no boys allowed in the room!!!!

okay i have a serious question:

i'm a member of a co-op that runs a noise clubhouse that does shows, and one of the members just booked a show where one of the musicians is a dude that a friend of mine had said date raped her (this was in the past year). And it feels icky. For all my years of booking and putting on shows, I haven't been in this situation before. I've booked dudes that were run-of-the-mill creepy or sexually aggressive when drunk, but nothing as serious as this.

what the fuck should I do? (if anything)

Are you likely to get any support from the other members of the co-op if you bring up that this guy is an un-safe person to have around? Not that that should stop you bringing it up, but it's good to know in advance if you can expect any backup. If you know there are people who would give you backup, raise it with them first, and then bring your concerns together to the whole group. (Rapists are not safe people to have in any space that includes women. I do not think it's undue or unfair to raise this issue.)

the co-op is 3 women and 5 men

Raise it with the other women, and discuss, and bring your perfectly legitimate concerns to the group together. Strength in numbers and a united front.

I also feel like I should talk to my friend about it first. But I feel weird contacting her and saying, "hey, how's it going? guess what? that dude who raped you is booked on a show at (name of space i run)."

I don't think you need to name the person, when you are saying "Person raped someone I know" - at least, that's not how it works in a court of law. But I can understand why you'd want to ask, first, does she feel comfortable being involved with this. But I would not have this guy play at your space.

I think you know what you need to do. Do you expect strong resistance to naming this issue and discussing a response from your co-op?

For me, the most compelling framing is a "health of the community" issue. (Well actually the most compelling framing is a 'THIS PERSON SHOULD NOT HAVE TO WATCH US APPLAUD HER RAPIST' one but I recognize that it opens both parties up to personal judgments.) But when someone has a serious allegation made against them and is still accepted by a community without an analysis of that, it starts to become definitional to that community that they didn't find it important enough to investigate or analyze.

Pretending that "oh we're not political" or w/e is a lie--that pretense itself is political. Taking no action is a vote for the status quo, ie patriarchy. Blah blah obviously.

okay i have a serious question:

i'm a member of a co-op that runs a noise clubhouse that does shows, and one of the members just booked a show where one of the musicians is a dude that a friend of mine had said date raped her (this was in the past year). And it feels icky. For all my years of booking and putting on shows, I haven't been in this situation before. I've booked dudes that were run-of-the-mill creepy or sexually aggressive when drunk, but nothing as serious as this.

what the fuck should I do? (if anything)

― sarahell, Thursday, April 3, 2014 1:27 PM (36 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

we have this exact situation going on at our space at this moment FYI

dude is currently banned but we havent told him so or the reason - im working on how to approach that, how to go about informing others - right now just consistently denying his requests to play

i was THIS close to recording him (in my house alone with him!) when this news came out

Ugh, so awkward to address. Well...there's a couple of conversations to have. One of them is about holding people accountable for sexual violence, and the other is about love/compassion/fellow-feeling (however you feel least hokey phrasing it) among community members and the need to be supportive of them. (Unless the guy is creepy and terrible and not central to the community in which case you don't have to foreground him as much imo.)

So it doesn't have to be like, You are hated and banned, it can be more, We'd like to support your request to play shows but we have a more compelling need to support our community by taking sexual violence seriously. Let's talk about how to navigate this. And then see what he says and how he reacts, which probably will tell you everything you need to know tbqh.

Not that you asked me! And roxy, I know you're a pro at managing yr space and community. But this is how I would feel most secure framing it and it keeps me focused on the largest goal which is maintaining a safe and secure community where growth can happen and not being derailed by my anger or desire to fix on an accusation.

i welcome all advice on this believe me!

he is a much loved member of the community, and a very young dude. i feel like - if we really believe that consent is something that has to be taught/learned - if he addresses this, has had counseling, obv he cant "make amends," but if he's worked on himself and learned, then i can make some space for him. my focus right now is on the woman tho, who is widely being called crazy and a liar by people who really should (and, it seems, do??) know better. im not putting dude on a stage while that is going on

I think that's a responsible and conscious choice, but like you already know, you're going to have to tell him why. Not least because direct lessons are more effective. If you behave cruelly toward others, you don't have the same access to group approval and resources--true fact, son.

cruelly/unjustly/destructive of the full humanity of others, whatever.

yeah, i know. im so stressed about that inevitable convo

OMF-ingG yes. When that kind of shit is going on (the victim being called "crazy" and "a liar" (ain't I been there)) then your A-number-1 priority is supporting her and showing that no, that kind of thing is not acceptable. She has the right to be taken seriously, believed, and have this guy be held accountable. Your first priority is keeping the people in your community safe. Female people are not safe with this dude around.

sorry x-posts

preach. im so disappointed in my community right now

sarahell, Branwell Bell's advice is very good about how to approach this. I don't have anything better to add but I want to say, sarah and roxy, thank you for making this a consideration.

it's pretty awesome to finally have female voices in positions of power in these types of music communities, so I'd like to think of your position as uncomfortable, but powerful. if people want the approval of the community, they have to behave by community standards, which you're setting by saying "we aren't going to clap for rapists".

i agree with whoever said there's power in numbers.

it's a challenge in a very dude-dominated scene, even if most of them are tbh pretty nerdy dudes.

because there often ends up being a feeling among women in the scene that they need to compete with the dudes and emulate the dude-ishness which can lead to something like this being seen as "overreacting" - like it wasn't really rape if the couple were casually dating

that's what i mean -- this seems like a precedent-setting moment (not to put more pressure on you). i've rarely been put into leadership positions before my current job, but now that i know what it feels like it has given me a quiet badass aura that i kind of like. it's ok to be scared, but ultimately you gotta stand up for what you think is right even if it means people think you're a choad.

the tricky thing for me is that it is something that happened to a friend, as opposed to something that happened to me, personally. i don't want to do or say anything that will hurt her or make her feel uncomfortable.

i'd definitely talk with her about it before taking any action with the group
if i were her, i'd want to be consulted first

that's just me though

I feel like I've told this story before but I experienced a similar situation and it was ugly and did not end well. Or maybe it ended really well in that I eventually cut ties with that particular group of people.

my sitch is a little different because i know the dude, but not the woman! many of my friends know her, and i've seen her, but never met her. should i reach out to her before talking to him?

also the dude in question was arrested for this crime, taken to court, then acquitted. he has a public mugshot. the woman has lost friends, is being called crazy or worse. why are people so willing to think that someone would do this to themselves if they had nothing at stake? because they are afraid to acknowledge that someone they like as a person or an artist could commit a rape.

who do they think is raping and harassing the women that we know, if not the men that we know?

The thing is, I have so little faith in the Justice System, when it comes to sexual assault, that I think the only recourse we have is social retribution. It's one of those occasions where the acquittal of a court means absolutely nothing. One system has already failed this woman, the only other answer is to stand up and say "well, I believe you." Or, maybe in this case, reach out and say "would you like to tell your story to me? I will *not* disbelieve you."

The thing that always impresses itself upon me, from discussions of Predator Theory (I think they may have happened upthread) is that, from studies of men who rape, men who rape *almost never* just do it once, go "oops, well, that was a mistake" and never do it again. If they learn that they can get away with it, they do it again and again. It feels impossible at this point to ever get them to face legal consequences. But "you will lose friends, you will lose shows, you will lose your reputation over this" is the best we have. (Because fuck knows, this already happens to the victims.)

roxy and sarahell, i'm so glad you're in a position of power in these spaces!

I am going to go ahead and tell this story because it's about group dynamics and rape so forgive me if I have told this before (I'm old and repeating myself) and also TRIGGER WARNING.

I ran with a group of tightly knit pals during my college and college-adjacent years, including a woman I'll call A and a man I'll call B. B went to visit A where she lived in another state and raped her. A pressed charges and B was convicted and actually served jail time (Branwell Bell your feelings re: the justice system are well founded and the fact that this dude served time is astounding). Aside from a small subgroup of women, the pals rallied around B and collectively decided that A was a slut who cried rape rather than admit that she had cheated on her boyfriend.

To my eternal shame, I chose to be "neutral" (and, as io said, remaining neutral is taking a position), torn between wanting to believe and support A and not wanting to believe that B was a rapist. I've thought about it A LOT and the thing is, admitting B is a rapist meant admitting that many of my friends were not safe to be around, and admitting the truth about how the men in that group viewed the women. And the answer was very uncomfortable. I mean, we had open jokes about how certain of our friends were relentlessly grope-y when drunk, and how annoying it was when some of these guys would crawl into bed with us and hassle us for sex, or creep on us at parties, and on and on. These guys were supposed to be my friends, they were supposed to care about me, but treated my consent to sex as a foregone conclusion and... Ugh. Gross.

So anyway, as I have spoken about before I eventually disconnected from these people, as did A. B served his time and moved to the city where A lived, which I'm sure was really fucking wonderful for her, and is married now. I don't know what A is doing these days. Two or three years ago they had an impromptu reunion, and seeing all these pictures on Facebook of everybody smiling with their arms around this dude who raped one of their friends made me ill.

They = this group of friends. A was not there, for obvious reasons.

Ugh, I don't even know how I would handle something like that, but the fact that people like B can get convicted brings me some tiny sense of justice. But at the same time, your friends were gross & there is a reason why they are ex-friends. It's just giving such a clear message about whose safety they value & whose words they believe and it will never be yours.

Yeah. I think about A a lot and hope she has much better friends in her life now.

Those 3 little words "I believe you" are one of the most powerful gifts we can give a survivor.

<3 yes

im so thankful for yall, people i can discuss this with

reluctant to butt in because this is an important topic but apparently I have PCOS and the Dr was surprised I didn't already know because I was tested for it 4 years ago and was told my results were "inconclusive" but apparently they were "conclusive enough"?

I mean this doesn't really change anything because she further shrugged and said there wasn't much I could do about it except try losing weight and I had already noticed that I should lose weight thanksverymuch, so

anyway

roxy and sarahell, i'm so glad you're in a position of power in these spaces!

yes!

!!!! bloody hell, sometimes the NHS seems to try to look like an argument against 'socialized medicine'.

i dont know much about PCOS, i hope it doesnt cause you much trouble!

I <3 the NHS but there are def areas where the system doesn't work quite so well and when I see USians talking about going to see their obgyn for a routine checkup I do sometimes think "oh, if I had one of those I could ask them about ___"

roxy, nor do I tbh! I'd already noticed I had most of the major-bullet-point symptoms but not really read up on it. I'll be doing some of that now. For me atm the symptoms are mostly in the "variety of minor annoyances" category, but it does feel like I'm at war with ~hormones~ in that both my own natural ones and artificial ones seem to have different side effects and it's a matter of deciding which set I'd rather deal with and waiting for some new ones to turn up.

Doesn't PCOS cause weight gain? Telling you to lose weight seems ridiculous.

It (often) does but it is also exacerbated by weight gain or something? Which is a fun little spiral.

(perhaps if I bothered to read the factsheet the Dr sent me home with I could post something which didn't end with "or something?")

btw I'm already on androgen-regulating birth control which is the main treatment and which I got put on after my inconclusive-or-not test results, so I guess the process worked fine apart from the telling me what was going on part. there is another medication she said we could consider but noted some "unpleasant side effects" so I'm in no real rush to try that, got enough side effects already iirc

i had to google pcos but that sounds like it sucks -- i'm sorry

Oh, Spacecadet, I am sorry. This sounds like a terrible thing to be going through.

(And though doctors' bad attitudes do not help, I do have to say that there exist also doctors with shitty attitudes towards weight gain and women's health also in America's ~wonderful~ free market medical system. Sorry, I get really twitchy about about my NHS.)

Oh man yeah. Go in with strep throat, get told to lose weight, get billed $250.00.

Yeah, I have heard horror stories from my Mum, who lives in the States, about being told for years about random things, "that's caused by your weight" (basically shut up and lose weight, fatty) only to get a new doctor who says "oh, actually, you can get an operation for that". This awful stuff is everywhere.

Ouch, x2!

My usual GP (who I didn't see today) has been v. good about not mentioning my weight, but the nurse has been known to go on at me a bit. Today's GP suggested I have a weekly checkin with the nurse to discuss food diaries. Not an appealing prospect tbh. Also I just finished a big long course of CBT and would quite like not to have any more conspicuous weekly absences from work...

My mother has Crohn's and for years doctors told her "of course you have stomach pains, you're a woman".

"of course you have stomach pains, you're a woman".

omg (but not surprised)

good lord

oh man have i told the story here of my friend who suffered for years, undiagnosed, with some kind of ovarian/uterine problem (cysts or polyps + other symptoms i think, anyway it was really really bad and painful), then she saw an ENDOCRINOLOGIST, an ACTUAL DOCTOR, who told her basically that it was god's will and there was nothing to do except... pray. and this is in nz, btw, not even the US.