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[deleted] wrote

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celebratedrecluse wrote

An ex-friend once told me that they would rape me if their life depends on it but no worries such a scenario would never happen

I...what...how does this sort of comment even come up in conversation?? wtf

Anyway:

Can someone enlighten me how you can prone anarchism and be such a creep?

Well my opinion on this is that people who are attracted to a philosophy whose conclusions are as dire and grim as revolutionary politics can be (death of the planet impending, hierarchy everywhere, the need for some sort of showdown between the forces of equality and inequity, the lack of any sort of guarantee of success) can sometimes be these macho types who are also misogynist, rapists, entitled, etc.

There is also the problem of radical politics being disproportionately populated by people who have the privilege to study theory, music, and other things that are unfortunately (and only partially) restricted to bourgeois people, and culturally insulated to white people often too, which is another layer of privilege.

the solution to this is to create anarchist spaces and communities which have a no-tolerance attitude for the types of behaviors that signal, and eventually lead to, predatory behavior. Dr. Bones, as much as I liked his characters, had plenty of these: cultural appropriation (which basically nobody called out), glamorization of substance use (its fine to use, or to talk about use, but he would exaggerate both his portrayal of his use & actually overindulge for dramatic social purposes on the podcast/in his writing), and frankly just the arrogant/domineering way he would talk on the podcast sometimes.

It's really hard to have these kind of discussions and interventions early, which is why it's so very important do so, and create a culture across multiple radical communities of doing so. If you catch this stuff early, you can attempt to call-in, you can save people from going through really painful call-outs, and most importantly you can stop people from being victimized.

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[deleted] wrote

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celebratedrecluse wrote

It came up because that person enjoy asking those "if you had to choose between this or that what would you do?"

lol wtf that's a social fail if i ever heard of one...and I would know lmao

Do you think those people that prone anarchism yet act opposite to it are full of shit or they simply don't realise their behaviour, so as you say, calling people out is the most important thing.

I think it depends, and making sweeping judgements is difficult and fraught with complications. All of us fail to live up to our beliefs, values and ideals, its the nature of being human. However, some of us also have selfish or malevolent intent. It's sort of a cop-out answer but you just have to feel out the situation for yourself when you're in it. It sucks because I've been taken advantage of by predatory people due to being too trusting in the wrong people, but i also feel very strongly that it would be even worse to shut myself off from trusting people in a big way, because that's reactive to past circumstance rather than engaged with the present.

In the case of your friend, though, that's a big red flag for me, not only did they share this info but they also sought out to tell you this info. A reasonable person would know that endorsing rape under any circumstances is going to make other uncomfortable, and they would not seek to espouse that unless they were making some weird kind of power play or they didn't even think about how you would feel, which are both kind of concerning possibilities

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