Arc Tangent

After a brief twit­ter exchange, I feel moved to com­ment on this blog post.

Before we start: My goal here is to have a rea­son­able dis­course and I hope that you’ll read on in that spirit. I am white and male and fairly priv­i­leged, and I try not to let that colour my opin­ion too much. I also try to be a man of sci­ence and rea­son, and I def­i­nitely let that colour my opin­ion as much as I can. I am not out to besmirch any­one, I don’t hate women, I don’t hate police, I don’t hate any­one (in fact I love most peo­ple) and if I go on to offend you, it was prob­a­bly acci­den­tal. Unless you deserved it.

(Because Twit­ter is a ter­ri­ble medium for hav­ing srs conversashuns)

Back­ground (As I Under­stand It — Please Cor­rect Me If I’m Wrong)

Some #occu­pymel­bourne pro­test­ers were camp­ing in Flagstaff Gar­dens, and to try and skirt bylaws pro­hibit­ing struc­tures (which appar­ently include tents), they gussied the tents up as out­fits. Which I think is com­mend­ably clever, but appar­ently not enough to sat­isfy the legal beagles.

The police raided Flagstaff, and accord­ing to their account gave plenty of warn­ing that tents — whether or not they be worn as cloth­ing — were con­sid­ered struc­tures for the pur­poses of cer­tain coun­cil by-​laws (which largely exist to enforce health and san­i­ta­tion stan­dards) and would need to go. Again accord­ing the police account, pro­test­ers were given warn­ing over a num­ber of days.

When the fuzz showed (accord­ing to reports) sev­eral of the pro­test­ers moved along, but one par­tic­u­lar pro­tester chose not to budge. The young lady in ques­tion was appar­ently not wear­ing cloth­ing under the tent. Again accord­ing to police reports, she was offered some time to clothe her­self. She appar­ently did not or could not do so. She was (appar­ently) again warned, and when she refused to com­ply, had the tent forcibly removed from her per­son (in a most dis­tress­ing manner).

Key Points (As I See Them)

1. Most impor­tantly: Using knives to cut some­thing off a young female pro­tester seems extremely heavy-​handed and ill-​advised (or, worse, uneth­i­cal and ille­gal). I hope that inves­ti­ga­tions related to the sub­se­quently lev­elled at the police will bring to light the exact cir­cum­stances around this case and that any wrong-​doing will be appro­pri­ately addressed. How­ever: I was not there, and for most peo­ple read­ing this — nei­ther were you.
2. I have yet to see com­ment from any­one who was actu­ally there for the whole series of events. A lot of the com­men­tary I’m see­ing on Twit­ter and blogs seems at best sec­ond hand and at worst com­plete hearsay. Peo­ple: you don’t get to just pull an opin­ion out of a hat and argue it vocif­er­ously as if it were fact based on some­thing you didn’t wit­ness in full your­self. That’s what the bloody reli­gious right do. We need to estab­lish facts and then dis­cuss those — calmly and ratio­nally. I’m not see­ing a lot of facts. Or a lot of rationality.
3. Think it through. Many of these laws exist for a rea­son. It’s not because “The Man” is out to get you. Most of the peo­ple who made those laws are peo­ple very sim­i­lar to your­selves. Some­times the laws are fun­da­men­tally flawed and should be opposed. I do not believe “no tents in Flagstaff Gar­dens” qual­i­fies as such a law. We have big­ger bat­tles to fight.
4. In my mind, pitch­ing a tent for days/​weeks on end isn’t “peace­ably assem­bling”. It’s camp­ing, which brings with it issues of health and san­i­ta­tion that need to be addressed.
5. You can’t just pitch a tent any­where you want to in Aus­tralia. This is (and I hes­i­tate to use the term, but here goes) com­mon knowl­edge. You can camp in des­ig­nated camp­ing grounds. This is a san­i­ta­tion require­ment and to me, seems rea­son­ably okay as laws go. Crash on a mate’s couch, come back in the morn­ing! (Right?)
6. Indi­vid­u­als were (appar­ently) warned, repeat­edly, over the course of sev­eral days, that the tents (as the col­lo­qui­al­ism goes) would not fly. If this is the case — pre­cisely what was their expec­ta­tion, and what skill did they dis­play in work­ing around these by-​laws?
7. I’m a lit­tle con­fused as to com­ments about “insti­tu­tion­alised sex­ism and misog­yny” in regards to this event given that there were male and female offi­cers and coun­cil work­ers present. Hav­ing met some female police offi­cers, I would chal­lenge you to call them sex­ist or misog­y­nist to their faces. In my expe­ri­ence they are not. YMMV, but it seems like a sweep­ing gen­er­al­i­sa­tion with lit­tle basis in fact.
8. Camp­ing out doesn’t seem the most effec­tive way to protest, to me. The point of a protest is to get pub­lic mind­share, and to do that you get in people’s faces. Per­sonal expe­ri­ence tells me that at 11pm-​6am on a Tuesday/​Wednesday is a pretty dead time in Flagstaff Gar­dens and does not accom­plish the goals of protesting.
9. Com­ments on the Inter­net are fuck­ing ter­ri­ble things. Ratio­nal peo­ple can and should choose to ignore them lib­er­ally, because John Gabriel’s Greater Inter­net Fuck­wad The­ory still holds true (and prob­a­bly always will). Pick­ing and choos­ing from Inter­net com­ments and com­ments from spokes­peo­ple seems slightly disin­ge­nous and non-​productive (“ass­holes gunna asshole”).
10. The police offi­cers and coun­cil work­ers involved thus far seem entirely silent (and will prob­a­bly remain so given that an inves­ti­ga­tion is pend­ing). I’m hes­i­tant to base any opin­ion on just one side of the story, no mat­ter who they are or how well inten­tioned. (This seems like a ratio­nal response to me?)

I’ve delib­er­ately avoided com­ment­ing on #occu­pymel­bourne in gen­eral and tried to con­fine my post to this spe­cific event which — again — I was not there for, and except in a notable few cases, nei­ther were you.

To sum up my posi­tion: the video is har­row­ing and the sit­u­a­tion seems like a nasty one, and it’s quite pos­si­ble that a young lady was wronged. It’s also quite pos­si­ble that she was com­plicit in the events that tran­spired by her refusal to obey some fairly rea­son­able requests. The sit­u­a­tion is far more com­plex and sub­tle than pun­dits are giv­ing credit and jump­ing on the “OMG SEXUAL ASSAULT” band­wagon seems (to me) unrea­son­able and ill-​advised.

TL;DR: STORM IN A FUCKING TEACUP GET OFF YOUR HIGH HORSES AND LET’S GET SOME FACTS UP INS PLZ