My main complaint is that the orgs and the folks listed aren’t knowledgable on the topic—while I’m sure are lovely humans in many regards—also aren’t willing to admit that they’re in over their heads and not experts on SA.
given that CH seems pretty antagonistic toward survivors or seeing that there’s a problem and puts me at risk of legal liability.
Creating a formal relationship with them would lower risk (some information is private, the flow of info from me to CH is better), and for CH, create conditions in which confidentiality exist.
If CH continues to be antagonistic toward survivors, then I’d rather not connect survivors to them. How can I possibly ever send survivors to talk to someone who says she needs to how the accused is beneficial to the movement to make any sort of judgement? I do genuinely want them to more survivor-friendly. I do want them to see that women are being harmed; especially because more trauma comes from mishandling rape cases than from rape itself*. But at the same time, I don’t want to spend all that time working with CH without getting paid for my time, nor do I think it’s a good idea to try to spend that time unless we have better communication between them & me.
If these are your main complaints, I’m a little confused about why you’ve included RP and Peter in alongside the community health team. I won’t speak for the CH team, but I don’t think Peter has claimed to be an expert on SA, and I feel confident that he’d be pretty happy to admit this. 2~4 seem also mainly to be relevant for CEA / the members of the CH team, not for Peter / RP.
You (ed: missing two words) have until- and to be clear—it could be CEA or RP—to decline or accept my offer by Friday, February 24. And clearly, if it’s accepted, there will have to be some sort of mediation or conversation on the topic of healing my wounds/anger with EA.
I do also want to manage expectations—if RP does not accept the offer, it is unlikely to be because decision-makers at RP believe that work to make the community a safer and more inclusive space is not worth doing, or that RP is “antagonistic to survivors”, or that you don’t deserve some conversation RE: healing your wounds / anger with EA. Some more plausible reasons might include:
Funding this work is not within RP’s scope / theory of change.
RP does not have the financial flexibility to fund something like this
RP does not have the capacity to review your proposal and decide if they should fund this within a 1 week period
To be clear, I don’t make the decision around whether RP accepts the offer or not, and I’m not speaking on behalf of RP here—I’ll clarify and update this post if I’ve made any mistakes.
I hope, based on the brief conversation we had prior to this post, that you don’t see this comment as an attack against your work (but rather a defence of Peter / RP).
Oh, don’t see your post as an attack at all. From what little I know of RP, it doesn’t feel to me that RP is right for this either since they’re not community-facing and work more on research (though, who knows, two friends at RP said they might so I cc’d/included Peter—so I guess two people you know). Also, Peter & I exchanged a couple emails, and (I don’t want to speak on Peter’s behalf I’ll be brief) - he said SA is something he spends a lot of time on, he wants to do what he thinks is best about SA, he asked what I’m looking to do, and the email I copied here is my response to that. I also copied Peter because I do feel frustrated with CH/feel—and who does one talk to about that?
Also, I felt that the information I pointed out to Peter are relevant info for EAers to have (eg, about defamation), which is the main reason I included the email I sent to him here.
AFTER I said that, both Catherine and Julia asked me to send survivors & bad actors their way. I found this really quite not okay. And you’re right, that situation is not Peter’s fault.
But also, I don’t expect CH or RP to accept the proposal, and I’m not going to be bitter when Friday passes in continued silence. Sending it was basically me saying—here’s what I need in return for helping you. I have a 99% expectation that the answer is that EA (as a whole) would rather not have my help if it’s conditioned upon reciprocity or admission of a problem. I wanted to state why I was leaving/discontinuing this work with EA, give a number on assaults so more people would take it seriously (seems like I failed in that effort), and highlight my experience with CEA to show why I think rape will be ongoing problem.
If these are your main complaints, I’m a little confused about why you’ve included RP and Peter in alongside the community health team. I won’t speak for the CH team, but I don’t think Peter has claimed to be an expert on SA, and I feel confident that he’d be pretty happy to admit this. 2~4 seem also mainly to be relevant for CEA / the members of the CH team, not for Peter / RP.
I do also want to manage expectations—if RP does not accept the offer, it is unlikely to be because decision-makers at RP believe that work to make the community a safer and more inclusive space is not worth doing, or that RP is “antagonistic to survivors”, or that you don’t deserve some conversation RE: healing your wounds / anger with EA. Some more plausible reasons might include:
Funding this work is not within RP’s scope / theory of change.
RP does not have the financial flexibility to fund something like this
RP does not have the capacity to review your proposal and decide if they should fund this within a 1 week period
To be clear, I don’t make the decision around whether RP accepts the offer or not, and I’m not speaking on behalf of RP here—I’ll clarify and update this post if I’ve made any mistakes.
I hope, based on the brief conversation we had prior to this post, that you don’t see this comment as an attack against your work (but rather a defence of Peter / RP).
(Disclaimer: Work for RP)
Oh, don’t see your post as an attack at all. From what little I know of RP, it doesn’t feel to me that RP is right for this either since they’re not community-facing and work more on research (though, who knows, two friends at RP said they might so I cc’d/included Peter—so I guess two people you know). Also, Peter & I exchanged a couple emails, and (I don’t want to speak on Peter’s behalf I’ll be brief) - he said SA is something he spends a lot of time on, he wants to do what he thinks is best about SA, he asked what I’m looking to do, and the email I copied here is my response to that. I also copied Peter because I do feel frustrated with CH/feel—and who does one talk to about that?
Also, I felt that the information I pointed out to Peter are relevant info for EAers to have (eg, about defamation), which is the main reason I included the email I sent to him here.
AFTER I said that, both Catherine and Julia asked me to send survivors & bad actors their way. I found this really quite not okay. And you’re right, that situation is not Peter’s fault.
But also, I don’t expect CH or RP to accept the proposal, and I’m not going to be bitter when Friday passes in continued silence. Sending it was basically me saying—here’s what I need in return for helping you. I have a 99% expectation that the answer is that EA (as a whole) would rather not have my help if it’s conditioned upon reciprocity or admission of a problem. I wanted to state why I was leaving/discontinuing this work with EA, give a number on assaults so more people would take it seriously (seems like I failed in that effort), and highlight my experience with CEA to show why I think rape will be ongoing problem.