Consent Culture basics for my communities

Consent Culture Basics: Safer Space Policies, Restorative Justice, Transformative Justice

The Scope of the problem

During the month of October 2015, I was contacted by a young woman who asked me to be her advocate in creating a community wide process of accountability for the man who raped her in 2013. I agreed to help her by meeting with her twice a month and researching what had been done and what could be done to create such a process. This is the first blog where I begin to document some of my process in attempting to create a community response to the sexual assaults and consent violations that occur in my communities.

If anyone reading this has encountered or co-created other processes which attempt to create Transformative Justice to address the experiences of sexual assault, rape or domestic violence in their own lives and communities, I would deeply appreciate being contacted so that I can learn from their experiences.

I will also be blogging about many of my own experiences of violence and micro aggression regarding intimate sensual and sexual relatedness between myself and the other people I engage with. I am writing this down because in the process of being an advocate for this young woman, I have uncovered a series of ongoing reports of sexual assault rape and other consent violations. I have also discovered that these events occur in my own friendship circles, at my own events and even within my own polyamorous relationship agreements.

It is now clear to me that rape and sexual assault is not happening “over there” only between people who are less evolved or less educated or less enlightened than me. It is also clear that there are no clear already standardized community processes for dealing with consent violations that hold the people who are violating consent accountable for the impact of their actions.

 Why Accountability is important

Without accountability processes that ask people who are violating consent to stop doing so, there can be no “new culture” or “sex- positivity”. Community leaders who declare that they are creating new cultures or sex-positive spaces but fail to address the facts of pre-existing trauma and social inequities cannot succeed in creating the non-violent and egalitarian spaces they declare in their stated goals, missions and values statements.

Currently, in the city of Portland, OR where I live and work, there are no known reliable grass roots community based accountability processes for the remediation of sexual assault, rape and domestic violence within the declared “sex positive” and “new culture” communities.

What needs to be created is a series of Safer Space policies , accountability processes and Transformative Justice panels developed and promulgated by the leadership of all organizations professing to be sex positive or oriented toward creating a “new culture” or “evolutionary culture”

What does exist is:

1) A series of non profit organizations:

Sexual Assault Resource Center (SARC). http://sarcoregon.org/

Here is a link to their Resources page: http://sarcoregon.org/online-information/

Men’s Resource Center provides counseling for anger management and domestic violence on a voluntary basis for men: http://www.portlandmrc.com/

Allies in Change is a domestic violence remediation agency: http://www.alliesinchange.org/

Webpage of the Sexual Violence Research Initiative: http://www.svri.org/justice.htm

 

2) A series of articles about restorative Justice processes:

PDF about restorative justice for sexual assault

http://www.vawnet.org/assoc_files_vawnet/ar_restorativejustice.pdf

 

Developing a Restorative Justice model for sex offenders:

https://law.wustl.edu/Faculty_Profiles/Documents/haley/SeminarPapers/GabrielPGreen-Mitchell.pdf

 

3) A wiki of safer space, Consent Policies and attempts at Transofrmative Justice written by anarchists for use at protest spaces

 

from the “Example Consent Policies” wikia page: http://medic.wikia.com/wiki/Example_Consent_Policies

 

The purpose of this page is to collect Safer Space and Consent policies form a diverse array of events and collectives, so that organizers have a resource to find ideas, wording, and policies that fit their needs and context. Note that a lot of these poliies are centered around preventing and responding to sexual assault, but many contain much broader suggestions for making spaces safer and more accessible to all people.

 

Example of a Safer Space and Consent Policy:

Perpetrators of Sexual Assault, Abuse, and Harassment Are Not Welcome in G20 Resistance Spaces

Perpetrators of sexual violence/assault/harassment are not welcome in Pittsburgh or any G20 protest organizational spaces. This includes people who have perpetrated in the past*, people currently engaged in or running away from accountability processes, and people who refuse to respect the ResistG20 consent guidelines. People who violate consent guidelines will be directed to leave G20 organizational spaces and housing arrangements. Given the short time frame, lack of people resources, and likelihood of state repression we don’t have the ability to deal with these situations in this artificially constructed community.

Perpetrators’ presence should not hinder survivors’ participation in G20 mobilizations (Perps: You are not welcome regardless of the survivor’s plans). We are resisting the G20 in large part because the G20 acts WITHOUT accountability to or consent of the people it fucks over. Don’t replicate the same paradigm of domination and abuse that you’re claiming to want to smash.

Note: We understand and respect that other communities have engaged in their own processes around these incidents. If you have gone through an accountability process and the survivor, joined by the community, feels you have sufficiently dealt with your shit, this statement does not include you.

Support Structure for Survivors of Sexualized Violence and Assault
If you experience harassment, abuse, sexual assault, or any other kind of consent violation while resisting the G20 this September, or if a perpetrator of sexual violence is interfering with your participation in the G20 resistance movement, or for any other reason you need support to deal with sexualized violence, please come to us.

There will be trained and experienced advocates and support people for survivors of sexual assault at the WELLNESS SPACE (located in the
clinic). People staffing housing and other spaces, as well as medics and (A)-minded legal observers (note: not the ACLU kind) should also
be able to put you in contact with us.

There will be trained and experienced advocates and support people for survivors of sexual assault at the WELLNESS SPACE (located in the
clinic). People staffing housing and other spaces, as well as medics and (A)-minded legal observers (note: not the ACLU kind) should also
be able to put you in contact with us.

We can offer you:

  • Support, caring, and listening
  • Advocacy on your behalf, including the removal of perpetrators of violence
  • Emergency housing changes to quiet, safer space housing
  • Transport to the Pittsburgh rape crisis center
  • Medical, herbal, and wellness (massage, acupressure, music therapy) resources
  • Resources for further support and/or action
  • Support, with the legal team, to document sexual abuse by law enforcement

Consent Guidelines for G20 Resistance Spaces and Housing
Consistently asking for consent and listening to your sexual partner at every step in every sexual encounter, regardless of length, history, or specific situation, is the only way to prevent sexual assault from happening. Consent includes asking, listening, and respecting; it does not include coercion, expectations, or assumptions.
Consent: Consent is actively and voluntarily expressed agreement. Doing personal work to consistently seek consent and respect the times when it is not given helps to combat rape culture, and informed consent, sexual and otherwise, is necessary in the building of strong, healthy anti-authoritarian communities.

 

The following do not qualify as consent: silence, passivity, and coerced acquiescence. Body movements, non-verbal responses such as moans, or the appearance of physical arousal do not, necessarily, constitute consent. Further, if someone is intoxicated, they may not be in a position to give you consent. Consent is required each and every time there is sexual activity, regardless of the parties’ relationship, prior sexual history, or current activity.

Sexual Assault: Sexual assault is any non-consensual sexual interaction. Sexual assault happens, and it happens in activist and radical communities as much as anywhere else. Sexual assault can be perpetrated by a complete stranger, but is often perpetrated by someone known and trusted by the survivor and community. Sexual assault is a tool of domination, of taking power, and can rob someone of their self respect, self worth, and autonomy. Sexual assault is rooted in broader systems of oppression- such as patriarchy, white supremacy, capitalism, homophobia, and colonialism- and is not separable from them in how and why it is perpetrated, experienced, and dealt with.
Rape Culture: Rape culture is the culture in which sexual assault and other forms of sexual violence are condoned, excused and even encouraged. Rape culture is part of a broader culture of violence, wherein people are socialized to inhabit different positions in hierarchical relationships, to commodify their fellow human beings, and to relate to each other through violence and coercion.
We are survivor centric and survivor oriented. When a decision needs to be made to give “benefit of the doubt” to a perpetrator or support to a survivor, the preference will be to support the survivor. State language which serves to cast doubt onto survivors experiences (eg referring to experiences as “allegations”) has zero space in radical support and communities.
Thank you G20RP, Antioch College Consent Policy, Denver on Fire, Unconventional Denver, and the RNC Welcoming Committee

 

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