there's our catastrophe

Anonymous asked: The details you speak of about Ben not revealing his infection with HPV are completely spirious. HPV is a virus that is pervasive in human populations. Each person is bathed in HPV. You could scrape your skin and find hundreds present. The fact is everyone is infected with these virus and over 80% of sexually active women (and men) will be infected with a high risk strain. There is no way a man could (or would) be tested or know of the particular strains he is infected with.

context (is a poster campaign publicly naming Sydney-based rapist Benjamin McCullagh-Dennis). 

I know this.  A number of other people have addressed this directly; my understanding is that the people involved in Rape Is Real have since chosen to de-emphasise Ben’s HPV. 

I am always concerned by misinformation around STIs.  I just didn’t think that in this context, and given the way it was framed, going HAM on that issue was worth distracting from outing a repeat sexual predator who has gotten away with this shit for years.  I can’t fucking believe that this is your biggest concern here.  You’re making out like this is some schoolyard gossip about boy germs.  Check your priorities. 

MORE INFORMATION ABOUT BENJAMIN McCULLUGH-DENNIS, RAPIST

everythingbutharleyquinn:

So I got in touch with Molly, the woman who was raped by Benjamin McCullugh-Dennis as she made it clear she had little support from the community at large in what she was doing so I wanted to indicate my support to her as well as my willingness to be involved in spreading information/postering around Newtown and such. 

Through her and information that has been posted at the rapeisreal.wordpress.com (I strongly encourage you to visit that link and read her story, with a major TW for horrible rape and abuse) blog by others as well as in the various reblogs and comments on tumblr, certain things have been revealed that I think it is important to compile for easy, clear reference as it will be of interest to anyone who maintains doubts about Molly’s methods, Ben’s character and the situation in general, as well of interest to those who are invested in opposing rape culture and supporting a survivor.  Molly has read this post and has given me permission to post this information for the knowledge of the general public. A general trigger warning for rape, whorephobia and rape apologism.

• Ben admitted in writing to the rape as Molly described it happening. Molly has records of this.
• Other women have also come forward since with similar stories of rape and sexual assault by Ben.
• It has come to light that Ben raped a sex worker he was dating.
• Furthermore he told that sex worker he raped her because she is a sex worker and he felt threatened by that and needed to “prove” himself. When this was told to his community by the survivor, they said they didn’t think he would say or do something like that, further disbelieving the survivor in favour of Ben.
• Furthermore, he indicated to the sex worker that if she went to the police, he would out her as a sex worker, something that would negatively impact her life to a very high degree. Ben knew that and took advantage of that to have his rape of her suppressed. The anarchist community knows about this.
• The anarchist community closest to Ben have told Molly that if she proceeds with criminal charges (a police report has been filed), they will consider supporting Ben in lying about the rape, even though they were witness to Ben confessing to the rape. Ostensibly this is because they object in principle to prisons and police**.
• Molly is an anarchist and a Woman of Colour from a poor background. She is also opposed to the justice system on principle and has been involved for years in activism against it, including having organised against the jail system, organised for prisoner support, and organised against police brutality and taught cop-watch training. She also has a family history with the jail system.. Her decision to utilise the justice system in this instance is therefore informed and aware and comes from a  long and serious ACTIVE engagement with the justice system that is based on an actual critique of power and privilege. 
• Ben is a white, cis male from an upper-middle class background, who has no physical or mental health issues, no dependents and no criminal history. Molly’s decision in reporting Ben came fully alongside knowing his sex, race, and class privilege and she has stated that if he didn’t occupy even one of these very real privileges, she would have seriously re-considered her decision. 
• The accountability process was initiated 2 and a half years ago, but Ben broke his agreements. Ben agreed to be a part of it again recently and then went overseas to avoid having to deal with it. Ben has agreed to participate in the process yet again and has then consistently avoided it and gone back on his word.
• An anarchist community won’t support a survivor going to the cops to report rape but doesn’t blink twice at a cis white man participating in capitalism to the degree he can up and GO OVERSEAS at a moment’s notice to escape the heat of his violent action?? UM??? Ben’s family is also able to offer him money whenever he needs it/asks for it and he has a stable job with a steady income and is a permanent resident meaning he can access government assistance.
• Molly, meanwhile, has physical health issues, is mixed race,  comes from a poor family who is unable to offer her financial support, is a stranger in this country in the process of trying to immigrate and therefore cannot work or access government assistance or medical care, has been seeing a therapist through CASA which was a limit of six sessions which have now completed so has no access to therapy either and is female.  These obvious power and privilege inequities play a key role both in how this situation played out originally and how it is being treated by the community now.
• When he went overseas, Molly contacted the places he was staying to advise local  women/trans/queer communities of what had happened so they could protect themselves by choosing what degree of contact they had with Ben. Someone in the Sydney anarchist scene actually told her she was endangering women who chose to be close to him because Ben might face retaliatory violence when he was out socially with them.
• Ben has behaved roughly and rudely as a client to at least one sex worker in Sydney, a different sex worker to the one he was dating. He did not negotiate rough service with the sex worker and did not apologise for the way he treated her. Bluntly, I think how a man treats his hooker says a LOT about his character overall.
• Several people who have been pierced by him say that he made inappropriate sexual advances during the process (in which Ben was acting ostensibly as a professional…) and made them feel uncomfortable, including underage girls.
• Ben has initiated sex with at least one client while offering to give her “aftercare.”
• Ben has currently gone on holiday again to avoid dealing with the heat, breaking his agreements to the process yet again. Despite the fact no violent action has been taken or incited, he is provoking pity and sympathy from the community by recentering himself once again by expressing he “fears for [his] safety”. Please also note his significant privilege in being able to remove himself at a moment’s notice. He has been supported by the anarchist community to do this.
• After 2 and a half years of Ben not participating in the accountability process as he agreed to do, alongside the anarchist community advising her that they would stand by Ben over her, Molly finally took drastic action by publicly outing Ben. She did this to WARN OTHER WOMEN ABOUT BEN’S BEHAVIOUR so that we can choose if we interact with him in the future, for our own safety, as he’s repeatedly targeted women for sexual coercion and rape. This was pro-active community-focused action in the interests of disseminating information for the greater good. Whilst I disagree with the specific way the revelation of his HPV status and consequent discussion and focus on that was taken, the information that Ben is a violent rapist is incredibly important for women who may find him in their life.

** I personally believe this is bullshit and is being used as an excuse to continue to support Ben over Molly due to his status in the community. I do not, generally speaking, support the police or the prison system, but I support a survivor always in principle as commitment to my own history and my ethics, and because survivors are generally so minimised and deprioritised overall I believe fostering their autonomy in how they decide to address the assault they were forced to is part of actively recentering them and opposing rape culture.

I also think more complicated dynamics are at work here given Molly is a Woman of Colour calling for support from a community that purports to be focused on the elimination of oppression and yet will actively conspire against someone based on an ideology that does not affect them practically along equal lines. People of Colour face exponentially more discrimination from the judicial system and police than white people (which Sydney anarchist community is predominantly composed of) and yet Molly, as a survivor of violent rape and abuse, wishes to avail herself of that system in an effort to take charge and control of her rape and remove a manipulative serial offender from being able to hurt more women. The Sydney anarchist community would seem to prefer to protect a white man out of a purported loyalty to their political ideology than support a Woman of Colour who faces actual oppression through misogyny, racism, homophobia (as she is queer-identified) classism and ableism. Whether intentional or not, they are therefore engaging in racist and misogynistic action by reinforcing the status quo that the concerns of women come after all else and the concerns of WOC come absolutely last, while the concerns of white men remain dominant. How is this radical or genuinely focused towards anti-oppression principles? No one has any love for the “justice” system but standing against it solely to protect a white man who serially rapes women instead of standing beside someone who faces far greater oppression than he along intersectional lines of race, class and sex, which he knowingly exploited in order to rape her, seems to be incredibly ineffective for those for whom anti-oppression is a complex and layered matter, not to mention racist and sexist.

It has also emerged that Ben got a swastika tattoo under the pretension he was “reclaiming” its “original meaning”. As a white person I DEMAND fellow white people to seriously examine why they feel a compelling need to use this symbol in any way shape or form, regardless of its long and checkered history, precisely because its most recent history is one so tainted with abhorrent, vile, reprehensible racism to the point that symbol can literally not be seen without calling to mind the Nazi Holocaust as well as neo-Nazism and skinheads, practitioners of which continue to perpetuate acts of terrible racist violence against People of Colour to this day. THERE IS NO EXCUSE NOR REASON OF ANY KIND FOR A WHITE PERSON TO GET A SWASTIKA TATTOO and no matter what that person says their motivation is I will assume they are racist because they are putting their own egos and self-interest ahead of the associated and inseparable history of that symbol. The tattoo has apparently now been removed or covered up but this is an example of Ben’s general failure to check his privilege and how he engages in racist behaviour alongside his abusive ones. 

Finally, it should be noted that many people who know/knew Ben are unanimous in having a generally high opinion of him, find him charming, friendly, decent, kind, etc. Ben is not a bogeyman. He is not a moustache-twirling villain. He’s just a guy, like many other guys, who has successfully concealed his abusive behaviour to the point other people refuse to believe he is capable of it, even when he says himself that he has done what he’s been accused of doing. This is not at all unusual in these situations when well-respected or high-status figures in a community are exposed for abuse, rape or pedophilia. This doesn’t mean that underneath it all these guys are demons in human skin, evil people who plot and plan their acts of heinous assault the way a comic book villain plots their world domination scheme.

It means rapists literally can be and are anyone. That even nice guys rape. That even politically sensitive people can be abusive fuckwits. That what creates a rapist or an abuser is systemic and intersects absolutely with misogyny and sexism, as well as racism, ableism, classism, etc.  It means we have to let go of our ideas that rapists can be identified on sight , that they are strangers and outsiders and realise that our friends may be rapists, that they may have raped people that we know and care for, that they are part of our social circles.  

And in realising all of this – believe and prioritise the survivor who is brave enough to come forward.

So if after all this, you still feel Ben should cut a break or that we need to be thinking about him, or that Molly did the wrong thing outing him so publicly, or that people haven’t been incredibly fucked in how they’ve dealt with this and responded to it, or that Ben still needs to tell his side of the story (as stated above – he has – and it was in accordance with Molly’s testimony) or that this sort of action is “dangerous” - look, there’s no hope for you. And you’re a rapist apologist asshole. And we have nothing to say to each other.

The rest of you, spread this information around. People deserve to know.

AND START SUPPORTING MOLLY IN WHAT SHE HAS STATED SHE WANTS AND NEEDS FROM THE COMMUNITY.

And if you want to support Molly? TELL HER you support her. Sometimes the most important thing for a survivor is to know they have been heard and believed. Get in touch with her at rapeisreal.wordpress.com and leave her a message of support and faith.

in things that are making me nauseous

some word has reached me about how the big names in the Sydney anarchist community are responding to this rape and I think you should all be fucking ashamed of yourselves. 

the only thing I can say without spiralling into invective is that if you are worried about how the survivor making his actions public is making one Benjamin McCullagh-Dennis “uncomfortable and defensive” (!), perhaps you should a) consider that he has had over three years to accommodate her earlier requests, and this was a last resort and b) remove yourself from the situation and cut ties with this dude, because you are way too close to him, and he is manipulating you to avoid having to face consequences for his actions, just like he’s been doing for the last 3+ years. 

not identifying you because, ironically, of concerns about the productivity of shaming in this context, but for real, if you think “shaming can be just as damaging as sexual assault itself” is a sentence that even makes sense then you have either gone way off the deep end of anarcho-hippy misogyny-coddling subcultural tunnel vision, or never moved away from mainstream rape culture to begin with, although truth be told the distinction is only of academic interest.