Blog #9 - Addendum to Blog #8 - Organizational Failures at Empowered Pleasure

Summary: Addressing an important omission in Blog #8. This blog has been co-written by Cliff, Charity, and reviewed by Miles Hurwitz, Accountability Coach. 

Content Warning: Oppression dynamics, abuse of power, consent violations, harassment of survivors. 

 

It has been brought to our attention that we omitted something very important from Blog #8, and we wish to apologize for and correct our omission. A member of the community who wishes to remain anonymous contacted our accountability coach, Miles Hurwitz, to share their concern about this, and we are grateful they revealed our blind spot. This individual indicated that our Blog #8 entitled “Organizational Failures at Empowered Pleasure” (https://cliffnotes108.blogspot.com/2024/02/blog-8-organizational-failures-at.html), published Feb 19, 2023, was incomplete as we failed to properly acknowledge and apologize for the negative impact some other EP members (who could be viewed as our supporters and possibly as having acted in our name) had on survivors and their allies. Furthermore, this individual indicated that this Blog was incomplete without apologizing and addressing the harms done by our silence and failure to act when survivors brought this to our attention. This concerned party is right!

To survivors and their allies, we deeply apologize for actions done by some EP

community members and the harmful impact it had on survivors, allies, and the sex positive community at large. We failed to intervene and did not respond to public comments on the EP Facebook page that minimized, denied, and otherwise de-centered harms revealed by survivors and the impact on them. Furthermore, we did not respond when some of the cis-men from Empowered Pleasure posted about their fears of being “misunderstood.” Cliff additionally failed to respond to one survivor’s private request that he make an additional public statement addressing the EP community about the responsibility of community members and other supporters to believe survivors and remain focused on holding him accountable for his actions.

 

Our silence resulted in additional harm and negative impact. It was a repetition of oppression dynamics that often prevent women from speaking out. Our silence and failure to act further increased the vulnerability of survivors, resulting in their feeling unsafe in community, leaving them isolated, fearful and further traumatized. It also impacted the broader sex positive community in Portland. One person stated on the EP public Facebook page, “This is the reason women don’t come forward. We know that there’s very little chance that anything will change and we’ll be the ones who are vilified.” They are right. Our silence resulted in intense emotional distress that had a severe impact on survivors (and their supporters) in their day-to-day lives. We also acknowledge that this emotional distress may have been deeper and more traumatizing than the original harm the poster experienced via Cliff and/or Charity.

 

When Miles brought this individual's concerns to our attention, we noticed a significant discrepancy between our memory of what we knew was happening at the time and the concerned parties' perspective on what we knew at the time. After initially feeling defensive, we recognized that the most responsible course of action when feeling defensive is to get curious, and as a result we decided to review the original Facebook conversations and our early e-mail exchanges to refresh our memory with the actual words of survivors and their supporters. In doing so, we realized that our negligence was greater than we initially recalled when Miles broached the topic. We deeply apologize for how our negligence intensified the suffering of survivors and their allies and resulted in further community division. In our original post, “Organizational Failures at Empowered Pleasure,” we stated that we were “indirectly informed” and this is incorrect. We were directly informed through a number of Facebook posts and comments and we failed to act and, instead, remained focused on ourselves.

 

Speaking out against those in power is often a terrifying experience. Survivors and their allies who were already fearful of retaliation from us and were afraid of being rejected by their community for speaking out had to protect themselves by disconnecting from community. While we do not pretend to know what others are thinking and feeling, we imagine this led to feelings of helplessness, hopelessness, isolation, demoralization, and confirmation that oppression by the powerful is inevitable and women will be punished for speaking out. We also acknowledge that this may have also resulted in feelings of betrayal, broken relationships, ostracization, loss of faith in community, and further trauma. Our silence impacted the sex positive community and resulted in endless hours of unpaid emotional labor by those spearheading or advising the Restorative Justice process. We deeply apologize for the impact caused by our failure to act (which would have been to write empathetic replies to survivors’ and their supporters’ FB comments and to include the content of this addendum in our original Blog #8), and for this glaring omission.

 

When someone, especially a leader, is called out for abuses of power, consent violations, and other related offenses in the arena of sexual intimacy, the only appropriate course is to believe, protect, and surround survivors with support while the process unfolds. We (Cliff and Charity) fully own our defensiveness during the early months of our accountability process. Facebook was the only place for survivors to go because we failed to provide any other avenues for reporting that would have been private, trauma-informed, and supportive. 

The public nature of the invitation to accountability made survivors extremely vulnerable and was traumatizing to them and also to onlookers, and survivors and their allies had no other choice. We apologize for the harm done by our defensiveness, silence, and our failure to halt and publicly confront acts of harassment, minimization of survivors’ experiences, retaliation, and the public de-centering of the impact on survivors.

At the end of Blog # 8 we stated, “To any who criticized or confronted survivors, especially to anyone that blamed survivors for the loss of Empowered Pleasure events in the Portland sex positive community, we urge you to be accountable for any harm caused by your words or actions.” This addendum is an opportunity for us to directly address the EP members who attempted to defend Cliff and Charity, de-centered the survivor’s experiences, complained about how survivors and allies voiced their experiences, and especially to anyone who directly harassed survivors and allies. We urge you to be accountable, apologize, and make amends wherever possible for the impact of your words and actions.   

 

We are certain that we will continue to realize additional harm and negative impact caused by our omissions as we continue in the lifelong process of accountability. We welcome and encourage any readers who see our blind spots to either approach us directly or one of our accountability providers, including Miles Hurwitz and/or our recently announced supervisor, Kamela Love, who will both be supporting the next phases of our accountability process and facilitating our upcoming Q/A on April 21, 2024 (https://www.meetup.com/Empowered_Pleasure_PDX/events/299936163/). We plan on having  additional accountability peers and professional supervisors yet to be announced. They will protect your confidentiality if confidentiality is your preference and will invite us to engage in continual reflection, amends, and appropriate course adjustments. In the coming weeks there will be an online reporting form managed by an independent third party made available for those who desire to bring further harms to our attention (with a confidentiality option). 

We are deeply grateful to this anonymous individual who contacted our accountability coach. This required immense  courage, brought to light the omission in our recent Blog, and revealed more to us about the pronounced intensity of the harassment that occurred in our name as experienced by survivors and their allies early on in our accountability journey, early in 2023. We project this must have generated considerable emotional labor and emotional exposure for this person to take on this function at this point, now, a year later, and we honor and place high value on the burden they bore to communicate with us now.

Miles Hurwitz contact info: mhmanage@gmail.com