DEALING WITH SURVIVORS. II.

It will take a while to express these issues in full, but today we raise six further points. These come from discussions between a number of Survivors and their Allies over a number of years.

TRIGGER WARNINGS APPLY: Survivor issues. Survivors who are one or more of non-mainstream, LGBT*, people who don't identify, Polys, BDSM being or feeling left out from some sources of support for Survivors. People being left out, including how some of these are in fact Survivors who don't identify.

1) Non-mainstream people often lead largely to totally different lives from mainstream people.

Many of us do not drink, or not to excess. Many of us do not club, whether at all or in the conventional sense. And yet some of us are also Survivors.

Most mainstream people, pastoral, listening and medical included, have little knowledge of the ways we are different, some of which matter a lot to us, some of which played significant part in where and how we were attacked, and some of which mean we have more and non-mainstream reasons for not coming forward.

Some of us were attacked for being different, whether by a meainstream individual or a non-mainstream individual.

That's right, some non-mainstream communities also have internal problems with harassment, sexual assault and bullying. See for instance Nine Worlds' admission of such problems being well-known to occur, that being one of the UK's sizeable 'Geek Conventions', attended by thousands of people.

Some non-mainstream communities bury their heads in the sand, but others, like ourselves and Nine Worlds, have such as mission statements, working feedback procedures for concerns and awarenesses, and organizer training to deal with such matters.

Some consequences of these things are as follows.

Mainstream people should not assume they understand non-mainstream issues. That we know of, between one person in 10 and 1 person in 20 is partly to totally non-mainstream; more may be so while not identifying as such. That's a lot of people to feel left out by mainstream-run facilities that don't cater for/understand/have time to learn about non-mainstream issues. Given the abundance of Survivors revealed by the recent survey: 1 in 13, it is a fair observation that there will probably be a proportionately numerous amount of of non-mainstream Survivors. Just take the total number of Survivors and remove the last digit to get an estimate. It would be particularly not OK for the way in which non-mainstream people are ignored, misunderstood and left out were to carry over to non-mainstream Survivors being ignored, misunderstood and left out by those who support mainstream Survivors. How does this enter various of the particular issues discussed of late?

A) Mark the difference between 'alcohol is often involved' and 'alcohol is always involved'. Mark the difference likewise as regards to clubbing. Let's see if Survivors whose lives are different from that are also willing to contribute testimonies, opinions, experience sharing.

B) Indeed, a number of non-mainstream Survivors have told us that 'giving testimonies' in its conventional form, carries mainstream connotations. They would rather give opinions and experiences in a more general and varied forms. They would also often rather react indirectly, such as by setting up shelters rather than by entering further confrontations with those who hurt them or those who facilitated that or those who ignored their pleas for support. We have no issue with those who want to give testimonies giving them, but we believe that a variety of channels should be available, so each Survivor can choose for themselves as to what to do. Saying what we think in this regard is speaking our minds too. It's just that Survivors over here want to speak about Survivor matters in general rather than just about ourselves. Whether for safety reasons, or because we rate general and commonplace experiences above our own particular ones, or because the particular still trigger us a lot more than the general. We've seen enough, and thought about the problems enough, that what subsets of those we experienced personally are moot to us. We wish to raise awareness with conclusions rather than with raw experiences.

C) Some Survivors are put off from wanting to give personal accounts because the attack involved non-mainstream things which they value (or used to, before) but which they know perfectly well that some other people use as excuses to belittle and exclude them. One might therefore entertain the possibility that there's a highly disjoint other population of Survivors out there who've not felt able to contribute any testimonies to the student press/blogs or to student union/private activism campaigns.

D) It may also be that we here too are missing out on yet further communities and yet further circumstances in which Survivors find themselves. Apologies if this is the case. Though we are pointing here to the possibility of multiple pockets of Survivors, with each pocket having very different ideas as to what to do. And you can contact us, and if anonymity concerns are blocking your contacting anybody at all, well, we'll start to present a menu of increasingly secure anonymizers from next week onward.

2) Limitations on the absolute relevance of one person involved being bigger than the other

Examples include if the abuser uses blackmail, a weapon, date rape drugs, or tricks the other person into consenting to be tied up for something they consent to only to be attacked in ways they don't consent to.

Some of these issues carry bigger than usual stigmas, so how frequently some of these occur may be very difficult to find out.

3) There have been far too many assumptions that attacks occur in elsewise vanilla contexts.

This explains the last example in 2).

For instance, a person can consent to be tied up for eg a tickling or a spanking, only to find themselves being raped, or tortured in ways in which they do not consent to.

It's important to note early that BDSM communities themselves self-define as consensual. Non-consensual sadists aren't accepted there; some of those are rapists, and some of these use means other than rape to badly and non-consensually hurt others. Kindly learn the difference between consensual BDSM on the one hand and non-consensual sadists on the other. Supposing these are the the same is very much like confusing rapists and consensual partners just because both happen to be involved in sex. The word and concept 'consensual' is so important by itself that it utterly changes the nature of the noun it is attached to, be this 'sexual partner' or 'sadist'. This matters in getting to grips with the full range of non-consensual individuals and attacks, and doing so without blaming other people whose entirely consensual sex lives just happen to be different from what you are accustomed to.

It's also important to note that being attacked by a non-consensual sadist is very largely independent of whether oneself is a member of a BDSM community. In other words, non-consensual sadists are everyone's problem; in some cases these are not exactly the same as rapists. One consequence of this is that gauging whether attacks are serious by whether non-consensual penetration occurred has limitations. Yes, all of those are serious, however some highly unpleasant attackers find other ways of badly and long-term to permanently hurting people, including ways which are sexual, or at least viewed sexually by the attacker, and ways which involve extreme power abuses. These are serious too, not least as far as the Survivors in question are concerned, and as regards the long-term impact on their mental health and their lives. A common view on rape is that it is an extreme form of power abuse; extreme power abuses can cause long-term mental and emotional damage, and unfortunately one can receive such wounds by means other than rape as currently 'technically defined'.

4) There is support, and hope, out there.

If something has happened to you that's caused life-changing hurt that doesn't get better over time, if you've stayed hurt for years, do be aware that even if it wasn't rape, there is expertise amongst some of those that are trained to deal with Survivors of rape. Some of these people deal with Survivors of rape as a specialty, rather than exclusively, and so would be fine with you booking an appointment with them. For instance, rape can cause post-traumatic stress disorder, but so can other terrible experiences. The point being made here is that if you are badly hurt, you are not alone. Regardless of if the circumstances under which you were hurt are unusual, even if you're not willing to tell the listener or therapist those, you can still have yourself checked for symptoms and have those treated, for some people do know about those, because they are exhibited for instance by some survivors of rape, and not just. Some people who've been in war zones have those too, as do some people who have been subjected to bullying, domestic violence, other crimes ...

5) Sometimes keeping things simple keeps them general and inclusive.

As a first instance, suppose that consent is presented as

'each person involved has the right to say NO at any point in the proceedings, and for this to be immediately recognized and respected'.

Then this covers participants of all orientations, all genders (including non-binary conception of gender, and gender identity issues), BDSM as well as vanilla, and the possibility of more than two people being involved at once in the sex. By all means illustrate this concept with frequently ocurring examples, but make it clear that these are common examples rather than all cases. This way nobody feels left out.

As a second instance, surveys might in future have a box that can be filled in with text by anybody feeling triggered or excluded from the survey, where they can explain why this is so, so that this become known and factored into the design of future surveys. This way nobody feels left out, especially not Survivors taking the survey.

As a third instance, one might look into training for non-judgmental Listening including not ignoring or despising people for being non-mainstream, understanding that non-mainstream people are free to place great value on things that manistream people do not value or do not even know about. That it includes the concept that Survivors may differ considerably in priorities, needs, concerns and what they find helpful, which are best found out about by seeing what a range of different survivors have to say. That it includes not presuming all sex and relationships mentioned are vanilla, these mentions being the contexts in which attacks or relationship problems occurred. That it includes the understanding that e.g. people who practise BDSM and Poly people usually do not identify as such, not even to Listeners. Thus these are often indirect issues to factor in. That takes quite a lot of setting up.

But the outcome is simple: that the non-judgemental listener's non-judgmentalness henceforth include that sex is probably but not necessarily vanilla, relationships probably but not necessarily involve two people, and so on. And that a proportion of those they listen to have further parts of their life that contribute to the issues at hand but which they are not disposed to identify with.

They might for instance be, but not identify as, Poly or as Trans*. They might be a Survivor but not identify as that.

People who don't identify also have the right to seek and receive support, without needing to identify in the process. If that means they're only partly willing to reveal why things aren't OK, well, that's all that the Listener or has to work with. A person with three inter-related problems who's only at all OK with mentioning one of them should be able to expect listening and support for that one. Along with the right to say no to possible ways forward that might elsewise be OK but which what they don't identify with renders highly to totally not OK.

6) We now come on to a common Survivor experience that little has been said about elsewhere in the city. It is secondary abuse . We are told about this by Survivors, who pointedly don't want to say what originally happened, or what form the secondary abuse took. Rather, they wish to raise awareness about secondary abuse.

There are two types: random and directed.

Sometimes some individual makes a personal comment about another person, who happens to be a Survivor. This renders that comment highly hurtful, and yet the Survivor dare not identify as a Survivor or elsewise say why this is highly hurtful to them.

This often occurs randomly: there is often a 'random background' of such present in a social group, say.

However, some individuals do this on purpose to see who they can hurt how. Upon finding someone they can hurt, these repeat and refine that way of hurting them. This can unfortunately often be done in plain sight, because most of those present are unaware of what's going on. Which is finding a non-obvious way of hurting a person who, secretly, is already badly hurt. This is one of a number of 'personal boundary testing' concerns, and the particular point is that a few individuals out there are looking for an already hurt person to hurt lots more. If challenged, these individuals often use 'just joking' as an excuse to get away with it: they rely on the 'random background' to hide in and excuse themselves by. This is why such as 'just joking' cannot be an acceptable excuse in every last part of the city. If it is, then Survivors trying to rebuild their lives will constantly have to leave social groups and societies due to actual or perceived probing of boundaries. This is one way in which our Safer Spaces are different. At ours, "a person is upset if they say they are and without having to say why, with apologies and non-repeats expected". Amongst other things, on our turf, that stops secondary abuse of Survivors in its tracks. It also accommodates those who don't identify with why they wish or need to spend some time in a Safer Space. We have no issue with other societies and social groups conducting themselves in a wide range of ways different from ours on their own turfs, we make no demands of other such. What we would like to raise awareness of secondary abuse, why it can badly affect, drive away people who are actually Survivors or who have other issues they don't identify with.

So, as for whichever of you reading this who are part of running a society. If you wish for that society to gain awareness so as to prevent secondary abuse and other issues concerning accommodating Survivors and people who don't identify and are thus unlikely to call out on anyone distressing them. One can email Alternative Welcome to ask about various ways in which this could be done. Remember in doing so that communicating with Alternative Welcome about such matters is itself subject to Alternative Welcome's Safer Space rules.