The fact is i don't think there is any scene in the world (except maybe the European anarcho-leftist scene?) which is more sensitive, scratch that, more hair-trigger-wired to explode around accusations of sexism and sexual misbehavior, than the anarchist scene in the U.S. Once again, is it so impossible that someone could have exploited these tendencies rather than deal with real issues around an important "community" member in a sane and rational way? Who was best served here? Do the math... There are examples to follow which involve Santa Cruz in the late-2000s; one can also look at Eugene, OR a few years earlier and please see the below, much longer statement for a fuller exposition.
I realize my analyses of radical ideologies, and the mindsets and social and psychological types that congregate around them, may appear as so much embitterment and sour grapes. It's true that having wasted a decade of your life on ideas you thought were important, on a conception of yourself you thought was noble, and on friends who turned out to be fly-by-night *ssh*les is an incredibly embittering experience. I submit as well that it's very different to look at something when you are caught up in it as when you have stepped away from it, or in my case, have been thrown under a bus by it.
Without repeating what I have said in the below post about the expedience of those who mobilize such accusations and such stories, I would like to add something else: the Santa Cruz anarchist scene has been severely affected by accusations of rape against men involved in it, namely members of the highly popular, successful and now defunct band Blackbird Raum. More than a few people in SC told me that it was generally believed that government infiltrators/provocateurs were involved in the circulation of these accusations, which served the purpose not only of discrediting prominent individuals who advocated anarchist ideas but of discrediting those ideas themselves as somehow inherent sympathetic to sexism and rape.
As for those who would like to continue pretending that we live in the 1950s rather than the 21st century and that "patriarchy" is an immobile, immutable structure that somehow ceaselessly underlies all social activity, this is of course as convenient for leftist student activists who wish to distract from the charges of racism leveled against them by student-of-color groups as it is for anyone else, like the FBI, who might want to drive a wedge between anti-authoritarian perspectives and a volatile social movement.
The truth of modern day gender relations is not what it was 50, 100 or 1000 years ago. Explicitly or not, the fact that there are not merely two genders, even if categorized broadly, but many genres of performance, has gained widespread mainstream acceptance. Is it so meaningless that many of the most beloved figures of the current right wing movement in the U.S. are women? Since the birth of "third-wave" feminism in the 60s/70s, the anti-domestic/sexual-violence movement has been made up mostly of NGOs in the pockets of their state benefactors. Is it so great a leap from saying "feminism by any means necessary, even police power" to "feminism by any means necessary, especially police power" or even, what I would take to be the real meaning, "police power by any means necessary, especially feminism"?
Again: why don't they worry that I might turn them in for their illegal activities in the student movement? Because there is a risk to myself? Or just because they know I'm not that kind of person anyway, I am an anti-authoritarian at heart, and because that is exactly why they had to take me down?
Once again: Although I am no saint, I am not a rapist. I used to be an anarchist. I was taken down by a bunch of communists who hated everything I stood for and wanted to paint me as the worst thing in the world. Do the fxcking math and don't be fooled by their politically opportunistic lies.
Jan Dichter
2/1/11
