Prosecuting Sexual Misconduct Online
A few examples of "sexual abuse" adjudication happening in the online world.
Twitch is starting to ban streamers following allegations of abuse and harassment. More specifically, this discipline is addressing incidents which took place off Twitch. This is from their statement:
In many of the cases, the alleged incident took place off Twitch, and we need more information to make a determination. In some cases we will need to report the case to the proper authorities who are better placed to conduct a more thorough investigation.
I'm so completely weirded out by this. I fully understand why Twitch would care if its platform was used by others to carry out abuse or harassment. I also understand why Twitch would be interested in the private lives of streamers it has a business relationship with. But this doesn't seem to be limited to just that.
Rock Paper Shotgun (PC gaming website I think leans hard into collateral woke issues) phrases this development approvingly as "It seems Twitch plan to police the communities they helped create, and the behaviour of people they want associated with their service." It's an expansive justification which appears designed to capture virtually anyone who uses Twitch.
I don't understand why Twitch is particularly equipped to investigate domestic abuse allegations. It strikes me that some are eager to use the significant cudgel that Twitch is to impose consequences (sometimes severe financial ones) on anyone who has fallen into disrepute.
Elsewhere, one of the two hosts of the podcast Hella Black was vaguely accused on Twitter for being an "abuser", as well as implying he was contributing to "direct violence" against his ex, and also obliquely accusing him of violating consent. None of the allegations were clear, and so rumors ran rampant (understandably so) that he maybe raped someone or beat someone.
So the host comes out with what is a mix of extreme deferential language (e.g. "As the harm doer, I felt it important to go along with any process that would result in atonement.") BUT also combines it with a description of the alleged abuse in order to dispel the suspicions that he's a sex trafficker or something. For example:
In 2018, after previously agreeing that we would be sober for the first time we had sex. We were both intoxicated and neither of us could legally consent. The following week we discussed the event and why we should have honored our boundary. During this exchange, I attributed my contribution to breaking the boundary to my arousal. By blaming my contribution to the breaking of the boundary to my arousal, I reduced the impact of the event and dismissed the concerns she raised.
[…]
I saw the money I was giving to queer women, trans women, cis women, sex workers, and my former partner as practicing a politic of being a cishet man who gives money to women. I paid for meals, gifts, an Airbnb, and other expenses for this former partner. However, the former partner wanted me to engage in small gift-giving more often. In one particular instance, I said I could not pay for a flight and let them know that I could not afford it.
[…]
Despite pushing a pro-woman politic, someone I am close to (who is a former pimp) recently said some very whorephobic things on his public twitter. Instead of addressing it publicly (because that is where the harm occurred), I addressed it privately. This enabled them to continue to engage in these online behaviors. This is only one example of how I have engaged with folks known to use misogynistic language.
I'll admit, I read this and was repulsed and baffled as to how a heterosexual man with relatively high status would stoop to this level. The relationship he describes sounds controlling and littered with petty disputes. Also relevant, a twitter account acting as a surrogate for the alleged victim here took offense that he decided to describe the abuse publicly. So there does not appear to be a material issue of fact in question here.
There were a few moments throughout the #MeToo saga which I believed would be moments of reckoning with the idea of adjudicating private relationship disputes in the public sphere (Alec Holowka's suicide after being dragged by Zoe Quinn being one example), but the train doesn't seem to be stopping anytime soon. I'm curious how sustainable this approach really is.