Activist dudes: own your shit before it lands you in jail
There’s a pretty scary meta-plot to the Rob Gilchrist story. And that’s, basically, how the rampant misogyny of otherwise-liberal, otherwise-righteous leftwing dudes, led to Gilchrist being able to continue to spy on progressive and environmental groups in New Zealand despite others pointing out his shadiness.
The people pointing it out? Oh, right. Women.
Women like Tove, who got suspicious, and whose privacy was coincidentally breached – that is to say, photos of her just coincidentally ended up on fucking neo-Nazi sites, and just accidentally got mailed to members of the New Zealand Police. (How’s that cultural transformation coming, by the way?)
And when this was pointed out to other activists? Gosh, if it doesn’t read like every single character assassination of every single victimised or abused woman in history. “That’s what he said you’d say.” “He’s a good guy.” “Well actually, he said you were the cop.”
What made Rob Gilchrist – the dude who was spying on you all for ten years – more trustworthy than a young woman activist?
Besides, you know, her pesky gender.
Wait, QoT, you horrible manhating radfem, you cry. You can’t just jump straight to accusations of blatant misogyny and leftwing activism being a total old boys’ club. Not on just one little accusation (by a WOMAN, too!)
Sorry, dudebro lefties, but it’s actually not good enough to blithely accept the word of Important Dudes because they are Important Dudes. You’ve managed to figure this out where traditional economic power structures are involved, but you’re continued to labour (yep, I went there) under the idea that you’re immune from that follower shit. That it’s different when it’s one of the club doing it.
The boys’ club.
And at the end of the day, who’s suffered for this? Who’s been ostracised, victimised, forced to completely uproot her life because you scumfucks wouldn’t believe a young woman over Your Mate?
The woman has. Because it was so fucking easy for you to believe a woman would lie about rape. Because it was so fucking easy for you to spin some little scenario about how she must be the liar, she must have initiated everything. In the face of her fervent activism, it was easier to believe she was a neo-Nazi cop than question Your Mate.
You should all be thanking your fucking stars that Rob Gilchrist didn’t provoke you all into comfy jail terms. And you should be doing a daily fucking penance for letting your sexist jerkoff attitudes prevent you from nailing a spy in your midst sooner.
You should also bear very closely in mind that it was another woman, Rochelle Rees, who finally uncovered his crap. Stellar fucking work there, dudes.
(Also, even if you seriously want to play the who-me-a-misogynist card, apparently none of you douchebags have watched a single police drama in your entire life. You know the number one sign of a dirty snitch, people? It’s being the guy who keeps accusing others of snitching. Every fucking time.)
Ideologically Impure 
Also being the guy constantly trying to get people to do illegal shit. It’s funny how everyone’s all “oh I knew there was something off about him” NOW.
I’m reminded of a passage from Susan Brownmiller’s In Our Time, about planning a protest when suddenly these women no one’s ever seen before turn up in big leather jackets asking when the “heavy stuff” is “going down”.
Across the world, women active in the radical left are waking up, standing up and saying NO MORE of this brocialism and manarchism. This crap has been going on since Karl Marx was a cowboy (exhibit A: Jean Devanney), but now we’re seeing a generational shift away from the aging soixante-huitards who built their own comfortable little scenes, in favour of young people (women, men and others) who can’t believe this shit’s still going on in Century 21.
“Brocialism” may be my new favourite word.
Hear Hear! THey’re both great words, consider them stolen, thanks Doloras. alas I can only offer “Craparazzi” – the plethora of ambulatory street vendors in Rome selling crap in between bursts of running from the Polizia (anti-pesto?)
QoT, just a quick word of thanks for your hard work blogging. IMNSHO you’re one of the best, and scathingly hilarious. plus of course you’re (as usual) dead right – which is kinda important.
[meta] Initially I wrote: “you put the ‘rude’ into ‘erudite’ (oops suffering from dailysex)”.
Then I read it, administered a cerebral admonishment and deleted it, because although they’re kinda amusing puns, methinks I’d have to really work at it to pick a less-appropriate witticism, given the central thesis of this article, let alone the blog! its almost like my brains been marinated in mysogyny for 40 years. Over the last 2 years I’ve been studying “good mental hygiene” (thanks QoT, Rebecca & Pharyngula), but there’s a long way to go yet [/meta]
Not to mention the faceless anonymous National Brocialists in the police force, who get away scot free, again.
We do at least know the names of Gilchrist’s handlers. I’d love to know what their superiors did about the situation, but I think it’s safe to assume sweet fuck-all.
here is something that was written when RG was first discovered, about how he got away with it for so long. He was very good at making everyone think that everyone else trusted and liked him, this was true some of the time but not nearly as much as he made out http://de.indymedia.org/2008/12/237332.shtml
It may not have been “not nearly as much as he made out” but it still took Rochelle Rees to uncover his bullshit, while other people had been raising serious issues with his behaviour which got ignored. Just coincidentally, some of those people were women. That’s the problem.
as recently as 5 or so months before Rob was outed in the SST, Nicky Hager was still defending Rob on activist email loops from people ( including me) who were calling him out as a cop informant. a few months later, Nicky wrote the article that formally outed him.