{"id":14471,"date":"2014-05-06T17:25:45","date_gmt":"2014-05-07T00:25:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/amicuscuria.com\/wordpress\/?p=14471"},"modified":"2015-02-09T14:12:57","modified_gmt":"2015-02-09T21:12:57","slug":"the-politics-of-denunciation-by-kristian-williams","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/amicuscuria.com\/wordpress\/the-politics-of-denunciation-by-kristian-williams\/","title":{"rendered":"The Politics of Denunci@tion by Kristian Williams"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"GilesCorey5\"<\/a><\/p>\n

by Kristian Williams (published 2-20-14)<\/em><\/p>\n

A year ago, on February 28, 2013, at an event titled “Patriarchy and the Movement,” I watched as a friend of mine attempted to pose several questions based on her experience trying to address domestic violence and other abuse in the context of radical organizing.<\/span><\/p>\n

“Why have the forms of accountability processes that we\u2019ve seen in radical subcultures so regularly failed?” she asked. \u00a0“Is there a tension between supporting a survivor\u2019s healing and holding perpetrators accountable?” \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

At that point she was, quite literally, shouted down. An angry roar came up from the crowd, from both the audience and the panelists. \u00a0It quickly became impossible to hear her and, after a few seconds, she simply stopped trying to speak.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Witchunt\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The weeks that followed produced an atmosphere of distrust and recrimination unlike anything I had experienced in more than twenty years of radical organizing. \u00a0A few people were blamed for specific transgressions. \u00a0(My friend was one: she was accused of violating the venue’s “Safer Space” policy, “triggering” audience members, and employing “patriarchal mechanisms” in her statement.) \u00a0Others were called out for unspecified abusive or sexist behavior. \u00a0And a great many more were alleged to have supported or defended or coddled those guilty of such offenses.<\/span><\/p>\n

The ensuing controversy destroyed at least one political organization, and an astonishing number of activists\u2013\u2013many with more than a decade of experience\u2013\u2013talked about quitting politics altogether. \u00a0I know people who lost friends and lovers, often not because of anything they had done, but because of how they felt about the situation. Several people\u2013\u2013mostly women, interestingly\u2013\u2013told me they were afraid to say anything about the controversy, lest they go “off-script” and find themselves denounced as bad feminists.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"GilesCorey\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Questioning<\/span><\/strong><\/h1>\n

One might expect that in the midst of conflict questions about how we address abusive behavior and hold each other accountable would seem particularly relevant.\u00a0\u00a0Instead, in a statement released after the event, the unnamed “Patriarchy and the Movement” organizers tried to bar such questions from being raised at all. They wrote:<\/span><\/p>\n

We also feel that framing the discourse around survivor\u2019s needs as ‘political disagreements’ or ‘political arguments’ is in of itself sexist\u2013\u2013as it pretends that this conversation should be emptied of subjective narrative, or that there is an equal playing ground in the conversation because the conversation itself isn\u2019t about real power, or that this conversation itself isn\u2019t already racialized and gendered. It is also problematic, in that it suggests that there is a neutral or objective rationality in this debate, rather than the possibility that the debate itself and the content of the debate is a socially contingent result of prevailing power dynamics. [If this line of argument isn’t from a religious ascetic, it’s a distinction without a meaningful difference. It sounds like a lyrical line from ‘Nearer My God To Thee’, with the only question remaining being what brand of greater r@dical ‘purity’ will bring salvation most quickly.]<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

\"GilesCorey2\"<\/a><\/p>\n

If political framing does all that\u2013\u2013assumes objectivity, equality, ahistoriocity, race and gender neutrality, and an absence of power\u2013\u2013then it becomes hard to see how political discussion is possible, not only about gender, but at all. \u00a0On the other hand, if political discussion relies on those conditions, then not only would it be impossible, it would also be unnecessary. \u00a0For it is precisely the disputes over truth, the contested facts of history, identity, inequality, and power that give politics its shape, its content, and its significance. \u00a0The second sentence of the above quotation contradicts the first: \u00a0the argument runs that this discussion cannot be political, because it is necessarily political. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\"GilesCorey3\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Their statement continues:<\/span><\/p>\n

There are direct consequences to these ‘debates’, and there [are] physical bodies involved. As survivors and feminists, we must become cautious when our bodies[,] our safety, and our well-being, as well as our needs around our bodies, safety, and well beings, become the subject of ‘political debate’. For us, there is more at stake here than just the merits of a ‘debate’. Our bodies, safety, health, personal autonomy, and well-beings are at stake. We do not agree with people having a ‘political argument’ at our expense. The outcome could be life or death for us.<\/span><\/p>\n

That is true: There are serious consequences to the debate about accountability. \u00a0There are lives, and not merely principles, at stake. \u00a0But rather than being a reason not to argue these issues, that is precisely the reason that we must. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

If politics means anything, it means that there are consequences\u2013\u2013sometimes, literally, life or death consequences\u2013\u2013to the decisions we make. \u00a0When it comes to war, climate change, immigration, policing, health care, working conditions\u2013\u2013in all of these areas, as with gender, “bodies, safety, health, personal autonomy, and well-beings are at stake.” \u00a0That is why politics matters.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"GilesCorey6\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Fallacies<\/span><\/strong><\/h1>\n

While attempting to elevate feminism to a place above politics, the organizers’ statement in fact advances a very specific\u00a0kind<\/em>\u00a0of politics. \u00a0Speaking authoritatively but anonymously, the “Patriarchy and the Movement” organizers declare certain questions off-limits, not only (retroactively) for their own event, but seemingly altogether. These questions cannot be asked because, it is assumed, there is only one answer, and the answer is already known.\u00a0The answer is, in practice,\u00a0whatever the survivor says that it is<\/em>.<\/span><\/p>\n

Under this theory, the survivor, and the survivor alone, has the right to make demands, while the rest of us are duty-bound to enact sanctions without question. \u00a0One obvious implication is that all allegations are treated as fact. \u00a0And often, specific allegations are not even necessary. \u00a0It may be enough to characterize someone’s behavior \u2013\u2013or even his fundamental character\u2013\u2013as “sexist,” “misogynist,” “patriarchal,” “silencing,” “triggering,” “unsafe,” or “abusive.” \u00a0And on the principle that\u00a0bad<\/em>\u00a0does not allow for\u00a0better<\/em>\u00a0or\u00a0worse<\/em>, all of these terms can be used more or less interchangeably. \u00a0After all, the point is not really to make an accusation, which could be proved or disproved; the point is to offer a judgment. \u00a0Thus it is possible for large groups of people to dislike and even punish some maligned person without even pretending to know what it is, specifically, he is supposed to have done. \u00a0He has been “called out” as a perpetrator; nothing else matters.<\/span><\/p>\n

This approach occludes\u2013\u2013and herein, perhaps, lies its appeal\u2013\u2013the complexities of real people’s lives, the multiple roles we all occupy, the tensions we all embody and live out, and the ways we all participate in upholding systems of power even as they oppress us. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Under this schema, it is taken for granted that no survivor is ever also an abuser, and no abuser is the survivor of someone else’s violence. \u00a0Naturally, no past victimization can justify or excuse present abuse, but the strict dichotomy implied here too neatly defines the past away; by the same reasoning, it also forestalls the potential for future healing or growth. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

What it offers, instead, is a reassuring dualism in which survivors and abusers exist, not only as roles we sometimes fill or positions we sometimes hold, but as particular\u00a0types of people<\/em>\u00a0who are essentially those things, locked forever into one or the other of these categories, and (not incidentally) gendered in a conventional, stereotyped binary. \u00a0Each person is assigned a role and, to some degree, reduced to their position in this story. \u00a0One is only a perpetrator\/abuser; the other is only a victim\/survivor. \u00a0They are each defined by the suffering they have caused, or the suffering they have endured\u2013\u2013but never by both.<\/span><\/p>\n

A double transformation occurs. \u00a0Patriarchy ceases to be a mode of power and system of social stratification and becomes, instead, identified with the behavior of an individual man and is even thought to be personified by him. \u00a0At the same time, both perpetrator and survivor are depersonalized, abstracted from the context and the narratives of their lives, and cast instead as symbolic figures in a kind of morality play. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Our scrutiny shifts, then, from the\u00a0abuse<\/em>\u00a0to the\u00a0abuser<\/em>, from the\u00a0act<\/em>\u00a0to the\u00a0actor.<\/em>\u00a0\u00a0Instead of seeking out ways to heal the harm that has been done, we invest our collective energy in judging the character of the man responsible. \u00a0Support for the survivor is equated with, and then replaced by, castigation of the perpetrator. \u00a0These displays of moral outrage serve above all as pronouncements of the innocence and testaments to the virtue of those who issue them. \u00a0And as such, they have a way of becoming weirdly obligatory. \u00a0Since we are not asking whether some particular person committed some identifiable act, but instead whether he is\u00a0fucked up<\/em>, then it makes a certain kind of sense to think that anyone who “coddles,” or “defends,” or “supports,” or even just\u00a0likes<\/em>\u00a0him\u2013\u2013 or who merely fails to denounce him\u2013\u2013must take a share of the blame. \u00a0So there is a powerful impulse to line up on the “right” side, to join in the denunciation before one finds oneself called out as well. [The same dynamics are found at work in the mob psychology of prison gangs, et al, even our criminal ‘justice’ system. This is well known and used by agent provocateurs.]<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

Implications<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

The ideology at work here is self-defeating, producing a movement that is less, rather than more, capable of handling the issues surrounding sexual assault, domestic violence, and other effects of patriarchy. \u00a0Barring questions from discussion does not encourage learning or improvement. \u00a0And an atmosphere of public shaming provides strong incentives for people who have done wrong\u00a0not<\/em>\u00a0to admit to it or try to atone. \u00a0The charged environment makes things harder for those who take on accountability and support work; it stigmatizes individuals who willingly enter into accountability processes; and it may reduce survivors of abuse, their experiences, and their needs to political symbols used by others to advance some specific ideological line. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The politics involved are also deeply authoritarian, barring from consideration a range of questions concerning authority, accountability, punishment, and exclusion. \u00a0Its advocates effectively claim a monopoly on feminist praxis and exclude other feminist perspectives. \u00a0And so they silence those who disagree\u2013\u2013literally, in the “Patriarchy and the Movement” episode.<\/span><\/p>\n

In the situation I’ve described here, these moves are being made in the name of feminism, but there is no reason to believe the pattern will stop there. \u00a0The same tactics are available to any identity politics camp, or any ideological sect seeking to rid itself of bourgeois influences, or pacifists wishing to make a total break from the culture of violence, or environmentalists looking to escape from civilization, or really anyone whose radicalism consists of decrying other people’s purported shortcomings. \u00a0The obsessive need for political conformity, the mutual fault-finding that animates it, and the sense of embattled isolation that results\u2013\u2013combined with a kind of self-righteous competitiveness (on the one hand) and a masochistic guilt complex (on the other)\u2013\u2013 practically guarantees the sort of internecine squabbling we’ve seen emerge, not only in Portland, but in Oakland, Minneapolis, and New York as well. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The totalitarian impulse has found its expression, and it has proven so destructive, in part because we have consistently failed to find the means for handling disagreements, for resolving disputes, for responding to violence [some glory in it]<\/em>, and (yes) for holding each other accountable. \u00a0Without those tools, we rely\u2013\u2013far too often\u2013\u2013on ideological purity tests, friend-group tribalism, peer pressure, shaming and ostracism, as well as general shit-talking and internet flame wars. \u00a0Such behavior has been part of our political culture for a long time. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

It is unsurprising, then, that our tendency is to push people out, rather than draw them in; but when we do that, our capacity for meaningful action diminishes. \u00a0A cycle of suspicion and exclusion takes hold. \u00a0As we grow less able, and even less interested, in having an effect on the larger society, we become increasingly focused on the ideas and identities of those inside our own circle. \u00a0We scrutinize one another mercilessly, and when we discover an offense\u2013\u2013or merely take offense\u2013\u2013we push out those who have lost favor. \u00a0As our circle grows ever smaller, minor differences take on increasing significance, leading to further suspicion, condemnation, and exclusion\u2013\u2013shrinking the circle further still.<\/span><\/p>\n

We behave, in other words, not like a movement but like a scene\u2013\u2013and a particularly cliquish, insular, and unfriendly scene at that.<\/span><\/p>\n

Visions<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

At issue here are strikingly different visions of what a political movement ought to be. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

In one vision, a movement and the people who make it up should be in every respect beyond reproach, standing as an example, a shining city on a hill, apart from all the faults of our existing society. \u00a0To achieve this perfection, we have to separate the sheep from the goats, the good people from the bad, the true feminists from everyone else. This outlook produces, almost automatically, a tendency to defer to the dogma of one’s in-group. It is not enough simply to do the right things; one must also think the right thoughts and find favor with the right people. […to LOVE<\/strong> ‘big brother’]<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

In contrast, in the other vision, a movement should attract people to it, including damaged people, people who have done bad things [e.g. Saul of Tarsus]<\/em>, and those who are still in the process of figuring out their politics. \u00a0It will require us, therefore, to address sexual assault and other abuse by actually engaging with the people who do such things. \u00a0We have to struggle\u00a0with<\/em>\u00a0them as much as we struggle\u00a0against\u00a0<\/em>oppression. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Neither approach is likely to be easy. \u00a0They each face the challenge of developing a feminist praxis in the midst of a sexist society. \u00a0But where one vision imagines that the authors of that praxis must be individuals free of the taint of patriarchy, the latter begins by acknowledging that we are all shaped by the forces we struggle against and that we are implicated in the systems of power that oppress us. \u00a0The first seeks to defeat patriarchy chiefly through exclusion; the latter, through transformation.<\/span><\/p>\n

The question we face, in other words, is this: Do our politics aim at\u00a0purity<\/em>\u00a0or\u00a0change<\/em>?<\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

Bio:<\/span>\u00a0Kristian Williams is the author\u00a0Our Enemies in Blue: Police and Power in America<\/em>,\u00a0American Methods: Torture and the Logic of Domination<\/em>, and\u00a0Hurt: Notes on Torture in a Modern Democracy<\/em>. He lives in Portland, Oregon.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Kristian Williams (published 2-20-14) A year ago, on February 28, 2013, at an event titled “Patriarchy and the Movement,” I watched as a friend of mine attempted to pose several questions based on her experience trying to address domestic … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14471","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/amicuscuria.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14471","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/amicuscuria.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/amicuscuria.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amicuscuria.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amicuscuria.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14471"}],"version-history":[{"count":17,"href":"https:\/\/amicuscuria.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14471\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16507,"href":"https:\/\/amicuscuria.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14471\/revisions\/16507"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/amicuscuria.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14471"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amicuscuria.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14471"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amicuscuria.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14471"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}