This was originally shared by Marissa Sanchez in a note with the following content:
As I am finalizing my own response to the Central Committee’s “true narrative” about what happened to me, I am deeply appreciative of others who are taking the time to read their response carefully and assess what it reveals.
I especially appreciate this piece for calling attention to the fact that I signed the Steven Powers letter in 2020, and yet now find myself subjected to the same insinuations that I am a wrecker, a state agent, or someone whose criticisms must be understood as part of an attack on the Party rather than engaged with for its own substance.
I think there is an important lesson in that for every comrade to internalize.
One of the things I have had to reckon with from my own time in the PSL and on the NDC is how, when the Party comes under criticism, women comrades are placed in front of and made to bear those criticisms. Our identities become something the Party wields defensively against people who criticize it. I wish I had understood more clearly what was being asked of me in 2020. I wish I had thought more independently and critically about the role I was being asked to play then. It has taken a great deal of personal development for me to understand that role and to take responsibility for having allowed myself to play it.
As I said in my own essay: if PSL members can change the organization, great. I mean that sincerely. But this is one place where I differ from the hopes expressed in this piece. I do not believe the Party can be reformed by its membership in the ways this comrade is calling for.
The Central Committee’s response to me, and what I am hearing about the way I continue to be discussed in internal meetings and in one-on-one conversations with members, has only deepened that conclusion for me. Right now, rather than seriously assessing the organizational shortcomings that allowed these events to happen, Party leadership is working seemingly tirelessly to discredit me and to reinforce it’s increasingly closed internal narrative about why criticism exists in the first place.
I hope everyone following this situation will read this piece carefully. And I especially hope we will all think seriously about what it means that someone who once helped defend the Party against these very kinds of criticisms can so easily become their target when she is the one speaking.
For my part, my branch has expelled me. I’m officially no longer a party member after years of work, hundreds of hours, signing the lease on our Liberation Center, and helping to found the branch. This has hit our branch very hard; but leadership has doubled down and closed ranks.
I’m looking into other cadre orgs to join and work with, and looking to try and build an alternative here with the expectation that the party will not be able to handle this contradiction and will implode. Wish us luck 🤞
At bare minimum, Brian Becker needs to either be expelled from the party through a party vote (ideal) or fall on his own sword for the sake of the party by resigning (less ideal). The feds have realized that PSL’s weakness is its poor internal process for handling cadre sexual misconduct and are now applying that pressure point just when PSL is starting to gain momentum. COIN doesn’t just look like assassinating cadre or kidnapping cadre in unmarked vans. They want to completely sink PSL’s reputation so that when most people hear PSL, they think of sex predators and r-word victims.
The maximalist goal is to turn PSL into a sex cult filled with sex predators who glaze Brian Becker who himself has been turned into an informant due to planted CSAM and to turn those splinter groups into sex cults with informant characteristics as well. “Having good internal processes” is not enough at this point. In order to salvage PSL’s tattered reputation, heads have to roll and the most important head that has to roll is Becker’s head. If his head doesn’t roll, nobody is going to believe that PSL has actually reformed their internal process and nobody is going to want to join PSL except for sex predators who want to join PSL so they can be protected after sexually harassing people. Everything that I have said is applicable if Becker is completely innocent and sincere in trying to stop sexual misconduct and doubly so if Becker enables sexual misconduct through protecting perpetrators and marginalizing victims.
This is a crossroads moment for PSL. If they do not handle this well, they will shrivel into irrelevance.
The thing about Marissa’s testimonial that really stood out to me was how she offhandedly referred to telling her comrades about her assault as “breaking party discipline.” Absolutely heart-wrenching to read that description.
Agree with most of the action list at the end of this except procedures having full transparency. This is not a viable method of handling sexual assault as victims that do not want to be the center of a huge uproar will not come forwards if handling is expected to be open and transparent.
I also think this entire shit storm has a chilling effect on victims coming forwards. Not just in PSL but in any american leftwing parties in the future. I for one would not come forwards under any circumstances if I were a party member of any american party if I could expect it to be blown up into something like this.
This is why it’s so disgusting and misogynistic for the wrecker faction to be weaponizing Marissa’s experience of sexual assault in a political attack intended to destroy the PSL.
I don’t really know enough to weigh in on factionalism other than that I think it’s inappropriate and harmful for future victims for these things to blow up at all and that the procedures necessary for this kind of thing need to be designed around making as little noise and impact as possible.
Most people don’t want to be the center of a huge drama if they come forwards and are less likely to do so if that is what they can expect. Any system that wants to serve victims properly must be discreet by design. Discretion and safety is the primary thing any victims want before they will come forwards.
I’m only so vocal because I experienced the exact same tactics and methods used against Marissa to silence and belittle me. If a faction is using it, and national leadership knows, they should have done the right thing instead of doubling down. I’ve put years into the party, but it won’t matter in the end.
This whole ordeal reminds me why purges are necessary. Get the pests out of the fucking org.
Another thing: How fucking foolish is it to not have in-practice an actual good method for investigating and handling this kind of thing within your org? IT ALREADY HAPPENED ONCE. Every leftist in an org larger than like 5 people needs to have something robust set up to handle allegations and deal with an offender summarily. Period. Your org will not be exempt. If your org (especially one that is large like the PSL) doesn’t have this in place you are inviting abuse and assault into your ranks. Period.
I used to recommend the PSL. Can’t and won’t anymore and that’s a damn shame because it’s filled with some really great and driven people.
The Central Committee has investigated itself via an entity it set up for the purpose, which has found that the CC did no wrongdoing at all.
i am once again sharing this excellent article. the people here claiming that this is a part of NSPM-7 (?) or that it’s “factionalism” need to take a good hard look at themselves. you accuse others of being wreckers while yourself participating in the highest form of wrecking. it’s stunning to me that in 2026 the amerikkkan left still hasn’t learned from this shit. covering up this and other sexual assaults is not “the proper response” and accusing your perfectly-legal organization that stands in national elections of something it admits to doing does not constitute COINTELPRO.
also, i find it particularly disgusting that in the official response, they still try to do what they were accused of in the article they are responding to! for them to weaponize the identities of the “all-women National Disciplinary Committee”, to accuse the victim of having “repeatedly denied [the NDC] the right to visibility in attacks that claim to speak against the very violence that women are subjected to in society”, this is the height of liberal identity politics, the ghislaine maxwellification of the left.
overall, the PSL’s response to this incident has convinced me that it will not be reformed, and that it won’t recover. i hope there are elements within the PSL who are willing and able to oust or control the members and thought processes involved in the original incident and those involved in the horrific statement cited in the article. but seeing hexbear (and maybe even my own instance) respond to this in the way they have has severely damaged my faith in that. the most likely outcome, in my opinion, is the PSL either dissolves or becomes another CPUSA in a nation of CPUSAs. i hope they prove me wrong.
I’m actually open to the theory that this could be partially NSPM-7 related. A common pattern in the COINTELPRO era (and beyond) is to wreck an org using real grievances and real problems and real divisions. If they’re competent, the government has known about all of this for a long time, and just sat on it until the order came down. That doesn’t mean that most people raising this issues are feds, it would take very little to spark something like this, and then just let things follow their own logic. More than likely the feds would stay completely behind the scenes, not out front writing documents.
And if this is an op, that doesn’t really change things for me, because 1) we’ve all seen this pattern of failed coverups so many times, we should know it doesn’t work in the first place 2) we should expect to be surveilled by our enemies and to have our (real) problems exploited in the future, at the worst time, and 3) the defense of “I was only caught because I faced unfair scrutiny” might (sometimes) work in court, but its not a viable political defense. I am extremely sympathetic to PSL, very aware of what the gov is capable of, and I still find this “its the feds fault” defense to be absolutely unconvincing, so I don’t know who else would be convinced by this. I think that’s why this defense is usually stated indirectly, because it’s such an obviously weak excuse.
I find it completely baffling that an apparently-competent org like PSL would try to cover up things like this, instead of making the obvious choice of just removing anyone with credible accusations. Its the only viable strategy to keep the org safe. Its also, incidentally, a much better way to protect other comrades, who (if secrecy is actually maintained) would have no way to know who is dangerous and who isn’t. You’d think that would also matter, but the defenders never seem very concerned with that goal, compared to the greater good of protecting the org. Just cult-like thinking. Pathetic to defend this. Worms.
i started this comment thinking this would be getting more attention if the feds wanted to use it that way. as it stands, even the ADL hasn’t said anything about it. i’m genuinely shocked i haven’t seen anything about it outside of this site. however, it seems like psl might not even last the year. if it does, i have to think it’ll just be opportunists like the ones who wrote the response. i guess if the feds are getting actively involved, it’s gonna be to try to prevent the PSL from ousting their wrecker leadership. seeing the way PSL members act on here, i really don’t know if it’s gonna be able to come back from this.
Our mettle is tested not on paper, but in practice. The survivor is brave and should be thanked, not lambasted.
strong whiff of slop
psl should get their shit together
I agree with many points in the article, but there are some painfully bad ones.
These workers have degrees (e.g. in social work, industrial-organizational psychology, law), training and certifications (e.g. SEAH Investigation, Title IX)
Just lol. Why are bourgeois institutions a good benchmark or standard for the way a communist party should function? Also, saying survivors should never directly meet with the person who assaulted them is… Wildly reductive. Obviously they shouldn’t be pressured to do so but it should definitely be an option, as it’s an important step in many cases
I agree with some parts of this but disagree with a bunch of other parts still.
I’ve never met a victim, and I’ve met many, who wants their shit blasted all over the world like this. Everyone I’ve met wouldn’t consider it sweeping it under the rug to keep the victim’s privacy. I disagree with all the parts about how they should’ve told everyone Marissa’s private story. It’s also clear to me that despite what everyone here is saying, Eugene is not a danger after the initial event because it never happened again. Everyone says he’s X because he did something once while drunk that he didn’t even remember. I’m not defending him his actions, he needed to be punished, I’m just saying sometimes one event doesn’t define a whole person. It seems restorative justice worked in this case. And I see people saying restorative justice doesn’t apply here for some reason, but nobody is saying why. I work in prison abolition and am trying to build communism in a conservative area, though so maybe I have a different view on people’s abilities to change.
I do agree that they handled parts wrongly the first time, but to me it’s because they didn’t know what they were doing. It doesn’t define Ben as some sort of guy trying to cover things up, but as someone over their head who was trying to figure out what to do. He should probably at the very least step down for a bit to get some heat off the party. And the party should have probably been alerted that Eugene is being suspended for an inappropriate sexual assault event at a company party, but only if Marissa wanted that. Everyone, I imagine even Marissa, was probably worried about the state and their enemies taking advantage of that to destroy the party. It’s a tough one on what to keep in and what to blast because every weakness will be taken advantage of and every party internal communication will leak. They chose wrong in this case, but I empathize with the difficulty of trying to build socialism in the imperial core.
It’s clear that they made the NDC to account for this in the future, but the fact that they didn’t have it setup before this doesn’t mean the party is unfixable or the whole thing is a wash. It’s a part of the improvements every org will have to go through as it grows. From what I heard, their current processes are much better, but I’m sure it varies from branch to branch. It probably does need to be kept separate from the CC, but I think it already is completely independent and has a higher authority than it.
And does hiring professionals from the bourgeois society full of sexual harassment and sexual assault a good idea? Idk if trusting the processes or current companies and such is a great idea. It’s not like they all do amazing on these kinds of things, either, but the writer of this acts like the PSL needs to be copying them.
Also, they attest the faction doesn’t exist because it’s people leaving who are then forming a new org, but that’s a lie. It formed while they were members of the PSL as an attempt to split the party, attempted to recruit people in the PSL, pretended to agree with their politics while secretly forming their own faction, and are continuing to do so.
“restorative justice” has repeatedly been misused in this discussion. It does not mean sweeping offences under the rug and allowing people to stay in their top positions, where they will continue to be a threat to others, who will have no way of knowing of any danger. It means accountability and change and then afterwards being allowed, provisionally, to return to a normal status, not an entitlement to the very position of authority which enabled this behavior in the first place. If you can’t understand this basic difference, if you don’t understand the first thing in this topic, then you should seriously reflect on why you feel the need to give ignorant opinions on serious topics.
Hard agree. There’s a strong effort here to portray the organization as irredeemable or fatally flawed. You can see an org that has learned from multiple failures and that is continuing to improve. You can see that the NDC is an iterative improvement over using standard channels and even though this incident predates the NDC you can see that body is also learning from it. In my personal opinion I’d want to see the party, and any socialist party, plan for malfeasance, sexual assault, and other inappropriate behavior by creating a strong independent and adversarial investigative arm. That said I’d defer to people that have more experience in building strong mechanisms for handling these kinds of issues.
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wow if this is the “correct” policy then whats a mistake look like?
Feel free to propose any superior solution, and I’ll either be convinced or I’ll explain why I think you’re wrong.
how about the superior solution proposed in the article? hell, how about you start by not making a sexual assault victim kiss and make up with her assailant?
Yes, this article is not “factionalist” and literally suggests principled solutions a party like the PSL should be doing.
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Eugene Puryear must be formally expelled from the party and acceptance of his resignation must be retracted.
Why?
I swear to god you have to be an undercover cop or something trying to ruin the reputation of the party with your shocking and callous disregard for sexual consent or the often unprovable violence of misogyny. If the party turns into freaks like you into cadre who think this attitude is appropriate at all then the people trapped in america are fucking cooked
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The leadership of the party disregarded it by not immediately expelling Puryear and focusing on care and safety for Marissa and launching an investigation into anyone else Puryear may have assaulted or harassed. The party will have disregarded it if it doesn’t force big changes in leadership.
Merely smear the survivor as being an unprincipled wrecker.
Consider, perhaps, that we can have principles which do not allow for us to submit to the will of a central committee good ol’ boys club that protects assaulters and denigrates survivors. That is not unprincipled, it reflects a difference of principles.
Neither I nor the party has, at any point, disregarded the sexual assault that took place
No. Instead they acknowledged that it happened and protected the perpetrator anyway.
That is not better.
Get a new hobby, this is disgusting. At this point I can only assume that you are alternating between exaggerated callousness and this absurd posturing about “good faith” as some sort of sophistic strategy.
Are you a typical member? I thought(looking in from outside) that PSL was one of the better hopes for comrades in the US. Now I’m not so sure.
i’m gonna treat this with more seriousness than it deserves
party’s process is in accordance with the party’s official position on restorative justice.
yeah, that’s a problem. you can never get to any kind of justice while the people responsible for this disgusting transgression are still leading the party. eugene should have been expelled or, at the very least, demoted, the moment it became apparent he’s a danger to be around. see here for one of many reasons why. we’re not talking about an accident or a boo-boo. we’re talking about intentional sexual violence. it’s not some mystery how to handle sexual violence in the victim’s best interests. we have, unfortunately, had a lot of experience solving that particular issue. the PSL’s procedures are decades behind even the most regressive corporations. to force potential future victims to interact with the offender, to force the actual victim to interact with the offender, that is unforgiveable. and it’s bad for the movement.
Absolutely not, discretion is absolutely crucial to protect the privacy and safety of victims. Publicly sharing details of disciplinary procedures would have a chilling effect on victims’ willingness to come forward.
maybe. if that were the reason for the coverup, you’d think the victim would be given the choice to publicly come forward. in this case, PSL silenced her against her own wishes for almost a decade. shame. they told her it was “in the best interests of the movement” for her to protect this sex pest. shame. now that she can no longer be silenced, they smear her as a wrecker. shame.
But I’d say it reflects very poorly on all the former members claiming that they had no idea a process even existed, since that means they never even bothered to read the constitution and bylaws.
it seems as though a process actually doesn’t exist, seeing as the NDC is consistently able to fail so spectacularly on such points as “don’t let molesters lead your organization”. but even if it does, it’s up to the organization to ensure that every member is aware of their recourse in a situation such as this. sexual assault is, because of the way even communists go about the issue, very prevalent. it’s not a niche procedure that will only be applicable in a small number of cases. even a properly-run organization will have to recruit from a pool where up to 95% of men are rapists. and this is not a properly-run organization.
They have nothing to apologize for.
did you even read the statement they put out? it was disgusting. using their “all-women” NDC as a shield from criticism, smearing people as misogynists who take issue with being led by molesters. smearing the victim of one of the molestations as a wrecker. taking zero notice of the fact that, again, misogynists make great informants. and all the bullshit about “heavy drinking”. that’s the only part of it they found “unacceptable”. what a bunch of horseshit. it opens with a paragraph feigning concern for all the sexual violence women face, and then it goes on to talk about the actual sexual molestation the way i’d expect from a college frat president. and with processes like this, PSL might as well be a frat. your “restorative justice” actually doesn’t mean shit if you just end up with the exact same procedures to handle SEXUAL MOLESTATION as the catholic church.
As a matter of fact, the author’s suggestions are completely discarding the democratic practices within the party. It’s ridiculous on its face.
if your organization is “democratically” sexually assaulting your comrades, maybe your “democratic practices” should be disregarded.
even a properly-run organization will have to recruit from a pool where up to 95% of men areremoveds.
What? I do not believe it. (This comment is only about the linked study, nothing specific about PSL or the left.)
This article first states that 95% of men have recently attempted, and in 65% were successful, to intentionally coerce a woman into sex.
Participants were asked “In the past four years, how many times have you used any of the following strategies to get (or try to get) a woman to have some type of sex when she did not want to have sex or acted like she did not want to have sex? (Only women you have recently met—no sex or dating history with them beforehand).”
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Later they are also posing different questions involving “the most recent or memorably vivid experience” “or most clearly remembered experience”.
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Men who haven’t had sex in 2 years were not included so they are not in the denominator of this alleged 95%removeds.
Whatever the time frame, it also says “the average number ever used was 8.94”. So first it seems that this is happening all the time (62% recent success) but then the average ever is 9? If all men are doing this all the time, shouldn’t the number be higher?
The “list of strategies” (Table 2) includes things that could be, or certainly are, coercive, but not all of these can be rounded up toremoved. The worst:
- Focused on a stranger to have sex with (or someone who did not know you)
That is wild. Conflating sex with a stranger withremoved is totally unserious.
Furthermore, the survey only applies to “women you have recently met”! That one alone catches n=1018 (40%) attempting, of which 67% success. (67% success at trying to have sex with a random stranger is kind of unbelievably high, if I am understanding that properly.)
Here are the top 4 by frequency, which are all completely ambiguous and could be understood by different people in different ways:
- Told her whatever she wanted to hear
Well it depends what she “wants to hear”, no? I love you! I’ll marry you! is one thing, but this could also describe giving someone a compliment, flirting or engaging in good-faith sexual negotiation. There is an implication of dishonesty/manipulation because of context but it could just mean being ammenable and nice.
The frequency of this one every being tried is 78% and the next one on the list is 49%, so it is far and away the most common.
- Asked her repeatedly to have sex
The implication is of someone pestering and bugging til you finally give in, but this could also describe a practice of verbal consent.
- Had a friend, partner, or group of friends help you get what you want
Again, a nefarious implication but could mean anything. God forbid your friends would be nice to a girl you just met.
- Had a female friend around to make the woman Feel safe and convince her
According to this, 45% of men have a Ghislane Maxwell at their disposal. Which means a lot of women must be vicarious sexual predators on behalf of men in their lives.
The language like “make the woman Feel safe” implies a ruse is being conducted, that she is not safe. But if we do not assume every man is aremoved, it could also just be a legitimate demonstration of non-predatory intentions. This is like, having a chaperone. Other women being around dramatically lowers the pressure because most men do not start having sex in front of their female friends. It is safer. But the authors describe it as “aided in these crimes against other women” and speculated about punishment and bullying by women as mediators ofremoved.
The article repeatedly states “isolation” as a main underlying strategy ofremoved, but then also defines being around other people asremoved.
This article is attempting to depict men as a group as pervasivelyremovedy. As you said, 95%removeds apparently. But it is making a false equivilance between numerous behaviors which are are not the same. It is casting the worst possible light on things.
One thing I wonder about, is why they didn’t mix it up with pro-consent assertions. E.g. “Stopped doing something when she didn’t seem to like it”. Like if you are a guy taking a sex survery, will you feel like a loser virgin if you don’t check anything off the list? Maybe men will always check x% items on any list of sex acts, to retain masculinity. (And that’s why the FBI thinks it needs to allow practitioners of bestality?)
Also, I am sure that I have heard of research like this in the past, even though the article states it is novel. I remember hearing about some kind of survey which did not exclude women, and found that they also endorsed high rates of non-consensual behaviors. The discrepency between self-reported bad behaviors and everything that is known about SV (that it is overwhelmingly male) was explained by women being more self-reflective and aware of dynamics, thertefor more able to self-crit. But that study was also criticized for counting a person who one time, ever, did a single thing that they shouldn’t have, as equivilant to a habitual and unrepentantremoved.
Going down the list by incidence, the first one that is probably wodely understood as being bad is:
Gradually pushed verbally or physically until you got what you wanted
which was ever attempted by 32%, successful 58% of that. That’s not good, but it is totally different than 95% of men.
I think it is much more likely that a small number of men are doing a lot of these things often, and that certain behaviors are clustered together.
This is probably why the average number of strategies ever used is only 9, which seems too low for the numbers suggested at the top.
I don’t know why they didn’t seem to be interested in doing some fancy stats to ellaborate on this. All the stats energy was spent on comparing being an arrogant prick to propensity to coercive sexual behavior. If that is truely foundational work that’s not been done, I guess it ought to be. The only scrap is:
36 men (1.3%) reported using all of the strategies at least once
But I think given the vaguaries of language, it would be useful to know how many men had used almost all of them. Or just like they might not want to check no boxes, they might not want to check all the boxes.
Overall I think the study is a totally fine idea, but drawing the worse possible inferences is totally uncalled for. It isn’t helpful to go around saying that 95% of men areremoveds. I do not think it is true. More, it isn’t what was found in this study. And I don’t think you are in error to have gotten that impression, it is written to suggest incorrectly. You really have to dig into it to see what they actually studied, much less the results. Eventually you see that it is, at best, preliminary work. Limited in scope, sample size, applicability, with no info on reliability/validity. Unconsidered confounders. But presented with unscientific confidence it is sensational. Hopefully someone with a more rigorous approach can develop the concept. It is clearly a question open to the scientific method.
As it stands, is no benefit from this, it does not increase understanding, it only sows confusion and paranoia. If it is a step in the development of a specialist feild, it is not yet ready for general consumption and the authors should be more careful to avoid giving false impressions.
the average number ever used was 8.94
i don’t think this is terribly unbelievable, given the numbers of men who use some of these strategies. i guess some of the strategies might be less bad than others, as you mention later in your comment.
Focused on a stranger to have sex with (or someone who did not know you)
i didn’t notice this when i went through the article. i don’t know what may have driven its inclusion in the survey.
The implication is of someone pestering and bugging til you finally give in, but this could also describe a practice of verbal consent.
i think it’s more likely that american and canadian men read it as the former rather than the latter.
According to this, 45% of men have a Ghislane Maxwell at their disposal. Which means a lot of women must be vicarious sexual predators on behalf of men in their lives.
i think the numbers might be overinflated for a reason i’ll get to later, but i think the psl’s statements on the recent controversy show that it’s not as rare as you might think. i don’t really think it’s 45% but i also don’t think it’s as low as you might assume.
I remember hearing about some kind of survey which did not exclude women, and found that they also endorsed high rates of non-consensual behaviors.
i think this reinforces the point that there are more ghislaine maxwells than one might initially believe
Maybe men will always check x% items on any list of sex acts, to retain masculinity
this is a great point and segues well into the reason i think the numbers might be overinflated. the survey was published and promoted in communities that are explicitly misogynistic, including reddit’s r/theredpill. it was also promoted in communities that were more “mainstream” such as sports communities. it makes no attempt to control for or even collect data on which of these communities a respondent might have come from. i’ve had that particular reservation about the study since i found out about it, and i maybe should have communicated it clearer when i linked it. i didn’t realize that would be the part of my original comment that would get the most attention, but with such a claim as 95%, i should have guessed. that was my fault.
If that is truely foundational work that’s not been done, I guess it ought to be.
i don’t know what exactly you mean by this, but if you mean the survey, i do believe it’s foundational. i haven’t found another one of its kind, which is why i chose to link this one. if there’s a better one, i certainly would rather go around linking that one instead.
It isn’t helpful to go around saying that 95% of men areremoveds. I do not think it is true. More, it isn’t what was found in this study.
this might call for a moment of self-reflection from me. i linked it offhand as evidence of the prevalence of sexual assault in the usa. i do believe it is very prevalent, but i didn’t give the study as much nuance as it deserved. overall, i think it’s still a useful link because it’s the only one of its kind, but i should have treated it with more thoughtfulness than just saying “up to 95%”
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even a properly-run organization will have to recruit from a pool where up to 95% of men are removeds
This study was alarming, thanks for sharing it. At the risk of downplaying the results, or maybe just to discuss more, I don’t think that is an accurate summary of what it found; what it found wasn’t great, don’t get me wrong. It is still very normal for men to push sexual boundaries of women. It should be noted that:
- The study’s participants included only men (mostly straight) who have been sexually active in the past 2 years
- The definition of sexual force includes things like the man “[telling] her whatever she wanted to hear” (this was the most frequent tactic)
- This was an anonymous online survey
Regarding #1, this might not affect the result that much, but should be noted ~30% of young men are not sexually active. For #2, I find this very troubling but nonetheless different from SA, and I wonder how much of that 95% is people who admitted to only that tactic. I would connect it to the history of “wooing” / courtship and its modified expression in modern dating, which carries with it all of the misogyny in which women were much more directly positioned as property. Both men and women are trained to accept courtship as a norm. Part of that is persistence (on the part of the man) and modesty (on the part of the woman), both of which contribute to the trampling of women’s autonomy
i have my own problems with the study, which is why i said “up to”. for one, it makes no attempt to control for the website or subreddit where the man found the survey. since it mixes redpill websites with more “normal” social media, i think the actual number might be quite a bit lower. as for number 2, is your contention that i shouldn’t have said “rape”? it may have been stronger language than i should have used. in that case, “up to” just wouldn’t cut it. it should be noted that, as far as i can tell, the study itself never actually used that word. overall, i think the study is the best of its kind, but only because it’s the only one of its kind, or at least the only one i’ve heard of thus far. it has its shortcomings but as far as i can tell, it’s the best we’ve got. please correct me if there’s something better
Um… Ew.
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develop the same resilience to controversy as the two major parties in the U.S.,
so basically by sweeping it under the rug, not taking accountability, and forcing victims out to save face? yeah that sounds like the two major parties alright, definitely what a “true revolutionary force” should be emulating.
the misogyny in this community and especially grad has become frankly unbearable
I’m really surprised that we’ve had so many people crawl out of the woodwork to say totally indefensible shit about this. Should I not be surprised?
personally i’ve found this site has almost never failed to be deeply upsetting on matters dealing with misogyny and assault
i’m about ready to just leave at this point
Eugene Puryear is a comrade who I have met personally and has my complete trust and support.
That’s the guy who sexually assaulted a comrade, right? Not saying a person can make mistakes and then reform but when someone does something like that and gets away with it, it’s not the last time. That’s your guy?
You’re vouching for the assaulter? Who everyone agrees assaulted Marissa? And the subsequent cover-up and remaining in the party and at high levels is now why this is blowing up and threatening the party (of course that’s a blame shared by leadership)?
Interesting choice. I wonder who you think this appeals to.
…everyone, including party leadership and him, agrees that he did in fact commit the assault in question. How can you possibly claim he did nothing wrong?!
Please listen to the comrades explaining how this is misogynistic, consider this a formal warning.
