Hey guys! A story from Ye Aulde Dayes of Sady. I led a hashtag campaign, in late 2010, centered around the Assange rape accusations and pressuring left-wing media figures to stop uncritically repeating Assange's narrative (the women are liars, it was "surprise sex," etc).
Now. Because I did this, I was IMMEDIATELY viewed by some sectors as untrustworthy, no true leftist, etc. There were posts about how I might be secretly working for the FBI or the CIA. About how I was excusing US imperialism through my petty focus on women's rapes. And so on.
I was working pretty hard to keep the narrative clean and clear: This was wrong, and it was because leftist spaces and causes mattered to women that we needed to be especially vigilant about keeping rape culture out of them. I got several interview requests & said yes. I was new.
Among the interview requests I got was one from a site I didn't recognize, called the Daily Caller. Generic name, right? You don't know all these people and you don't Google them and you just send a quote their way. Except it was the Daily fucking Caller.
So now, all those false narratives about me -- that I was secretly right-wing, that I opposed Assange's noble cause and not his raping people, that I was an outside agent -- all those narratives looked true, because I didn't Google. I chewed DC out on Twitter. It didn't help.
The protest was pretty successful. It got an apology from one of the main guys we were targeting. But I looked like an idiot, people lost confidence, and the whole thing lost momentum. It's one of the mistakes I regret most deeply in my whole career, just saying "yes" in a hurry.
But, you know, I was twenty-six or twenty-seven, I had never done this before, I was fielding tons of death threats & rape threats & abuse. I don't think it was wrong that I was overwhelmed. I think it was wrong that some right-wing scumbag took advantage of me in that moment.
So this is what I'm thinking of, about the Sanders sexism allegations. That you don't want to be that scumbag. You don't want to take a woman who's speaking up, at risk, and use her as a tool to score a point against some people you already dislike.
You can discredit people by not listening to them, by burying them, by attacking their character, but you can also discredit them by giving the wrong kind of support. In advocacy, the victims are always the point, always the end goal. Not what they prove. Who they are.
It doesn't always have to be fair. I've heard stories about certain guys that I haven't shared, because the victims might be seen as less credible in their friend groups if they were seen as "friends with Sady Doyle." It has to be about creating the space for victims to be heard.
