnoses of Hugo, and other readers were emailing me privately to express shock at how ugly the discussion had gotten. So I closed down the discussion, making it impossible to continue commenting in that particular forum. As a result, I have now received more hate mail from other feminists than I ever have from anti-feminists. (Note: I have not received a small amount of hate mail from anti-feminists.)
In this situation, people seem to expect me to take a position that is primarily political. People seem to believe that I can either “prove my loyalty to feminism” by throwing Hugo under the bus — or I can “prove my loyalty to Hugo” by claiming that everything he’s done is A-OK. Like many political problems, neither of these options are fully human. Both of these options are stupid, limited, and do not get us any further in our lives.
I certainly do not always agree with Hugo, and I have occasionally pushed him to reconsider certain things. But, full disclosure: my experiences with him have been incredibly positive. Hugo was one of the first high-profile bloggers to promote my work — and occasionally, he took heat for doing so when I wrote about controversial topics. Hugo invited me to guest lecture in his class when I passed through Los Angeles, and he’s given me extensive feedback on and encouragement about my work. Even though I don’t always agree with him, and I believe that a lot of feminists’ critiques of his work are valid … a number of Hugo’s pieces make me want to cheer, like his article “The Paris Paradox: How Sexualization Replaces Opportunity with Obligation”. Perhaps ironically, when I once wrote an agonized post about moral accountability and how to deal with friends who have done really bad things, the most thoughtful and nuanced response came from Hugo. (He’s also written about the problem of how too many people will excuse some sexual predators, even within feminism itself, just because those predators do good activist work.)
Other feminists have been angrily emailing me, Tweeting at me, etc with things like “FUCK YOU FOR PROTECTING THIS WOLF IN SHEEP’S CLOTHING.” But I have seen no evidence that Hugo hasn’t made an honest and sustained effort at recovery and accountability. I have seen no evidence that Hugo’s religious re-conversion was dishonest. And I have seen no evidence that Hugo continues problematic behavior.
I am telling you this partly to explain where I’ve been coming from during this particular Internet Scandal. But more importantly, I’m telling you this to lend shape to the ethical problems I see underneath it — problems that are intimately intertwined with how I think about gender and sexuality. I’m actually not very interested in picking apart Hugo himself, whether positively or negatively. I believe that the politics of this situation are mostly a cheap distraction from truth and honor.
For me, the interesting and important questions that emerge in cases like this are:
How can we create processes for accountability? Feminists often discuss crimes like partner violence and sexual assault. Our focus is on helping survivors of these crimes, just as it should be. I personally have been trained as a rape crisis counselor, and I have volunteered in that capacity (if you’re interested in feminist activism, then I really encourage you to look into doing the same). And the history of feminism includes convincing people to actually care about and recognize the trauma of rape: Rape Trauma Syndrome was first defined and discussed in the 1970s.
But perhaps because of our focus on helping and protecting survivors, I rarely see feminist discussions of how to deal with people who have committed crimes. In fact, I rarely see any discussions of how to deal with that, aside from sending people to jail. Let me just say that problems with the prison-industrial complex are their own thing — but even aside from those, the vast majority of rapes and assaults and other forms of gender-based violence go unprosecuted.
So, frequently, jail won’t even enter the picture. Yet communities and individuals often know that gender-based violence is going on. How do we talk about the people who have done those things, and how do we talk to them? How can we create community structures and norms that enable people to change the behaviors that led to those crimes? How do we interact with and judge someone who has committed to change, as opposed to a person who has not?
“Accountability teams” are one way I’ve heard of for dealing with this: whether support groups of perpetrators who share their experiences with making amends and changing their ways, or groups of friends who assist a perpetrator with those processes. I would like to see more and larger discussions about those teams, and more acknowledgement that change is possible. If we can’t create this kind of process, then how can we expect to create real change around these crimes? How can we expect perpetrators of violence to work on themselves if we can’t give them the space to work? Why should someone work for forgiveness if they know forgiveness can never come?
On another note: are there crimes where we draw a bright line? Are there things we cannot or should not forgive? If some crimes are unforgivable, then how do we deal with the perpetrators? In some areas of the USA, sex crimes are punished legally by restricting the movement of perpetrators, but this law has had significant unintended consequences. And the legal question doesn’t even cover the dimension I’m most interested in, which is how friends and social circles can deal with these situations. If there are unforgivable crimes, then how do we handle the unforgiven people involved?
And: have you thought about these questions in your own life? I don’t mean abstractly, as an intellectual exercise. Concretely, and with intention. What would you do if, tomorrow, you found out that your best friend was a rapist? Your lover? What would you do if your sibling came to you to confess a terrible crime? To request absolution? To request accountability?
These questions are not just applicable to an individual like Hugo. They’re applicable to all of us, in all kinds of situations. And I think it’s wise for us to give them some thought before they come up … because in the heat of the moment, we can be overwhelmed by questions we could have thought our way around if we addressed them beforehand.
Do you believe people can change? And if you do believe it, then how would you help someone change?
Note from early 2012: This piece kicked up a huge controversy, and I learned a lot from the ensuing debate. If I were writing this piece today, then I would not write it the way I did above. My favorite response to this piece around the internet was posted by Maia at Alas, A Blog. It’s really good and I later requested that we be permitted to cross-post it to Feministe, a request that Maia gracefully granted.
Another update: In late January 2012, I posted about some stuff I’ve been reading on transformative justice.
Tags: abuse, blogosphere, community, feedback, feminism, interviews
Thank you for writing this and I am sorry that you have been subjected to the internet flamewar issue around a topic so critical to ending violence as community accountability. I have been involved in several circle processes which have sought to find forms of accountability for crime and for violence. Let me suggest a few resources that are concretely addressing such issues on a regular basis. I am certain that you already know of many of these organizations and resources:
1. Support NY — http://supportny.org/
2. PhillyStandUp – http://phillystandsup.wordpress.com/
3. Creative Interventions (which will release an invaluable toolkit in early 2012 about just such practices and ideas) – http://www.creative-interventions.org/about.html
4. Generation Five – http://www.generationfive.org/
My own organization also works on such issues. The bottom line is that there are groups many of them which identify as feminist and queer affirming doing this hard work on a daily basis. Recognizing that prison has never been and will never be the solution to ending gender-based or any other kind of violence. FULL STOP. In solidarity.
You can have your own opinions about Hugo Schwyzer, but you can’t have your own facts. Hugo told two lies during that interview.
First, Hugo lied when he said that his sexual misconduct ended in 2008. This year, blogger Susan Walsh received an email from a man whose marriage was ruined by Hugo (see comments 312, 314, 317 and 327). Hugo had an affair with a newly wedded woman, who soon conceived a child. Hugo continued to email this woman throughout until 2008, at least. When the husband finally found out that Hugo had been having a relationship with his wife, Hugo was “dismissive and unrepentant”.
Second, Hugo lied when he said he’s “a pretty open book”. But when Hugo found out about Susan’s discover, he didn’t answer questions. Instead, he bullied Susan on Twitter and threatened to reveal the husband’s name unless Susan stopped talking about him. Susan was planning on publishing a full account of the husbands story, but she caved when Hugo’s threats. What kind of an “open book” feminist bullies a woman into keeping his secrets?
Again, you can have your own opinions of Hugo, but you can’t have your own facts. And the facts are that Hugo Schwyzer lied when he said his misconduct ended in 1998, and he lied when said he was an open book.
GudEnuf — Where exactly are these lies? These incidents are in his past as well: Hugo had the affair before his conversion. You really think he should have cut off all contact with the mother of his child after his conversion? As for Susan Walsh, I don’t get it. She was planning to publish information about this guy and then … Hugo said that would mean information would come out about this guy … so Susan didn’t do it? That doesn’t sound like a threat to me, that sounds like he was trying to point out the actual consequences of her actions.
It also sounds to me like Susan Walsh, as usual, is using whatever weaponry she can find to go after high-profile feminists. Are you really trying to make the case that Susan acted in a way that was designed to protect this guy’s privacy? Because if she cared about that, then she would have gone about the whole thing in a totally different way. Like, without public posts about it. You can have your own opinions about Susan Walsh, but you can’t have your own facts about her, either. Citing her as a reliable reference on Hugo Schwyzer is like citing the head of Disney as a reliable reference about copyright law: she probably does know a lot about Hugo, but she’s biased as hell and she’s got a really intense anti-feminist agenda.
At any rate, once again, I am not especially interested in picking Hugo apart. You have not presented any evidence of actual misconduct, just more old stories and backbiting about them. Way to miss the entire point of my article.
If this thread continues to degenerate into picking Hugo apart, I will consider closing comments. As I have repeatedly stated, I have zero interest in flamewars. I have already pre-emptively closed the comments on the mirror version of this post at Feministe.
How can we create processes for accountability?
I’ve thought and wrote on this before. And I think that one thing that is missing when it comes to how to deal with such criminals is how to actually prevent them from doing it again. Many people simply stop at “make them pay for what they did”. Its a noble idea but should “make sure they never do it again” also be a part of that?
I find that “make sure they never do it again” usually comes in the form of just hoping that while stewing in prison they will become so scared of going back they go straight, but does that really solve it (if you look at recidivism rates I think the answer is no).
Speaking of rape and abuse specifically I’ve seen where people say that some of the people that are in prison for such violent crimes were either victims of similar crimes themselves or witnessed such crimes on a regular bases. Why not give them a chance to actually process that stuff?
Is it possible for a person to change? Yeah I think so if for no other reason that the people that are prompting these questions (various criminals) didn’t just spring forth with their criminal intent (well at least most of them didn’t). Something changed them. Perhaps the question is can they go back to what they were?
Thanks for this post, Clarisse.
First, thanks for pointing out that there are more than two possible responses — either absolutely standing by someone or else utterly staking them out.
Also thank you for breaching the subject of what to do about perpetrators — whether repentant or simply unprosecutable.
My peripheral involvement with 12-step-related recovery groups lately has taught me a lot. One thing I’ve learned is that the nominally cliche link from preyed-upon to preying-upon is remarkably pervasive, complex, and subject to considerable denial. And while I haven’t attended support groups to deal with my own childhood and youth involvement I’ve finally realized that a lot of the peers I “cut my teeth” with sexually had themselves been groomed and preyed upon, with the result that a great deal of the “advice” I received was pretty… um… unreliable.
At the moment I’m feeling reactive enough to say that it would probably be a very good idea for everyone to take lessons from the negotiation fetishists in the kink community, and to steer as clear as possible from silent sexual overtures.
As I mentioned I’m aware I’m overreacting but it’s important to recognize the extent to which people of all sexes, orientations, and preferences find themselves “going along” with partners when, if offered a clear option, they would quickly stop. I’ve been put in that situation in the past, and I’ve put others in that position, and so at least for the moment I’m feeling acutely conscious of the need for even very nice, very well-intentioned, and possibly even totally oblivious men and women, tops and bottoms, cis and alt, gay, bi, and straight, monogamous or polyamorous, kinky or vanilla (especially vanilla!) and so on, to soften the black and white boundaries of convention perpetration stereotypes in order to entertain the question “have I or haven’t I?” And “If I have then what?”
And lately I’ve been asking myself those same two questions. They’re questions I recommend more people begin asking themselves.
Total ostracism isn’t an answer for most. Complete absolution isn’t an answer either. Instead, like the degrees of offense, the degrees of awareness, and the degrees of acknowledgment and remorse, the answer just lies on a broader spectrum than most of us would have thought.
—
Two other things emerge based, again, on peripheral involvement with people in 12-step programs. First, some of those groups are actually pretty good at processing both predation and victimization — I have extremely mixed feelings about 12-steppery but they seem to be able to be pretty frank about things. Second, it doesn’t seem at all to be as clear cut that, at least for the kind of people who feel compelled to join 12-step groups, that predatory behavior is exclusive to men or that victimization is exclusive to women and very young men.
I hope this doesn’t feel too much like a derail, Clarisse. I just feel, again, that both the question of Hugo’s successes and failures and the question of where perpetration begins and how it can end are poorly served by black and white thinking. In the end we’re not just going to need shades of gray, we’ll need to use colors too.
figleaf
GudEnuf, you have said your piece and I’ve said mine. I will not publish further comments from you on the topic of Hugo’s personal life, especially given that your primary source is a headliner anti-feminist who routinely launches personal attacks against feminist writers. If you want to participate in the discussion without making it about Susan Walsh’s view of Hugo Schwyzer, you are free to do so. Otherwise, I will continue to moderate your comments out of existence.
Figleaf, that’s not at all a derail, and thanks for commenting. In fact, thanks to everyone who’s been talking about accountability, change, and resources on those topics.
Great post. I’m really sorry to hear about your troubles with a flamewar. They’re so nasty, on the internet people can be twice as vindictive.
Your post raises a lot of interesting questions. It reminded me a bit about a debate I overheard with punishment vs rehabilitation. Which is more likely to turn out a reformed criminal, rehabilitation or a spell of punishment in prison, an often rough and dangerous place?
It seems to me that a lot of people aren’t willing to forgive and forget when it comes to Hugo, which is a pity. It’s difficult to trust someone if they have a bad history, but in a way we have to. Else how can anyone ever reform? People should always be given second chances. I hope that, considering the time of year, goodwill and all that, people will start to remember forgiveness, and how key it is in making yourself, and others, happy.
Thanks for another good read and seasons greetings!
What do you mean “Susan Walsh’s view of Hugo Schwyzer?” I saw him threaten Susan Walsh. publicly, on his Twitter. You can see it too if you check twitter’s archives back in July.
Mod Note From Clarisse: This is the last comment that gets published from you about Hugo, GudEnuf. You have now given two separate sources that people can check for themselves. If people want to share sources for others to check, then that’s okay with me, and if people want to speak up about abusive experiences they have personally had with Hugo, then I’m not going to silence them … but misogynist posts from anti-feminists that slut-shame, attack queer identity, and attack Hugo for daring to keep in touch with his biological child are where I draw the line. (This mod note was later edited for clarity about my intentions.)
First, I feel I should say I’ve only recently started reading your work. Coincidentally, I also recently became aware of Hugo’s work. You both write well reasoned pieces and thought provoking pieces.
Second, my comment. I was unaware of Hugo’s past before reading this post and yes, I’m going to have to do some processing around that, but it doesn’t change the truth of what he said and did by leaving the Good Men Project.
Further, to answer the question of whether people can change, I think it’s rare but it doesis happen. Brain chemistry and long term habits have defeated my best intentions so many times, but I can and have changed major things. Because of that, I don’t want to be judged now for who I was 10 years ago, or even 3. Further, I try to judge people for who they are now.
I’m not sure what else to say. I have no resources to share, only a word of agreement.
On the personal side, I rarely have built a new trust when an old one has been broken. I don’t find people all that predictable to begin with (and envy those who do), so past behavior is the largest factor in my trust. That said, I believe in the possibilities of learning, growth, and change and have seen people mold themselves into better versions of themselves.
It makes for a two-toned forgiveness.
I can forgive a wrong action and cheer/help the actor along the path of change that makes that action unlikely in the future. Socially, I feel that the good a person can do often outweighs the bad they have done.
At the same time, I do not *trust* that person to continue into the future without ever repeating the wrong action.
You pretty clearly lay out the plan: “But I have seen no evidence that Hugo hasn’t made an honest and sustained effort at recovery and accountability. I have seen no evidence that Hugo’s religious re-conversion was dishonest. And I have seen no evidence that Hugo continues problematic behavior.”
Taken as a set of steps, it could read: Forgiveness requires an honest and sustained effort at recovery and accountability (which I interpret as “I did it and won’t do it again”), done without dishonesty (repeat from above, could instead read “done for the right reasons”), and maintained over time.
This moves a person from “unrepentant wrongdoer” to “person who did wrong and repented”. It doesn’t necessarily move them from “person who is likely to hurt me” to “person who is unlikely to hurt me” in one’s own personal estimation of the universe.
This is the gap between forgiveness and trust. I think it’s a good gap to keep in mind when reading about someone like Hugo. I would never flame you for presenting his ideas, especially because you contextualize them by presenting his history. I think it perfectly likely that he will go to his grave faithful to his latest wife and sober. But, if he put his arm around my shoulder after class, I would not expect it to be an avuncular act. I would think it was a backslide.
This is the final, in-no-way-malicious punishment I would expect him to accept. The loss of trust among those who do not have direct experience with the strength of his repentance.
And to take it the next step, I think…in a way that is fluid and changing all the time…that society and community need to be based on accountability and earned forgiveness. Trust is too personal and too subjective to be used as a basis for societal prosecution and punishment.
Also, I think that the dichotomy of punishment vs rehabilitation hides the fundamental difference in the nature of each. Punishment is an act of power and usually is reserved for government (that whole “government is a monopoly on violence” thing). It is *done to* a person, and that satisfies many people as the only thing we can count on achieving.
Rehabilitation or reformation can’t be *done to* a person. It’s something that a person must *go through*, a process and a growing and a change. Impossible to legislate, impossible to ignore. Our current “justice” system attempts to use forms of power to achieve aims that cannot be forced. (Ex: court-ordered AA)
I don’t like to think of the question in terms of forgiveness because it abstracts too much what the goals are. I like to start from the point of view that the goal is to promote behavior we find “good” and deter behavior we find “bad”. (In contrast, if the goal is to feel good about bashing people who do bad things then the answer is clear: keep bashing.)
So here we have two strategies which have been well studied in game theory. On the one hand we have Grim Trigger where a single violation (or some number of violations) on the part of someone earns your eternal opprobrium. On the other, you have Tit-For-Tat where you punish the violator through temporary opprobrium but then give them a chance to redeem themselves and “forgive” their past offenses with the understanding that future offenses will again earn them corner time.
The two strategies are differently useful depending upon how you view the people around you. If you view people as falling into “good” or “bad” categories and their actions as being signals of their inherent nature, then Grim Trigger is quite sensible. You have seen that someone is in the “bad” bucket and so you have no reason to ever forgive them. After all, they would do it again if they had the chance.
On the other hand, if you view people as being able to make decisions, Tit-For-Tat allows them to learn. It allows people to realize that certain things are acceptable while others are not. It allows people to realize how unacceptable certain things are. Perhaps more importantly, it incentivizes people to change their behavior. Forget for a moment the question of the sincerity of repentance. If you shun someone forever, they will bear no further cost by continuing their bad behavior. After all, they are already the target of universal opprobrium. If (for instance) your husband knows he will never recover your trust, love and care, why should he stop cheating? On the other hand, if he knows that through fidelity and honesty he can recover your trust, love and care, then he has a good reason to change his behavior.
I think we live in the second world where while people do have some tendencies, they also make choices and those choices can be incentivized as a general rule.
From personal experience, I can say that the promise of forgiveness, of regaining trust and respect is an important motivator. I have had to change in many ways in my life after it was shown to me that I carried out behaviors that were somehow problematic, ranging from the trivial to the significant. Every time, it was very difficult. But what pushed me forward was the opportunity to regain some trust or respect that I had lost as a result of the behavior in question. Sometimes, it was not until that promise was made explicit that I was able to put myself through the uncomfortable places that change requires.
From the outside, I think I would look at the person in front of me and look at their more recent behavior. I know many people who have done things of which I disapprove strongly. In all cases, my approach to them is dependent upon how they have acted in the past few months with ultimately little regard for their earlier actions. It is not forgiveness. It is simply a recognition that I want to be with the person they are now even if I may not have wanted anything to do with the person they once were.
Particularly troubling: when the victimizers were themselves victims. Because there, they’re denied re-integration in the name of justice, but when justice should have stepped in for them, it often *failed* to do that. Sometimes even when the people representing it knew what was going on. Maybe often. And the awareness of that is probably a part of the recidivism, giving the idea that other people deserve complete and permanent protection from them, now, but that they, evidently, weren’t worth protecting when they needed it.
“Bear the burden that no one is supposed to bear. Bleed the blood that your protectors were supposed to make sure didn’t come out. Heal alone the wounds that the doctors were supposed to cure. And if you fail at any of that, drop into the disease and infect anyone else, you’re to blame, not us. Not BOTH. Not ALL. We don’t share in the blame for not doing what we say that good and moral and just people do. What we shout out on talk shows and news shows that we know we’d do if we only knew it was happening.”
“You’re gone. Disowned. Forever.”
What’s left, then, but to identify with the abuser? The temptation to embrace the demon? The perverted sense of justice, because it’s the only justice left.
link
Clarisse, I think a lot about your questions & my response is in the above link, which I wrote before I read your interesting post & ?s. Short answer is: some people can change (some, a little) and some can’t (IMO), & that’s a matter of personality, which does become fixed but one facet of personality (Openness) allows for change & it depends where on that continuum a person is that determines if, or if not, he/she can change & how much. Complicated. I do give specific, personal examples in the post. It is long. cheers.
I’d like to share a zine about transformative justice that was written by a couple of friends. I think that it tries to address some of the questions that you pose by asking more questions…
http://www.usprisonculture.com/blog/2011/06/15/transformative-justice-and-cities-of-refuge-miklat-miklat-zine/
Wishing you a happy New Year!
I just would like to applaud right now. I think dealing with the people who create survivors in the first place, is a feminist concern. Beyond abuse programs for male abusers is housed in domestic violence agencies that follow feminist theory and practice.
This is a feminist issue, always has been and will be for quite some time.
We need to address TRAUMA.
The interesting thing about reading feminist blogs is how often accounts of abuse come up and yet how rarely they’re from the point of view of the abuser. I presume most people have been on both sides at various points and sometimes at the same point. Yet that angle never comes up.
I remember reading through a book on counseling people convicted of rape in order to rehabilitate them where the writers pointed out how difficult it was to make process because of the reticence of the patients to view themselves as perpetrators of rape and their defence of the abuse as being deserved. I think this problem is so widespread though that is not only a barrier to rehabilitation but also a reason for abuse. People generally struggle to see themselves as the perpetrators rather than the victims.
Can’t presume that. Don’t know either way.
But that’s another problem with a complete lock-out of victimizers with abuse histories. It can make anyone with that kind of history horrified over even the possibility that they might slip up. Even if that doesn’t extend to a clear crime.
It’s a hard enough battle to fight. Harder, when you’re fighting alone. But it’s hardest when you know that one single solitary loss, if anyone ever found out, would exile you.
Hard, because it’s like anything else: the the longer the battle goes on, and the more of them you have to fight, the more of a chance there is that one of those times… you’re not going to win.
And once you’ve lost, none of those years of fighting are going to matter.
Thank you all for your incredibly thoughtful comments. This whole thing has been really intense for me, especially given the fallout at Feministe, which has included some people calling for me to stop writing etc. etc. etc. It makes me really appreciate the generosity of spirit and carefulness that I see represented in this discussion, even more than I otherwise would have. Happy holidays to everyone.
Thank you all for your incredibly thoughtful comments. This whole thing has been really intense for me, especially given the fallout at Feministe, which has included some people calling for me to stop writing etc. etc. etc.
I refuse to go to that place (and frankly you, one who is generally accepted among them, being treated that way is a reason) but I’ll say sorry to hear how you’ve been treated over there.
Clarisse, Thank you all for your incredibly thoughtful comments.
It’s probably because it’s been well moderated.
I think that you are tackling a tough area here and I appreciate you trying to directly confront the issues in a thoughtful way.
I think that accountability can have issues which don’t necessarily appear on the surface immediately.
Relevant here I think is To Whom One is Accountable and How.
To the degree that one has multiple and complex issues, accountability with the issues involved in the original writing might relate to:
1.) Individuals who were or may have been hurt,
2.) Others – who are seriously impacted by the issues that have been raised – such as survivors of various types of assault and other abuse,
3.) “Recovery communities” – e.g. substance abuse, sexual addiction, etc.
4.) Feminists and
5.) Men – simply being a man
Where the support is good and effective, the community may be much, much tougher on one than outsiders.
Men – need to help hold other men accountable. We men – oft times – b.s. women either knowingly or unknowingly and often other men are necessary to see through the b.s. or to help in a way force the other man to really listen to some of his issues.
Oft times – rather than being held accountable, we have communities who help support the inappropriate behaviors. We men, oft times excuse inappropriate behavior and enable the silence – such as was done at Penn State U evidently.
A second issue that I think is important is the need to Get Attention or be “The Center” of what is going on. Some individuals unfortunately – have a great need to be The Center of Attention. Sometimes in such situations bad attention is better than No attention – and can detract from focusing upon the underlying, much more important issues.
In the end I hope that More Men will see the importance of working with Other Men and Boys and helping make us more functional, more happy, more full People.
Feminism – has opened up a lot of things for most women, whether they identify as feminists or not. For men, we’ve got a lot more work to do on Our Issues so that we can better be a part of the dialog with women.
Thanks!!
Clarisse – I just wanted to say that I’m really sorry for all of the shit you’ve had to put up with. I can see why people might disagree with your choices (though I certainly understand them – reading the comments on Feministe is stressful enough; I can’t imagine what it must be like moderating them) but telling you that you should stop writing, or that you’re too thin-skinned for be a blogger, is just uncalled for. I love Feministe, but those sorts of attacks remind me why I’ve never been a big part of the community there.
While I think a person with Schwyzer’s history of misogyny and abuse of women’s trust should in no way, shape, or form be permitted to make a career–indeed, lionized for it–out of surrounding himself with young women and preaching to them about feminism, I had no problem at all with your posting of your interview with him at Feministe. I thought the “powers-that-be” were right to apologize for your closing of a comment thread, but wrong to apologize for publishing your post in the first place.
My Dad told me a few years ago that if I ever did a crime and he knew I did it he would turn me in. I believed him and I was not upset by it, because to us turning me in would be the loving thing to do. If I knew my friend did a serious crime I would confront them privately. For your friend who was guilty of rape, you should congratulate him that he has realized what he did was wrong and he should confront and apologize those he has wronged if he wants to properly erase the guilt. Also allow tell them to give the victim the proper opportunity to punish them. As for the other guy who sexually assaulted someone and that person isn’t going to press charges? I would personally stop having association with them. If your friends know about it as well, recommend they do the same. Associating with someone like that when you know what they did, you are giving the message that what they did was acceptable (and only associate with the person after he has confessed to the proper authorities). It makes you apart of “rape culture” not it’s enemy. I do believe people can change, but we are limited. We can’t since someone’s inner thoughts or motivations. For Hugo, I take a Jonah approach. When the Ninevites repented for their evil ways, Jonah still believed God should destroy them for their past actions. But God said they were honestly repented and because of that he doesn’t hold them accountable for their past actions (he did the same for King Mannaseh). We shouldn’t be mad at Hugo for his past actions because it’s in the past. I believe we should treat him as a new more experienced person, but if he does do something we believe immoral today then we should be mad at him for what he does now and not that in 1996 Hugo was getting coochie from a 18 year old sexually confused student.
Thanks again folks … not sure I have much meaningful to say on the topic at this time, but this thread has given me a lot to think about. And I do appreciate the friendliness too.
Some actions are simply unforgivable and it’s impossible to make amends; one has to live with that and try his or her best to be a better person and never hurt anybody else again. When we reach maturity we are fully responsible for our actions or lack of them : not helping somebody dying on the street (when there is little or no risk) is just as atrocious as stabbing somebody in my book.
I think that the best thing somebody that truly hurt me can do is to sincerely apologize (preferably in a letter) and just… disappear from my life, move out of town if possible, things like that.
Do I believe people can change ? Certainly ! People change with time, as they become more mature (or less…), when they suddenly have some epiphany or something. But that does not take the guilt away. It just allows them to never make the same mistake again.
Oh, on a side note: as you can see in the comments… well, pretty much everywhere besides his blog, people are not happy about people who are doing one thing and preaching another.
One thing that I’ve seen happen is that, when it comes to individuals that people believe have rehabilitated, they’ll sometimes come to them for advice on prevention: to talk to them about events that they suspect could have happened, but didn’t. Feelings that they don’t know how to process, and that disturb them. Reactions that they’re not sure are healthy ones to have. Kind of like something else I’ve seen happen, where someone has had a person talk to an ex-con friend to see whether or not they smelled a lie in their denial.
It seems, sometimes, like there are some things that people are only comfortable discussing with the fallen.
I haven’t tried to become familiar with Schwyzer’s writing, and more importantly, I’ve never met the man in person, so I can’t say one way or the other. But I suspect that this is one of the reasons why he’s so contentious: when you claim to climb back from the darkness, people are going to come to you for guidance on those same kinds of dark things. You’d better be able to establish that you’re truly in the position to give it.
But, the point: like Wirbelwind wrote, there are unforgivable things. There is guilt that never goes away, and absolution that never comes. Burdens that never lift, and burdens that should never stop being borne. But that isn’t the same as the impossibility of redemption. Maybe that redemption can never be complete, and can never be full. But it can still work through other paths. And even if those paths cannot erase old tragedies, they can sometimes prevent new ones from being written.
I think the “things are not black and white” is a really important point. There was recently a Internet Drama on a feminist livejournal community because an individual who ran the community had on their friends list a woman who had sexually assaulted a man (under circumstances where the woman claimed to have not realized that her actions were assault.)
Several people on the LJ community were loudly proclaiming that still being in contact with the woman meant supporting and approving of her actions. There was no space possible for something like still being “friends” with the woman in an effort to support the woman coming to understand and deal with the causes and consequences of her actions. It was “Either you shun her or you say she’s in the right.” This also left no space for the woman to say “I know now that what I did was wrong”, because to say such a thing would be to risk jail.
This hit especially close to home for me, as I, as a teenager, did things to a male partner that in retrospect were at best questionable and at worst sexual assault. (At the time, I had no conceptualization of passive non-consent, and thus thought if a guy didn’t say “no” or “stop” or anything of the sort, and had an erection, everything must be aces.)
This isn’t something I feel like I can discuss even now. I have a much clearer and deeper understanding of consent than I did as a teen, do my utmost to never act except with enthusiastic consent, and feel confident that for years, I’ve never acted without enthusiastic consent.
But I still feel like the black and white divisions that get drawn could ruin me socially and carry negative consequences for any friends who chose to weigh who I am over who I was. I don’t feel like there’s a place in society where I can stand up and say “I fucked up, but I know that and will do my utmost to never do it again.”
“What would you do if your sibling came to you to confess a terrible crime? To request absolution? To request accountability?”
Had to write this after reading one of the responses over at R/R.
Much as it might seem like a dodge, I’d have to say that there’d be no hard and fast rule, though things would be far clearer in some circumstances than others. In particularly severe cases, crystal. And the reasons come down to what I would have wanted people to have done if/when my victimizers had confessed to *them*.
So I guess that I can only answer this by saying it from the other side.
When I was a child? Turning them in wouldn’t be enough. I’d need to listen to enough to be able to make my own statement, and not just entrust the matter to the police. I’d need to do what I could to find out if there were any others. And I’d need to try to identify their risk factors, and address them, in case they were at risk for re-offense, before or after trial. Or in case one never came.
But as an adult? There, I’m not so sure. On the more severe stuff, I’d want action on my behalf. In situations where I couldn’t otherwise get to them, where the person knew or suspected that they’d otherwise get away with it, I’d be betrayed if it didn’t happen. But when I think about most of the situations I’ve gone through, what I’ve wanted most was the ability to go forward with action if I chose to do so.
In those circumstances, I wouldn’t have wanted them to turn that person in. I would have wanted them to get that person to willingly, fully and lastingly admit, and then surrender control of that proof. What I really would have wanted… is a taped or signed confession.
Not that I would have used it to take them to trial, necessarily. Maybe I might have. Or I might have kept it to myself. Or I might have eventually destroyed it. But the point is, they would have admitted, and of their own free will. Which is something that they might only do with the support of someone they know and trust.
And by giving it to me, they wouldn’t have been able to take it back.
And then, the choice of what to do would have truly, finally been mine.
Mod note: I will not be publishing comments that characterize feminism as a “hate movement”. Come on, people.
“Why should someone work for forgiveness if they know forgiveness can never come?”
Taking a slightly different tack on this point than has been taken at Alas!, I suspect that I’d have agreed with the sentiment if it had been phrased differently: maybe as “Why would someone work to become a healthy member of society if they thought it would never be recognized?”, for example. I wouldn’t agree with it as stated, and for reasons that others have already pointed out. But I think that this is one possible, and perhaps more acceptable, interpretation.
That kind of version, I think, would have placed the focus where it needs to be, where figleaf has taken pains to place it, and where the original version failed to squarely locate it: on the recovery and rehabilitation process.
Forgiveness doesn’t need to play a part in it. But opening up the possibility, even if it doesn’t extend to expectations of likelihood, that once a villain doesn’t mean always one, does. Problem is, those two ideas tend to get conflated.
Thanks for this, Clarisse – another great post. Your questions about accountability for perpetrators are questions I have asked myself many times in my personal life.
Growing up with the internet has exposed me to a lot of things I never wanted to see. I know several people, mostly men but not exclusively, who started seeking out child pornography while they were still children themselves, curious young people looking for pictures of other curious young people.
Our desire to demonize anyone who has ever downloaded an image of someone under 18, as identical to a child-rapist, without ever attempting to understand how these problems develop, are unsustainable at best and utterly destructive and possibly even encouraging aberrant (and abhorrent) behaviour at worst.
Thank you for helping start the conversation. If we truly want to prevent sexual violence and abuses of power without blaming the victims, I think we must turn to perpetrators and potential abusers to make change.
So, firstly, there’s a good response post up over at Alas! A Blog. I don’t agree with all of it, but I think it makes a lot of good points and I’m planning to cross-post it at Feministe tomorrow.
Some thinky thoughts for this thread, and I’m sorry I was out of touch for so long, because there are some really great comments here.
As I said on the Alas thread, I do think that I failed to make adequate space for abuse survivors in this post, and I accept that this post came across as pressuring abuse survivors, and I’m sorry for that.
There’s also a question of how we deal with accountability and trust in these contexts. Dena’s comment here gets at that a little bit, and I’m gonna go ahead and quote it for agreement:
This is the gap between forgiveness and trust. I think it’s a good gap to keep in mind when reading about someone like Hugo. I would never flame you for presenting his ideas, especially because you contextualize them by presenting his history. I think it perfectly likely that he will go to his grave faithful to his latest wife and sober. But, if he put his arm around my shoulder after class, I would not expect it to be an avuncular act. I would think it was a backslide.
This is the final, in-no-way-malicious punishment I would expect him to accept. The loss of trust among those who do not have direct experience with the strength of his repentance.
And to take it the next step, I think…in a way that is fluid and changing all the time…that society and community need to be based on accountability and earned forgiveness. Trust is too personal and too subjective to be used as a basis for societal prosecution and punishment.
A commenter named Adrian at Alas said something similar:
My choice is whether to *trust* him or not. That’s different from whether to forgive him. Trust is complicated, and deciding to trust a person not to steal your money doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with trusting them to keep a particular promise, or with trusting them to respect your boundaries. I’m not coming within arms’ length of Hugo, because he’s in California. I suspect that’s true for most of us. What kind of trust are we talking about, in this case?
Right. Good question. I certainly trusted him enough to go out to lunch and guest-lecture in his class when I was in California. Is this more trust than I, as a feminist, should have extended to him? Is trust even the operative word there?
On another note …. Another gender writer emailed me after the publication of “On Change and Accountability” to say that she sees this as a kind of fundamental clash between the survivor-centered ethics and language that are currently central to feminist thought, and the type of language that is widely used in the recovery communities she is familiar with. I don’t have any well-developed thoughts on this either, but I would really appreciate others’ thoughts/links. Infra, it sounds like you might have some experience with this?
There has been a lot of discussion among others about how it’s fucked up to offer an outside social reward for a person’s internal change. I think the comments on this thread are interesting because a lot of commenters here appear to see these ideas of forgiveness and absolution as something that’s an acceptable “carrot” for personal growth — much more willing than commenters I’ve seen elsewhere. Now that I’ve read a number of extremely clear explanations of why that’s kind of messed up, I am not quite okay with it. But as Infra says,
That kind of version, I think, would have placed the focus where it needs to be, where figleaf has taken pains to place it, and where the original version failed to squarely locate it: on the recovery and rehabilitation process.
Which makes sense …. I find myself wondering, what are the nuances of these words — “recovery” and “rehabilitation” — that make them more okay than “forgiveness” and “absolution”? I guess forgiveness and absolution are things that come from outside, while recovery and rehabilitation are interior. But while I agree that it’s bad to pressure abuse survivors to forgive, I do wonder where the lines are in actions we take. I mean, we can sit here and argue theory and linguistic connotation all day. Where are the important differences between a set of steps that emphasizes “rehabilitation and recovery”, rather than “seeking forgiveness and/or absolution”? What do those differences, those actions, look like in practice?
Infra, it sounds like you might have some experience with this?
I do. Though I’m not sure how representative it is; from what I’ve come to learn, it was along the lines of the forensic psychotherapy approach, which seems to be kind of rare.
I don’t think that the languages clash, necessarily. But this goes to an issue that I’ve mentioned in other threads, some time ago: the development of victim empathy. In the program, that was the foundation, and without it, any progress was unlikely. So developing it required approaching the subject of survivors in a particular way. Through anonymous or pseudonymous case stories, for example, presented by the group facilitator, with the focus maintained on the effects that the abuse had on the survivors’ lives, abilities to form relationships, physical hardships, emotional stability and so on. On humanizing them. But that only worked with acute attention to any group member’s attempt to focus on the details of the abuse instead of the effects, as occasionally happened — and one of the signs that the group was successfully working was that other members of the group, often ones who would find themselves identifying or sympathizing with one survivor’s story or another, would call those members out on that behavior.
So I’d say that the difference, as far as the program I’m familiar with was concerned, was that it didn’t approach the subject of harm first. It approached empathy and sympathetic connection first, after which the perception of harm that had been caused was able to become poignant.
Where are the important differences between a set of steps that emphasizes “rehabilitation and recovery”, rather than “seeking forgiveness and/or absolution”? What do those differences, those actions, look like in practice?
Just to reference, again, things included in or inspired by the program that I’m familiar with, things that would be involved in a rehabilitation approach that wouldn’t necessarily be involved, or be involved at all, in a forgiveness/absolution one would include the identification of risk factors, self-policing (as akin to the “calling those members out” part above, which is why I prefer the idea of vigilance groups to accountability groups — the proactive quality of vigilance is more effective than the often retroactive nature of accountability) and broad-spectrum aftercare (which would include individual therapy, as warranted, even for issues not directly related to the original offense). The idea being that an offense isn’t just an isolated act, or even a serial act; it’s one with broad connections and ramifications within the individual, just as applies without.
But I do think that the options available are limited, because explorations in the area are still limited. Conceptions of offense still seem to be mostly those of isolated and serial acts, rather than of events in a systemic context, and I’m not sure that more options will become available until more research is done. Like I wrote at the start, approaches like these seem to be rare.
But I have seen no evidence that Hugo hasn’t made an honest and sustained effort at recovery and accountability. I have seen no evidence that Hugo’s religious re-conversion was dishonest. And I have seen no evidence that Hugo continues problematic behavior.
All of this may be true, but it is also irrelevant. The fact remains – and this fact is not in question – that Hugo committed attempted murder while attempting suicide.
He tried to kill his girlfriend.
There is no absolution or forgiveness that can be given by anyone other than her, for the wrong that he brought against her. Absolution and forgiveness as concepts are where the one who has been wronged, chooses to grant such to the person who wronged them. Thus, the experiences and opinions of all third parties (including you) are completely meaningless.
Did he confess to his crime, plead guilty, and go to jail? No? If not, I would say he has not made effort towards ‘accountability’. Whether or not you like the criminal justice system, in this society when you commit a crime you deserve to go to jail. To be accountable for your actions, you must choose to face their consequences. If he has not done so, he has not chosen to be accountable.
Religious re-conversion is irrelevant. Putting aside the fact that religious people can do atrocious things and not be sorry, or can even believe they were *right* – if religious conversion was an act of atonement or apology, the concept of apology requires that said apology accepted by the one who was wronged to be valid. Whether or not you think his apology is sincere does not matter.
Finally, you state that you haven’t seen Hugo continue to behave problematically. This also is meaningless, because your comfort level with his behavior is irrelevant – what is significant, is how the ‘target’ of his behavior feels. If he continues to make people feel wretched or make decisions for them and it does not personally effect you, that does not make his behavior laudable.
In short, you are being an apologist for his actions, and in doing so you are attempting to demand forgiveness for his acts that are neither yours to demand nor ours to give. Such forgiveness, acceptance of apology, acknowledgement of redemption, or absolution can be granted by exactly one person on earth – his victim.
And if she does not choose to grant these things, and wishes to avoid him, judge him for his actions, and insist that others recognize his actions for what they were – neither you nor I can gainsay her.
Which also means that you cannot force others to accept and be accepting what he has verifiably done, simply because you personally believe he is not that bad.
He did what he did. Do not pretend that he did not and do not make excuses for it. That one act may not be the totality of who he is – but don’t pretend that it lacks significance either. Because that is what you are doing…and I severely doubt that the victim who nearly died shares your opinion. Need I even point out that her opinion in this case carries greater significance than yours?
I have to come at this from the perspective of my faith in the Holy Trinity: a redeeming Son, a forgiving Father, a guiding Holy Spirit. These are the sources for my answer on these issues. So please forgive me (heh, that word again) if the following seems a bit preachy or religious. It is only because without those things, I got nothin’.
Forgiveness is proclaimed to all who repent of their sins, however great and numerous those sins may be. We are commanded to forgive others as the Lord God forgives us. To abandon grudges or hatred, and to treat all people, even those who have done great wrong, with compassion and love. That is a tough challenge that God lays down for us there.
Forgiveness does not, in my mind, entail forgetting, however. Repentance is a key element of the forgiveness that we are offered by God – without it, we remain sinners, and we remain liable for the sins both past and future, that we have committed. Only God can see into the heart of a person and know that they have truly repented of their sins; us poor, limited, souls have to make the best guess we can on such a matter, regarding the people and how well we know them.
I believe I have a duty to forgive, but there is also a duty to protect others. Should I believe that a person confessing an assault to me would act in a similar way in future (i.e. there is insufficient repentance), then my duty to God and my neighbour (that is, any putative human being in the present or future) is clearly to ensure that this friend is not in a position to do so. That they are caught and punished for their reform and for society’s protection. If I believe in their repentance but still feel that some penalty must be paid, then the question becomes whether I believe a just punishment can or will be meted out by the law, or whether I must do it myself (I do not think I could in good conscience place myself in that role; I would have to let the law do its work).
Forgiveness does not entail forgetting. Just because I forgive a person for their past wrong, does not mean I will be unwary of their actions in future. Although I believe that an event in someone’s past does not define the character of that person in the present, I must get to know that person’s character now before I can discount the significance of that previous deed; I also need to see that it was not a part of a trend in the past, or to understand what makes the difference. In short, I need a reason to trust, and I need grounds to believe in that person’s repentance.
Forgiveness, to me, simply means “I won’t try to hurt you for the harm you once did”.
But no one is entitled to be trusted by another. That’s something that may be given but only based on each individual’s criteria. It’s not nice to be treated as suspect, but only by living our lives well and letting others choose to draw their own conclusions can we move forward. Expecting redemption is a sure way to lose it, and people’s minds are not ours to control – if they are suspicious of us, for whatever reason, we cannot change that but must let them change their minds if they will. On the other hand, I believe that there is a duty to be open to the possibility of changing my mind about those whom I view with suspicion (and would wish that others were flexible in the same way).
This, for me, is another manifestation of my rule, “I keep an open mind, but there is a bouncer on the door”.
Clarisse, I have post a rather long response to your excellent questions in your comment #34. You can read it here: http://www.markjabbour.com/2012/01/02/forgiveness-and-change-happy-new-year/
thanks for the opportunity & great discussion.
peace,
mark
@Sam Stauffer:
There is no absolution or forgiveness that can be given by anyone other than her, for the wrong that he brought against her.
This seems to be a semantic argument clinging onto the words “forgiveness” and “absolution.” I think what Clarisse is saying is that sometimes people do really bad things, but later change their ways, and that perhaps we should take that into account when judging their character. That last part, I think, is what is meant by “forgiveness” — not that some random third party could somehow grant forgiveness and that would make the victim happy.
Especially considering that forgiveness can be something *useful* to a survivor, though, is it right to allow, much less endorse, that kind of semantic slippage?
I can look at someone’s actions, and I can say that, in my estimation, they’ve changed their ways. But for me to say that that involves, in any way, forgiving them for those things — that encroaches on territory that isn’t mine to begin with. I haven’t forgiven them; I’ve made a moral evaluation of them. That’s a different thing, and should be regarded as such. To do otherwise appropriates that which belongs, properly and only, to the survivor(s).
I have my own problems with the fact that this particular survivor gets brought into the discussion as often as she does — although there may have been cases in which this has occurred, I have not seen, at least in these recent threads, anyone disclose whether or not they have her permission to speak for her, or her position or opinions on it, or how she has been or is being affected by it, and much more care could be taken in preventing the effects of secondary victimization in these discussions — but the core point is and remains valid.
The decision to bestow or refuse forgiveness belongs to her. It isn’t a matter of semantics, it’s an issue of appropriation and theft.
Real accountability is actions, not words. This might seem confusing when we’re talking about interactions online, since the internet is made up of words, but the distinction still exists.
For instance, if someone says that he understands that no one has to accept his transformation and he can’t dictate where he is welcomed, those are words. Do his actions match that? If not, then the words are just words.
Something occurred to me regarding the “fundamental clash [with] the survivor-centered ethics and language that are currently central to feminist thought.” As far as what I’ve encountered, it’s actually more similar to disability studies than other approaches, at least in one way: in that disability studies theorists tend to make a manifest distinction between impairment and disability (the latter being, essentially, the social experience of impairment). The initial focus on the development of victim empathy seems similar to focusing on that second element, then using that as a bridge toward gaining an understanding of the first.
So, again, I don’t think that there’s a clash. It’s just that it’s aligned with a branch of thought with which some might not be familiar.
I’ve always seen forgiveness as something that the person that is wronged does, not what third parties do. To me forgiveness isn’t about forgetting or ignoring past actions, but rather to get to a mental state where recollection of the past actions are no longer an emotional trigger, to let go of the anger so to speak. You still might not trust the person in general or in a particular way, but their simple mention or presence is no longer upsetting.
I think the concept of forgiveness might be useful in a more general sense in the context of feminism for a couple of reasons. Firstly, it seems common that feminists will see themselves as victims of a sexist social structures in one way or another. They also see individual actions of others as playing into those systems and, in an indirect way, being an assault on themselves (and other women). Thus, because a man they have never met has attack a woman they have never met, the man has contributed to a culture of violence and fear and thus has committed an offence against them personally which they have a right to determine whether to forgive or not. As for appropriation, I suspect the strongest push for this view is coming from survivors who are seeking to extend the coping mechanisms they learnt in a slightly broader context.
The second reason is that (at least some) feminists seem to hold they have some perpetual right to be angry. I’m far from convinced this is a positive thing, so see a general forgiveness concept as something that could be positive on a social rather than individual level.
“As for appropriation, I suspect the strongest push for this view is coming from survivors who are seeking to extend the coping mechanisms they learnt in a slightly broader context.”
Care to clarify what you mean here? I just want to make sure I’m reading you correctly.
To clarify I was talking about how a survivor would use forgiveness as a way of dealing with or gaining control of the emotions surrounding the attacker and/or event. If someone has used such a technique in the past, when similar emotions are triggered in a related context (such as feeling threatened or violated when a self confessed attacker is made the focus on a blog they feel ought to be a safe space), they would feel that a right of forgiveness would give them the same ability to deal with or control their freshly triggered emotions. To deny them that right of forgiveness would then be to force them to experience the emotions of their victimisation, essentially re-victimising them.
I’m not sure I agree with this view (or even if it’s accurate), rather just trying to see things from another perspective.
@Infra, not sure I’m seeing the disability studies link, though I kind of do? Could you go into that more?
@desipis, that’s an interesting point. I hadn’t thought about it in quite those terms before. I’ve got a lot of sympathy for feminist rage (a LOT), but it’s not the most useful emotion when you’re trying to build something new.
“@Infra, not sure I’m seeing the disability studies link, though I kind of do? Could you go into that more?”
Maybe the best way of explaining it is by contrasting it with the medical model, which focuses on more or less direct reduction in quality of life; that has obvious parallels in the need for safe spaces, compromise of and interference with social activities and groups and the like. I’d suggest that that’s probably the dominant approach used in dealing with the subject here. The social model, though, approaches these subjects in a slightly different way: the breakdown of social activities as conflicted reactions to a traumatized individual and the expression of varying approaches to how such an impaired individual “should” heal from such insults and injuries, for example. Similarly, an offender’s attempts at rationalization, and/or their receipt of inappropriate support from the community, could be presented as attempts to encourage, leverage or force a ‘fix’ or ‘cure’ upon the survivor, regardless of their wishes or needs, regardless of the actual effect, and sometimes even with the belief that they’re actually “trying to help someone get past the harm.”
(It’s been a bit since I’ve read it, but I think that these aspects were clearly illustrated in some of the stories in the Revolution Starts at Home ‘zine, and they reminded me of some of the case studies I’d seen used.)
The basic idea, I think, could be described this way: that an offense isn’t just an act to be addressed, it’s also an act embedded within a social context that will respond to it (in a broad and varied sense); and a victim isn’t just someone you’ve harmed, they’re someone who others will react to both as *your* victim, specifically, and as a victim, generally, whose impairments (the effects of the offense, direct and indirect) will shape and affect these reactions. And those are levels of response that may or may not compound each other, or even overlap.
The disability studies model — with its distinction between impairment and disability — seems to come closest to matching that, at least in terms of what I’m familiar with.
Taking the change and accountability idea in a somewhat different direction… has anyone else seen the recent Superheroes documentary? I’m wondering what the opinions might be on the kind of redirection done by people like Lucid, of the New York Initiative.
Hm. I personally don’t feel like I have much of a stake in this. I discovered Schwyzer’s writing before I learned of his past, and I liked some of it, disliked other parts. Once I learned about his history, I took it as a warning to read with an even more critical eye. I lost quite a bit of respect for him, especially because of the way he writes about his history, but do read an occasional piece by him.
I guess he was just never one of THOSE writers for me. Like, if Clarisse suddenly gave up kink because it’s too patriarchal, or Ta-Nehisi Coates took off and abandoned his young son, or I learned that bell hooks had been an abuser of others, I would feel real betrayal. But not for Schwyzer. And not because of an internet flamewar over Schwyzer, either.
I’ve been reading about transformative justice; here are some links.