People who do good work can still be bastards

Here's what we know about Julian Assange: he founded WikiLeaks, he has been arrested and charged with sexual offenses, he denies the allegations, he has been denied bail, and his work has generated extensive controversy and animosity among politicians.

Here's what I know about rape allegations: the mass media is particularly shit at impartial journalism when it's about a rape allegation, and we, the general public are also particularly shit at being impartial.

I think what WikiLeaks does is important. I think transparency in governing is important. I think protections for whistleblowers are important.

I also think that nobody is all good or all bad, and that the fact that you do good and important work does not necessarily mean that you're not a bastard. Whether Julian Assange belongs in this category I do not know, and I do not care to speculate. I refer you to the above list of things I do know about him. I note the point here because it's something that people often overlook but I thin it may be part of what is motivating the popular support of Assange against the allegations. That is, I think many people assume that if someone is nice to fluffy kittens then they must automatically be A Good Person who can do no harm. Maybe Assange is the sweetest person you could ever hope to meet, and is particularly sweet to fluffy kittens. Maybe he's a total wanker. I don't know, and what's more, I don't particularly care. What I do know and care about is that supporting transparency and whistleblowing does not require me to excuse or ignore serious allegations.

But I'm saddened to see a number of liberal and even feminist friends talking and writing about Assange and the allegations as if the allegations are obviously trumped-up, or simply unimportant, or who write about supporting WikiLeaks more vociferously and frequently when the media is full of stories about these allegations than at any other times. The people who know what really happened are Assange and the two complainants. The rest of us? We have to stick with the lists at the start of this post.

If you really care about transparency, and you really think whistleblowing is important (and I assume that you do think these things if you support WikiLeaks), your concern should be for the truth. And as you know, if you have been following WikiLeaks, the truth isn't always convenient or simple. So if you're really committed to finding out the truth, your concern should be not to shut down allegations or dismiss them, but to insist on a fair trial.

--IP

Down on ASBOs

Suppose you have a justice system which allows you to stop people from doing certain activities that are not covered under any specific law, but which threaten people's safety. A kind of "Stop taking the piss, Not Necessarily Otherwise Specified" court order. Sounds pretty useful, right?

Except...can you spot the problem?

If you guessed "not covered under any specific law" you guessed right, and you get to wear the cloggs of clever.

"Stop taking the piss, Not Necessarily Otherwise Specified" orders (or ASBOs, as they are more commonly known) are social justice issues because they can be slapped on people who have not been charged with any crime. They're purpose is to restrict dodge activity that is hard to prosecute under other laws, like stalking or being disorderly (although actually, there are laws to prosecute these behaviours). But in practice they tend to be used either in cases where the behaviour is already illegal (eg, stalking, underage drinking) or where there is a good reason that the behaviour is not criminalised (like: it would be about seventeen different kinds of immoral to make it illegal).

Can you guess who is most likely to be affected by ASBO abuse? Hint: consider the latter case.

If you guessed "people who deal with societal oppression", then you get to wear the cloggs of clever and the pants of smart.

A couple of weeks ago, Kate posted about the Met "naming and shaming" sex workers on their website. Why had the Met done this? It's part of a policy of "naming and shaming" people with ASBOs. From the Guardian article:

A Met spokesman said the asbos against the Newham women had been used as a last resort because they were persistent offenders, and that decisions to publicise the identities of people issued with asbos were made on a case-by-case basis.

"Persistent offenders"? So, let's see what crimes the women had been convicted of (multiple times, from the sound of "persistent")?

Sex workers and their support groups have condemned a police operation to "out" prostitutes even when they have not been convicted of any crime.

[...]

Police took photographs of the Polish women, who were not charged.

Wait, you mean they weren't convicted of a crime? Not even charged with a crime? So in what sense are they "persistent offenders"?

Ah, well, you see, they are sex workers, which means have received money in exchange for some kind of sexual interaction. An activity which is totally legal. And which they have engaged in more than once.

(Other activities which are legal, in case you were wondering, include: surfing, drinking tea, and writing about how pissed off you are at the Met.)

On the other hand, activities which are not legal include: sex trafficking, rape, and sexual assaults.

On top of the obvious humiliation and threat to the two women involved of having their personal information broadcast to the world, the implication for other sex workers is huge. The Met in its infinite wisdom has dedicated itself to harassing sex workers, instead of being active in preventing and prosecuting violence against women and against sex workers. This policy creates fear in people who might well have been trafficked, raped, assaulted, etc, and cannot now go to the police because it seems they're more likely to get an ASBO than police support. This policy only hurts people who need police support the most.

Also: it's not just sex workers who are affected by societal biases in the use of ASBOs. The British Institute for Brain Injured Children found that more than one third of children with ASBOs have a mental disability.

Like I said: hurts people who need police support the most.

--IP

The "choice" discourses let us down

As long as "choice" means legal abortion, choice isn't nearly enough.

I've written before about reproductive coercion, and as Lynn Harris explains in an article in The Nation, the role of reproductive coercion in partner violence and unwanted pregnancies isn't being talked about nearly enough:

Two new studies have quantified what advocates for young women’s health have observed for years: the striking frequency with which it is in fact young men who try to force their partners to get pregnant. Their goal: not to settle down as family men but rather to exert what is perhaps the most intimate, and lasting, form of control. (“Control” may also include attempts to force both pregnancy and abortion, even in the same relationship.)

[...] In the largest study of this phenomenon to date, “Pregnancy Coercion, Intimate Partner Violence and Unintended Pregnancy,” published in the January issue of the journal Contraception, lead researcher Elizabeth Miller and others surveyed nearly 1,300 16- to 29-year-old women who’d sought a variety of services at five different Northern California reproductive health clinics. Among those who had experienced intercourse, i.e. who could be at risk of unintended pregnancy, not only did 53 percent of respondents say they’d experienced physical or sexual violence from a partner, but one in five said they had experienced pregnancy coercion; 15 percent said they experienced birth control sabotage, including hiding or flushing birth control pills down the toilet, intentional breaking of condoms and removing contraceptive rings or patches. These figures were consistent from clinic to clinic.

Emphasis mine.

Choice means nothing to the person who is being raped, or whose birth control is being sabotaged, or whose partner refuses to use a barrier. Choice means nothing when violence and lack of autonomy are systemic. It's not that choice has no place in discussions of reproductive freedom. Of course it's important. But we talk about it almost to the exclusion of other factors. And that's the wrong way round. Choice matters, but it's not the right paradigm.

This isn't even a problem that sex ed is going to solve, although definitely, we need sex ed. One might be fully informed about contraception and STDs and that still won't help if your partner forces sex without a barrier. Although having said that, I'm increasingly moving towards the position that deliberately withholding safer sex information (eg, by the government) is abusive.

We should be talking about challenging domestic abuse, supporting people in abuse situations, and what constitutes a healthy relationship based on mutual respect. We need, desperately, to connect the dots between abuse and reproductive freedom.

(Hat tip: Melissa McEwan at Shakesville)

--IP

[Crossposted at Modus Dopens]