Party Vibe

by now most of you will have seen reports coming in from Europe – one young girl raped at a Tek, another dead in dubious circumstances in a Paris squat.

Here in Britain, just down the road from me, our Crown Court is surrounded by reporters – the case being heard is the kidnap, serious sexual assault and murder of two young teenage girls (the Mary Ann Leneghan case). The two victims are known to raver friends of mine and were “happy go lucky girls who liked parties and music” – who simply just “got in with the wrong crowd”.

And none of this is new. All these bad things were happening in the early 90s in the “old skool days” – but we didn’t have the Internet to report the incidents; and worse still a lot of people were in denial, and victims too traumatised to speak widely about what was going on

Some will argue “this is just normal societys problem” – but thats no excuse. In fact in “normal society” those who abuse women/girls are more likely to be dealt with, as people who are not involved in things deemed illegal by wider society are obviously more likely to go to cops and report stuff.

There is a culture of denial, and worse one of acceptance of gender violence on the “free party” scene.

its unregulated nature sadly attracts predators, worse still a patriarchal attitude has developed – I’ve known so called “radical activists” to claim straight from the heart that “women shouud know their place”, and lots of girls in squats/protest camps etc were harrassed by blokes – the “hippy girls are easy” attitude (George Monbiot mentions this problem in one of this reports).

Some blokes speak up against violence, but often its simply from a “macho perspective” because they want an excuse to beat up the outside predators (whilst keeping the women for themselves – a bit like chimpanzees) – I am aware of incidents where vigilantés who don’t even know the circumstances have dealt out punishment beatings when the female victims (and even their partners) have in fact wanted to have stuff dealt with properly by cops and courts!

Another bad development is couples having their domestic arguments in the middle of raves – of course couples may not always agree but surely this stuff is for sorting out in the home, not a public arena? Often it just seems like it is the male trying to exert dominance over the female.

I always thought people originally got into the underground rave scene to escape attitudes like this; after all you can see it in every commercial venue and on the high street, but thankfully cops / bouncers / CCTV ops often intervene before people are too badly hurt.

Even at free parties incidents are usually stopped – but uninvolved and uninformed people take sides without the accountability that traditional authority figures have – and of course it ruins the atmosphere for everyone when these things happen in a party zone.

And sadly, often the argument carries on where no witnesses are about (such as in the bedrooms of a squat or shared house) and far worse things happen.

This must stop. the girls/women today do “not” have a victim mentality – they are prepared to stand up for themselves and/or use conventional authorities if need be – but why should it have to come to this?

Some girls I know now are so disillusioned by the way things are going they no longer attend raves (unlicensed or commercial) for their own and in some cases their partners safety/sanity – or attend them less often – with every girl who stops raving thats one less person to support the cause.

And why should they support a community which is being taken over by “angry young men” and treats them as second class citizens?

Further, the female police officers, social workers and many other authority figures / professionals who often end up picking up the pieces of gender violence on our scene will think

“these so called “autonomous communities” are dangerous to girls/women. They should be closed down or more strictly regulated”.

it may no longer be “cool” for a straight male like myself to speak about “respecting women” (people think I am a sandal-wearing 80s hippy!) – but I do not care about fashion labels when this is attacking the existence of this scene.

its worth remembering the party community is a “living organism” – and thus needs both genders involved to survive and grow…