With the online discourse swirling around the Cornell Seven, I had to respond to a fediverse post where a person had announced that the only reasonable response to the situation was to ban all fraternities. That response is odd enough on its own, but what truly takes it to eye-rolling territory is that it was a self described anarchist that wrote it.
I quote posted the toot and pointed out that the right to association is still a thing, which under US law falls under the first amendment. I’m not one to shirk my responsibility and added that maybe the place where I’d start my reforms would be the privatised police force that answers to the University, rather than the people.
I chose to quote post, because, for whatever reason, there is a cultural quirk on the fediverse where some servers believe that responding to a person’s public post, no matter how outrageous or intellectually dishonest it might be, constitutes as harassment. I’m sure there are reasons for this custom, but before quote posting, it certainly seemed to be weaponised for the worst of takes to construe critique as attack. My take was that trying to ban the right of association was disproportionate as well as ineffective was not well received.
So of course this nutter, sorry, anarchist, replies to me and calls me a rape apologist. I told them “try and be a better person” to which they have not responded. I thought I’d further explain my thinking here because I wanted to be thorough, but also because I want my response to remain for posterity. To wit: anarchists, your politics is terrible.
There’s a certain irony in anarchists, those brave few who would dismantle the yoke of unjust authority would in turn demand the suppression of the right to assembly as the solution to sexual assault. One can’t help but think if your response is the denial of bodily autonomy is mass denial of bodily autonomy – you may have missed the point.
This is my point, if you want to change the culture around sexual assault, you might want to have systems that are incentivised to consistently punish perpetrators and to support victims, as opposed to protecting the institution that they are situated in. This is the issue, that the privatised police forces that plague the US don’t serve the people, even nominally, they are explicitly in the employ of the non-democratic institutions that hire them. There is a perverse incentive to protect the institution above and beyond the people in that institution.
But for anarchists, the contradiction of wanting to dismantle a system of power and replace it with their own vision of oppressive authority does not burden them. Indeed, why not use the tragedy of a violent gang rape as a shield for their own politics, and as a sword to attack anyone who would dare to disagree with them. Their motivation is certainly not to make the world safer for women, because if it was, you might have a police force that serves women, and not the university board. So to all the anarchists of the world, my advice to you remains unchanged, try and be a better people.