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 🤞
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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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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.
They asked her what she wanted. It seems to me focusing on what the victim wants is the best thing, and I could see why they thought so, too.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
if your organization is “democratically” sexually assaulting your comrades, maybe your “democratic practices” should be disregarded.
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.
Later they are also posing different questions involving “the most recent or memorably vivid experience” “or most clearly remembered experience”.
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:
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:
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.
The implication is of someone pestering and bugging til you finally give in, but this could also describe a practice of verbal consent.
Again, a nefarious implication but could mean anything. God forbid your friends would be nice to a girl you just met.
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:
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:
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.
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.
i didn’t notice this when i went through the article. i don’t know what may have driven its inclusion in the survey.
i think it’s more likely that american and canadian men read it as the former rather than the latter.
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 think this reinforces the point that there are more ghislaine maxwells than one might initially believe
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.
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.
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%”
Like what I mean is, shouldn’t it be higher if the other numbers are correct?
Neither of us can know for sure, which is why the questionnaire needs to be validated before conclusions can be drawn.
Well, idk what you might assume I might assume. I’m not trying to downplay how common SA/SV are.
I wouldn’t post a a study claiming that 95% of all illness is caused by pathogens, even though I do believe in germ theory of disease. Even if 1% of men areremoveds, that is still a lot of men. We are certain to come across them in organizing, so we still need a plan to deal with them.
What I meant is that the women said they themselves were the perpetrators of non-consensual sexual activity (not that they were helping men). But it was a long time ago and I can’t find it.
Do you mean the respondents were actually recruited from those forums? Or shared post-publication? The paragraph where they are mentioned, is about the background and prior work.
This is the methods:
Qualtrics gets respondents from “Facebook advertisements and Amazon.com’s Mechanical Turk” according to a relevent footnote.
“We want to get your side of the story” sounds like a Good Cop, I wonder who was fooled by that… It sounds kind of priming to me.
The thing about science, is that is is an iterative, collective process. There is really no reason to pay attention to a study (especially a unique one) unless you are a person in the field. One study can’t “prove” anything, it cannot even rise to “demonstrate”. “Possibly suggest” would be the most generous language I could use (not in this case). But really, it requires replication.
If it is “95%”, isn’t it hopeless? And how could any woman every trust any man? Or trust any woman with male friends? I would say we should organize gender-segregated in that case.
I searched the primary author, O’Sullivan, and found a 2018 non-academic article, We need to learn from the men whoremoved where she describes her desire for research just like the study at hand.
The link is dead, but I think it is this (2002): Repeatremoved and Multiple Offending Among Undetectedremoveds (sci-hub):
This one has 6% of men asremoveds. It is using a narrower definition.
I also found this one (2009) while I was looking, because it is mis-labeled: [Reports ofremoved Reperpetration by Newly Enlisted Male Navy Personnel]](https://archive.org/details/RepeatRapeAndMultipleOffedingAmongUndetectedRapists)
So acknowledging different definitions, there is significant overlap. Their result is 13% for all methods lifetime. It includes use of drugs and alcohal. Which in your study, about 85% endorsed in the last 4 years.
It is a massive discrepancy. I would guess the variation is at least somewhat due to the expansive, falsely equivalent language used in the posted study. Which is more reflective of reality? Idk.
Also they are saying (and discuss it more later) that acquaintance SV is more common than for strangers, which I think we all know about. So it is a weird choice in that study to limit it only to stranger women, and to include the tactic of targeting someone who is unknown, when targeting someone who is known is more common by a wide margin.
I don’t know why it isn’t mentioned by O’Sullivan’s study. Especially if the existing work is really so shallow. Maybe the author isn’t credible, or its been refuted, or something else.
Anyway, it doesn’t prove anything, it’s just a single study. You’d need to follow the citation web to see the prior and subsequent research. Or better, read a summary of evidence by an expert, ideally for a non-expert audience.
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:
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.