the seas are finally moving
when the thing begun before I was born starts to bear fruit
We’re seeing a change in how we-the-public handle sexual assault.
I can say this with confidence not because I’m tracking data but because I’m tracking vibes. You don’t live with the various histories and conditions that I do without tracking vibes. Vibes are knowledge. Vibes are survival. Vibes are the air that we breathe. Vibes are kind of...everything.
And the vibes have changed.
Five years, ten years, fifteen years ago, despite all the good training to the contrary, we were still operating under *boys will be boys* rules. Women and queers had a little less latitude, trans folks were dealing with another whole set of biases, but most of the time, if someone was accused of assault or harassment...at most a big splash for a moment and then...crickets.
It wasn’t great. It was, in fact, super annoying on the surface and really scary underneath. You can’t really face head-on how scary something is if you have to go to work every day in that space, walk to the grocery store, drive around under a police presence that is that thing, so you don’t face it. You tuck it under the rug with nice tight hospital corners and you keep going.
As it turns out, we now know that Congress had a whole fund for paying off accusers.
As it turns out, we needed to believe survivors a lot more often than we did.
As it turns out, the anti-sexual-assault-and-harassment training that we got at college in the 90s after a much earlier wave of lawsuits was laying the goundwork for some things, but it took a minute, and a bunch of apologists, and a bunch of internal work, and yes there were some false or misleading accusations but not nearly the volume that we had been led to expect, and now what seems like suddenly but not-at-all suddenly, here we are.
I have, myself, also gone through some changes. Like most people, I disagree with some things some of the time but in general and in principle, I think I’m pretty well caught up.
So what are we doing right now? We know what times *were*. What are times doing now?
1) We do believe survivors. People who have been attacked are, increasingly (not flawlessly) being given the benefit of the doubt and first crack at credibility. This does go against our judicial *innocent until proven guilty* model, but going more deeply, what we are engaging is *nuance*. We are increasingly assuming that the person with more power in the situation was responsible for not wielding that power badly, and the person with less power might have a motivation to stay quiet or avoid conflict or protect themselves and their family.
2) We try to create some balance. We do that by looking for likely motive, the aforementioned power imbalances, external corroboration. The more of that we find, the more weight we put with the survivors. If we don’t find any of that, we STILL don’t drop the case, we keep looking for whatever else could be at play. We look for a whole story.
3) If the evidence seems clear, we call for (usually) appropriate next steps. In the case of Eric Swalwell, resignation from Congress, withdrawing from the governor’s race. In some cases, more than resignation is required. Trials, restitution, incarceration. While many of us recognize the absolute disaster of a judicial system we are operating under, repeatedly causing others physical harm may mean that those are the only ways to keep others safe.
4) We (collectively, all of these things have been coming for decades from smaller quarters) are more aware, and more cranky about, attempts to deflect or cover things up. We are more willing to take a “no one is sacred” approach to tracing the problems out to their roots.
5) And people are increasingly aware of what’s wrong and how to address it in the moment. Telling people off, interrupting harassment in progress, movin through the world with a level of self-awareness regarding power and privilege and bias, all these things are changing the landscape. In the last two years I’ve seen more white cis men show up on social media knowing what is right and wrong than I have ever seen before. Caveat: many people who talk the talk don’t walk the walk, and that’s not less true among progressive-seeming people, sadly. But the culture is changing, the water we swim in is changing. You can no longer credibly claim that you didn’t know that it was wrong to f*k your intern. You just can’t. It’s showing up in changes to covenants and codes of conduct and presenter agreements and gradually in the culture itself. We paid lip service for a long, long, time, but finally in some cases it’s not just words.
Now is this perfect? Absolutely not. As hard as we have worked for as long as we have worked to create a healthier, kinder, more just culture, there are folks in positions of power who have worked at least as hard to hold back or reverse progress, create dangerous and unhealthy work and recreation environments, put women and children and gender minorities at risk.
Of course, what is currently reality is also not “completely fixed” whatever that would be. We have so far to go to create the best possible system of protections and freedoms. There are so many things we still do wrong, or badly. There are so many interdependent issues at play. Class, race, ability and more are also causing inequal, unjust outcomes.
But when everything is going to hell in the proverbial handbasket, it’s extra important to notice what is shifting toward justice. Swalwell’s resignation, so swift, so universally called for, is a shift toward justice. Let’s see how much more of that we can do.