More on "Occupy" and not having nice things

When I wrote this piece about why Hot Chicks of Occupy Wall Street was just nasty and wrong, and why trying to justify it by talking about your erection was even nastier and wronger, I thought (hoped) I was being rhetorical when I wrote:

And women have an issue, which is sleazy dudes perving over them and viewing them primarily as sexual stimuli (whether visual or tactile). This is a problem, because it is about feeling one's boundaries violated and it is about feeling one's physical safety threatened.

Renegade Evolution has collated a few stories to show that, in fact, women's physical safety is not only threatened, but violated, and Mr Greenstreet and his kind are quite happy to promote that. Women who experience sexual assaults are coming under heavy pressure to "not bring the movement into disrepute" by reporting these crimes against them. I have read enough stories posted by women about this kind of thing happening to them at so many Leftist/progressive/intellectual events, I sometimes despair.

I would like to imagine that the "Occupy" event in London is not like this, but I have no basis for or against it, and because of the pressures not to report the crimes, I might not hear about it - partly because I view the "Occupy" protests with a tinge of suspicion and distance anyway, and partly because I may very well not come across places where they are reported. My abiding suspicion is that this stuff is highly likely, because men of "the Left" so often do act like privileged arseholes on a regular basis.

Once again: this is why the Left can't have nice things. It's why protests fail. It's why solidarity on the left is a myth, or worse, it's a story used to oppress people who should be on our side! Until the automatic assumption is that the rapists and sexual assaulters are the ones bringing the movement into disrepute, there can be no forward progress.

Heck, Daisy Deadhead has a recent tale about being sexually harassed by a lefty dude because he disagreed with her on an issue!

We - the Left, that is - need to get our own house in order before we start whining about the shit that corporations pull. Anarcho-Leftyism is all very well, but somebody has to organise it and somebody has to keep this shit from happening. Otherwise, the society you build will be another case of "meet the new boss, same as the old boss."

[Edit To Add: it turns out that the Occupy Glasgow organisers called in the police as soon as the allegation of rape was made]