Former NDP Staffer assaulted by candidate

Unionist wrote:

Pondering - leave her alone, please. Stop your sophistry. She was assaulted, she came forward, she deserves unconditional support. Just try to get that.

I am not doing anything to her. The issue is bigger than one woman and a single event. There are sad parallels in the accounts of the many women coming forward since the Jian Ghomeshi case.

Don't attack me on this topic.

Unionist wrote:

I'm not attacking you. I'm pointing to very specific offensive statements you made in one post. Don't turn this into "don't attack me". Just withdraw those statements, please. You know, extremely well, that I have been nothing but respectful to you, your input here, and your experience. That does NOT give you any right to generalize about "these young women" and to question this young woman for being sensitive to this scumbag's wife and how she learns about these events.

You can give people you know the benefit of the doubt or you can interpret their words in the worst way possible. You chose the second. The last word is yours.

Pondering wrote:

All the victim wants is to know that this man will not be permitted to run federally.

Marco C wrote:

  Unfortunatly she not really entitled to that information, though if the accused openly drops out of the race I think it would be obvious why. But again she is not going to get a letter from the Federal NDP telling her they stoped the accused from running, that's a bit nonsensical to exspect honestly.

Revisit this:

Lawson told Ratelle the matter would be addressed and followed-up with her by phone. She later informed Ratelle that her complaint would be shared with the federal party. She offered Ratelle the option of participating in a mediation process, which she accepted. However the accused candidate refused to take part.

That the man refused to take part in mediation (which I consider inappropriate anyway) is reason enough for the federal party to reject him as a candidate.

A phone call letting her know the man wouldn't be running would suffice.

Pondering wrote:

My interest is in what happened to the letter informing the federal NDP of the complainant's request and whether or not they will bar this candidate from running.

Marco C wrote:

Same thing here, the Federal NDP isn't likely to announce who they accept or not as prospective candidate... especially if it involed posible criminal action. anything they disclose publicly could exspose them in court.

That she went to police means his name will likely come out and either way they won't let him run now.

Quote:

I find the reticience to letting the wife find out bizarre. Why don't these young women recognize the wife's right to know that their husbands are sexual predators?

Tehanu wrote:

Let's parse this a bit, shall we?

Because in your world academic parsing is so much more important than actual communication. If you read the whole post you would realize that I was not passing judgement over the woman but that wouldn't serve your purpose which is to use this incident to attack me.

Tehanu wrote:

"These young women" is frightening language for obvious reasons that Unionist has pointed out. 

Normal people use words like "these" as specifiers, Such as "these young women are swimmers".  Using the word "these" is not in and of itself derogatory except in your own mind.

Tehanu wrote:

Involving "the wife" plays into a whole bunch of patriarchal assumptions about heterosexual marriages. Why should "the wife" be involved? So she punishes him? So she is responsible for policing his behaviour, thereby letting him abrogate responsibility? So she also feels pain? To punish her for her bad judgement in marrying the guy? This is a far too common trope, and it entangles and blames women for their husbands' behaviour.

You must have read textbooks from the 1930s. I've never met anyone in my entire life that thinks like that. The patriarchal assumptions are yours and you are projecting them. You have bought into the common trope that the wife is being protected from hurt by being decieved. Apparently you think she is doomed to be married to the sexual predator forever so no point in her knowing he's accosting 19 year olds in her basement while she and her children are sleeping upstairs. In your book it's none of the wife's business. You want to "protect" her from being hurt and you call me paternalistic.

Tehanu wrote:

"Reticence to letting the wife find out is bizarre" also demonstrates, again, a clear lack of understanding of what many victims experience. I've already tangled with Pondering about lacking empathy and respect for victims; if someone who has been assaulted doesn't want certain things to happen -- for whatever reason -- then that person needs to be respected.

Don't pretend that you have genuine empathy for victims. Your empathy is limited to the ones that agree with your politics.

Tehanu wrote:

That includes deciding how and what and to whom the assault should be reported, and being given as much control as possible when determining next steps. We shouldn't be telling victims what they should and shouldn't do, and we shouldn't be taking their agency away from them. When we do, we are simply reinforcing the very lack of power they had in the first place.

No what you are doing is putting all the responsibility on the victim's shoulders for everything that happens. If it were up to you police still wouldn't be laying charges in cases of domestic assault out of respect for the victim's agency.

If the wife gets hurt or the man's career suffers in your book it's the victim's responsibility.

Tehanu wrote:

As I've said before and will keep on saying, the punishment-based approach to sexual assault, tangling it up in adverserial procedures, can be completely revictimizing and rarely results in satisfactory outcomes.

So now we know what your preferred outcome is, defender of the clueless dude that just needs to be educated not punished. He just didn't understand when the woman was rejecting his advances that she was rejecting his advances. He had to fondle her leg three times to make sure he understood correctly. Now that men know they will get a good talking to I'm sure they will stop harassing and assaulting women.

Tehanu wrote:

Pondering has been highly dismissive on this thread and elsewhere of alternative approaches.

I made one overly generalized comment within the context of the CBC handling which I admitted was overly generalized and now you are going to harass me over it every chance you get.

Tehanu wrote:

I would hope that others would recognize that the way we as a society and within our institutions have been dealing with sexual assault cases is deeply flawed, and would be open to a complete re-examination of how cases are handled.

That's the approach we've been taking for 30 years. Arbitration isn't new. Women are finally saying screw that and coming foward publically and going to police. You'll just have to get over the fact that we don't all want to stand around singing kumbaya with men who sexually assault women.

Tehanu wrote:

And that we also all stop criticizing people who have the courage, the temerity, to speak out when they have been assaulted.

Unless of course you don't like what they are saying. I didn't criticize any woman who has spoken out. I am criticizing the culture that you are a part of that leads women to believe they should keep it a secret because they are responsible if the wife gets hurt and that they are protecting the wife by keeping her husband's behavior a secret.

You fail to acknowledge when women keep it a secret because they think it's the moral thing to do; they need to be asked if they would want to know if they were the wife. Victims need more than to just express their feelings. They need help processing and seeing the events from a different perspective than their own but the only kind of help you want to give them is to pursuade them into singing kumbaya with abusive men. You want women to accept it as misunderstandings giving men licence to repeat their behavior with the next young woman that comes along.

I'm not impressed by your sanctimoneous biased lecturing about women's agency which is just an excuse for laying all the responsibility on their shoulders. How about recognizing that touching people sexually without their consent is a crime not just being rude.

Aristotleded24 wrote:

I've been debating whether or not to post this, but I will.

Pondering, while you have a right to disagree with her, I find your attacks on Tehanu here beyond the pale. She has been a member of this online community for nearly the same length of time as I have, and she is well known and respected, particularly for her advocacy around feminist and LGBQT issues. To characterize her position and opinion as asking a victim to sing kumbya with her attacker is ridiculous, as she has a great deal of experience dealing with this kind of thing. Like most people here, I also have a great deal of respect for her, and when she calls me out for something, I sit back and think about it, regardless of whether or not I eventually come around to her way of thinking in the end. I also find that she exercises a great deal of patience in defending her point of view and takes great care to challenge the issues rather than the person, probably moreso than many of us here. It's ironic that you'll chastise her for bad communication, when reading bad intentions into someone else's posts because you disagree does not facilitate that kind of communication at all.

Well she certainly hasn't done so with me. As far as I can tell she just drops by to take potshots at me.  She has made no attempt at all to communicate with me choosing instead to twist my words and project some weird views on me that she apparently thinks are common.

She preaches arbitration but her first "communications" with me have both been attacks. I don't see her commenting in "Not Her Shame".

You have a different experience of her than I do. That's fine, but I will judge her by how she has treated me. She projected ugly views on me that I in no way expressed by any stretch of the imagination. She didn't bother to engage me in conversation she was hostile from the get go. If she has a lot of experience it doesn't appear to be applied.

Several people have twisted my words to use them to attack me. It's deeply discouraging and painful to be treated this way on a supposedly progressive message board. It's wrong in any topic but in this one I just can't take having my words twisted to be used as weapon against me. To have it done to me by someone you claim is a feminist and advocate for women....words fail me. So yes, I did to her what she did to me, I put the worst possible connotation on her words.

They can all pat themselves on the back because they have succeeded. I am silenced and Tehanu helped them. It doesn't even matter what anyone says from this point forward. I can't talk about it anymore.

WARNING:  This is a VERY long post, even for me. Reading it is non-compulsory.  You probably won’t like it anyway.

Tehanu wrote:

I hadn't made up my mind about returning to this thread after Pondering's post (which I decided to address below) because it was getting so personal.

_____

Pondering, I've never before been accused of the things you're saying. I will take some responsibility for provoking your attack, and for that, I apologize.

You didn’t “provoke” my attack. You attacked me and I retaliated in kind. Isn’t the first step of a successful arbitration that the person admits what they did? The post you responded to was # 43. It’s very clear that I was defending the young woman not attacking her. I reiterated that my objection was to rape culture conditioning in post 51. In post 61 you call me out. You made it personal, and now you are complaining that it got personal.

Tehanu wrote:

I mostly lurk at babble, and tend to read feminist threads/threads about sexual assault/LTBTQ threads. I am likely to post when I see something that stands out, and unfortunately some of your posts on feminist and trans issues have done so.

I strongly suspect that in this case Unionist asked you to post in this thread or alerted you to it. I don’t believe that you were just lurking and came across my comment by chance.  

Your criticism is safely generalized so I can’t defend myself. The only thing I’ve written on trans that I can recall is about the Michigan Woman’s Music Festival. I thought it was happy news that trans women were openly attending and being fully accepted as women and as sisters. When I saw that the thread was degenerating I posted saying that I had not intended to start a debate and left the thread. I don’t see why you would have a problem with that, and even if you did what that has to do with this thread.

Tehanu wrote:

You are not the only person with whom I have argued on babble (in fact, after a quick look over my past posts, you and I have disagreed on three threads that I can see). But your discussion style is one that I find particularly challenging, because what I've seen is that often when someone disagrees with you, you respond very aggressively and extrapolate a great deal, and sometimes with personal attacks ... but at the same time you complain that people who are disagreeing with you are hurting you.

Point me to one thread where I initiated a personal attack without being attacked first. Your last few posts aren’t exactly short. Could that be because you felt a need to defend yourself and explain your views?

I said wives had a right to know, you extrapolated into suggesting I wanted wives to take the responsibility for punishing their husbands or wanted them hurt to hold them responsible for their husband’s actions. That’s really ugly and I highly doubt that it is a common trope.

I find the most common form of attack on babble is what was done here to me which I then did to you. Not much fun having your words twisted and defending yourself against things you didn’t say. The alternative is to leave a false interpretation of your words to stand. On this topic it is intolerable.  

Tehanu wrote:

This is a pattern that I find highly reminiscent of another poster on enMasse and babble called Infosaturated. Are you her?

OMG you people are paranoid. I was accused of being some man before and a whole conversation ensued about whether or not I was him before a mod stepped in and said that isn’t done here. I haven’t seen her on babble so why don’t you just talk to her at enMasse which I assume is one of the three Great Schism sites. Apparently who people are here is much more important than what they say. You guys talk about it a lot but no one ever says why so many people felt they had no choice but to leave other than blaming the moderators. The paranoia must be catching because I am convinced Unionist asked you to intervene in this thread specifically to disagree with Aristotle for speaking out.  

Tehanu wrote:

I have empathy with ALL victims. Not just the ones who agree with my politics, and that was a hurtful thing for you to say.

You haven’t shown me any empathy. It was very hurtful to have multiple men twisting my words into something ugly and then having you jump in to support them. So much so I had to leave and still don’t feel safe discussing this topic on babble.

I just remembered you came down against Trudeau for saying the two MPs were suspended for misconduct towards two MPs from another party but you didn’t provide your reasoning.

I asked what you thought about the comments of Mulcair, Turmel, and Leslie but you had nothing to say about them. All three of them damaged the women’s reputations and set them up for ridicule but you have had nothing to say about that. Pretty much no one has except me because they are NDP. From where I sit you are looking choosey in where you decide to pop in.

Tehanu wrote:

If the victim does not want other people involved, I will also respect that…..They may indeed desire this because they don't want others to be hurt. That can come from a place of caring and compassion and I will respect that as well.

I don’t think it’s respecting victims to support the notion that they are protecting the wife and family by staying silent. The notion that the wife is better off being married to a predator than to know that he is one is part of rape culture. Maybe some wives would rather live in ignorance but there are plenty who would want to know. I think it’s important for victims to be disabused of false assumptions so “protecting the family” leaves the equation of whether or not to come forward. 

Tehanu wrote:

I absolutely do not put responsibility on the victim if the attacker's career or family is hurt by his own actions and it is offensive that you would say I would.

It was just as offensive of you to suggest I was passing judgment over the victim or would want the wives to feel pain or in any way hold them responsible for their husband’s transgression. I said they “had a right to know”. I was referring to their rights therefore it’s obvious I wasn’t suggesting they were at fault for anything.

Tehanu wrote:

If the victim wants to report to the police, I will support that. There is value in having police records even if charges are not laid, but I also know that many victims find reporting difficult and the police cannot always be counted on to react with sensitivity. I am hopeful that all the recent attention on WHY victims don't report will help ameliorate this.

One of the reasons WHY victims don’t step forward is the false notion that they are protecting the wife and family.

I think that all the recent reporting has encouraged women to realize what was done to them was wrong and that they have a right to denounce the men that took advantage of them. I think the “I believe Lucy” and “been raped never reported” twitter feeds had a huge impact in making women more angry and more willing to press their complaint when they have not received satisfaction. I think it is why the woman approached Trudeau on the bus and I think it’s why this young woman has come forward with her complaint. In both cases they went the route of informing their own organizations first and were not satisfied with the response.

I agree with the value of records even when charges are not laid. I think it is important to point out to women that if multiple complaints turn up the odds of conviction rise considerably so even if they don’t want to lay charges there is still value in telling police. They need to realize that it isn’t useless. I would not push women to report if they don’t feel comfortable doing so but at the same time I would reassure them that they stay in control, that they don’t have to lay charges and that having an advocate with them can protect against insensitive treatment. I think it’s a pretty common trope that police will put women through the wringer or just do nothing so there is no point in reporting word against word cases.

I don’t have a problem with mediation being used in some cases but it is not always appropriate. This thread was about one case in particular not harassment or abuse in general. In the most recent cases from Jian Ghomeshi to this one it has been older men preying on young women in professions that they fear would punish them for speaking out. In the three political situations there is no ongoing direct work relationship. That’s a very different situation than mediating between students. If the transgressor were a professor would you suggest mediation?

Tehanu wrote:

I keep alternative approaches in mind for the reasons outlined in the enMasse post I referenced. Our society's record on dealing with sexual assault cases is abysmal.

I don’t even know if what this guy did was illegal, In my opinion it became so when he repeatedly touched her leg after she made it clear she was not interested. As a volunteer she is not an employee. On the other hand she is doing this for the professional opportunities. It was in response to a request by the federal NDP that she volunteered to help on his campaign. Now she feels she lost out on the opportunity of a job because of it. There may not be any connection, but it shows that she fears that it has had a backlash on her career, but not on his. He refused arbitration because he knows better. Same goes for Scott and Pacetti. Neither will say anything to incriminate themselves. They haven’t been clamoring for a way to clear their names. They were not demanding an investigation.

It’s often word against word and men know it and so do their victims. The men have no fear because of it, and the women do fear because of it. Multiple accusers is often the only way that will result in action legally or otherwise. Even in a non-legal situation women are asked if they want to “make it official”.  Unless a woman is willing to make a “formal” complaint nothing happens. That is called giving women a choice.

In some cases what victims want is for someone to react with indignation and go tell the guy, without details, to keep it in his pants because if there are more complaints it won’t go well for him. In these three particular cases they are three married men who are political representatives. Party officials are well within their rights to intrude informally and/or to sever the connection to the party.

Tehanu wrote:

I do not sing kumbaya with rapists. I do not "want women to accept it as misunderstandings giving men licence to repeat their behavior with the next young woman that comes along." I despise sexual assault. How dare you.

I dare because you did the same to me. You took my words out of context and twisted them and used them to attack me.  Aristotle understood what I was saying so it’s not that my message was incomprehensible.  You responded to him but it didn’t cause you to check yourself and reread my post because you arrived on the Unionist team with your mind made-up.

You justify yourself based on threads and topics that have nothing to do with this issue and my style of posting which other posters here also share.  You carried a grudge into this thread rather than reading what I was saying.  You made it personal and you have tried to justify yourself and further blame me.

The same behaviors in other posters are acceptable because they denounce Trudeau and support the legalization of prostitution.

I should not have retaliated against you. I did so because I felt hurt angry and betrayed. I should feel sorry but I don’t. I should be compassionate and caring and not want you to feel like I do when my words are twisted and misrepresented in order to attack me. The truth is there is some strange comfort in knowing for once somebody else knows how it feels. Someone else felt forced to say “those are not my views, that isn’t what I was saying”.

Tehanu wrote:

So much for this thread getting better. Well, Pondering, you managed to completely validate my summary of your usual pattern when you're challenged on something.

Let's not aspire to moral equivalency, though. I called you out on victim-blaming. You accused me of enabling rapists. Even the worst, most misogynistic troll I've ever encountered has never done that.

Oh I see, my attack is worse than your attack even though I was retaliating. You did a lot more than accuse me of victim blaming.

Pondering wrote:

I should not have retaliated against you. I did so because I felt hurt angry and betrayed. I should feel sorry but I don’t. I should be compassionate and caring and not want you to feel like I do when my words are twisted and misrepresented in order to attack me. The truth is there is some strange comfort in knowing for once somebody else knows how it feels. Someone else felt forced to say “those are not my views, that isn’t what I was saying”.

Tehanu wrote:

Says a lot about you, doesn't it. It's okay to hurl filth at a feminist who is active in sexual assault prevention and victim support, because it makes you feel better.

I'm a feminist too but you thought it was fine to hurl filth at me now you are complaining that you got a taste of your own medicine. Says a lot about you doesn't it.

You make it sound like you were an innocent bystander. You ignore that I admit I shouldn't have retaliated. You judge my emotions which were in reaction to your attack. You minimize your action and exagerate my reaction to try to make me the instigator. Anything other than admit you were in the wrong to attack me.

My style had nothing to do with your original attack in this thread. There is no common trope of people wanting to punish wives for their husband's transgressions or to hurt the wives of men who have preyed on other women or expecting women to supervise their husbands. You went quite a bit farther than accuse me of victim blaming. You reached for some extremely insulting and mysogynistic views to throw at me.

Your activities in sexual assault prevention don't justify your condemnations of me. If anything it makes you more responsible.  You just keep launching fresh attacks by minimizing what you did and blaming me for your actions. You know better.

Tehanu wrote:

So much for this thread getting better. Well, Pondering, you managed to completely validate my summary of your usual pattern when you're challenged on something.

You didn't "challenge me on something", you attacked me. I'm not going to accept blame for your actions or passing judgement over me more generally. I didn't start this. My "style when I am challenged" didn't start this.

I'm sure it's very annoying that I won't accept responsibility for being attacked by any of you no matter how impressive your progessive credentials are.

jjuares wrote:

Pondering wrote:

I find the reticience to letting the wife find out bizarre. Why don't these young women recognize the wife's right to know that their husbands are sexual predators?.

I didn't want to enter into this discussion but I was alarmed by these god awful sentences. They have been called offensive and they are certainly that. But more importantly they represent an attempt to place a responsibility on the victim that is not only unwarranted but could perhaps prove harmful psychologically and even physically if they were to act upon this piece of advice and attempt to tell the wife. There is no guarantee of course the wife will believe this piece of news and may even inform her husband or other members of the family and place the victim at greater risk. I just hope the author of this post is never in a position to advise any victims either formally or informally for if this little nugget of "wisdom" is any indication of her insight I must say I fear for the continuing safety of any victims who listen to her.

I did not suggest the victim should tell the wife. I asked why so many young women think they are protecting the wife by actively preventing them from finding out that their husband is a sexual predator.

What I would tell a victim is that many wives would prefer to know even if some would not therefore it should not carry any weight in their decision of whether or not to go to police. I would tell them that if they do come forward and the family splits up it will be because that is what the wife wanted and she is likely to get an excellent divorce settlement so that should not prevent the victim from going to police.