Ted Ts'o is a rape apologist and why this matters
(This post contains some discussion of rape and sexual assault but does not go into any specifics)
There was a brief controversy at Linux.conf.au back in 2011. The final keynote speaker gave a compelling presentation on online privacy, including some slides containing sexualised imagery. This was against the terms of the conference policies, and resulted in an apology from the conference organisers and the speaker. The situation was unfortunate but well handled, and that should have been the end of it.
Afterwards, there was some pushback on the conference mailing list. Concerns were raised about the policy being overly restrictive and the potential for it to be used to stifle speech that influential groups disagreed with. I don't agree with these arguments, but discussion of why policies have been implemented is completely natural and provides an opportunity for a community to determine what its expected standards are.
And then Ted Ts'o effectively called rape victims liars[1]. At first I assumed that this was just some sort of horrific failure to understand the implications of what he was saying, so I emailed him to check. The reply I got drew a pretty clear distinction between the case of a drunk college student raping another drunk college student in their room and the case of knifepoint rape in a dark park. You know, the difference between accidental rape and rape rape. The difference between the one any of us might have done and the one that only bad people do. Legitimate rape and the "rape" that those feminists talk about. The distinction that lets rapists convince themselves that they didn't really rape anyone because they weren't holding a knife at the time.
Ted Ts'o argues that only a small percentage of rape really counts as what people think of as rape. Ted Ts'o is a rape apologist.
There's an ongoing scandal in the UK at the moment. A well known DJ, Jimmy Savile, died last year. He grew up in a working class family, but through hard work and natural talent was one of the most significant figures in promoting pop music in the UK in the 50s and 60s, and worked in various parts of the BBC for the best part of 30 years. He spent significant amounts of time raising money for charity, and it's estimated that he raised over £40 million for various causes. Since his death, around 300 people have accused him of sexually abusing them. The BBC is desperately trying to explain why it cancelled an expose shortly before it aired. Multiple people who worked there at the time claim that everyone knew he was involved in indecent activities, but saying anything would risk both their career and the charities that depended on his fundraising. Nobody said anything, and he was allegedly free to continue his abuse.
Ted Ts'o is a significant figure in the Linux kernel community. He has expressed abhorrent beliefs that damage that community. Condemnation was limited to a mailing list with limited readership, meaning, effectively, that nobody said anything. Last week the Ada Initiative published a blog post pointing out the damage that did, and I realised that my effective silence was not only helping to alienate 50% of the population from involving themselves with Linux, it was also implicitly supporting my community leadership. I was giving the impression that I was basically fine with our community leaders telling people that it wasn't really rape if you were both drunk enough. I was increasing the chances of members of our community being sexually assaulted. Silence is endorsement. Saying nothing is not ok.
In the absence of an apology and explanation from Ted, I'll be interacting with him to the bare minimum that I'm compelled to as a result of my job. I won't be attending any Linux Foundation events he's involved in organising. If I'm running any events, I won't be inviting him. At a time when we're finally making progress in making our community more open and supportive, we don't need leaders who undermine that work. Support organisations who encourage that progress, not the people who help drag us back.
Footnotes
[1]The original archive has vanished. I've put up a copy of the relevant thread here. Throughout, Ted states that he's actually arguing against the idea that women need to be frightened of sexual assault, and not against the definition of rape. Except saying things like
(Update 2012/10/30: Adam Williamson suggests in this comment that this mail is a better example of Ted's behaviour - there's some explicit victim blaming and a lot of "Is that rape" questioning with the obvious implication that the answer should be "no". Ted Ts'o is a victim blaming rape apologist.)
(Update 2012/11/05: It's been suggested that I haven't been sufficiently clear about which of Ted's statements justify my claims. So, here we go.
In this mail, Ted links to and endorses this article. He explicitly links to it because of its treatment of rape statistics. Quoting directly from that article:
Ted explicitly endorses an article that claims that a significant percentage of reported rapes are false. The study that generated that figure is held in poor regard by other researchers in the field - Australian police figures indicate that 2.1% of rape accusations were classified as false. Ted asserts that he was trying to argue against poor use of statistics, so it's a fair assumption that he agrees with the alternative statistics that he's citing. Ted believes that many rape victims are making false accusations. Ted believes that many rape victims are liars.
Again in this mail, Ted argues against a claimed figure that 1 in 4 women have been sexually assaulted. One of his arguments is that
There was a brief controversy at Linux.conf.au back in 2011. The final keynote speaker gave a compelling presentation on online privacy, including some slides containing sexualised imagery. This was against the terms of the conference policies, and resulted in an apology from the conference organisers and the speaker. The situation was unfortunate but well handled, and that should have been the end of it.
Afterwards, there was some pushback on the conference mailing list. Concerns were raised about the policy being overly restrictive and the potential for it to be used to stifle speech that influential groups disagreed with. I don't agree with these arguments, but discussion of why policies have been implemented is completely natural and provides an opportunity for a community to determine what its expected standards are.
And then Ted Ts'o effectively called rape victims liars[1]. At first I assumed that this was just some sort of horrific failure to understand the implications of what he was saying, so I emailed him to check. The reply I got drew a pretty clear distinction between the case of a drunk college student raping another drunk college student in their room and the case of knifepoint rape in a dark park. You know, the difference between accidental rape and rape rape. The difference between the one any of us might have done and the one that only bad people do. Legitimate rape and the "rape" that those feminists talk about. The distinction that lets rapists convince themselves that they didn't really rape anyone because they weren't holding a knife at the time.
Ted Ts'o argues that only a small percentage of rape really counts as what people think of as rape. Ted Ts'o is a rape apologist.
There's an ongoing scandal in the UK at the moment. A well known DJ, Jimmy Savile, died last year. He grew up in a working class family, but through hard work and natural talent was one of the most significant figures in promoting pop music in the UK in the 50s and 60s, and worked in various parts of the BBC for the best part of 30 years. He spent significant amounts of time raising money for charity, and it's estimated that he raised over £40 million for various causes. Since his death, around 300 people have accused him of sexually abusing them. The BBC is desperately trying to explain why it cancelled an expose shortly before it aired. Multiple people who worked there at the time claim that everyone knew he was involved in indecent activities, but saying anything would risk both their career and the charities that depended on his fundraising. Nobody said anything, and he was allegedly free to continue his abuse.
Ted Ts'o is a significant figure in the Linux kernel community. He has expressed abhorrent beliefs that damage that community. Condemnation was limited to a mailing list with limited readership, meaning, effectively, that nobody said anything. Last week the Ada Initiative published a blog post pointing out the damage that did, and I realised that my effective silence was not only helping to alienate 50% of the population from involving themselves with Linux, it was also implicitly supporting my community leadership. I was giving the impression that I was basically fine with our community leaders telling people that it wasn't really rape if you were both drunk enough. I was increasing the chances of members of our community being sexually assaulted. Silence is endorsement. Saying nothing is not ok.
In the absence of an apology and explanation from Ted, I'll be interacting with him to the bare minimum that I'm compelled to as a result of my job. I won't be attending any Linux Foundation events he's involved in organising. If I'm running any events, I won't be inviting him. At a time when we're finally making progress in making our community more open and supportive, we don't need leaders who undermine that work. Support organisations who encourage that progress, not the people who help drag us back.
Footnotes
[1]The original archive has vanished. I've put up a copy of the relevant thread here. Throughout, Ted states that he's actually arguing against the idea that women need to be frightened of sexual assault, and not against the definition of rape. Except saying things like
This one does a pretty good job of taking apart the Koss / Ms. Magazine study, which is the source for the "1 in 4" number. For example, it points out that over half of those cases were ones where undergraduates were plied with alcohol, and did not otherwise involve using physical force or other forms of coercionis difficult to read in any way other than "Half of the people you're counting as having been raped haven't really been raped", and favourably referring to an article that asserts that the rate of false rape reports is probably close to 50% is pretty strong support for the idea that many rape victims are liars.
(Update 2012/10/30: Adam Williamson suggests in this comment that this mail is a better example of Ted's behaviour - there's some explicit victim blaming and a lot of "Is that rape" questioning with the obvious implication that the answer should be "no". Ted Ts'o is a victim blaming rape apologist.)
(Update 2012/11/05: It's been suggested that I haven't been sufficiently clear about which of Ted's statements justify my claims. So, here we go.
In this mail, Ted links to and endorses this article. He explicitly links to it because of its treatment of rape statistics. Quoting directly from that article:
the rate of false reports is at least 9 percent and probably closer to 50 percent
Ted explicitly endorses an article that claims that a significant percentage of reported rapes are false. The study that generated that figure is held in poor regard by other researchers in the field - Australian police figures indicate that 2.1% of rape accusations were classified as false. Ted asserts that he was trying to argue against poor use of statistics, so it's a fair assumption that he agrees with the alternative statistics that he's citing. Ted believes that many rape victims are making false accusations. Ted believes that many rape victims are liars.
Again in this mail, Ted argues against a claimed figure that 1 in 4 women have been sexually assaulted. One of his arguments is that
Also found in the Koss study, although not widely reported, was the statistic that of the women whom she classified as being raped (although 73% refused to self-classify the event as rape), 46% of them had subsequent sex with the reported assailant. Ted disagrees with a statistic because some rape victims subsequently have sex with the reported assailant. This means that Ted believes that this indicates that they were not really raped. Ted is a rape apologist.)
Re: Worst piece of libel on Planet Gnome ever
(Anonymous) 2012-10-30 03:51 pm (UTC)(link)Re: Worst piece of libel on Planet Gnome ever
(Anonymous) 2012-10-30 04:44 pm (UTC)(link)And even if you think Ted's posts did not have a constructive effect, how would that justify writing libel about him being a "rape apologist"? Matthew Garrett's post here has not been helpful or constructive. Does that now justify writing articles like "Matthew Garrett is a known pedophile"?
Re: Worst piece of libel on Planet Gnome ever
(Anonymous) 2012-10-30 05:14 pm (UTC)(link)I didn't say that. I already explained exactly what I think above, but oh well, I'll repeat it:
The post Ted was ultimately replying to cited some statistics on how many women have been subject to sexual abuse / rape in support of a specific point. The point was that displaying sexualized images of women in a highly male-dominated environment can be traumatizing for survivors of sexual assault / rape. The OP was pointing out that it's a statistical certainty that some of the women at any large conference have suffered some form of sexual assault in their lives and hence it is vital to consider the needs of women who've been sexually assaulted if you're trying to organize a conference to be welcoming to women.
In this context, bringing up a finicky argument about whether the assaults in the most commonly-cited studies were 'really rape' or 'rape rape' or 'bad rape' or whatever the hell you want to call it is not just not constructive, it's actively harmful. It's throwing a grenade into the discussion. Even if somehow you win the argument that some rapes aren't really rapes, what have you achieved in context? The assaults were still clearly likely to have traumatized those who were assaulted. The point that showing them sexualized images of women in a highly male conference is probably not a good idea still stands. It was utterly inappropriate to start dissecting statistics that were cited in support of a wider point which would not be invalidated even if you could win your toxic, derailing argument about the nature of sexual assault.
"And even if you think Ted's posts did not have a constructive effect, how would that justify writing libel about him being a "rape apologist"?"
I certainly wouldn't call it libel. I think Matthew could have provided stronger evidence in support of his allegation, though. Like these quotes from later in the thread, when Ted more or less went off the deep end. WARNING: triggers follow:
"OK, let's do a thought experiment, shall we? Suppose Alice and Bob have sex, and Bob is drunk. Did Alice rape Bob? He was drunk, and someone who is drunk presumably can't give consent. Is that rape? Does the gender of the two people matter?"
"Suppose Bob drank the alcohol himself, willingly. And if he was still raped, does he bear any responsibility for put himself into a situation where Alice could ask and ask him until he said yes?" (this one is *especially* bad)
"Now suppose Alice is also drunk. Now did she rape Bob? Or did Bob rape Alice now? Or did Alice and Bob rape each other? Let's throw them both in jail!"
"All aside from the legal question, there's also the question, in the Alice and Bob thought experiment, regardless of whether Alice is guilty of raping Bob (assume that Bob was inebriated and couldn't give consent, and she knew that Bob was drunk), should Bob be faulted for putting him into a situation where he was so drunk that he couldn't take responsibility for himself? What if it was pretty clear that he regularly did this *because* he could lose control and not take responsibility for what he did? Suppose he hadn't yet had sex without giving consent?"
"I'll give another example. There is no question that a huge number of incidents of very regrettable incidents occur when large amounts of alcohol are involved. Whether the women involved called it rape (73% or not) or Ms. Koss calls it rape, it was probably situations that in most cases, I'm betting both the women and the man probably regretted it the next morning. I have a very simple personal solution for this, which is i don't go out on heavy drinking binges when I am at a conference."
That whole post - http://www.codon.org.uk/~mjg59/ted_mail/0038.html , in its full, well, glory - is _classic_ rape denial. Whether you couch it in cute 'thought experiments' with gender switching or not, when you start harping on this theme of the involvement of alcohol, _you are making excuses for rape_. If you go back and actually look at the stuff Ted cited at the start of the thread, there's some legitimate though highly sensitive debate about the methodology of some studies (which I recommend not getting involved in unless you really know your stuff, much like kernel hacking...), but none of it remotely supports the asshattery in that post.
It's even worse when you start saying stuff like "should Bob be faulted for putting him into a situation where he was so drunk that he couldn't take responsibility for himself". I mean, if when the topic of rape comes up, the first thing that seems like a good idea to you is to come up with hypothetical scenarios that allow you to blame the victim for consuming alcohol, I think you have problems. And I'm _entirely_ happy with calling the above post 'rape apology' of the highest order. I'll stand by Matthew in saying so, in fact. When I first read this blog and the comments I hadn't seen the entire thread, but now I've read through the whole thing, I think Ted's contribution to it was not just non-constructive but destructive, offensive to the women involved, incorrect, inappropriate, and definitely constituted 'rape apology'.
-adamw
Re: Worst piece of libel on Planet Gnome ever
(Anonymous) 2012-10-31 02:26 am (UTC)(link)Re: Worst piece of libel on Planet Gnome ever
(Anonymous) 2012-10-31 02:35 am (UTC)(link)I have quoted at length and verbatim what Ted said, and it was not about calling a collection of statistics bogus. It was an incorrect and offensive belief about what constitutes rape and who is to blame for it. No 'reading into it' is required. I really don't know why I have to post this over and over, but here it is again. These are Ted's exact words. Quoted verbatim, from http://www.codon.org.uk/~mjg59/ted_mail/0038.html . No 'reading into' anything is going on. This is a direct quotation.
"All aside from the legal question, there's also the question, in the Alice and Bob thought experiment, regardless of whether Alice is guilty of raping Bob (assume that Bob was inebriated and couldn't give consent, and she knew that Bob was drunk), should Bob be faulted for putting him into a situation where he was so drunk that he couldn't take responsibility for himself? What if it was pretty clear that he regularly did this *because* he could lose control and not take responsibility for what he did? Suppose he hadn't yet had sex without giving consent? Would, should he, face opprobrium for his actions? If yes, does that magically go away once he is raped, and is now a victim, since that would now be blaming the victim?
My personal opinion is that things aren't black and white, and even if Alice is guilty of raping him, Bob should also be faulted for his contribution towards the incident, and should take at least some responsibility for avoiding being put in similar situations in the future."
In that text Ted clearly states that he believes people who are raped bear 'at least some responsibility' for being raped. This is not me 'reading into' anything. This is not about statistics.
Re: Worst piece of libel on Planet Gnome ever
(Anonymous) 2012-10-31 02:56 am (UTC)(link)Re: Worst piece of libel on Planet Gnome ever
(Anonymous) 2012-10-31 03:10 am (UTC)(link)You can if you're very careful make an entirely practical point that there are certain situations in which rape is more likely to occur and as a completely practical issue of avoiding getting raped people might want to make certain choices. But you step over a line the _moment_ you assign any fault or blame to anyone who falls outside whatever rules you dream up for yourself. When someone gets raped _it is entirely and only the rapist's fault_. They made the choice to commit rape. The blame is theirs and theirs alone. No set of circumstances theoretical or real excuses assigning blame to the victim.
Re: Worst piece of libel on Planet Gnome ever
(Anonymous) 2012-10-31 03:49 am (UTC)(link)Just because you think he's wrong doesn't give you the right to extend his comments to other categories and manufacture false statements and beliefs to demonize him.
No one except the radicals in your fan club agree with you on this anyway. I noticed they pulled this drek off of planet gnome.
Re: Worst piece of libel on Planet Gnome ever
(Anonymous) 2012-10-31 04:05 am (UTC)(link)Your first paragraph is technically correct and I accept the technical correction. I don't think this damages my position one iota. Yes. Ted said that rape victims who get drunk are partly to blame for being raped. I'm glad we agree on that. I am sad that you do not seem to think this is a problem.
Re: Worst piece of libel on Planet Gnome ever
(Anonymous) 2012-10-31 04:19 am (UTC)(link)Re: Worst piece of libel on Planet Gnome ever
(Anonymous) 2012-10-31 04:22 am (UTC)(link)The section I quoted does not involve "two persons are shitfaced and incapable of consenting". Read it once more.
"All aside from the legal question, there's also the question, in the Alice and Bob thought experiment, regardless of whether Alice is guilty of raping Bob (assume that Bob was inebriated and couldn't give consent, and she knew that Bob was drunk), should Bob be faulted for putting him into a situation where he was so drunk that he couldn't take responsibility for himself?"
It does not say that Alice is drunk. It in fact explicitly states that Alice knows Bob is not capable of consenting to the sex, which if you understand Ted's position, means Alice is _not_ drunk (because Ted stated elsewhere that he thinks if Alice _is_ drunk, she is not capable of determining Bob's consent).
The statement to which I am drawing attention is _not about two people being drunk_. It is about _one_ person being drunk.
Re: Worst piece of libel on Planet Gnome ever
(Anonymous) 2012-10-31 04:46 am (UTC)(link)In the passage you're now citing (since its a different passage each time) the main point was: does gender matter in the designation of an incident being rape?
In fact, until fairly recently gender did matter in the designation of rape, so I don't blame him for taking time to consider that question with an example.
Re: Worst piece of libel on Planet Gnome ever
(Anonymous) 2012-10-31 05:00 am (UTC)(link)I have intentionally been leaving the question of gender out of this discussion as far as it is plausible, as it's not really relevant in this specific discussion (it absolutely _is_ relevant to the wider topic of rape in general, don't get me wrong on that). In what Ted says it doesn't matter whether Bob is a man or a woman. The point is that he assigns responsibility to Bob for being raped, because he got drunk. I don't care what gender Bob is, this is unacceptable to me.
Re: Worst piece of libel on Planet Gnome ever
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(Anonymous) 2012-10-31 05:19 am (UTC)(link)Re: Worst piece of libel on Planet Gnome ever
Re: Worst piece of libel on Planet Gnome ever
(Anonymous) 2012-10-31 03:54 am (UTC)(link)Re: Worst piece of libel on Planet Gnome ever
(Anonymous) 2012-10-31 12:43 pm (UTC)(link)Re: Worst piece of libel on Planet Gnome ever
(Anonymous) 2012-10-31 03:14 am (UTC)(link)Re: Worst piece of libel on Planet Gnome ever
(Anonymous) 2012-10-31 03:31 am (UTC)(link)If he'd said that it's OK for a sober person to rape someone who's passed out, or that it wouldn't be rape at all, then I'd understand why it would be considered offensive and wrong. But as far as I can see he did NOT say that; he'd clearly consider that rape and a crime, and I don't see him saying that it'd make the actions of the rapist any less condemnable either. What he did say, I may not agree with myself, but I think most people have at least some views I'd condemn more strongly than that.
Re: Worst piece of libel on Planet Gnome ever
(Anonymous) 2012-10-31 03:49 am (UTC)(link)Really, yeah. I don't agree with you that it's a commonly held view with regard to anything except rape. Take the mugging example I just posted above; when someone gets mugged in a dark alley do we blame the victim? Does the attacker's lawyer spend lots of time in courts asking probing questions about whether the victim liked walking down dark alleys, walked down dark alleys because they liked the thrill of it, and so on? When someone gets murdered do we start asking questions about the victim's lifestyle and whether they did something that made them more likely to get murdered?
Usually no. The only cases I can think of are when the person who was the victim of a crime was also a criminal - classic example being gang members getting shot - or, sadly, when prostitutes get killed (this is often seen as less 'bad' than murder of, I dunno, the homecoming queen). Which is part of the same problem as blaming rape victims.
Rape has a much bigger problem with victim blame. Just about every time rape comes up, someone has to question the victim. Did they go to bars they shouldn't have gone to? Did they like a drink? Did they wear short skirts? It's just about unique. What happened when Dominique Strauss-Kahn was accused? Everyone started investigating the victim.
I think there's a _huge_ difference between the practical issue of avoiding being a victim of crime - which is pretty uncontroversial and something we all do - and assigning blame or responsibility to the victims of crime. They are completely different things. Are you maybe statistically slightly less likely to get raped if you never go out drinking? Possibly (I don't know, but for the sake of argument, let's say yes). Okay. But that doesn't mean that if you go out drinking and get raped that it is your fault or your responsibility or you are to blame. That's a very different thing and a hugely problematic thing for anyone to say.
The reason I think you have to draw a really clear bright line here and say that the responsibility and blame for crime lay entirely at the feet of the criminal is that if you don't draw it there, where do you draw it? This is another place where there's a continuum, which runs all the way from blaming a victim who's passed out drunk through blaming a victim who wears miniskirts all the way through to the Victorians covering up table legs to avoid inflaming the male passions to requiring women to cover their entire bodies in restrictive clothing because otherwise men won't be able to restrain themselves from raping them. They are _all ultimately a result of the same line of thought_: women are capable of arousing irresistible passions in men, and it is the responsibility of women to avoid tempting men to rape them. I'm sure you'd say that's absurd, but if you don't draw the line at a point where the rapist is entirely responsible for their own actions, where _do_ you draw the line? How do you differentiate between the rapist who rapes a passed-out drunk, where perhaps you think the victim bears some of the responsibility, and the rapist who rapes a woman who wasn't wearing a veil and claims the sight of her face roused irresistible urges? On what basis do you make that distinction?
I think the only reasonable position is that a person who makes a free choice to have sex with another person against their will is responsible for that choice. The circumstances of the person they rape are entirely besides the point. Doesn't matter if they're wearing a miniskirt, in the wrong part of town, drunk, or all three. It is not their responsibility.
"But as far as I can see he did NOT say that; he'd clearly consider that rape and a crime, and I don't see him saying that it'd make the actions of the rapist any less condemnable either"
Well. I have been reducing the quotations down to a single one that's really objectionable, but if you read the whole mail. He posits a whole series of hypothetical scenarios with the question 'Is it rape?'. Which is clearly questioning the definition.
Re: Worst piece of libel on Planet Gnome ever
(Anonymous) 2012-10-31 04:58 am (UTC)(link)Considering the above, I think your "How do you differentiate" question and court references are at least partly off the mark. As far as I can see, nobody has suggested that a rapist should not be convicted just because the victim was drunk; saying that you may bear some responsiblity for becoming the victim of a crime if you intentionally incapacitate yourself does not imply accepting the actions of the criminal.
Re: Worst piece of libel on Planet Gnome ever
(Anonymous) 2012-10-31 05:03 am (UTC)(link)Re: Worst piece of libel on Planet Gnome ever
(Anonymous) 2012-10-31 05:46 am (UTC)(link)Re: Worst piece of libel on Planet Gnome ever
(Anonymous) 2012-10-31 06:38 am (UTC)(link)Only blame the rape victim?
> mugged in a dark alley do we blame the victim?
I was held up at night. And, yes, I was told that I was partly to blame. I was told that I should have known better than to be making a withdrawal from that ATM on foot (it was a drive up) at 9 o'clock at night in the city of New Orleans.
So, yes, the victim was blamed. Oh, and because he was't caught, the thief was never held responsible.
Which I say only to provide a counter example. I think this entire discussion is being side tracked by focusing on the blame issue, or the issue of rape statistics.
The point was that overly sexualized content in a technical presentation isn't productive or appropriate. This whole "Ted T'so is a rape appologist" discussion is taking the focus away from what should a discussion about what is appropriate content for presentations