We are a nation that consigns people to lives of poverty because they got sick, injured, of had a mental health issue at the wrong moment in their careers or education and never got back on track.
My cares for whether there is a “path back” for these fuckers is way, way down the list. A lot better human beings have had to work minimum wage for the rest of their lives because of shit luck that wasn’t even their fault.
It also bears repeating that more often than not the people who are recognized for their abuse tend to continue in their existing careers or successfully pivot to something adjacent.
This is incredibly important, and often overlooked.
Whenever anyone whines about "Cancel Culture" I want to pull my hair out. The only people who ever suffer from calling out abusers are the victims.
The abusers themselves bounce back in record time, and no one cares about their abuses.
sooner or later, and hopefully sooner, somehow our society needs to figure out how to deal with people who have been outed as abusers. if nothing else the last few years should have shown that there is a lot of abusers out there.
I don't have an answer but I know for a fact that just going "fuck em' who cares" doesn't work. there's too many people who are abusers. unless the answer is to literally just kill them outright then the fact that they still exist in society has to be dealt with somehow. for example, blacklisting an abuser out of their industry seems morally right to me. but somehow that abuser must be able to find work of some kind to the point of being able to keep themselves alive. otherwise that blacklisting actually is just a death sentence that everyone is too cowardly to actually own up to.
throughout nearly all of human history the answer to this problem was banishment or outlawing. it was possible to remove someone from a community without killing them. that is no longer an option. and it was never a great solution as nothing was stopping the banished from moving to another community and continuing whatever behavior that got them in trouble in the first place.
if nothing else, publicly outing abusers seems a good and necessary first step. but what comes next is tricky. for example it would be an enormous good if all the outed abusers in the games industry were somehow blacklisted and unable to work in that industry ever again. there are so many people who aren't abusers, including the victims of said abuse, ready to take their place. but what happens next. if the answer is something like "well they get a job at McDonalds / as a janitor / as some other low status job" then really all we are doing is removing abusers from high status jobs and high status victims and dumping them on people who already have enough shit to deal with.
Nobody is saying "fuck them". What people are pointing out is that abusers are not owed their high status in society, and if they lose that status due to their own conduct, that's on their head. The problem with the "rehabilitation narrative" is that it too often prioritizes the welfare of the abuser over the welfare of victims, and argues that an abuser's fall from grace (which, as several people have pointed out, is rarely as total as made out to be) is the fault of the community.
Maybe we should worry more about the victims. Because when we get past the fantasy of the abuser forever shunned, what you see is that a huge percentage return to their careers quietly while the accusers see their careers wither and die.
I mean, this is like round three for Mel Gibson. Brian Wood still gets work. I imagine I’ll see Avellone’s name pop up in credits again in a year or two.
in what way would worrying about the victims change the fact that Mel Gibson and Brian Wood still get work? What does "worry more about the victims" actually even mean here? Believing them? Ok no prob. But for anyone just following along on twitter that's a very "thoughts and prayers" kind of thing.
Arguing with those who don't believe the victim? Sure ok maybe but I don't know how much good it is trying to convince twitter randos but it's something.
Not buying or consuming media they have created? Probably a good idea but gets tricky in cases where the media was the product of many innocent peoples' labor as well as the abuser. Have to figure that out on a case by case basis.
If you happen to be in a position where it is possible, refusing to work with the absuer / cut them off etc... ? Now that seems like a positive thing to do for the few people in a position to do so (compared to the number of spectators on social media). But that is what you are saying is "the fantasy of the abuser forever shunned" and that we should be worrying more about the victims instead.
Maybe we should worry more about the victims. Because when we get past the fantasy of the abuser forever shunned, what you see is that a huge percentage return to their careers quietly while the accusers see their careers wither and die.
I mean, this is like round three for Mel Gibson. Brian Wood still gets work. I imagine I’ll see Avellone’s name pop up in credits again in a year or two.
in what way would worrying about the victims change the fact that Mel Gibson and Brian Wood still get work? What does "worry more about the victims" actually even mean here? Believing them? Ok no prob. But for anyone just following along on twitter that's a very "thoughts and prayers" kind of thing.
Arguing with those who don't believe the victim? Sure ok maybe but I don't know how much good it is trying to convince twitter randos but it's something.
Not buying or consuming media they have created? Probably a good idea but gets tricky in cases where the media was the product of many innocent peoples' labor as well as the abuser. Have to figure that out on a case by case basis.
If you happen to be in a position where it is possible, refusing to work with the absuer / cut them off etc... ? Now that seems like a positive thing to do for the few people in a position to do so (compared to the number of spectators on social media). But that is what you are saying is "the fantasy of the abuser forever shunned" and that we should be worrying more about the victims instead.
So how does that work?
The first step is to show more concern over the welfare of victims than the welfare of their abusers. Too often, victims find themselves isolated from the communities they belong to because the community gets more concerned about what will happen to the abuser rather than what is happening to their victims.
sooner or later, and hopefully sooner, somehow our society needs to figure out how to deal with people who have been outed as abusers. if nothing else the last few years should have shown that there is a lot of abusers out there.
I don't have an answer but I know for a fact that just going "fuck em' who cares" doesn't work. there's too many people who are abusers. unless the answer is to literally just kill them outright then the fact that they still exist in society has to be dealt with somehow. for example, blacklisting an abuser out of their industry seems morally right to me. but somehow that abuser must be able to find work of some kind to the point of being able to keep themselves alive. otherwise that blacklisting actually is just a death sentence that everyone is too cowardly to actually own up to.
throughout nearly all of human history the answer to this problem was banishment or outlawing. it was possible to remove someone from a community without killing them. that is no longer an option. and it was never a great solution as nothing was stopping the banished from moving to another community and continuing whatever behavior that got them in trouble in the first place.
if nothing else, publicly outing abusers seems a good and necessary first step. but what comes next is tricky. for example it would be an enormous good if all the outed abusers in the games industry were somehow blacklisted and unable to work in that industry ever again. there are so many people who aren't abusers, including the victims of said abuse, ready to take their place. but what happens next. if the answer is something like "well they get a job at McDonalds / as a janitor / as some other low status job" then really all we are doing is removing abusers from high status jobs and high status victims and dumping them on people who already have enough shit to deal with.
Nobody is saying "fuck them". What people are pointing out is that abusers are not owed their high status in society, and if they lose that status due to their own conduct, that's on their head. The problem with the "rehabilitation narrative" is that it too often prioritizes the welfare of the abuser over the welfare of victims, and argues that an abuser's fall from grace (which, as several people have pointed out, is rarely as total as made out to be) is the fault of the community.
why did you quote my post for this reply? Because it seems almost entirely orthogonal. I never even hinted at a rehabiliation of these people. Some of them cannot be rehabiliated no matter what. But they still exist and so must be dealt with somehow. There is nowhere to banish them to and there is an understandable reluctance to just kill them. As I said, and you ignored, removing them from their high status jobs seems like a good thing. But what you also ignored was the question of what happens after. Is that just moving abusers into more invisible low status jobs where they (like the people already in such jobs) can be more easily ignored?
Maybe we should worry more about the victims. Because when we get past the fantasy of the abuser forever shunned, what you see is that a huge percentage return to their careers quietly while the accusers see their careers wither and die.
I mean, this is like round three for Mel Gibson. Brian Wood still gets work. I imagine I’ll see Avellone’s name pop up in credits again in a year or two.
in what way would worrying about the victims change the fact that Mel Gibson and Brian Wood still get work? What does "worry more about the victims" actually even mean here? Believing them? Ok no prob. But for anyone just following along on twitter that's a very "thoughts and prayers" kind of thing.
Arguing with those who don't believe the victim? Sure ok maybe but I don't know how much good it is trying to convince twitter randos but it's something.
Not buying or consuming media they have created? Probably a good idea but gets tricky in cases where the media was the product of many innocent peoples' labor as well as the abuser. Have to figure that out on a case by case basis.
If you happen to be in a position where it is possible, refusing to work with the absuer / cut them off etc... ? Now that seems like a positive thing to do for the few people in a position to do so (compared to the number of spectators on social media). But that is what you are saying is "the fantasy of the abuser forever shunned" and that we should be worrying more about the victims instead.
So how does that work?
The first step is to show more concern over the welfare of victims than the welfare of their abusers. Too often, victims find themselves isolated from the communities they belong to because the community gets more concerned about what will happen to the abuser rather than what is happening to their victims.
again, you seem to be quoting posts and then typing things that sound nice but are not related to the thing you are quoting.
Maybe we should worry more about the victims. Because when we get past the fantasy of the abuser forever shunned, what you see is that a huge percentage return to their careers quietly while the accusers see their careers wither and die.
I mean, this is like round three for Mel Gibson. Brian Wood still gets work. I imagine I’ll see Avellone’s name pop up in credits again in a year or two.
in what way would worrying about the victims change the fact that Mel Gibson and Brian Wood still get work? What does "worry more about the victims" actually even mean here? Believing them? Ok no prob. But for anyone just following along on twitter that's a very "thoughts and prayers" kind of thing.
Arguing with those who don't believe the victim? Sure ok maybe but I don't know how much good it is trying to convince twitter randos but it's something.
Not buying or consuming media they have created? Probably a good idea but gets tricky in cases where the media was the product of many innocent peoples' labor as well as the abuser. Have to figure that out on a case by case basis.
If you happen to be in a position where it is possible, refusing to work with the absuer / cut them off etc... ? Now that seems like a positive thing to do for the few people in a position to do so (compared to the number of spectators on social media). But that is what you are saying is "the fantasy of the abuser forever shunned" and that we should be worrying more about the victims instead.
So how does that work?
The first step is to show more concern over the welfare of victims than the welfare of their abusers. Too often, victims find themselves isolated from the communities they belong to because the community gets more concerned about what will happen to the abuser rather than what is happening to their victims.
again, you seem to be quoting posts and then typing things that sound nice but are not related to the thing you are quoting.
Your posts illustrate the problem, because you're more concerned about where the abuser winds up than what happens with the victims. If an abuser can no longer get high status work, why exactly is that a problem that demands our attention? Again, this is one of the major flaws of the "rehabilitation narrative", that the abuser is now somehow society's problem, and as such society is somehow obligated to work with them for their rehabilitation. Society does need to provide the tools for rehabilitation, but beyond that, the onus of improvement is on the abuser. Meanwhile, no concern is shown for the victims - as I pointed out, they are too often pressured into being co-opted into the "rehabilitation" of their abuser.
So before we start spitballing about the plight of the poor starving abuser, how about we first address the very real problems that their victims routinely suffer after everything comes out.
Maybe we should worry more about the victims. Because when we get past the fantasy of the abuser forever shunned, what you see is that a huge percentage return to their careers quietly while the accusers see their careers wither and die.
I mean, this is like round three for Mel Gibson. Brian Wood still gets work. I imagine I’ll see Avellone’s name pop up in credits again in a year or two.
in what way would worrying about the victims change the fact that Mel Gibson and Brian Wood still get work? What does "worry more about the victims" actually even mean here? Believing them? Ok no prob. But for anyone just following along on twitter that's a very "thoughts and prayers" kind of thing.
Arguing with those who don't believe the victim? Sure ok maybe but I don't know how much good it is trying to convince twitter randos but it's something.
Not buying or consuming media they have created? Probably a good idea but gets tricky in cases where the media was the product of many innocent peoples' labor as well as the abuser. Have to figure that out on a case by case basis.
If you happen to be in a position where it is possible, refusing to work with the absuer / cut them off etc... ? Now that seems like a positive thing to do for the few people in a position to do so (compared to the number of spectators on social media). But that is what you are saying is "the fantasy of the abuser forever shunned" and that we should be worrying more about the victims instead.
So how does that work?
The first step is to show more concern over the welfare of victims than the welfare of their abusers. Too often, victims find themselves isolated from the communities they belong to because the community gets more concerned about what will happen to the abuser rather than what is happening to their victims.
I think everyone is here is for the most part, in agreement in how we feel about the victims. There isn't a lot of debate and discourse to be had there. I don't think people need to post a paragraph about how much they care about the victims as a prelude to discussing the part everyone would like to debate about (the aggressors). And I don't think it's fair to say that because we want to discuss the aggressors, that that somehow makes us care less about the victims.
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Kane Red RobeMaster of MagicArcanusRegistered Userregular
Maybe we should worry more about the victims. Because when we get past the fantasy of the abuser forever shunned, what you see is that a huge percentage return to their careers quietly while the accusers see their careers wither and die.
I mean, this is like round three for Mel Gibson. Brian Wood still gets work. I imagine I’ll see Avellone’s name pop up in credits again in a year or two.
in what way would worrying about the victims change the fact that Mel Gibson and Brian Wood still get work? What does "worry more about the victims" actually even mean here? Believing them? Ok no prob. But for anyone just following along on twitter that's a very "thoughts and prayers" kind of thing.
Arguing with those who don't believe the victim? Sure ok maybe but I don't know how much good it is trying to convince twitter randos but it's something.
Not buying or consuming media they have created? Probably a good idea but gets tricky in cases where the media was the product of many innocent peoples' labor as well as the abuser. Have to figure that out on a case by case basis.
If you happen to be in a position where it is possible, refusing to work with the absuer / cut them off etc... ? Now that seems like a positive thing to do for the few people in a position to do so (compared to the number of spectators on social media). But that is what you are saying is "the fantasy of the abuser forever shunned" and that we should be worrying more about the victims instead.
So how does that work?
The first step is to show more concern over the welfare of victims than the welfare of their abusers. Too often, victims find themselves isolated from the communities they belong to because the community gets more concerned about what will happen to the abuser rather than what is happening to their victims.
I think everyone is here is for the most part, in agreement in how we feel about the victims. There isn't a lot of debate and discourse to be had there. I don't think people need to post a paragraph about how much they care about the victims as a prelude to discussing the part everyone would like to debate about (the aggressors). And I don't think it's fair to say that because we want to discuss the aggressors, that that somehow makes us care less about the victims.
It sure seems like we do because these threads always seem to derail into hand-wringing about how unfair it is to shun abusers forever.
Which is especially bullshit given abusers always seem to suffer less than the people speaking out against them.
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SummaryJudgmentGrab the hottest iron you can find, stride in the Tower’s front doorRegistered Userregular
Maybe we should worry more about the victims. Because when we get past the fantasy of the abuser forever shunned, what you see is that a huge percentage return to their careers quietly while the accusers see their careers wither and die.
I mean, this is like round three for Mel Gibson. Brian Wood still gets work. I imagine I’ll see Avellone’s name pop up in credits again in a year or two.
in what way would worrying about the victims change the fact that Mel Gibson and Brian Wood still get work? What does "worry more about the victims" actually even mean here? Believing them? Ok no prob. But for anyone just following along on twitter that's a very "thoughts and prayers" kind of thing.
Arguing with those who don't believe the victim? Sure ok maybe but I don't know how much good it is trying to convince twitter randos but it's something.
Not buying or consuming media they have created? Probably a good idea but gets tricky in cases where the media was the product of many innocent peoples' labor as well as the abuser. Have to figure that out on a case by case basis.
If you happen to be in a position where it is possible, refusing to work with the absuer / cut them off etc... ? Now that seems like a positive thing to do for the few people in a position to do so (compared to the number of spectators on social media). But that is what you are saying is "the fantasy of the abuser forever shunned" and that we should be worrying more about the victims instead.
So how does that work?
The first step is to show more concern over the welfare of victims than the welfare of their abusers. Too often, victims find themselves isolated from the communities they belong to because the community gets more concerned about what will happen to the abuser rather than what is happening to their victims.
again, you seem to be quoting posts and then typing things that sound nice but are not related to the thing you are quoting.
Your posts illustrate the problem, because you're more concerned about where the abuser winds up than what happens with the victims. If an abuser can no longer get high status work, why exactly is that a problem that demands our attention? Again, this is one of the major flaws of the "rehabilitation narrative", that the abuser is now somehow society's problem, and as such society is somehow obligated to work with them for their rehabilitation. Society does need to provide the tools for rehabilitation, but beyond that, the onus of improvement is on the abuser. Meanwhile, no concern is shown for the victims - as I pointed out, they are too often pressured into being co-opted into the "rehabilitation" of their abuser.
So before we start spitballing about the plight of the poor starving abuser, how about we first address the very real problems that their victims routinely suffer after everything comes out.
This is bullshit, Riemann is contending (among other things) you're just shifting the abuser onto low-status work where they can continue to prey on people, and under conditions where victims have less agency to fight back.
He's directly mentioning the problems victims suffer and you're pointedly ignoring that.
Some days Blue wonders why anyone ever bothered making numbers so small; other days she supposes even infinity needs to start somewhere.
I suspect that anyone who would be capable of engaging in serious debate about what should happen to the victims of abuse would probably have been banned from these forums years ago. We talk about abusers because there's actually something to discuss there.
Maybe we should worry more about the victims. Because when we get past the fantasy of the abuser forever shunned, what you see is that a huge percentage return to their careers quietly while the accusers see their careers wither and die.
I mean, this is like round three for Mel Gibson. Brian Wood still gets work. I imagine I’ll see Avellone’s name pop up in credits again in a year or two.
in what way would worrying about the victims change the fact that Mel Gibson and Brian Wood still get work? What does "worry more about the victims" actually even mean here? Believing them? Ok no prob. But for anyone just following along on twitter that's a very "thoughts and prayers" kind of thing.
Arguing with those who don't believe the victim? Sure ok maybe but I don't know how much good it is trying to convince twitter randos but it's something.
Not buying or consuming media they have created? Probably a good idea but gets tricky in cases where the media was the product of many innocent peoples' labor as well as the abuser. Have to figure that out on a case by case basis.
If you happen to be in a position where it is possible, refusing to work with the absuer / cut them off etc... ? Now that seems like a positive thing to do for the few people in a position to do so (compared to the number of spectators on social media). But that is what you are saying is "the fantasy of the abuser forever shunned" and that we should be worrying more about the victims instead.
So how does that work?
The first step is to show more concern over the welfare of victims than the welfare of their abusers. Too often, victims find themselves isolated from the communities they belong to because the community gets more concerned about what will happen to the abuser rather than what is happening to their victims.
again, you seem to be quoting posts and then typing things that sound nice but are not related to the thing you are quoting.
Your posts illustrate the problem, because you're more concerned about where the abuser winds up than what happens with the victims. If an abuser can no longer get high status work, why exactly is that a problem that demands our attention? Again, this is one of the major flaws of the "rehabilitation narrative", that the abuser is now somehow society's problem, and as such society is somehow obligated to work with them for their rehabilitation. Society does need to provide the tools for rehabilitation, but beyond that, the onus of improvement is on the abuser. Meanwhile, no concern is shown for the victims - as I pointed out, they are too often pressured into being co-opted into the "rehabilitation" of their abuser.
So before we start spitballing about the plight of the poor starving abuser, how about we first address the very real problems that their victims routinely suffer after everything comes out.
You didn't even read Riemann's post.
Riemann's entire post was about the fact that "fuck abusers, they end up where they end up" strategy does not actually get rid of abusive people, and in fact still allows them to prey on people when they inevitably find work elsewhere, whether in the industry or just wherever. There was absolutely no handwringing about how abusers should be treated better or real concern with how they end up, except for the caveat that just straight up exiling them to starve to death is probably not morally palatable. They were basically saying "y'know, maybe we should actually figure out a good way to enforce consequences or better behavior longer term", which is the exact opposite of being concerned about how they end up.
Better support structures for victims, better reporting, more people believing victims, etc. are all very important, but given how often this thread correctly points out cancelling people doesn't seem to stick, it seems like focusing on how to actually ensure abusers do not do future harm is a pretty important angle to consider.
Maybe we should worry more about the victims. Because when we get past the fantasy of the abuser forever shunned, what you see is that a huge percentage return to their careers quietly while the accusers see their careers wither and die.
I mean, this is like round three for Mel Gibson. Brian Wood still gets work. I imagine I’ll see Avellone’s name pop up in credits again in a year or two.
in what way would worrying about the victims change the fact that Mel Gibson and Brian Wood still get work? What does "worry more about the victims" actually even mean here? Believing them? Ok no prob. But for anyone just following along on twitter that's a very "thoughts and prayers" kind of thing.
Arguing with those who don't believe the victim? Sure ok maybe but I don't know how much good it is trying to convince twitter randos but it's something.
Not buying or consuming media they have created? Probably a good idea but gets tricky in cases where the media was the product of many innocent peoples' labor as well as the abuser. Have to figure that out on a case by case basis.
If you happen to be in a position where it is possible, refusing to work with the absuer / cut them off etc... ? Now that seems like a positive thing to do for the few people in a position to do so (compared to the number of spectators on social media). But that is what you are saying is "the fantasy of the abuser forever shunned" and that we should be worrying more about the victims instead.
So how does that work?
The first step is to show more concern over the welfare of victims than the welfare of their abusers. Too often, victims find themselves isolated from the communities they belong to because the community gets more concerned about what will happen to the abuser rather than what is happening to their victims.
again, you seem to be quoting posts and then typing things that sound nice but are not related to the thing you are quoting.
Your posts illustrate the problem, because you're more concerned about where the abuser winds up than what happens with the victims. If an abuser can no longer get high status work, why exactly is that a problem that demands our attention? Again, this is one of the major flaws of the "rehabilitation narrative", that the abuser is now somehow society's problem, and as such society is somehow obligated to work with them for their rehabilitation. Society does need to provide the tools for rehabilitation, but beyond that, the onus of improvement is on the abuser. Meanwhile, no concern is shown for the victims - as I pointed out, they are too often pressured into being co-opted into the "rehabilitation" of their abuser.
So before we start spitballing about the plight of the poor starving abuser, how about we first address the very real problems that their victims routinely suffer after everything comes out.
This is bullshit, Riemann is contending (among other things) you're just shifting the abuser onto low-status work where they can continue to prey on people, and under conditions where victims have less agency to fight back.
He's directly mentioning the problems victims suffer and you're pointedly ignoring that.
The answer to abusers of every level is that we as a society need to stop giving them leeway, no matter where they sit. But beyond that, the argument that an abuser falling from grace (which, again, is more myth than fact) is somehow the fault of society is some gooseshit framing. Communities should not be obliged to keep abusers around out of some twisted idea of duty, and arguing that an abuser losing status and the privileges thereof is somehow "shifting" them off is nonsense.
And if we're going to discuss the problems victims face, we should be centering them in our discussions, and not just treating them as ancillary to the discussion of their abusers.
Maybe we should worry more about the victims. Because when we get past the fantasy of the abuser forever shunned, what you see is that a huge percentage return to their careers quietly while the accusers see their careers wither and die.
I mean, this is like round three for Mel Gibson. Brian Wood still gets work. I imagine I’ll see Avellone’s name pop up in credits again in a year or two.
in what way would worrying about the victims change the fact that Mel Gibson and Brian Wood still get work? What does "worry more about the victims" actually even mean here? Believing them? Ok no prob. But for anyone just following along on twitter that's a very "thoughts and prayers" kind of thing.
Arguing with those who don't believe the victim? Sure ok maybe but I don't know how much good it is trying to convince twitter randos but it's something.
Not buying or consuming media they have created? Probably a good idea but gets tricky in cases where the media was the product of many innocent peoples' labor as well as the abuser. Have to figure that out on a case by case basis.
If you happen to be in a position where it is possible, refusing to work with the absuer / cut them off etc... ? Now that seems like a positive thing to do for the few people in a position to do so (compared to the number of spectators on social media). But that is what you are saying is "the fantasy of the abuser forever shunned" and that we should be worrying more about the victims instead.
So how does that work?
The first step is to show more concern over the welfare of victims than the welfare of their abusers. Too often, victims find themselves isolated from the communities they belong to because the community gets more concerned about what will happen to the abuser rather than what is happening to their victims.
again, you seem to be quoting posts and then typing things that sound nice but are not related to the thing you are quoting.
Your posts illustrate the problem, because you're more concerned about where the abuser winds up than what happens with the victims. If an abuser can no longer get high status work, why exactly is that a problem that demands our attention? Again, this is one of the major flaws of the "rehabilitation narrative", that the abuser is now somehow society's problem, and as such society is somehow obligated to work with them for their rehabilitation. Society does need to provide the tools for rehabilitation, but beyond that, the onus of improvement is on the abuser. Meanwhile, no concern is shown for the victims - as I pointed out, they are too often pressured into being co-opted into the "rehabilitation" of their abuser.
So before we start spitballing about the plight of the poor starving abuser, how about we first address the very real problems that their victims routinely suffer after everything comes out.
Ok look you need to start actually reading posts here hedgie. You have this platonic ideal of a kind of post you really want to disagree with (which is understandable) but you are projecting it onto posts that don't actually say what you want them to say. You have not in any way even started to show that what I actually posted "illustrate the problem, because you're more concerned about where the abuser winds up than what happens with the victims".
If nothing else I want you to realize that never once have I talked about abusers behind rehabilitated. Or being allowed to keep their jobs. Or even being allowed to somehow make a comeback later (regardless of contrition).
You ask: "If an abuser can no longer get high status work, why exactly is that a problem that demands our attention?". First off it demands our attention (as in, society as at large, we gawking social media spectators) because it shouldn't it shouldn't be the responsibility of the attention of the victim. And yet there is an overwhelming number of posts in this thread that are in some way grappling with the question: "ok we believe the victim, what do we actually do next? What should happen next?"
You talk about "concern for the victims". What does that mean? I listed several things above that it could mean, perhaps, but that was in the post you ignored.
You, not I, keep talking about this issue of rehabilitation. Whether that is even possible it must be at some point in the future. Possibly the far distant future. What I am curious about is what happens in the meantime. Before you jump on that statement you should actually take a moment to read the first post I made last page rather than pulling out one of your scripts.
Maybe we should worry more about the victims. Because when we get past the fantasy of the abuser forever shunned, what you see is that a huge percentage return to their careers quietly while the accusers see their careers wither and die.
I mean, this is like round three for Mel Gibson. Brian Wood still gets work. I imagine I’ll see Avellone’s name pop up in credits again in a year or two.
in what way would worrying about the victims change the fact that Mel Gibson and Brian Wood still get work? What does "worry more about the victims" actually even mean here? Believing them? Ok no prob. But for anyone just following along on twitter that's a very "thoughts and prayers" kind of thing.
Arguing with those who don't believe the victim? Sure ok maybe but I don't know how much good it is trying to convince twitter randos but it's something.
Not buying or consuming media they have created? Probably a good idea but gets tricky in cases where the media was the product of many innocent peoples' labor as well as the abuser. Have to figure that out on a case by case basis.
If you happen to be in a position where it is possible, refusing to work with the absuer / cut them off etc... ? Now that seems like a positive thing to do for the few people in a position to do so (compared to the number of spectators on social media). But that is what you are saying is "the fantasy of the abuser forever shunned" and that we should be worrying more about the victims instead.
So how does that work?
The first step is to show more concern over the welfare of victims than the welfare of their abusers. Too often, victims find themselves isolated from the communities they belong to because the community gets more concerned about what will happen to the abuser rather than what is happening to their victims.
again, you seem to be quoting posts and then typing things that sound nice but are not related to the thing you are quoting.
Your posts illustrate the problem, because you're more concerned about where the abuser winds up than what happens with the victims. If an abuser can no longer get high status work, why exactly is that a problem that demands our attention? Again, this is one of the major flaws of the "rehabilitation narrative", that the abuser is now somehow society's problem, and as such society is somehow obligated to work with them for their rehabilitation. Society does need to provide the tools for rehabilitation, but beyond that, the onus of improvement is on the abuser. Meanwhile, no concern is shown for the victims - as I pointed out, they are too often pressured into being co-opted into the "rehabilitation" of their abuser.
So before we start spitballing about the plight of the poor starving abuser, how about we first address the very real problems that their victims routinely suffer after everything comes out.
This is bullshit, Riemann is contending (among other things) you're just shifting the abuser onto low-status work where they can continue to prey on people, and under conditions where victims have less agency to fight back.
He's directly mentioning the problems victims suffer and you're pointedly ignoring that.
The answer to abusers of every level is that we as a society need to stop giving them leeway, no matter where they sit. But beyond that, the argument that an abuser falling from grace (which, again, is more myth than fact) is somehow the fault of society is some gooseshit framing. Communities should not be obliged to keep abusers around out of some twisted idea of duty, and arguing that an abuser losing status and the privileges thereof is somehow "shifting" them off is nonsense.
And if we're going to discuss the problems victims face, we should be centering them in our discussions, and not just treating them as ancillary to the discussion of their abusers.
An abuser falling from grace is not a fault of society it is a feature of a functioning society (which we don't have).
edit: There was a quote in one of the Pratchett books that I think about quite often: "Every layer of society dumps their garbage on the one below it until someone is prepared to eat it".
Maybe we should worry more about the victims. Because when we get past the fantasy of the abuser forever shunned, what you see is that a huge percentage return to their careers quietly while the accusers see their careers wither and die.
I mean, this is like round three for Mel Gibson. Brian Wood still gets work. I imagine I’ll see Avellone’s name pop up in credits again in a year or two.
in what way would worrying about the victims change the fact that Mel Gibson and Brian Wood still get work? What does "worry more about the victims" actually even mean here? Believing them? Ok no prob. But for anyone just following along on twitter that's a very "thoughts and prayers" kind of thing.
Arguing with those who don't believe the victim? Sure ok maybe but I don't know how much good it is trying to convince twitter randos but it's something.
Not buying or consuming media they have created? Probably a good idea but gets tricky in cases where the media was the product of many innocent peoples' labor as well as the abuser. Have to figure that out on a case by case basis.
If you happen to be in a position where it is possible, refusing to work with the absuer / cut them off etc... ? Now that seems like a positive thing to do for the few people in a position to do so (compared to the number of spectators on social media). But that is what you are saying is "the fantasy of the abuser forever shunned" and that we should be worrying more about the victims instead.
So how does that work?
The first step is to show more concern over the welfare of victims than the welfare of their abusers. Too often, victims find themselves isolated from the communities they belong to because the community gets more concerned about what will happen to the abuser rather than what is happening to their victims.
again, you seem to be quoting posts and then typing things that sound nice but are not related to the thing you are quoting.
Your posts illustrate the problem, because you're more concerned about where the abuser winds up than what happens with the victims. If an abuser can no longer get high status work, why exactly is that a problem that demands our attention? Again, this is one of the major flaws of the "rehabilitation narrative", that the abuser is now somehow society's problem, and as such society is somehow obligated to work with them for their rehabilitation. Society does need to provide the tools for rehabilitation, but beyond that, the onus of improvement is on the abuser. Meanwhile, no concern is shown for the victims - as I pointed out, they are too often pressured into being co-opted into the "rehabilitation" of their abuser.
So before we start spitballing about the plight of the poor starving abuser, how about we first address the very real problems that their victims routinely suffer after everything comes out.
This is bullshit, Riemann is contending (among other things) you're just shifting the abuser onto low-status work where they can continue to prey on people, and under conditions where victims have less agency to fight back.
He's directly mentioning the problems victims suffer and you're pointedly ignoring that.
The answer to abusers of every level is that we as a society need to stop giving them leeway, no matter where they sit. But beyond that, the argument that an abuser falling from grace (which, again, is more myth than fact) is somehow the fault of society is some gooseshit framing. Communities should not be obliged to keep abusers around out of some twisted idea of duty, and arguing that an abuser losing status and the privileges thereof is somehow "shifting" them off is nonsense.
And if we're going to discuss the problems victims face, we should be centering them in our discussions, and not just treating them as ancillary to the discussion of their abusers.
None of these are things that Riemann said.
There was no moralizing about how it is wrong to punish abusers.
They were not saying communities were obliged to keep abusers around (except for the bit where them literally being exiled from any paid work would be too extreme).
They were not saying that it was wrong for them to lose status or privilege.
They were not saying or implying any group was at fault for what an abuser did once they were shunned.
What they were saying is "hey, if abusers still keep abusing after they get outed, we should consider how to deal with that issue, because it isn't like abuse stops being bad if they do it with less prestige."
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CambiataCommander ShepardThe likes of which even GAWD has never seenRegistered Userregular
Consent in Roleplaying is a really big thing and it is just as important as anywhere else. The entire point of roleplaying games is to have an enjoyable time with your friends. Finding out the limits of certain topics for the people in the group should be done session zero and regularly checked in on as things go forward.
I need to emphasize in a very clear way that this level of streaming is employment, not your friends having fun at your table. Adam is the contracted DM for the RollPlay company. He is the functional supervisor who determines what players get continued employment. These are professional entertainers and actors, who create content as the way they eat and pay rent.
Forcing a rape scene, unexpectedly, is sexual assault by a person in a supervisory position over an employee. This is world's apart from just table manners.
And that's a big part of the core of this discussion as well. When normal people go to cons, they do it for fun. When these entertainers go, they're going to a work convention to network employment opportunities. It is the hustle of the job. And having all the drinking, misogyny, and sexual bro culture built in to the industry is so different from just this being more misogyny in gaming.
You're right, this is a different situation since it's not a group of peers. Thank you for pointing that out.
Being a work environment definitely elevates it, however, let's look past the fact that the actions are being performed by and against fictional characters: The DM in this situation is attempting to force the player to take part in a sexual fantasy against their will. A good analog would be if I started texting a woman and describing the sexual things I could do to her and demanding she reciprocate.
Which is not what happened, and again, in the context of the episode, there are a number of points where Adam attempts to narratively elicit a go/no-go (they're not very effective hence the problem and the whole thing again is badly structured - but it's the tail end of a 4 hour episode as well, which doesn't excuse it but highlights the issue).
The problem I'm having with the way people have reacted is that unlike almost everything else in this thread, this wasn't concealed or hidden, or a pattern of behavior on Adam's part towards his players. It was one scene, where communication in the scene went badly. And a ton of people have gone "Ah hah! We got him! Cancelled forever! Here let me go through all his prior work, see how when he plays characters he's always choosing...."
Which I suppose ties into the whole sentencing discussion above. No one seems to have a solution for how to deal with a social situation that was blundered into, or wants to consider the possibility that this was in fact a mistake, which is sure looks like given that it's the only (though significant) one like it.
EDIT: I was a fan of the show, and a lot of Adam's content. I came out of that episode feeling bad because it was a bad scene which some second pass thinking or editing would've gone "oh, wait the best case outcome here is not good". The reactions and damage to the show are all reasonable. The way it's tossed around, the way it's been dropped in this thread, the way up-thread its been used to imply "ooh there might be more because Adam works with JP and JP has this other thing...". What is that? It doesn't feel like justice, or even something useful.
A couple of things, from someone who never heard of this roleplay group before I watched the video if this event.
First, though we often think of famous people having their predation "concealed", that's hardly ever true in that person's day to day. Predators tend to be pretty open about who they are as long as you don't use words like "rape" or "sexual assault" around them. Think about someone like Weinstein and how everyone in the industry knew who he was; his behavior just wasn't televised which is what we mean, I suppose, when we talk about something being "secret." Most of the people exposed in this thread have tons of outpouring from the industry saying "this guy has always been a creep." So I don't think "it was live and not secret so it couldn't have been predatory" is as air tight of a defense as you think it is.
I don't know what it's like to be a man. But I know I've been present when a guy makes a predatory joke and everyone just laughs and no one says, "that's predatory, yo." I fear that being a man who has laughed at a joke where someone talks about fucking a drink girl makes men - maybe? - want to give leeway where none should actually exist. Again, predators are aware of this social contract and use it to their defense and their victims detriment.
The reason that role-play was canceled was because all the players quit. I think if they believed he was just an innocent guy who made one mistake, I think they would have been more willing to work with him.
But more importantly, I saw the video myself. That was uninvited sexual discussion between two human beings, not two characters. That shit was messed up.
Edit: watching the end of that video, EVERYONE instantly understood what was wrong with what Adam did, while Adam laughed. The other men on the video are all doing facepalms while the women try to explain it. Adam understood, too, he just pretended not to to get benefit of the doubt. He probably wasn't expecting everyone to quit over it, but he knew he was violating a boundary.
Cambiata on
"If you divide the whole world into just enemies and friends, you'll end up destroying everything" --Nausicaa of the Valley of Wind
Maybe we should worry more about the victims. Because when we get past the fantasy of the abuser forever shunned, what you see is that a huge percentage return to their careers quietly while the accusers see their careers wither and die.
I mean, this is like round three for Mel Gibson. Brian Wood still gets work. I imagine I’ll see Avellone’s name pop up in credits again in a year or two.
in what way would worrying about the victims change the fact that Mel Gibson and Brian Wood still get work? What does "worry more about the victims" actually even mean here? Believing them? Ok no prob. But for anyone just following along on twitter that's a very "thoughts and prayers" kind of thing.
Arguing with those who don't believe the victim? Sure ok maybe but I don't know how much good it is trying to convince twitter randos but it's something.
Not buying or consuming media they have created? Probably a good idea but gets tricky in cases where the media was the product of many innocent peoples' labor as well as the abuser. Have to figure that out on a case by case basis.
If you happen to be in a position where it is possible, refusing to work with the absuer / cut them off etc... ? Now that seems like a positive thing to do for the few people in a position to do so (compared to the number of spectators on social media). But that is what you are saying is "the fantasy of the abuser forever shunned" and that we should be worrying more about the victims instead.
So how does that work?
The first step is to show more concern over the welfare of victims than the welfare of their abusers. Too often, victims find themselves isolated from the communities they belong to because the community gets more concerned about what will happen to the abuser rather than what is happening to their victims.
again, you seem to be quoting posts and then typing things that sound nice but are not related to the thing you are quoting.
Your posts illustrate the problem, because you're more concerned about where the abuser winds up than what happens with the victims. If an abuser can no longer get high status work, why exactly is that a problem that demands our attention? Again, this is one of the major flaws of the "rehabilitation narrative", that the abuser is now somehow society's problem, and as such society is somehow obligated to work with them for their rehabilitation. Society does need to provide the tools for rehabilitation, but beyond that, the onus of improvement is on the abuser. Meanwhile, no concern is shown for the victims - as I pointed out, they are too often pressured into being co-opted into the "rehabilitation" of their abuser.
So before we start spitballing about the plight of the poor starving abuser, how about we first address the very real problems that their victims routinely suffer after everything comes out.
I see "what do we do with abusers?" as a question directly related to victim welfare, because, well... what do we do with abusers? Abusive personalities are incredibly common, as we're finding out. I'd love to see more research into how much of that is nature vs nurture, and thus how much can be done to identify abusers and intervene early; but in the meantime, what do we do with the frankly huge percent of men in power (edit: and some women) who have abusive personalities?* Ideally, I'd isolate them until and unless they can demonstrate a sincere desire to change, and then monitor them for life to make sure they follow through - but that's neither practical nor plausible, especially considering very few abusers are 1) interested in changing and 2) capable of it. So how do we keep past, current, and potential future victims safe when abusers are a dime a dozen?
* When I say "abusive personality," I'm not trying to recast abuse as the result of a mental illness and thus absolve abusers (though I think making "abusive personality disorder" a thing might be an effective way of directing resources to the problem, as well as hopefully making its scope visible to the general public). I'm saying that because abusive behavior is rooted in entitlement, you can't treat abuse as a one-time misdeed or abusers as good people who made mistakes. You have to look at it as the result of a moral compass that is fucked up enough to think the behavior was acceptable, and you have to deal with the whole person as someone with a fucked-up moral compass. You can't just attempt to address the specific behavior, because that only teaches them how to abuse in more subtle ways.
(I am not a psychologist; this is my personal opinion as someone who has survived intimate partner abuse.)
Maybe we should worry more about the victims. Because when we get past the fantasy of the abuser forever shunned, what you see is that a huge percentage return to their careers quietly while the accusers see their careers wither and die.
I mean, this is like round three for Mel Gibson. Brian Wood still gets work. I imagine I’ll see Avellone’s name pop up in credits again in a year or two.
in what way would worrying about the victims change the fact that Mel Gibson and Brian Wood still get work? What does "worry more about the victims" actually even mean here? Believing them? Ok no prob. But for anyone just following along on twitter that's a very "thoughts and prayers" kind of thing.
Arguing with those who don't believe the victim? Sure ok maybe but I don't know how much good it is trying to convince twitter randos but it's something.
Not buying or consuming media they have created? Probably a good idea but gets tricky in cases where the media was the product of many innocent peoples' labor as well as the abuser. Have to figure that out on a case by case basis.
If you happen to be in a position where it is possible, refusing to work with the absuer / cut them off etc... ? Now that seems like a positive thing to do for the few people in a position to do so (compared to the number of spectators on social media). But that is what you are saying is "the fantasy of the abuser forever shunned" and that we should be worrying more about the victims instead.
So how does that work?
The first step is to show more concern over the welfare of victims than the welfare of their abusers. Too often, victims find themselves isolated from the communities they belong to because the community gets more concerned about what will happen to the abuser rather than what is happening to their victims.
again, you seem to be quoting posts and then typing things that sound nice but are not related to the thing you are quoting.
Your posts illustrate the problem, because you're more concerned about where the abuser winds up than what happens with the victims. If an abuser can no longer get high status work, why exactly is that a problem that demands our attention? Again, this is one of the major flaws of the "rehabilitation narrative", that the abuser is now somehow society's problem, and as such society is somehow obligated to work with them for their rehabilitation. Society does need to provide the tools for rehabilitation, but beyond that, the onus of improvement is on the abuser. Meanwhile, no concern is shown for the victims - as I pointed out, they are too often pressured into being co-opted into the "rehabilitation" of their abuser.
So before we start spitballing about the plight of the poor starving abuser, how about we first address the very real problems that their victims routinely suffer after everything comes out.
You didn't even read Riemann's post.
Riemann's entire post was about the fact that "fuck abusers, they end up where they end up" strategy does not actually get rid of abusive people, and in fact still allows them to prey on people when they inevitably find work elsewhere, whether in the industry or just wherever. There was absolutely no handwringing about how abusers should be treated better or real concern with how they end up, except for the caveat that just straight up exiling them to starve to death is probably not morally palatable. They were basically saying "y'know, maybe we should actually figure out a good way to enforce consequences or better behavior longer term", which is the exact opposite of being concerned about how they end up.
Better support structures for victims, better reporting, more people believing victims, etc. are all very important, but given how often this thread correctly points out cancelling people doesn't seem to stick, it seems like focusing on how to actually ensure abusers do not do future harm is a pretty important angle to consider.
And my point is that nobody is saying that, so he's just attacking a strawman. The reason that abusers keep finding a way back in is 1) because rape culture is A Thing, and thus many people don't actually see their behavior as wrong (this was a big theme I saw in discussions about the Warren Ellis Forum, and how that sort of behavior was normalized and critics shouted down (often in a misogynistic manner,)) and 2) because we have this cultural conceit of a "redemption narrative" that routinely refocuses the matter around the abuser, often forcing the community and their victims to bend to work with them. Society should be stopping them from abusing again, which is best done by no longer tolerating abuse at any level. But beyond that, people no longer treating an abuser with respect is not society's problem, and we need to stop treating it like it is.
Maybe we should worry more about the victims. Because when we get past the fantasy of the abuser forever shunned, what you see is that a huge percentage return to their careers quietly while the accusers see their careers wither and die.
I mean, this is like round three for Mel Gibson. Brian Wood still gets work. I imagine I’ll see Avellone’s name pop up in credits again in a year or two.
in what way would worrying about the victims change the fact that Mel Gibson and Brian Wood still get work? What does "worry more about the victims" actually even mean here? Believing them? Ok no prob. But for anyone just following along on twitter that's a very "thoughts and prayers" kind of thing.
Arguing with those who don't believe the victim? Sure ok maybe but I don't know how much good it is trying to convince twitter randos but it's something.
Not buying or consuming media they have created? Probably a good idea but gets tricky in cases where the media was the product of many innocent peoples' labor as well as the abuser. Have to figure that out on a case by case basis.
If you happen to be in a position where it is possible, refusing to work with the absuer / cut them off etc... ? Now that seems like a positive thing to do for the few people in a position to do so (compared to the number of spectators on social media). But that is what you are saying is "the fantasy of the abuser forever shunned" and that we should be worrying more about the victims instead.
So how does that work?
The first step is to show more concern over the welfare of victims than the welfare of their abusers. Too often, victims find themselves isolated from the communities they belong to because the community gets more concerned about what will happen to the abuser rather than what is happening to their victims.
again, you seem to be quoting posts and then typing things that sound nice but are not related to the thing you are quoting.
Your posts illustrate the problem, because you're more concerned about where the abuser winds up than what happens with the victims. If an abuser can no longer get high status work, why exactly is that a problem that demands our attention? Again, this is one of the major flaws of the "rehabilitation narrative", that the abuser is now somehow society's problem, and as such society is somehow obligated to work with them for their rehabilitation. Society does need to provide the tools for rehabilitation, but beyond that, the onus of improvement is on the abuser. Meanwhile, no concern is shown for the victims - as I pointed out, they are too often pressured into being co-opted into the "rehabilitation" of their abuser.
So before we start spitballing about the plight of the poor starving abuser, how about we first address the very real problems that their victims routinely suffer after everything comes out.
You didn't even read Riemann's post.
Riemann's entire post was about the fact that "fuck abusers, they end up where they end up" strategy does not actually get rid of abusive people, and in fact still allows them to prey on people when they inevitably find work elsewhere, whether in the industry or just wherever. There was absolutely no handwringing about how abusers should be treated better or real concern with how they end up, except for the caveat that just straight up exiling them to starve to death is probably not morally palatable. They were basically saying "y'know, maybe we should actually figure out a good way to enforce consequences or better behavior longer term", which is the exact opposite of being concerned about how they end up.
Better support structures for victims, better reporting, more people believing victims, etc. are all very important, but given how often this thread correctly points out cancelling people doesn't seem to stick, it seems like focusing on how to actually ensure abusers do not do future harm is a pretty important angle to consider.
And my point is that nobody is saying that, so he's just attacking a strawman. The reason that abusers keep finding a way back in is 1) because rape culture is A Thing, and thus many people don't actually see their behavior as wrong (this was a big theme I saw in discussions about the Warren Ellis Forum, and how that sort of behavior was normalized and critics shouted down (often in a misogynistic manner,)) and 2) because we have this cultural conceit of a "redemption narrative" that routinely refocuses the matter around the abuser, often forcing the community and their victims to bend to work with them. Society should be stopping them from abusing again, which is best done by no longer tolerating abuse at any level. But beyond that, people no longer treating an abuser with respect is not society's problem, and we need to stop treating it like it is.
Nobody is saying what, exactly? You are once again making a post where you are not actually responding to any statements, you're just repeating yourself as if we said the thing you thought we were going to say.
Like, OK, some assholes who aren't here are talking about redemption narratives. Why are you bringing it up here, in response to a question explicitly saying that redemption is wrong? Why are you acting as if people are arguing that abusers should be treated with respect, when we're explicitly saying that not-respecting somebody out of an industry does not go far enough to prevent abuse? Clearly the issue can't be solved by literally never talking about how to deal with abusers past the initial, generally useless, cancellation, and while we are all in agreement that rape culture is a problem and victims are not taken seriously enough, the issue is more than just that.
What I wonder, is how do we create a system for dealing with abusers within our current society. I think most of us would agree that twitter shaming isn't really a sustainable model. And it's probably way less effective if your coworker at Ross Dress for Less is harassing you as opposed to famous person or person that works in something the internet loves (games).
How would we word a law that defines what abuse is? What would the punishments be?
Edit: Currently we practically have corporations in charge of punishments. How crazy is that?
What I wonder, is how do we create a system for dealing with abusers within our current society. I think most of us would agree that twitter shaming isn't really a sustainable model. And it's probably way less effective if your coworker at Ross Dress for Less is harassing you as opposed to famous person or person that works in something the internet loves (games).
How would we word a law that defines what abuse is? What would the punishments be?
Edit: Currently we practically have corporations in charge of punishments. How crazy is that?
The laws exist. What often doesn't is support for the victim in coming forward, and condemnation of the abuser.
What I wonder, is how do we create a system for dealing with abusers within our current society. I think most of us would agree that twitter shaming isn't really a sustainable model. And it's probably way less effective if your coworker at Ross Dress for Less is harassing you as opposed to famous person or person that works in something the internet loves (games).
How would we word a law that defines what abuse is? What would the punishments be?
Edit: Currently we practically have corporations in charge of punishments. How crazy is that?
The laws exist. What often doesn't is support for the victim in coming forward, and condemnation of the abuser.
The laws don't exist, though.
Laws against rape and certain kinds of sexual assault exist, yes, and they aren't enforced well enough and that's a huge problem.
But the stuff being talked about in recent pages of this thread? There are few to no laws to enforce. What Warren Ellis is accused of isn't illegal. It's immoral and shitty but unless I missed something he basically befriended young women, signal boosted their work and helped them network, then tried to turn their relationships sexual and dropped them if they didn't go for it. He's not their actual employer so workplace harassment laws don't apply. I mean, if he told them "let's fuck or I don't give your manuscript to my publisher friends" then you could maybe try to get him for solicitation, but just being a shit heel isn't against any laws. The RollPlay thing you could try to bring a lawsuit for sexual harassment but given the performative nature of their work it's about on par with Tarantino putting weird foot-fetish shit in his movies. It's certainly skeezy but it's going to be hard to codify "skeezy art" in a way that's not censorship. Which isn't to say it shouldn't be done, but it hasn't already been done.
Consent in Roleplaying is a really big thing and it is just as important as anywhere else. The entire point of roleplaying games is to have an enjoyable time with your friends. Finding out the limits of certain topics for the people in the group should be done session zero and regularly checked in on as things go forward.
I need to emphasize in a very clear way that this level of streaming is employment, not your friends having fun at your table. Adam is the contracted DM for the RollPlay company. He is the functional supervisor who determines what players get continued employment. These are professional entertainers and actors, who create content as the way they eat and pay rent.
Forcing a rape scene, unexpectedly, is sexual assault by a person in a supervisory position over an employee. This is world's apart from just table manners.
And that's a big part of the core of this discussion as well. When normal people go to cons, they do it for fun. When these entertainers go, they're going to a work convention to network employment opportunities. It is the hustle of the job. And having all the drinking, misogyny, and sexual bro culture built in to the industry is so different from just this being more misogyny in gaming.
You're right, this is a different situation since it's not a group of peers. Thank you for pointing that out.
Being a work environment definitely elevates it, however, let's look past the fact that the actions are being performed by and against fictional characters: The DM in this situation is attempting to force the player to take part in a sexual fantasy against their will. A good analog would be if I started texting a woman and describing the sexual things I could do to her and demanding she reciprocate.
Which is not what happened, and again, in the context of the episode, there are a number of points where Adam attempts to narratively elicit a go/no-go (they're not very effective hence the problem and the whole thing again is badly structured - but it's the tail end of a 4 hour episode as well, which doesn't excuse it but highlights the issue).
The problem I'm having with the way people have reacted is that unlike almost everything else in this thread, this wasn't concealed or hidden, or a pattern of behavior on Adam's part towards his players. It was one scene, where communication in the scene went badly. And a ton of people have gone "Ah hah! We got him! Cancelled forever! Here let me go through all his prior work, see how when he plays characters he's always choosing...."
Which I suppose ties into the whole sentencing discussion above. No one seems to have a solution for how to deal with a social situation that was blundered into, or wants to consider the possibility that this was in fact a mistake, which is sure looks like given that it's the only (though significant) one like it.
EDIT: I was a fan of the show, and a lot of Adam's content. I came out of that episode feeling bad because it was a bad scene which some second pass thinking or editing would've gone "oh, wait the best case outcome here is not good". The reactions and damage to the show are all reasonable. The way it's tossed around, the way it's been dropped in this thread, the way up-thread its been used to imply "ooh there might be more because Adam works with JP and JP has this other thing...". What is that? It doesn't feel like justice, or even something useful.
A couple of things, from someone who never heard of this roleplay group before I watched the video if this event.
First, though we often think of famous people having their predation "concealed", that's hardly ever true in that person's day to day. Predators tend to be pretty open about who they are as long as you don't use words like "rape" or "sexual assault" around them. Think about someone like Weinstein and how everyone in the industry knew who he was; his behavior just wasn't televised which is what we mean, I suppose, when we talk about something being "secret." Most of the people exposed in this thread have tons of outpouring from the industry saying "this guy has always been a creep." So I don't think "it was live and not secret so it couldn't have been predatory" is as air tight of a defense as you think it is.
I don't know what it's like to be a man. But I know I've been present when a guy makes a predatory joke and everyone just laughs and no one says, "that's predatory, yo." I fear that being a man who has laughed at a joke where someone talks about fucking a drink girl makes men - maybe? - want to give leeway where none should actually exist. Again, predators are aware of this social contract and use it to their defense and their victims detriment.
The reason that role-play was canceled was because all the players quit. I think if they believed he was just an innocent guy who made one mistake, I think they would have been more willing to work with him.
But more importantly, I saw the video myself. That was uninvited sexual discussion between two human beings, not two characters. That shit was messed up.
Edit: watching the end of that video, EVERYONE instantly understood what was wrong with what Adam did, while Adam laughed. The other men on the video are all doing facepalms while the women try to explain it. Adam understood, too, he just pretended not to to get benefit of the doubt. He probably wasn't expecting everyone to quit over it, but he knew he was violating a boundary.
I, too, had no idea who any of the people in the Adam incident were before today. I watched the end of that episode and I was severely creeped out. I don’t routinely role play but I’ve always felt that that is a vulnerable situation in any context which is why it is imperative that it is treated as a safe space as much as possible and I feel like that didn’t happen.
It was obvious to me based on body language alone that everyone aside from Adam was uncomfortable and thrown off kilter.
Then I watched Elspie’s (sp?) [the one that the robot machinations were directed at in the game] response video explaining her thoughts and why she quit Far Varona as a result and I’m like “yeah, that was really bad.”
I mean I would have quit, too.
Also, maybe I’m just cynical and I really don’t know any of these people including Adam, but I almost felt like he was testing the waters/toeing the line to see if he could get this out there into the group to normalize it, which I think is a common aspect of habitual harassment behavior. Abusers (at least as one tactic) step a little bit over the line again and again to constantly re-normalize negative behavior. I don’t know Adam but it felt like that to me considering the reactions from this group he supposedly has a somewhat significant history with at this point.
The fact that it happened at the VERY END of the episode is very suspect too. Cross the line knowingly and then use public pressure (it was a live broadcast) to prevent any response. Sorry but eww. Even if he really didn’t mastermind the situation in that manner, it was abusive, and as the de facto leader? organizer? he had a responsibility to prevent exactly that kind of situation from occurring even if it was not explicitly intentional.
What I wonder, is how do we create a system for dealing with abusers within our current society. I think most of us would agree that twitter shaming isn't really a sustainable model. And it's probably way less effective if your coworker at Ross Dress for Less is harassing you as opposed to famous person or person that works in something the internet loves (games).
How would we word a law that defines what abuse is? What would the punishments be?
Edit: Currently we practically have corporations in charge of punishments. How crazy is that?
I think the focus on punishment after the fact is at best an incomplete and inadequate solution to the problem. Educating and empowering bystanders and potential victims that abusers exist, and that they often hold positions of respect and authority is equally important. Teach people how to temper their admiration with skepticism, and emphasize the importance of not looking away or making excuses for disrespectful and creepy behaviour.
How hard is it, really, to not fucking sexually harass someone? I mean, I'm a straight guy. I find plenty of women to be incredibly attractive. But I don't accost them. My penis doesn't actually do my thinking for me. I can control myself. And it's not all that difficult.
I just don't get it.
It's the same, old, tired line from George Carlin. Figure that at minimum that half the people out there have less impulse control than you do. Figure that many of those don't or won't understand things like consent because we don't live in a world where that's taught much, if at all.
Also, consider yourself lucky that you've lived long enough and see enough to learn from mistakes like that. I do. I did some pretty stupid stuff when I was younger but it was in small groups of friends and I'm glad we didn't have the kinds of social media we have now, because I'd be in just the same amount of hot water without call-out culture and whathaveyou to try to educate me.
In fact, we live in a world that actively teaches against consent.
Every "she is playing hard to get" and "well you just have to keep trying" message in romantic comedies (or in real life), are actively working against the understanding of consent.
There has to be a path to rehabilitation or why would people ever bother to amend their ways. I don't believe in retribution because what's the point other than gratification? You can't undo what you've done, but we expose people who do these things to protect others from them, not because we are specifically looking to cause suffering.
That said rehabilitation requires acceptance and a genuine desire to change. And that takes time.
There should be a path to rehabilitation.
But that path does not need to, and often should not, involve giving the abuser their position back.
Also, until we first deal with the issue of victims being thrown under the buss, worrying about the abusers feels kinda uncomfortable to me.
In a way the US lack of social safety net really warps any conversation about stuff like this, because getting fired can be akin to a death sentence for some people (almost never to the specific people we discuss), so on broad hypotheticals the soluton of "fire them" can get people from defensive because of how bad that can be.
A properly functioning society could fire harassers and abusers, and not need to worry about them starving on the streets.
I like the theory of jail because you serve your time and then hypothetically (if not usually in reality), you get a second chance to try to get your life going again. There's something much more uncertain about the cycle of justice for someone like Noah Bradley. He loses his job (and I assume he can't do much else besides illustration) but there's never really time to serve. There's no sentence. At what point do we let people back into society and give them another chance? The internet never forgets. Or maybe it will in x years?
After seeing the absolute shit conditions prisoners suffer through, it's REALLY hard to say that just losing your job and social standing can compare, but there is something about an end up that at least gives the criminal a hope to better themselves. The ability to say "I served my time." I'd hire an ex-con at my business. I think a lot of people in here would approve of that. If I hired Noah tomorrow, people would be upset. If I hired him a year from now? 2? more?
The core problem with this argument - the core problem with the rehabilitation narrative - is that the only obligations are put on society, not the individual in question. You ask at what point does such an individual get a second chance, but such a question ignores the obligation of the individual to demonstrate that they should be given that chance - this is the purpose of serving one's time, and tends to get particularly messy in the matter of sexual assault because of how our society treats it. As was pointed out above, Bradley has openly subscribed to a philosophy in which demonstrations of contrition are tools to gain breathing time - something that should bring greater scrutiny to his performing such acts, and which demands greater obligations on his part. At this point, the argument of "should he be allowed back into proper society" shouldn't even be on the table, because the prerequisites on his part to bring it there haven't been met yet.
And yes, this means that if he refuses to do that work, society is not obligated to turn a blind eye to that refusal. Nor is society obligated to accept whatever he presents as evidence, either. As I saw pointed out elsewhere in response to the argument of stigmatization:
Do you want to know who else besides rapists spend their entire lifetime wanting to avoid talking about an event in their past because it makes others give them dirty, disapproving looks?
Rape victims.
This is exactly the attitude that leaves people stuck in prison because they don't act sorry enough to please the parole board. And highlights the entire issue notya is talking about. The law has codified sentences and does not necessarily care if you are sorry for what you did. You serve your full time and you leave. Attempts at social and workplace ostracization, which is ultimately what this stuff all ends up being, has no defined sentence.
And we already know from the stigmas against ex-cons that these kind of persistent negative effects on peoples ability to function and support themselves in society.
Your entire framework here is very similar to the one used by "tough on crime" advocates when it comes to how incarceration and afterwards should function.
So, we instead get a culture where victims of sexual/gendered/domestic violence become more and more alienated, because we prioritize the "rehabilitation" of abusers and routinely push their victims (often to the point of outright gaslighting) to have to "accept" their abuser back into the community (which often forces those victims to have to leave for their own safety.) And since you brought it up, it's worth pointing out that sexual and domestic violence is a long-running weak point for the anti-carceral movement because of the nature of such acts of violence and why normal paths of rehabilitation don't really work (this was why the movement really showed their ass during the Persky recall drive.)
I'm a big believer in restorative justice - but as I've said before, the first step (and this goes triple in cases of sexual/gendered/domestic violence) must be contrition. Furthermore, victims must not be forced to be part of the rehabilitation process.
No, the first step is not contrition because that's exactly what I'm talking about above. In terms of actual function justice systems focused on rehabilitation, in the end you have a sentence and then you are done. There is no "indefinite sentence till we believe you when you say you feel bad about it".
"They have to show me they are sorry and make me believe it" is not a system that actually works anyway. Because it's entirely subjective. We've seen how this kind of thing works in the justice system already and about as useful as a cop "knowing a criminal when they see one". And you can see this kind of thing at work just last page, where there's a lot of comments to the effect of "X person said they were sorry, but I don't believe them". Apparently contrition sometimes doesn't count. That's not a system of restorative justice.
And we can see the problem notya was talking about again in the things you keep arguing, even in this post. Because you keep circling around trying to say these people can't be rehabilitated and brushing away what that actually means for where this system, either formal or informal, goes.
Consent in Roleplaying is a really big thing and it is just as important as anywhere else. The entire point of roleplaying games is to have an enjoyable time with your friends. Finding out the limits of certain topics for the people in the group should be done session zero and regularly checked in on as things go forward.
I need to emphasize in a very clear way that this level of streaming is employment, not your friends having fun at your table. Adam is the contracted DM for the RollPlay company. He is the functional supervisor who determines what players get continued employment. These are professional entertainers and actors, who create content as the way they eat and pay rent.
Forcing a rape scene, unexpectedly, is sexual assault by a person in a supervisory position over an employee. This is world's apart from just table manners.
And that's a big part of the core of this discussion as well. When normal people go to cons, they do it for fun. When these entertainers go, they're going to a work convention to network employment opportunities. It is the hustle of the job. And having all the drinking, misogyny, and sexual bro culture built in to the industry is so different from just this being more misogyny in gaming.
You're right, this is a different situation since it's not a group of peers. Thank you for pointing that out.
Being a work environment definitely elevates it, however, let's look past the fact that the actions are being performed by and against fictional characters: The DM in this situation is attempting to force the player to take part in a sexual fantasy against their will. A good analog would be if I started texting a woman and describing the sexual things I could do to her and demanding she reciprocate.
Which is not what happened, and again, in the context of the episode, there are a number of points where Adam attempts to narratively elicit a go/no-go (they're not very effective hence the problem and the whole thing again is badly structured - but it's the tail end of a 4 hour episode as well, which doesn't excuse it but highlights the issue).
The problem I'm having with the way people have reacted is that unlike almost everything else in this thread, this wasn't concealed or hidden, or a pattern of behavior on Adam's part towards his players. It was one scene, where communication in the scene went badly. And a ton of people have gone "Ah hah! We got him! Cancelled forever! Here let me go through all his prior work, see how when he plays characters he's always choosing...."
Which I suppose ties into the whole sentencing discussion above. No one seems to have a solution for how to deal with a social situation that was blundered into, or wants to consider the possibility that this was in fact a mistake, which is sure looks like given that it's the only (though significant) one like it.
EDIT: I was a fan of the show, and a lot of Adam's content. I came out of that episode feeling bad because it was a bad scene which some second pass thinking or editing would've gone "oh, wait the best case outcome here is not good". The reactions and damage to the show are all reasonable. The way it's tossed around, the way it's been dropped in this thread, the way up-thread its been used to imply "ooh there might be more because Adam works with JP and JP has this other thing...". What is that? It doesn't feel like justice, or even something useful.
A couple of things, from someone who never heard of this roleplay group before I watched the video if this event.
First, though we often think of famous people having their predation "concealed", that's hardly ever true in that person's day to day. Predators tend to be pretty open about who they are as long as you don't use words like "rape" or "sexual assault" around them. Think about someone like Weinstein and how everyone in the industry knew who he was; his behavior just wasn't televised which is what we mean, I suppose, when we talk about something being "secret." Most of the people exposed in this thread have tons of outpouring from the industry saying "this guy has always been a creep." So I don't think "it was live and not secret so it couldn't have been predatory" is as air tight of a defense as you think it is.
I don't know what it's like to be a man. But I know I've been present when a guy makes a predatory joke and everyone just laughs and no one says, "that's predatory, yo." I fear that being a man who has laughed at a joke where someone talks about fucking a drink girl makes men - maybe? - want to give leeway where none should actually exist. Again, predators are aware of this social contract and use it to their defense and their victims detriment.
The reason that role-play was canceled was because all the players quit. I think if they believed he was just an innocent guy who made one mistake, I think they would have been more willing to work with him.
But more importantly, I saw the video myself. That was uninvited sexual discussion between two human beings, not two characters. That shit was messed up.
Edit: watching the end of that video, EVERYONE instantly understood what was wrong with what Adam did, while Adam laughed. The other men on the video are all doing facepalms while the women try to explain it. Adam understood, too, he just pretended not to to get benefit of the doubt. He probably wasn't expecting everyone to quit over it, but he knew he was violating a boundary.
I, too, had no idea who any of the people in the Adam incident were before today. I watched the end of that episode and I was severely creeped out. I don’t routinely role play but I’ve always felt that that is a vulnerable situation in any context which is why it is imperative that it is treated as a safe space as much as possible and I feel like that didn’t happen.
It was obvious to me based on body language alone that everyone aside from Adam was uncomfortable and thrown off kilter.
Then I watched Elspie’s (sp?) [the one that the robot machinations were directed at in the game] response video explaining her thoughts and why she quit Far Varona as a result and I’m like “yeah, that was really bad.”
I mean I would have quit, too.
Also, maybe I’m just cynical and I really don’t know any of these people including Adam, but I almost felt like he was testing the waters/toeing the line to see if he could get this out there into the group to normalize it, which I think is a common aspect of habitual harassment behavior. Abusers (at least as one tactic) step a little bit over the line again and again to constantly re-normalize negative behavior. I don’t know Adam but it felt like that to me considering the reactions from this group he supposedly has a somewhat significant history with at this point.
The fact that it happened at the VERY END of the episode is very suspect too. Cross the line knowingly and then use public pressure (it was a live broadcast) to prevent any response. Sorry but eww. Even if he really didn’t mastermind the situation in that manner, it was abusive, and as the de facto leader? organizer? he had a responsibility to prevent exactly that kind of situation from occurring even if it was not explicitly intentional.
Like...this entire post is kind of what I mean? You freely admit you don't know any of the personalities, and then go on to speculate wildly about the type of monster you think one of them might be. Adam is a streamer, his body of work for Rollplay shows is all there for anyone to see including dozens if not hundreds of hours of interactions with female castmates.
There isn't a groundswell of people coming forward going "oh yeah this was a problem when we were doing...", it's literally this one episode in this one case.
Like, yes, it was bad. Elspeth's reaction was justified and it did pretty much poison the chalice of continuing the show, but what I'm really struggling with is the "cancel him forever!" reaction and "oh I think pretty clearly he's an abuser" that's just getting idly dropped in this thread.
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FencingsaxIt is difficult to get a man to understand, when his salary depends upon his not understandingGNU Terry PratchettRegistered Userregular
I like the theory of jail because you serve your time and then hypothetically (if not usually in reality), you get a second chance to try to get your life going again. There's something much more uncertain about the cycle of justice for someone like Noah Bradley. He loses his job (and I assume he can't do much else besides illustration) but there's never really time to serve. There's no sentence. At what point do we let people back into society and give them another chance? The internet never forgets. Or maybe it will in x years?
After seeing the absolute shit conditions prisoners suffer through, it's REALLY hard to say that just losing your job and social standing can compare, but there is something about an end up that at least gives the criminal a hope to better themselves. The ability to say "I served my time." I'd hire an ex-con at my business. I think a lot of people in here would approve of that. If I hired Noah tomorrow, people would be upset. If I hired him a year from now? 2? more?
The core problem with this argument - the core problem with the rehabilitation narrative - is that the only obligations are put on society, not the individual in question. You ask at what point does such an individual get a second chance, but such a question ignores the obligation of the individual to demonstrate that they should be given that chance - this is the purpose of serving one's time, and tends to get particularly messy in the matter of sexual assault because of how our society treats it. As was pointed out above, Bradley has openly subscribed to a philosophy in which demonstrations of contrition are tools to gain breathing time - something that should bring greater scrutiny to his performing such acts, and which demands greater obligations on his part. At this point, the argument of "should he be allowed back into proper society" shouldn't even be on the table, because the prerequisites on his part to bring it there haven't been met yet.
And yes, this means that if he refuses to do that work, society is not obligated to turn a blind eye to that refusal. Nor is society obligated to accept whatever he presents as evidence, either. As I saw pointed out elsewhere in response to the argument of stigmatization:
Do you want to know who else besides rapists spend their entire lifetime wanting to avoid talking about an event in their past because it makes others give them dirty, disapproving looks?
Rape victims.
This is exactly the attitude that leaves people stuck in prison because they don't act sorry enough to please the parole board. And highlights the entire issue notya is talking about. The law has codified sentences and does not necessarily care if you are sorry for what you did. You serve your full time and you leave. Attempts at social and workplace ostracization, which is ultimately what this stuff all ends up being, has no defined sentence.
And we already know from the stigmas against ex-cons that these kind of persistent negative effects on peoples ability to function and support themselves in society.
Your entire framework here is very similar to the one used by "tough on crime" advocates when it comes to how incarceration and afterwards should function.
So, we instead get a culture where victims of sexual/gendered/domestic violence become more and more alienated, because we prioritize the "rehabilitation" of abusers and routinely push their victims (often to the point of outright gaslighting) to have to "accept" their abuser back into the community (which often forces those victims to have to leave for their own safety.) And since you brought it up, it's worth pointing out that sexual and domestic violence is a long-running weak point for the anti-carceral movement because of the nature of such acts of violence and why normal paths of rehabilitation don't really work (this was why the movement really showed their ass during the Persky recall drive.)
I'm a big believer in restorative justice - but as I've said before, the first step (and this goes triple in cases of sexual/gendered/domestic violence) must be contrition. Furthermore, victims must not be forced to be part of the rehabilitation process.
No, the first step is not contrition because that's exactly what I'm talking about above. In terms of actual function justice systems focused on rehabilitation, in the end you have a sentence and then you are done. There is no "indefinite sentence till we believe you when you say you feel bad about it".
"They have to show me they are sorry and make me believe it" is not a system that actually works anyway. Because it's entirely subjective. We've seen how this kind of thing works in the justice system already and about as useful as a cop "knowing a criminal when they see one". And you can see this kind of thing at work just last page, where there's a lot of comments to the effect of "X person said they were sorry, but I don't believe them". Apparently contrition sometimes doesn't count. That's not a system of restorative justice.
And we can see the problem notya was talking about again in the things you keep arguing, even in this post. Because you keep circling around trying to say these people can't be rehabilitated and brushing away what that actually means for where this system, either formal or informal, goes.
When Hedgie says contrition, it's not about saying "sorry", it's about an actual effort to stop victimizing people.
I've seen the episode after the fact. It's no excuse for the way it played out and he's wrong for having thought about giving his players a way to simply message/text him to halt or redirect something that's going to inappropriate nonconsensual territory.
The show needed to end and he needed to admit he was wrong - even if it's role-playing he understands why it's unacceptable, he doesn't get a pass to keep making content without making corrections to how his games are run. There should be no chance of this happening again.
I'm unaware of a pattern of behavior. He went over the line, but the entire reason people like edgy role-playing is that it deals with adult themes and emotional complexity. Inevitably something was going to happen somewhere.
There have been plenty of streamers playing GTAV RP who have been outright racist and misogynistic, to others around them who had no say in the matter. What happened on RollPlay rightly killed the show. I'm not sure more needs to happen publicly, it's between Adam and Elspeth.
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CambiataCommander ShepardThe likes of which even GAWD has never seenRegistered Userregular
Consent in Roleplaying is a really big thing and it is just as important as anywhere else. The entire point of roleplaying games is to have an enjoyable time with your friends. Finding out the limits of certain topics for the people in the group should be done session zero and regularly checked in on as things go forward.
I need to emphasize in a very clear way that this level of streaming is employment, not your friends having fun at your table. Adam is the contracted DM for the RollPlay company. He is the functional supervisor who determines what players get continued employment. These are professional entertainers and actors, who create content as the way they eat and pay rent.
Forcing a rape scene, unexpectedly, is sexual assault by a person in a supervisory position over an employee. This is world's apart from just table manners.
And that's a big part of the core of this discussion as well. When normal people go to cons, they do it for fun. When these entertainers go, they're going to a work convention to network employment opportunities. It is the hustle of the job. And having all the drinking, misogyny, and sexual bro culture built in to the industry is so different from just this being more misogyny in gaming.
You're right, this is a different situation since it's not a group of peers. Thank you for pointing that out.
Being a work environment definitely elevates it, however, let's look past the fact that the actions are being performed by and against fictional characters: The DM in this situation is attempting to force the player to take part in a sexual fantasy against their will. A good analog would be if I started texting a woman and describing the sexual things I could do to her and demanding she reciprocate.
Which is not what happened, and again, in the context of the episode, there are a number of points where Adam attempts to narratively elicit a go/no-go (they're not very effective hence the problem and the whole thing again is badly structured - but it's the tail end of a 4 hour episode as well, which doesn't excuse it but highlights the issue).
The problem I'm having with the way people have reacted is that unlike almost everything else in this thread, this wasn't concealed or hidden, or a pattern of behavior on Adam's part towards his players. It was one scene, where communication in the scene went badly. And a ton of people have gone "Ah hah! We got him! Cancelled forever! Here let me go through all his prior work, see how when he plays characters he's always choosing...."
Which I suppose ties into the whole sentencing discussion above. No one seems to have a solution for how to deal with a social situation that was blundered into, or wants to consider the possibility that this was in fact a mistake, which is sure looks like given that it's the only (though significant) one like it.
EDIT: I was a fan of the show, and a lot of Adam's content. I came out of that episode feeling bad because it was a bad scene which some second pass thinking or editing would've gone "oh, wait the best case outcome here is not good". The reactions and damage to the show are all reasonable. The way it's tossed around, the way it's been dropped in this thread, the way up-thread its been used to imply "ooh there might be more because Adam works with JP and JP has this other thing...". What is that? It doesn't feel like justice, or even something useful.
A couple of things, from someone who never heard of this roleplay group before I watched the video if this event.
First, though we often think of famous people having their predation "concealed", that's hardly ever true in that person's day to day. Predators tend to be pretty open about who they are as long as you don't use words like "rape" or "sexual assault" around them. Think about someone like Weinstein and how everyone in the industry knew who he was; his behavior just wasn't televised which is what we mean, I suppose, when we talk about something being "secret." Most of the people exposed in this thread have tons of outpouring from the industry saying "this guy has always been a creep." So I don't think "it was live and not secret so it couldn't have been predatory" is as air tight of a defense as you think it is.
I don't know what it's like to be a man. But I know I've been present when a guy makes a predatory joke and everyone just laughs and no one says, "that's predatory, yo." I fear that being a man who has laughed at a joke where someone talks about fucking a drink girl makes men - maybe? - want to give leeway where none should actually exist. Again, predators are aware of this social contract and use it to their defense and their victims detriment.
The reason that role-play was canceled was because all the players quit. I think if they believed he was just an innocent guy who made one mistake, I think they would have been more willing to work with him.
But more importantly, I saw the video myself. That was uninvited sexual discussion between two human beings, not two characters. That shit was messed up.
Edit: watching the end of that video, EVERYONE instantly understood what was wrong with what Adam did, while Adam laughed. The other men on the video are all doing facepalms while the women try to explain it. Adam understood, too, he just pretended not to to get benefit of the doubt. He probably wasn't expecting everyone to quit over it, but he knew he was violating a boundary.
I, too, had no idea who any of the people in the Adam incident were before today. I watched the end of that episode and I was severely creeped out. I don’t routinely role play but I’ve always felt that that is a vulnerable situation in any context which is why it is imperative that it is treated as a safe space as much as possible and I feel like that didn’t happen.
It was obvious to me based on body language alone that everyone aside from Adam was uncomfortable and thrown off kilter.
Then I watched Elspie’s (sp?) [the one that the robot machinations were directed at in the game] response video explaining her thoughts and why she quit Far Varona as a result and I’m like “yeah, that was really bad.”
I mean I would have quit, too.
Also, maybe I’m just cynical and I really don’t know any of these people including Adam, but I almost felt like he was testing the waters/toeing the line to see if he could get this out there into the group to normalize it, which I think is a common aspect of habitual harassment behavior. Abusers (at least as one tactic) step a little bit over the line again and again to constantly re-normalize negative behavior. I don’t know Adam but it felt like that to me considering the reactions from this group he supposedly has a somewhat significant history with at this point.
The fact that it happened at the VERY END of the episode is very suspect too. Cross the line knowingly and then use public pressure (it was a live broadcast) to prevent any response. Sorry but eww. Even if he really didn’t mastermind the situation in that manner, it was abusive, and as the de facto leader? organizer? he had a responsibility to prevent exactly that kind of situation from occurring even if it was not explicitly intentional.
Like...this entire post is kind of what I mean? You freely admit you don't know any of the personalities, and then go on to speculate wildly about the type of monster you think one of them might be. Adam is a streamer, his body of work for Rollplay shows is all there for anyone to see including dozens if not hundreds of hours of interactions with female castmates.
There isn't a groundswell of people coming forward going "oh yeah this was a problem when we were doing...", it's literally this one episode in this one case.
Like, yes, it was bad. Elspeth's reaction was justified and it did pretty much poison the chalice of continuing the show, but what I'm really struggling with is the "cancel him forever!" reaction and "oh I think pretty clearly he's an abuser" that's just getting idly dropped in this thread.
He did the thing he did. We all saw what he did. I'm not prepared to say "he's an abuser" or whatever, but I don't really need to. He did something we have on record, that everyone else in the room instantly reacted to. You're the one trying to reframe it like he's some innocent doe in the woods who never heard of consent before or couldn't possibly know that someone getting raped in-game without discussing it with the character's author and actress could be in any way a horrible thing to do. Him being completely oblivious to whether someone might mind about getting virtal-raped or not is the unlikely thing, the thing you want to sell us in this thread. He doesn't look like he's below the age of 14, so I'm not going to give him the "he's never read any books or watched any TV or movies" defense like you want to. It doesn't fly.
Complaining about "cancelling" is and will always be dumb. For 99.9% of anyone whose accused, no matter what the evidence, they get right back into their career just as powerful as ever.
I like the theory of jail because you serve your time and then hypothetically (if not usually in reality), you get a second chance to try to get your life going again. There's something much more uncertain about the cycle of justice for someone like Noah Bradley. He loses his job (and I assume he can't do much else besides illustration) but there's never really time to serve. There's no sentence. At what point do we let people back into society and give them another chance? The internet never forgets. Or maybe it will in x years?
After seeing the absolute shit conditions prisoners suffer through, it's REALLY hard to say that just losing your job and social standing can compare, but there is something about an end up that at least gives the criminal a hope to better themselves. The ability to say "I served my time." I'd hire an ex-con at my business. I think a lot of people in here would approve of that. If I hired Noah tomorrow, people would be upset. If I hired him a year from now? 2? more?
The core problem with this argument - the core problem with the rehabilitation narrative - is that the only obligations are put on society, not the individual in question. You ask at what point does such an individual get a second chance, but such a question ignores the obligation of the individual to demonstrate that they should be given that chance - this is the purpose of serving one's time, and tends to get particularly messy in the matter of sexual assault because of how our society treats it. As was pointed out above, Bradley has openly subscribed to a philosophy in which demonstrations of contrition are tools to gain breathing time - something that should bring greater scrutiny to his performing such acts, and which demands greater obligations on his part. At this point, the argument of "should he be allowed back into proper society" shouldn't even be on the table, because the prerequisites on his part to bring it there haven't been met yet.
And yes, this means that if he refuses to do that work, society is not obligated to turn a blind eye to that refusal. Nor is society obligated to accept whatever he presents as evidence, either. As I saw pointed out elsewhere in response to the argument of stigmatization:
Do you want to know who else besides rapists spend their entire lifetime wanting to avoid talking about an event in their past because it makes others give them dirty, disapproving looks?
Rape victims.
This is exactly the attitude that leaves people stuck in prison because they don't act sorry enough to please the parole board. And highlights the entire issue notya is talking about. The law has codified sentences and does not necessarily care if you are sorry for what you did. You serve your full time and you leave. Attempts at social and workplace ostracization, which is ultimately what this stuff all ends up being, has no defined sentence.
And we already know from the stigmas against ex-cons that these kind of persistent negative effects on peoples ability to function and support themselves in society.
Your entire framework here is very similar to the one used by "tough on crime" advocates when it comes to how incarceration and afterwards should function.
So, we instead get a culture where victims of sexual/gendered/domestic violence become more and more alienated, because we prioritize the "rehabilitation" of abusers and routinely push their victims (often to the point of outright gaslighting) to have to "accept" their abuser back into the community (which often forces those victims to have to leave for their own safety.) And since you brought it up, it's worth pointing out that sexual and domestic violence is a long-running weak point for the anti-carceral movement because of the nature of such acts of violence and why normal paths of rehabilitation don't really work (this was why the movement really showed their ass during the Persky recall drive.)
I'm a big believer in restorative justice - but as I've said before, the first step (and this goes triple in cases of sexual/gendered/domestic violence) must be contrition. Furthermore, victims must not be forced to be part of the rehabilitation process.
No, the first step is not contrition because that's exactly what I'm talking about above. In terms of actual function justice systems focused on rehabilitation, in the end you have a sentence and then you are done. There is no "indefinite sentence till we believe you when you say you feel bad about it".
"They have to show me they are sorry and make me believe it" is not a system that actually works anyway. Because it's entirely subjective. We've seen how this kind of thing works in the justice system already and about as useful as a cop "knowing a criminal when they see one". And you can see this kind of thing at work just last page, where there's a lot of comments to the effect of "X person said they were sorry, but I don't believe them". Apparently contrition sometimes doesn't count. That's not a system of restorative justice.
And we can see the problem notya was talking about again in the things you keep arguing, even in this post. Because you keep circling around trying to say these people can't be rehabilitated and brushing away what that actually means for where this system, either formal or informal, goes.
When Hedgie says contrition, it's not about saying "sorry", it's about an actual effort to stop victimizing people.
I like the theory of jail because you serve your time and then hypothetically (if not usually in reality), you get a second chance to try to get your life going again. There's something much more uncertain about the cycle of justice for someone like Noah Bradley. He loses his job (and I assume he can't do much else besides illustration) but there's never really time to serve. There's no sentence. At what point do we let people back into society and give them another chance? The internet never forgets. Or maybe it will in x years?
After seeing the absolute shit conditions prisoners suffer through, it's REALLY hard to say that just losing your job and social standing can compare, but there is something about an end up that at least gives the criminal a hope to better themselves. The ability to say "I served my time." I'd hire an ex-con at my business. I think a lot of people in here would approve of that. If I hired Noah tomorrow, people would be upset. If I hired him a year from now? 2? more?
The core problem with this argument - the core problem with the rehabilitation narrative - is that the only obligations are put on society, not the individual in question. You ask at what point does such an individual get a second chance, but such a question ignores the obligation of the individual to demonstrate that they should be given that chance - this is the purpose of serving one's time, and tends to get particularly messy in the matter of sexual assault because of how our society treats it. As was pointed out above, Bradley has openly subscribed to a philosophy in which demonstrations of contrition are tools to gain breathing time - something that should bring greater scrutiny to his performing such acts, and which demands greater obligations on his part. At this point, the argument of "should he be allowed back into proper society" shouldn't even be on the table, because the prerequisites on his part to bring it there haven't been met yet.
And yes, this means that if he refuses to do that work, society is not obligated to turn a blind eye to that refusal. Nor is society obligated to accept whatever he presents as evidence, either. As I saw pointed out elsewhere in response to the argument of stigmatization:
Do you want to know who else besides rapists spend their entire lifetime wanting to avoid talking about an event in their past because it makes others give them dirty, disapproving looks?
Rape victims.
This is exactly the attitude that leaves people stuck in prison because they don't act sorry enough to please the parole board. And highlights the entire issue notya is talking about. The law has codified sentences and does not necessarily care if you are sorry for what you did. You serve your full time and you leave. Attempts at social and workplace ostracization, which is ultimately what this stuff all ends up being, has no defined sentence.
And we already know from the stigmas against ex-cons that these kind of persistent negative effects on peoples ability to function and support themselves in society.
Your entire framework here is very similar to the one used by "tough on crime" advocates when it comes to how incarceration and afterwards should function.
So, we instead get a culture where victims of sexual/gendered/domestic violence become more and more alienated, because we prioritize the "rehabilitation" of abusers and routinely push their victims (often to the point of outright gaslighting) to have to "accept" their abuser back into the community (which often forces those victims to have to leave for their own safety.) And since you brought it up, it's worth pointing out that sexual and domestic violence is a long-running weak point for the anti-carceral movement because of the nature of such acts of violence and why normal paths of rehabilitation don't really work (this was why the movement really showed their ass during the Persky recall drive.)
I'm a big believer in restorative justice - but as I've said before, the first step (and this goes triple in cases of sexual/gendered/domestic violence) must be contrition. Furthermore, victims must not be forced to be part of the rehabilitation process.
No, the first step is not contrition because that's exactly what I'm talking about above. In terms of actual function justice systems focused on rehabilitation, in the end you have a sentence and then you are done. There is no "indefinite sentence till we believe you when you say you feel bad about it".
"They have to show me they are sorry and make me believe it" is not a system that actually works anyway. Because it's entirely subjective. We've seen how this kind of thing works in the justice system already and about as useful as a cop "knowing a criminal when they see one". And you can see this kind of thing at work just last page, where there's a lot of comments to the effect of "X person said they were sorry, but I don't believe them". Apparently contrition sometimes doesn't count. That's not a system of restorative justice.
And we can see the problem notya was talking about again in the things you keep arguing, even in this post. Because you keep circling around trying to say these people can't be rehabilitated and brushing away what that actually means for where this system, either formal or informal, goes.
Second, contrition isn't "saying sorry". Contrition is accepting the ramifications of one's conduct - that one has harmed others, that the fault for those actions rests with oneself, and that it's on oneself to make amends -and that others are not obligated to accept. (And yeah, part of contrition is to accept that some bridges are well and truly burned due to one's actions.) You talk about people saying that they don't believe Bradley, while ignoring why people were saying that - he subscribed to a philosophy that has an outright precept of using false apologies to gain breathing room ("surrender to recover".) Yeah - it turns out that when you believe something like that, it's going to take more to demonstrate contrition to others, because you have shown that you are willing to lie about it.
Finally, I'm not saying that these people can't be rehabilitated. What I'm saying is that the responsibility of rehabilitation is on them - not on society, and definitely not on their victims. Because when we put the onus on society, what we wind up with is victims forced to have to make the choice between accepting abusers back into their lives when they're not willing, or having to leave communities to be safe.
Consent in Roleplaying is a really big thing and it is just as important as anywhere else. The entire point of roleplaying games is to have an enjoyable time with your friends. Finding out the limits of certain topics for the people in the group should be done session zero and regularly checked in on as things go forward.
I need to emphasize in a very clear way that this level of streaming is employment, not your friends having fun at your table. Adam is the contracted DM for the RollPlay company. He is the functional supervisor who determines what players get continued employment. These are professional entertainers and actors, who create content as the way they eat and pay rent.
Forcing a rape scene, unexpectedly, is sexual assault by a person in a supervisory position over an employee. This is world's apart from just table manners.
And that's a big part of the core of this discussion as well. When normal people go to cons, they do it for fun. When these entertainers go, they're going to a work convention to network employment opportunities. It is the hustle of the job. And having all the drinking, misogyny, and sexual bro culture built in to the industry is so different from just this being more misogyny in gaming.
You're right, this is a different situation since it's not a group of peers. Thank you for pointing that out.
Being a work environment definitely elevates it, however, let's look past the fact that the actions are being performed by and against fictional characters: The DM in this situation is attempting to force the player to take part in a sexual fantasy against their will. A good analog would be if I started texting a woman and describing the sexual things I could do to her and demanding she reciprocate.
Which is not what happened, and again, in the context of the episode, there are a number of points where Adam attempts to narratively elicit a go/no-go (they're not very effective hence the problem and the whole thing again is badly structured - but it's the tail end of a 4 hour episode as well, which doesn't excuse it but highlights the issue).
The problem I'm having with the way people have reacted is that unlike almost everything else in this thread, this wasn't concealed or hidden, or a pattern of behavior on Adam's part towards his players. It was one scene, where communication in the scene went badly. And a ton of people have gone "Ah hah! We got him! Cancelled forever! Here let me go through all his prior work, see how when he plays characters he's always choosing...."
Which I suppose ties into the whole sentencing discussion above. No one seems to have a solution for how to deal with a social situation that was blundered into, or wants to consider the possibility that this was in fact a mistake, which is sure looks like given that it's the only (though significant) one like it.
EDIT: I was a fan of the show, and a lot of Adam's content. I came out of that episode feeling bad because it was a bad scene which some second pass thinking or editing would've gone "oh, wait the best case outcome here is not good". The reactions and damage to the show are all reasonable. The way it's tossed around, the way it's been dropped in this thread, the way up-thread its been used to imply "ooh there might be more because Adam works with JP and JP has this other thing...". What is that? It doesn't feel like justice, or even something useful.
A couple of things, from someone who never heard of this roleplay group before I watched the video if this event.
First, though we often think of famous people having their predation "concealed", that's hardly ever true in that person's day to day. Predators tend to be pretty open about who they are as long as you don't use words like "rape" or "sexual assault" around them. Think about someone like Weinstein and how everyone in the industry knew who he was; his behavior just wasn't televised which is what we mean, I suppose, when we talk about something being "secret." Most of the people exposed in this thread have tons of outpouring from the industry saying "this guy has always been a creep." So I don't think "it was live and not secret so it couldn't have been predatory" is as air tight of a defense as you think it is.
I don't know what it's like to be a man. But I know I've been present when a guy makes a predatory joke and everyone just laughs and no one says, "that's predatory, yo." I fear that being a man who has laughed at a joke where someone talks about fucking a drink girl makes men - maybe? - want to give leeway where none should actually exist. Again, predators are aware of this social contract and use it to their defense and their victims detriment.
The reason that role-play was canceled was because all the players quit. I think if they believed he was just an innocent guy who made one mistake, I think they would have been more willing to work with him.
But more importantly, I saw the video myself. That was uninvited sexual discussion between two human beings, not two characters. That shit was messed up.
Edit: watching the end of that video, EVERYONE instantly understood what was wrong with what Adam did, while Adam laughed. The other men on the video are all doing facepalms while the women try to explain it. Adam understood, too, he just pretended not to to get benefit of the doubt. He probably wasn't expecting everyone to quit over it, but he knew he was violating a boundary.
I, too, had no idea who any of the people in the Adam incident were before today. I watched the end of that episode and I was severely creeped out. I don’t routinely role play but I’ve always felt that that is a vulnerable situation in any context which is why it is imperative that it is treated as a safe space as much as possible and I feel like that didn’t happen.
It was obvious to me based on body language alone that everyone aside from Adam was uncomfortable and thrown off kilter.
Then I watched Elspie’s (sp?) [the one that the robot machinations were directed at in the game] response video explaining her thoughts and why she quit Far Varona as a result and I’m like “yeah, that was really bad.”
I mean I would have quit, too.
Also, maybe I’m just cynical and I really don’t know any of these people including Adam, but I almost felt like he was testing the waters/toeing the line to see if he could get this out there into the group to normalize it, which I think is a common aspect of habitual harassment behavior. Abusers (at least as one tactic) step a little bit over the line again and again to constantly re-normalize negative behavior. I don’t know Adam but it felt like that to me considering the reactions from this group he supposedly has a somewhat significant history with at this point.
The fact that it happened at the VERY END of the episode is very suspect too. Cross the line knowingly and then use public pressure (it was a live broadcast) to prevent any response. Sorry but eww. Even if he really didn’t mastermind the situation in that manner, it was abusive, and as the de facto leader? organizer? he had a responsibility to prevent exactly that kind of situation from occurring even if it was not explicitly intentional.
Like...this entire post is kind of what I mean? You freely admit you don't know any of the personalities, and then go on to speculate wildly about the type of monster you think one of them might be. Adam is a streamer, his body of work for Rollplay shows is all there for anyone to see including dozens if not hundreds of hours of interactions with female castmates.
There isn't a groundswell of people coming forward going "oh yeah this was a problem when we were doing...", it's literally this one episode in this one case.
Like, yes, it was bad. Elspeth's reaction was justified and it did pretty much poison the chalice of continuing the show, but what I'm really struggling with is the "cancel him forever!" reaction and "oh I think pretty clearly he's an abuser" that's just getting idly dropped in this thread.
To a degree, this argument reminds me very much of the way people who say extremely racist things are treated after the fact. After someone calls their fan a racial slur, or uses one with the police while drunk, or what not. All these people come out saying, "I know this man, deep in his heart he isn't racist!" Well that fucking doesn't matter. Who he is is not at issue. What he did is. And if you downplay what he did by saying, "it was just words, it wasn't a real harm" then your head isn't in the right space to be talking about this. Sexually belligerent words cause real harm to women just as bigoted words cause real harm to black people. Yes, even if you're "just joking" or "you weren't directing it right at them." (Ironic racism and sexism both suck, ya'll!) Don't be fooled into the mindset that because you don't know what it's like experience it first hand then that means it doesn't exist.
Cambiata on
"If you divide the whole world into just enemies and friends, you'll end up destroying everything" --Nausicaa of the Valley of Wind
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FencingsaxIt is difficult to get a man to understand, when his salary depends upon his not understandingGNU Terry PratchettRegistered Userregular
I like the theory of jail because you serve your time and then hypothetically (if not usually in reality), you get a second chance to try to get your life going again. There's something much more uncertain about the cycle of justice for someone like Noah Bradley. He loses his job (and I assume he can't do much else besides illustration) but there's never really time to serve. There's no sentence. At what point do we let people back into society and give them another chance? The internet never forgets. Or maybe it will in x years?
After seeing the absolute shit conditions prisoners suffer through, it's REALLY hard to say that just losing your job and social standing can compare, but there is something about an end up that at least gives the criminal a hope to better themselves. The ability to say "I served my time." I'd hire an ex-con at my business. I think a lot of people in here would approve of that. If I hired Noah tomorrow, people would be upset. If I hired him a year from now? 2? more?
The core problem with this argument - the core problem with the rehabilitation narrative - is that the only obligations are put on society, not the individual in question. You ask at what point does such an individual get a second chance, but such a question ignores the obligation of the individual to demonstrate that they should be given that chance - this is the purpose of serving one's time, and tends to get particularly messy in the matter of sexual assault because of how our society treats it. As was pointed out above, Bradley has openly subscribed to a philosophy in which demonstrations of contrition are tools to gain breathing time - something that should bring greater scrutiny to his performing such acts, and which demands greater obligations on his part. At this point, the argument of "should he be allowed back into proper society" shouldn't even be on the table, because the prerequisites on his part to bring it there haven't been met yet.
And yes, this means that if he refuses to do that work, society is not obligated to turn a blind eye to that refusal. Nor is society obligated to accept whatever he presents as evidence, either. As I saw pointed out elsewhere in response to the argument of stigmatization:
Do you want to know who else besides rapists spend their entire lifetime wanting to avoid talking about an event in their past because it makes others give them dirty, disapproving looks?
Rape victims.
This is exactly the attitude that leaves people stuck in prison because they don't act sorry enough to please the parole board. And highlights the entire issue notya is talking about. The law has codified sentences and does not necessarily care if you are sorry for what you did. You serve your full time and you leave. Attempts at social and workplace ostracization, which is ultimately what this stuff all ends up being, has no defined sentence.
And we already know from the stigmas against ex-cons that these kind of persistent negative effects on peoples ability to function and support themselves in society.
Your entire framework here is very similar to the one used by "tough on crime" advocates when it comes to how incarceration and afterwards should function.
So, we instead get a culture where victims of sexual/gendered/domestic violence become more and more alienated, because we prioritize the "rehabilitation" of abusers and routinely push their victims (often to the point of outright gaslighting) to have to "accept" their abuser back into the community (which often forces those victims to have to leave for their own safety.) And since you brought it up, it's worth pointing out that sexual and domestic violence is a long-running weak point for the anti-carceral movement because of the nature of such acts of violence and why normal paths of rehabilitation don't really work (this was why the movement really showed their ass during the Persky recall drive.)
I'm a big believer in restorative justice - but as I've said before, the first step (and this goes triple in cases of sexual/gendered/domestic violence) must be contrition. Furthermore, victims must not be forced to be part of the rehabilitation process.
No, the first step is not contrition because that's exactly what I'm talking about above. In terms of actual function justice systems focused on rehabilitation, in the end you have a sentence and then you are done. There is no "indefinite sentence till we believe you when you say you feel bad about it".
"They have to show me they are sorry and make me believe it" is not a system that actually works anyway. Because it's entirely subjective. We've seen how this kind of thing works in the justice system already and about as useful as a cop "knowing a criminal when they see one". And you can see this kind of thing at work just last page, where there's a lot of comments to the effect of "X person said they were sorry, but I don't believe them". Apparently contrition sometimes doesn't count. That's not a system of restorative justice.
And we can see the problem notya was talking about again in the things you keep arguing, even in this post. Because you keep circling around trying to say these people can't be rehabilitated and brushing away what that actually means for where this system, either formal or informal, goes.
When Hedgie says contrition, it's not about saying "sorry", it's about an actual effort to stop victimizing people.
What does that even mean?
It means that abusers need to make an actual effort to stop being abusive. And the first step is admitting that their abise was wrong and harmful. That is the contrition Hedgie is talking about. It isn't about the sorry, it's about stopping the abuse. And if they refuse to stop, they should not have any position of power at all.
Consent in Roleplaying is a really big thing and it is just as important as anywhere else. The entire point of roleplaying games is to have an enjoyable time with your friends. Finding out the limits of certain topics for the people in the group should be done session zero and regularly checked in on as things go forward.
I need to emphasize in a very clear way that this level of streaming is employment, not your friends having fun at your table. Adam is the contracted DM for the RollPlay company. He is the functional supervisor who determines what players get continued employment. These are professional entertainers and actors, who create content as the way they eat and pay rent.
Forcing a rape scene, unexpectedly, is sexual assault by a person in a supervisory position over an employee. This is world's apart from just table manners.
And that's a big part of the core of this discussion as well. When normal people go to cons, they do it for fun. When these entertainers go, they're going to a work convention to network employment opportunities. It is the hustle of the job. And having all the drinking, misogyny, and sexual bro culture built in to the industry is so different from just this being more misogyny in gaming.
You're right, this is a different situation since it's not a group of peers. Thank you for pointing that out.
Being a work environment definitely elevates it, however, let's look past the fact that the actions are being performed by and against fictional characters: The DM in this situation is attempting to force the player to take part in a sexual fantasy against their will. A good analog would be if I started texting a woman and describing the sexual things I could do to her and demanding she reciprocate.
Which is not what happened, and again, in the context of the episode, there are a number of points where Adam attempts to narratively elicit a go/no-go (they're not very effective hence the problem and the whole thing again is badly structured - but it's the tail end of a 4 hour episode as well, which doesn't excuse it but highlights the issue).
The problem I'm having with the way people have reacted is that unlike almost everything else in this thread, this wasn't concealed or hidden, or a pattern of behavior on Adam's part towards his players. It was one scene, where communication in the scene went badly. And a ton of people have gone "Ah hah! We got him! Cancelled forever! Here let me go through all his prior work, see how when he plays characters he's always choosing...."
Which I suppose ties into the whole sentencing discussion above. No one seems to have a solution for how to deal with a social situation that was blundered into, or wants to consider the possibility that this was in fact a mistake, which is sure looks like given that it's the only (though significant) one like it.
EDIT: I was a fan of the show, and a lot of Adam's content. I came out of that episode feeling bad because it was a bad scene which some second pass thinking or editing would've gone "oh, wait the best case outcome here is not good". The reactions and damage to the show are all reasonable. The way it's tossed around, the way it's been dropped in this thread, the way up-thread its been used to imply "ooh there might be more because Adam works with JP and JP has this other thing...". What is that? It doesn't feel like justice, or even something useful.
A couple of things, from someone who never heard of this roleplay group before I watched the video if this event.
First, though we often think of famous people having their predation "concealed", that's hardly ever true in that person's day to day. Predators tend to be pretty open about who they are as long as you don't use words like "rape" or "sexual assault" around them. Think about someone like Weinstein and how everyone in the industry knew who he was; his behavior just wasn't televised which is what we mean, I suppose, when we talk about something being "secret." Most of the people exposed in this thread have tons of outpouring from the industry saying "this guy has always been a creep." So I don't think "it was live and not secret so it couldn't have been predatory" is as air tight of a defense as you think it is.
I don't know what it's like to be a man. But I know I've been present when a guy makes a predatory joke and everyone just laughs and no one says, "that's predatory, yo." I fear that being a man who has laughed at a joke where someone talks about fucking a drink girl makes men - maybe? - want to give leeway where none should actually exist. Again, predators are aware of this social contract and use it to their defense and their victims detriment.
The reason that role-play was canceled was because all the players quit. I think if they believed he was just an innocent guy who made one mistake, I think they would have been more willing to work with him.
But more importantly, I saw the video myself. That was uninvited sexual discussion between two human beings, not two characters. That shit was messed up.
Edit: watching the end of that video, EVERYONE instantly understood what was wrong with what Adam did, while Adam laughed. The other men on the video are all doing facepalms while the women try to explain it. Adam understood, too, he just pretended not to to get benefit of the doubt. He probably wasn't expecting everyone to quit over it, but he knew he was violating a boundary.
I, too, had no idea who any of the people in the Adam incident were before today. I watched the end of that episode and I was severely creeped out. I don’t routinely role play but I’ve always felt that that is a vulnerable situation in any context which is why it is imperative that it is treated as a safe space as much as possible and I feel like that didn’t happen.
It was obvious to me based on body language alone that everyone aside from Adam was uncomfortable and thrown off kilter.
Then I watched Elspie’s (sp?) [the one that the robot machinations were directed at in the game] response video explaining her thoughts and why she quit Far Varona as a result and I’m like “yeah, that was really bad.”
I mean I would have quit, too.
Also, maybe I’m just cynical and I really don’t know any of these people including Adam, but I almost felt like he was testing the waters/toeing the line to see if he could get this out there into the group to normalize it, which I think is a common aspect of habitual harassment behavior. Abusers (at least as one tactic) step a little bit over the line again and again to constantly re-normalize negative behavior. I don’t know Adam but it felt like that to me considering the reactions from this group he supposedly has a somewhat significant history with at this point.
The fact that it happened at the VERY END of the episode is very suspect too. Cross the line knowingly and then use public pressure (it was a live broadcast) to prevent any response. Sorry but eww. Even if he really didn’t mastermind the situation in that manner, it was abusive, and as the de facto leader? organizer? he had a responsibility to prevent exactly that kind of situation from occurring even if it was not explicitly intentional.
Like...this entire post is kind of what I mean? You freely admit you don't know any of the personalities, and then go on to speculate wildly about the type of monster you think one of them might be. Adam is a streamer, his body of work for Rollplay shows is all there for anyone to see including dozens if not hundreds of hours of interactions with female castmates.
There isn't a groundswell of people coming forward going "oh yeah this was a problem when we were doing...", it's literally this one episode in this one case.
Like, yes, it was bad. Elspeth's reaction was justified and it did pretty much poison the chalice of continuing the show, but what I'm really struggling with is the "cancel him forever!" reaction and "oh I think pretty clearly he's an abuser" that's just getting idly dropped in this thread.
First off, I'm not saying cancel Adam forever. I'm not not saying that either. I'm objectively examining the actions themselves (since I literally have nothing other than the evidence and testimony I have at my disposal about this specific situation, which is actually substantive in this case). I'm saying that the actions Adam took in this situation were abusive. You don't have to be a habitual abuser or abuse anyone else for an action to be abusive.
Evidence: The recorded livestream of Far Varona which includes Adam's actions and the very obvious reactions reinforced by their ensuing quitting of subsequent episodes
Testimony: Elspeth's, JPman's and Adam's commentaries after the fact. I was looking for a video from Vera (is that the name - upper right video in the Far Varona stream but couldn't find one) since she seemed even more discomposed than Elspeth on the live feed. Andrew (?) too - top left
As I stated, I don't know for certain what Adam's intentions were because I don't know him but I contend that I don't need to know his intentions. I don't believe intent is a necessary aspect of abuse. I feel that Adam's actions in this situation were abusive and the people on the stream, particularly Elspeth's but also everyone else's as they had to experience that live discomfort too, were abused in that situation.
So, my main point here is that Adam's actions were abusive in this case and that I don't need to know anything about Adam or his mindset to judge that.
I furthermore think it's fair to suggest that these actions closely represent the types of actions that known abusive personalities typically engage in and have provably engaged in in the past. That doesn't prove that Adam is a habitual abuser or should be "cancelled" as a result and that we should assume he is a habitual abuser but I think it's completely fair to point the above out. I don't need to know anything about him to make these observations either.
I like the theory of jail because you serve your time and then hypothetically (if not usually in reality), you get a second chance to try to get your life going again. There's something much more uncertain about the cycle of justice for someone like Noah Bradley. He loses his job (and I assume he can't do much else besides illustration) but there's never really time to serve. There's no sentence. At what point do we let people back into society and give them another chance? The internet never forgets. Or maybe it will in x years?
After seeing the absolute shit conditions prisoners suffer through, it's REALLY hard to say that just losing your job and social standing can compare, but there is something about an end up that at least gives the criminal a hope to better themselves. The ability to say "I served my time." I'd hire an ex-con at my business. I think a lot of people in here would approve of that. If I hired Noah tomorrow, people would be upset. If I hired him a year from now? 2? more?
The core problem with this argument - the core problem with the rehabilitation narrative - is that the only obligations are put on society, not the individual in question. You ask at what point does such an individual get a second chance, but such a question ignores the obligation of the individual to demonstrate that they should be given that chance - this is the purpose of serving one's time, and tends to get particularly messy in the matter of sexual assault because of how our society treats it. As was pointed out above, Bradley has openly subscribed to a philosophy in which demonstrations of contrition are tools to gain breathing time - something that should bring greater scrutiny to his performing such acts, and which demands greater obligations on his part. At this point, the argument of "should he be allowed back into proper society" shouldn't even be on the table, because the prerequisites on his part to bring it there haven't been met yet.
And yes, this means that if he refuses to do that work, society is not obligated to turn a blind eye to that refusal. Nor is society obligated to accept whatever he presents as evidence, either. As I saw pointed out elsewhere in response to the argument of stigmatization:
Do you want to know who else besides rapists spend their entire lifetime wanting to avoid talking about an event in their past because it makes others give them dirty, disapproving looks?
Rape victims.
This is exactly the attitude that leaves people stuck in prison because they don't act sorry enough to please the parole board. And highlights the entire issue notya is talking about. The law has codified sentences and does not necessarily care if you are sorry for what you did. You serve your full time and you leave. Attempts at social and workplace ostracization, which is ultimately what this stuff all ends up being, has no defined sentence.
And we already know from the stigmas against ex-cons that these kind of persistent negative effects on peoples ability to function and support themselves in society.
Your entire framework here is very similar to the one used by "tough on crime" advocates when it comes to how incarceration and afterwards should function.
So, we instead get a culture where victims of sexual/gendered/domestic violence become more and more alienated, because we prioritize the "rehabilitation" of abusers and routinely push their victims (often to the point of outright gaslighting) to have to "accept" their abuser back into the community (which often forces those victims to have to leave for their own safety.) And since you brought it up, it's worth pointing out that sexual and domestic violence is a long-running weak point for the anti-carceral movement because of the nature of such acts of violence and why normal paths of rehabilitation don't really work (this was why the movement really showed their ass during the Persky recall drive.)
I'm a big believer in restorative justice - but as I've said before, the first step (and this goes triple in cases of sexual/gendered/domestic violence) must be contrition. Furthermore, victims must not be forced to be part of the rehabilitation process.
No, the first step is not contrition because that's exactly what I'm talking about above. In terms of actual function justice systems focused on rehabilitation, in the end you have a sentence and then you are done. There is no "indefinite sentence till we believe you when you say you feel bad about it".
"They have to show me they are sorry and make me believe it" is not a system that actually works anyway. Because it's entirely subjective. We've seen how this kind of thing works in the justice system already and about as useful as a cop "knowing a criminal when they see one". And you can see this kind of thing at work just last page, where there's a lot of comments to the effect of "X person said they were sorry, but I don't believe them". Apparently contrition sometimes doesn't count. That's not a system of restorative justice.
And we can see the problem notya was talking about again in the things you keep arguing, even in this post. Because you keep circling around trying to say these people can't be rehabilitated and brushing away what that actually means for where this system, either formal or informal, goes.
Second, contrition isn't "saying sorry". Contrition is accepting the ramifications of one's conduct - that one has harmed others, that the fault for those actions rests with oneself, and that it's on oneself to make amends -and that others are not obligated to accept. (And yeah, part of contrition is to accept that some bridges are well and truly burned due to one's actions.) You talk about people saying that they don't believe Bradley, while ignoring why people were saying that - he subscribed to a philosophy that has an outright precept of using false apologies to gain breathing room ("surrender to recover".) Yeah - it turns out that when you believe something like that, it's going to take more to demonstrate contrition to others, because you have shown that you are willing to lie about it.
Finally, I'm not saying that these people can't be rehabilitated. What I'm saying is that the responsibility of rehabilitation is on them - not on society, and definitely not on their victims. Because when we put the onus on society, what we wind up with is victims forced to have to make the choice between accepting abusers back into their lives when they're not willing, or having to leave communities to be safe.
Dude, this is the entire problem with your argument right here in the first paragraph. I've literally not suggested any system at all. So I've no idea what you are talking about here. You are the one pulling these systems out of your ass. The people you are responding to don't know what they are and are not suggesting them.
And the rest of your post is just illustrative again of the same problem I mentioned above. I'm not ignoring why people are saying they don't believe Bradley, I'm pointing out that the very fact of that means this is an entirely vague subjective assessment on what "counts". You want to claim this as some sort of "restorative justice" system but it's all just undefined and hand-wavey and dependent on whether you actually believe the person's contrition or not. It's one with no defined end in sight and in which you've even posted links seeming arguing against the very restorative justice system you seem to be bringing up on the issue of the very type of case this entire thread is about. There's no defined anything here. No defined criteria, no defined end, no defined idea of rehabilitation. That's the thing notya is talking about right from the start here. At the end of the day, people who go to prison for non-life sentences go home. Even if they don't feel sorry for what they did.
Method has been sketchy for a long, LONG time, and it boils down to two reasons:
The fact that they keep MethodJosh on the company, despite the fact that he got a permaban on Twitch for pulling a knife on a woman on camera (a female streamer, he was "joke" doing it and then Twitch "joke" banned him) aka really should be in prison. Video is around, I won't link it, because even I found that vastly disturbing.
Their continuous refusal to not let viewers hear team coms, despite the other top end guilds ending up doing it these last couple of years, which makes everybody suspect about the content of those team coms.
I really don't know how to feel about this. I feel like breaking the social contract of violating what society has collectively codified as law is different/separate from breaking the social contract of not abusing positions of power in a (for example) sexually exploitative way. I don't see cancel culture has necessarily a response to violating the legal social contract but rather around the violation of trust that comes with abuse of positions of power, or even just proximity and access. I don't think you can really apply the same concepts of rehabilitation to this kind of situation and it's not about rehabilitation, but rather the offender proving they can permanently abide by the social contract henceforth. Can society provide an explicit, codified pathway for that? Should society? And to AH's point, why should society even be concerned with enabling offenders of this aspect of our social contract to re-prove their ability to be trusted in the situations they abused?
edit: Also, maybe this is callous, but there's plenty of talented people in every type of industry - art and otherwise - that maybe a one-strike-your-out policy is fine. Move aside and let someone else have a voice instead. Instead of Survival of the Fittest, how about Survival of the Nicest or at least Survival of the People Who Can Follow The Social Contract The Best. Not everyone in society, and in fact very few, are ever going to get to the point of fame that Chris Avellone had. Honestly, why even waste the energy on giving a shit about him anymore (as an example)?
*edit 2: This post is not about Adam. I'm circling back to less complicated/more egregious examples.
Posts
This is incredibly important, and often overlooked.
Whenever anyone whines about "Cancel Culture" I want to pull my hair out. The only people who ever suffer from calling out abusers are the victims.
The abusers themselves bounce back in record time, and no one cares about their abuses.
Nobody is saying "fuck them". What people are pointing out is that abusers are not owed their high status in society, and if they lose that status due to their own conduct, that's on their head. The problem with the "rehabilitation narrative" is that it too often prioritizes the welfare of the abuser over the welfare of victims, and argues that an abuser's fall from grace (which, as several people have pointed out, is rarely as total as made out to be) is the fault of the community.
in what way would worrying about the victims change the fact that Mel Gibson and Brian Wood still get work? What does "worry more about the victims" actually even mean here? Believing them? Ok no prob. But for anyone just following along on twitter that's a very "thoughts and prayers" kind of thing.
Arguing with those who don't believe the victim? Sure ok maybe but I don't know how much good it is trying to convince twitter randos but it's something.
Not buying or consuming media they have created? Probably a good idea but gets tricky in cases where the media was the product of many innocent peoples' labor as well as the abuser. Have to figure that out on a case by case basis.
If you happen to be in a position where it is possible, refusing to work with the absuer / cut them off etc... ? Now that seems like a positive thing to do for the few people in a position to do so (compared to the number of spectators on social media). But that is what you are saying is "the fantasy of the abuser forever shunned" and that we should be worrying more about the victims instead.
So how does that work?
The first step is to show more concern over the welfare of victims than the welfare of their abusers. Too often, victims find themselves isolated from the communities they belong to because the community gets more concerned about what will happen to the abuser rather than what is happening to their victims.
why did you quote my post for this reply? Because it seems almost entirely orthogonal. I never even hinted at a rehabiliation of these people. Some of them cannot be rehabiliated no matter what. But they still exist and so must be dealt with somehow. There is nowhere to banish them to and there is an understandable reluctance to just kill them. As I said, and you ignored, removing them from their high status jobs seems like a good thing. But what you also ignored was the question of what happens after. Is that just moving abusers into more invisible low status jobs where they (like the people already in such jobs) can be more easily ignored?
again, you seem to be quoting posts and then typing things that sound nice but are not related to the thing you are quoting.
Your posts illustrate the problem, because you're more concerned about where the abuser winds up than what happens with the victims. If an abuser can no longer get high status work, why exactly is that a problem that demands our attention? Again, this is one of the major flaws of the "rehabilitation narrative", that the abuser is now somehow society's problem, and as such society is somehow obligated to work with them for their rehabilitation. Society does need to provide the tools for rehabilitation, but beyond that, the onus of improvement is on the abuser. Meanwhile, no concern is shown for the victims - as I pointed out, they are too often pressured into being co-opted into the "rehabilitation" of their abuser.
So before we start spitballing about the plight of the poor starving abuser, how about we first address the very real problems that their victims routinely suffer after everything comes out.
I think everyone is here is for the most part, in agreement in how we feel about the victims. There isn't a lot of debate and discourse to be had there. I don't think people need to post a paragraph about how much they care about the victims as a prelude to discussing the part everyone would like to debate about (the aggressors). And I don't think it's fair to say that because we want to discuss the aggressors, that that somehow makes us care less about the victims.
It sure seems like we do because these threads always seem to derail into hand-wringing about how unfair it is to shun abusers forever.
Which is especially bullshit given abusers always seem to suffer less than the people speaking out against them.
This is bullshit, Riemann is contending (among other things) you're just shifting the abuser onto low-status work where they can continue to prey on people, and under conditions where victims have less agency to fight back.
He's directly mentioning the problems victims suffer and you're pointedly ignoring that.
You didn't even read Riemann's post.
Riemann's entire post was about the fact that "fuck abusers, they end up where they end up" strategy does not actually get rid of abusive people, and in fact still allows them to prey on people when they inevitably find work elsewhere, whether in the industry or just wherever. There was absolutely no handwringing about how abusers should be treated better or real concern with how they end up, except for the caveat that just straight up exiling them to starve to death is probably not morally palatable. They were basically saying "y'know, maybe we should actually figure out a good way to enforce consequences or better behavior longer term", which is the exact opposite of being concerned about how they end up.
Better support structures for victims, better reporting, more people believing victims, etc. are all very important, but given how often this thread correctly points out cancelling people doesn't seem to stick, it seems like focusing on how to actually ensure abusers do not do future harm is a pretty important angle to consider.
The answer to abusers of every level is that we as a society need to stop giving them leeway, no matter where they sit. But beyond that, the argument that an abuser falling from grace (which, again, is more myth than fact) is somehow the fault of society is some gooseshit framing. Communities should not be obliged to keep abusers around out of some twisted idea of duty, and arguing that an abuser losing status and the privileges thereof is somehow "shifting" them off is nonsense.
And if we're going to discuss the problems victims face, we should be centering them in our discussions, and not just treating them as ancillary to the discussion of their abusers.
Ok look you need to start actually reading posts here hedgie. You have this platonic ideal of a kind of post you really want to disagree with (which is understandable) but you are projecting it onto posts that don't actually say what you want them to say. You have not in any way even started to show that what I actually posted "illustrate the problem, because you're more concerned about where the abuser winds up than what happens with the victims".
If nothing else I want you to realize that never once have I talked about abusers behind rehabilitated. Or being allowed to keep their jobs. Or even being allowed to somehow make a comeback later (regardless of contrition).
You ask: "If an abuser can no longer get high status work, why exactly is that a problem that demands our attention?". First off it demands our attention (as in, society as at large, we gawking social media spectators) because it shouldn't it shouldn't be the responsibility of the attention of the victim. And yet there is an overwhelming number of posts in this thread that are in some way grappling with the question: "ok we believe the victim, what do we actually do next? What should happen next?"
You talk about "concern for the victims". What does that mean? I listed several things above that it could mean, perhaps, but that was in the post you ignored.
You, not I, keep talking about this issue of rehabilitation. Whether that is even possible it must be at some point in the future. Possibly the far distant future. What I am curious about is what happens in the meantime. Before you jump on that statement you should actually take a moment to read the first post I made last page rather than pulling out one of your scripts.
An abuser falling from grace is not a fault of society it is a feature of a functioning society (which we don't have).
edit: There was a quote in one of the Pratchett books that I think about quite often: "Every layer of society dumps their garbage on the one below it until someone is prepared to eat it".
None of these are things that Riemann said.
There was no moralizing about how it is wrong to punish abusers.
They were not saying communities were obliged to keep abusers around (except for the bit where them literally being exiled from any paid work would be too extreme).
They were not saying that it was wrong for them to lose status or privilege.
They were not saying or implying any group was at fault for what an abuser did once they were shunned.
What they were saying is "hey, if abusers still keep abusing after they get outed, we should consider how to deal with that issue, because it isn't like abuse stops being bad if they do it with less prestige."
A couple of things, from someone who never heard of this roleplay group before I watched the video if this event.
First, though we often think of famous people having their predation "concealed", that's hardly ever true in that person's day to day. Predators tend to be pretty open about who they are as long as you don't use words like "rape" or "sexual assault" around them. Think about someone like Weinstein and how everyone in the industry knew who he was; his behavior just wasn't televised which is what we mean, I suppose, when we talk about something being "secret." Most of the people exposed in this thread have tons of outpouring from the industry saying "this guy has always been a creep." So I don't think "it was live and not secret so it couldn't have been predatory" is as air tight of a defense as you think it is.
I don't know what it's like to be a man. But I know I've been present when a guy makes a predatory joke and everyone just laughs and no one says, "that's predatory, yo." I fear that being a man who has laughed at a joke where someone talks about fucking a drink girl makes men - maybe? - want to give leeway where none should actually exist. Again, predators are aware of this social contract and use it to their defense and their victims detriment.
The reason that role-play was canceled was because all the players quit. I think if they believed he was just an innocent guy who made one mistake, I think they would have been more willing to work with him.
But more importantly, I saw the video myself. That was uninvited sexual discussion between two human beings, not two characters. That shit was messed up.
Edit: watching the end of that video, EVERYONE instantly understood what was wrong with what Adam did, while Adam laughed. The other men on the video are all doing facepalms while the women try to explain it. Adam understood, too, he just pretended not to to get benefit of the doubt. He probably wasn't expecting everyone to quit over it, but he knew he was violating a boundary.
I see "what do we do with abusers?" as a question directly related to victim welfare, because, well... what do we do with abusers? Abusive personalities are incredibly common, as we're finding out. I'd love to see more research into how much of that is nature vs nurture, and thus how much can be done to identify abusers and intervene early; but in the meantime, what do we do with the frankly huge percent of men in power (edit: and some women) who have abusive personalities?* Ideally, I'd isolate them until and unless they can demonstrate a sincere desire to change, and then monitor them for life to make sure they follow through - but that's neither practical nor plausible, especially considering very few abusers are 1) interested in changing and 2) capable of it. So how do we keep past, current, and potential future victims safe when abusers are a dime a dozen?
* When I say "abusive personality," I'm not trying to recast abuse as the result of a mental illness and thus absolve abusers (though I think making "abusive personality disorder" a thing might be an effective way of directing resources to the problem, as well as hopefully making its scope visible to the general public). I'm saying that because abusive behavior is rooted in entitlement, you can't treat abuse as a one-time misdeed or abusers as good people who made mistakes. You have to look at it as the result of a moral compass that is fucked up enough to think the behavior was acceptable, and you have to deal with the whole person as someone with a fucked-up moral compass. You can't just attempt to address the specific behavior, because that only teaches them how to abuse in more subtle ways.
(I am not a psychologist; this is my personal opinion as someone who has survived intimate partner abuse.)
And my point is that nobody is saying that, so he's just attacking a strawman. The reason that abusers keep finding a way back in is 1) because rape culture is A Thing, and thus many people don't actually see their behavior as wrong (this was a big theme I saw in discussions about the Warren Ellis Forum, and how that sort of behavior was normalized and critics shouted down (often in a misogynistic manner,)) and 2) because we have this cultural conceit of a "redemption narrative" that routinely refocuses the matter around the abuser, often forcing the community and their victims to bend to work with them. Society should be stopping them from abusing again, which is best done by no longer tolerating abuse at any level. But beyond that, people no longer treating an abuser with respect is not society's problem, and we need to stop treating it like it is.
Nobody is saying what, exactly? You are once again making a post where you are not actually responding to any statements, you're just repeating yourself as if we said the thing you thought we were going to say.
Like, OK, some assholes who aren't here are talking about redemption narratives. Why are you bringing it up here, in response to a question explicitly saying that redemption is wrong? Why are you acting as if people are arguing that abusers should be treated with respect, when we're explicitly saying that not-respecting somebody out of an industry does not go far enough to prevent abuse? Clearly the issue can't be solved by literally never talking about how to deal with abusers past the initial, generally useless, cancellation, and while we are all in agreement that rape culture is a problem and victims are not taken seriously enough, the issue is more than just that.
How would we word a law that defines what abuse is? What would the punishments be?
Edit: Currently we practically have corporations in charge of punishments. How crazy is that?
The laws exist. What often doesn't is support for the victim in coming forward, and condemnation of the abuser.
The laws don't exist, though.
Laws against rape and certain kinds of sexual assault exist, yes, and they aren't enforced well enough and that's a huge problem.
But the stuff being talked about in recent pages of this thread? There are few to no laws to enforce. What Warren Ellis is accused of isn't illegal. It's immoral and shitty but unless I missed something he basically befriended young women, signal boosted their work and helped them network, then tried to turn their relationships sexual and dropped them if they didn't go for it. He's not their actual employer so workplace harassment laws don't apply. I mean, if he told them "let's fuck or I don't give your manuscript to my publisher friends" then you could maybe try to get him for solicitation, but just being a shit heel isn't against any laws. The RollPlay thing you could try to bring a lawsuit for sexual harassment but given the performative nature of their work it's about on par with Tarantino putting weird foot-fetish shit in his movies. It's certainly skeezy but it's going to be hard to codify "skeezy art" in a way that's not censorship. Which isn't to say it shouldn't be done, but it hasn't already been done.
I, too, had no idea who any of the people in the Adam incident were before today. I watched the end of that episode and I was severely creeped out. I don’t routinely role play but I’ve always felt that that is a vulnerable situation in any context which is why it is imperative that it is treated as a safe space as much as possible and I feel like that didn’t happen.
It was obvious to me based on body language alone that everyone aside from Adam was uncomfortable and thrown off kilter.
Then I watched Elspie’s (sp?) [the one that the robot machinations were directed at in the game] response video explaining her thoughts and why she quit Far Varona as a result and I’m like “yeah, that was really bad.”
I mean I would have quit, too.
Also, maybe I’m just cynical and I really don’t know any of these people including Adam, but I almost felt like he was testing the waters/toeing the line to see if he could get this out there into the group to normalize it, which I think is a common aspect of habitual harassment behavior. Abusers (at least as one tactic) step a little bit over the line again and again to constantly re-normalize negative behavior. I don’t know Adam but it felt like that to me considering the reactions from this group he supposedly has a somewhat significant history with at this point.
The fact that it happened at the VERY END of the episode is very suspect too. Cross the line knowingly and then use public pressure (it was a live broadcast) to prevent any response. Sorry but eww. Even if he really didn’t mastermind the situation in that manner, it was abusive, and as the de facto leader? organizer? he had a responsibility to prevent exactly that kind of situation from occurring even if it was not explicitly intentional.
I think the focus on punishment after the fact is at best an incomplete and inadequate solution to the problem. Educating and empowering bystanders and potential victims that abusers exist, and that they often hold positions of respect and authority is equally important. Teach people how to temper their admiration with skepticism, and emphasize the importance of not looking away or making excuses for disrespectful and creepy behaviour.
Every "she is playing hard to get" and "well you just have to keep trying" message in romantic comedies (or in real life), are actively working against the understanding of consent.
There should be a path to rehabilitation.
But that path does not need to, and often should not, involve giving the abuser their position back.
Also, until we first deal with the issue of victims being thrown under the buss, worrying about the abusers feels kinda uncomfortable to me.
In a way the US lack of social safety net really warps any conversation about stuff like this, because getting fired can be akin to a death sentence for some people (almost never to the specific people we discuss), so on broad hypotheticals the soluton of "fire them" can get people from defensive because of how bad that can be.
A properly functioning society could fire harassers and abusers, and not need to worry about them starving on the streets.
No, the first step is not contrition because that's exactly what I'm talking about above. In terms of actual function justice systems focused on rehabilitation, in the end you have a sentence and then you are done. There is no "indefinite sentence till we believe you when you say you feel bad about it".
"They have to show me they are sorry and make me believe it" is not a system that actually works anyway. Because it's entirely subjective. We've seen how this kind of thing works in the justice system already and about as useful as a cop "knowing a criminal when they see one". And you can see this kind of thing at work just last page, where there's a lot of comments to the effect of "X person said they were sorry, but I don't believe them". Apparently contrition sometimes doesn't count. That's not a system of restorative justice.
And we can see the problem notya was talking about again in the things you keep arguing, even in this post. Because you keep circling around trying to say these people can't be rehabilitated and brushing away what that actually means for where this system, either formal or informal, goes.
Like...this entire post is kind of what I mean? You freely admit you don't know any of the personalities, and then go on to speculate wildly about the type of monster you think one of them might be. Adam is a streamer, his body of work for Rollplay shows is all there for anyone to see including dozens if not hundreds of hours of interactions with female castmates.
There isn't a groundswell of people coming forward going "oh yeah this was a problem when we were doing...", it's literally this one episode in this one case.
Like, yes, it was bad. Elspeth's reaction was justified and it did pretty much poison the chalice of continuing the show, but what I'm really struggling with is the "cancel him forever!" reaction and "oh I think pretty clearly he's an abuser" that's just getting idly dropped in this thread.
When Hedgie says contrition, it's not about saying "sorry", it's about an actual effort to stop victimizing people.
The show needed to end and he needed to admit he was wrong - even if it's role-playing he understands why it's unacceptable, he doesn't get a pass to keep making content without making corrections to how his games are run. There should be no chance of this happening again.
I'm unaware of a pattern of behavior. He went over the line, but the entire reason people like edgy role-playing is that it deals with adult themes and emotional complexity. Inevitably something was going to happen somewhere.
There have been plenty of streamers playing GTAV RP who have been outright racist and misogynistic, to others around them who had no say in the matter. What happened on RollPlay rightly killed the show. I'm not sure more needs to happen publicly, it's between Adam and Elspeth.
He did the thing he did. We all saw what he did. I'm not prepared to say "he's an abuser" or whatever, but I don't really need to. He did something we have on record, that everyone else in the room instantly reacted to. You're the one trying to reframe it like he's some innocent doe in the woods who never heard of consent before or couldn't possibly know that someone getting raped in-game without discussing it with the character's author and actress could be in any way a horrible thing to do. Him being completely oblivious to whether someone might mind about getting virtal-raped or not is the unlikely thing, the thing you want to sell us in this thread. He doesn't look like he's below the age of 14, so I'm not going to give him the "he's never read any books or watched any TV or movies" defense like you want to. It doesn't fly.
Complaining about "cancelling" is and will always be dumb. For 99.9% of anyone whose accused, no matter what the evidence, they get right back into their career just as powerful as ever.
What does that even mean?
What you're describing is something like the Amish system of "shunning" - which, as it turns out, winds up screwing over victims of sexual abuse, who are expected to accept the ruling of the community. Which illustrates the problem with your position - you're so focused on rehabilitating the abuser that their victims cease to exist.
Second, contrition isn't "saying sorry". Contrition is accepting the ramifications of one's conduct - that one has harmed others, that the fault for those actions rests with oneself, and that it's on oneself to make amends -and that others are not obligated to accept. (And yeah, part of contrition is to accept that some bridges are well and truly burned due to one's actions.) You talk about people saying that they don't believe Bradley, while ignoring why people were saying that - he subscribed to a philosophy that has an outright precept of using false apologies to gain breathing room ("surrender to recover".) Yeah - it turns out that when you believe something like that, it's going to take more to demonstrate contrition to others, because you have shown that you are willing to lie about it.
Finally, I'm not saying that these people can't be rehabilitated. What I'm saying is that the responsibility of rehabilitation is on them - not on society, and definitely not on their victims. Because when we put the onus on society, what we wind up with is victims forced to have to make the choice between accepting abusers back into their lives when they're not willing, or having to leave communities to be safe.
To a degree, this argument reminds me very much of the way people who say extremely racist things are treated after the fact. After someone calls their fan a racial slur, or uses one with the police while drunk, or what not. All these people come out saying, "I know this man, deep in his heart he isn't racist!" Well that fucking doesn't matter. Who he is is not at issue. What he did is. And if you downplay what he did by saying, "it was just words, it wasn't a real harm" then your head isn't in the right space to be talking about this. Sexually belligerent words cause real harm to women just as bigoted words cause real harm to black people. Yes, even if you're "just joking" or "you weren't directing it right at them." (Ironic racism and sexism both suck, ya'll!) Don't be fooled into the mindset that because you don't know what it's like experience it first hand then that means it doesn't exist.
It means that abusers need to make an actual effort to stop being abusive. And the first step is admitting that their abise was wrong and harmful. That is the contrition Hedgie is talking about. It isn't about the sorry, it's about stopping the abuse. And if they refuse to stop, they should not have any position of power at all.
First off, I'm not saying cancel Adam forever. I'm not not saying that either. I'm objectively examining the actions themselves (since I literally have nothing other than the evidence and testimony I have at my disposal about this specific situation, which is actually substantive in this case). I'm saying that the actions Adam took in this situation were abusive. You don't have to be a habitual abuser or abuse anyone else for an action to be abusive.
Evidence: The recorded livestream of Far Varona which includes Adam's actions and the very obvious reactions reinforced by their ensuing quitting of subsequent episodes
Testimony: Elspeth's, JPman's and Adam's commentaries after the fact. I was looking for a video from Vera (is that the name - upper right video in the Far Varona stream but couldn't find one) since she seemed even more discomposed than Elspeth on the live feed. Andrew (?) too - top left
As I stated, I don't know for certain what Adam's intentions were because I don't know him but I contend that I don't need to know his intentions. I don't believe intent is a necessary aspect of abuse. I feel that Adam's actions in this situation were abusive and the people on the stream, particularly Elspeth's but also everyone else's as they had to experience that live discomfort too, were abused in that situation.
So, my main point here is that Adam's actions were abusive in this case and that I don't need to know anything about Adam or his mindset to judge that.
I furthermore think it's fair to suggest that these actions closely represent the types of actions that known abusive personalities typically engage in and have provably engaged in in the past. That doesn't prove that Adam is a habitual abuser or should be "cancelled" as a result and that we should assume he is a habitual abuser but I think it's completely fair to point the above out. I don't need to know anything about him to make these observations either.
So, I stand by my comments.
Dude, this is the entire problem with your argument right here in the first paragraph. I've literally not suggested any system at all. So I've no idea what you are talking about here. You are the one pulling these systems out of your ass. The people you are responding to don't know what they are and are not suggesting them.
And the rest of your post is just illustrative again of the same problem I mentioned above. I'm not ignoring why people are saying they don't believe Bradley, I'm pointing out that the very fact of that means this is an entirely vague subjective assessment on what "counts". You want to claim this as some sort of "restorative justice" system but it's all just undefined and hand-wavey and dependent on whether you actually believe the person's contrition or not. It's one with no defined end in sight and in which you've even posted links seeming arguing against the very restorative justice system you seem to be bringing up on the issue of the very type of case this entire thread is about. There's no defined anything here. No defined criteria, no defined end, no defined idea of rehabilitation. That's the thing notya is talking about right from the start here. At the end of the day, people who go to prison for non-life sentences go home. Even if they don't feel sorry for what they did.
Method has been sketchy for a long, LONG time, and it boils down to two reasons:
I really don't know how to feel about this. I feel like breaking the social contract of violating what society has collectively codified as law is different/separate from breaking the social contract of not abusing positions of power in a (for example) sexually exploitative way. I don't see cancel culture has necessarily a response to violating the legal social contract but rather around the violation of trust that comes with abuse of positions of power, or even just proximity and access. I don't think you can really apply the same concepts of rehabilitation to this kind of situation and it's not about rehabilitation, but rather the offender proving they can permanently abide by the social contract henceforth. Can society provide an explicit, codified pathway for that? Should society? And to AH's point, why should society even be concerned with enabling offenders of this aspect of our social contract to re-prove their ability to be trusted in the situations they abused?
edit: Also, maybe this is callous, but there's plenty of talented people in every type of industry - art and otherwise - that maybe a one-strike-your-out policy is fine. Move aside and let someone else have a voice instead. Instead of Survival of the Fittest, how about Survival of the Nicest or at least Survival of the People Who Can Follow The Social Contract The Best. Not everyone in society, and in fact very few, are ever going to get to the point of fame that Chris Avellone had. Honestly, why even waste the energy on giving a shit about him anymore (as an example)?
*edit 2: This post is not about Adam. I'm circling back to less complicated/more egregious examples.