Can we feasibly create structures to address violence whilst ensuring we don’t descend to bike-lock justice based on rumour?

I was raped in 1983. I was a seventeen-year-old gay teen and he was my twenty-year-old student boyfriend. At the time the age of consent for gay men in the UK was twenty-one. Having sex under that age was common. The age of consent for heterosexual sex was sixteen. I told a few people about it but i was soon shut down. A lesbian feminist friend told me i couldn’t be raped as a man because rape was a differential based on power. Several people told me if i went to the police i would ruin his life. And my then best friend said i was liar who wanted attention.

I was raped in my late teens by a boyfriend who domestically abused me for two years—sexually, physically, psychologically, emotionally and economically. People knew our relationship was problematic and yet no one said a word. We were a golden couple of nineteen- and twenty-year-old gay men in 1985 living out in public who other people looked up to. No one wanted to address the fact that I sometimes had a black eye or that he physically dragged me by the neck down two flights of stairs in a gay club. Several people told me he was a lovely handsome man and he wouldn’t be so mean to me if I wasn’t such a bitch.

The thing is, rape, abuse, violence don’t take place invisibly. People know. They always have. They choose to not engage. Not join the dots. Not to speak to the victims or the perpetrators. In the Cornell University rape case, 57 men were in the group chat called “Free Pussy” but not one of them ruined the chat by speaking out. No one texted the police or the university authorities, let alone step in to defend the victim.

But lets not pretend as anarchists that we posses a special rape-free community where no one is abused. I can think of two anarchist women who told me they were raped by other anarchists. I can think of anarchists who punched their domestic partners in the face. I can think of multiple people who knew about it and no consequences occurred

I can also think of fucked up processes for accountability organised by anarchists, when it ends up being a whispering campaign with no trial. When someone is punished, but the police get involved and the people dealing out the justice end up being investigated rather than the rapist. I can also think of people accused of rape but not given a right to even defend themselves, because we must always believe the victim. Or when self appointed jurors cop out during the process, leaving no restorative justice for anyone.

So how do we as intersectional anarchists create a world where victims are believed, but ensure due process is observed? Can we feasibly create structures to address violence whilst ensuring we don’t descend to bike-lock justice based on rumour? How do we address the silence in our community over the victims of domestic violence? Cis men benefit from the structures of patriarchy and the protection they give each other from the benefit of the doubt to flat out denials. But women, trans and non-binary people are not immune from backing the boys against the rest in the name of group cohesion and not grassing people up to the pigs.

As a rape victim and domestic violence survivor, I know only too well how often people are cowards. How they choose to look away or actively silence people who rock the boat. Reputation and good standing are endlessly used to protect guilty people, especially cis men. Its ‘reputation’ and ‘good standing’ that enabled the spycops to invade and rape anarchist women in the 90s.

Meanwhile Bridget Phillipson the equality minister has announced that refuges cannot be used by trans women escaping rape or domestic violence whilst not establishing any new refuges for trans, non-binary or intersex people. You see it is all interlinked. The violence meted out largely by cis men to women, trans and non-binary people can’t simply be ignored by safeguarding cis women alone. Remember the transphobic defender of women and girls in chief—J . K. Rowldemort—has not tweeted once about the Cornell7 rape cases. Not once!  But unlike her and the government of cowards and bigots our responses must be inclusive and acknowledge all the victims. Yes. The cis male victims too. We cant simply ignore that most murdered trans women die at the hands of people they know, whilst most rape victims know their rapists. It’s systemic, it’s intersectional, and it’s happening every day.

When was the last time your affinity group, chat group, zine or mates had a serious conversation about consent, anger management, violence? Rape and domestic violence don’t just happen to other people. They are happening now. The effect of being raped and then abused for two years left me with significant trust issues that still reverberates with me today. But knowing they got away with it is what really haunts me.

Is your comrade a rapist? Do they beat up their partner? Are you covering up for someone’s behaviour? Stopping sexual and domestic violence is an anarchist issue. Silence is complicity, comrade.