The Unit of Caring

Today, two people I know came forward about abuse they suffered during their relationships with Brent Dill.

You can read their accounts here: Warning 1, Warning 2. 

If you don’t want to read the accounts, or want to know what to look for, both of them agree that Brent pressured them into painful and violent sex and pressured them into drug use which harmed them, and engaged in extreme emotional abuse and manipulation. Liz reports that Brent on likely dozens of occasions ignored her safeword or pressured her into scenes without a safe word and ignored her efforts to make the scene stop (which is conventionally called ‘rape and torture’).

I believe them. I believe them because they’ve provided me with documentation including text message conversations and the ‘slave contracts’. I believe them because I’ve heard from other people who were visiting their home at the time and who corroborated large portions of their story. I’ve spoken with someone who witnessed things she identified as abuse at Burning Man. And I believe them because these stories make a ton of sense - they’re honestly only a few steps farther than what everyone knew was going on. 

(That, too, is a pattern in things like this. I know people who knew Harvey Weinstein; they knew everything he had a reputation for except the actual rape, and were shocked by that when it happened.)

People have known for a long time that Brent frequently causes his partners harm and that it’s necessary to warn future partners about this tendency of his. I no longer think that’s anywhere near an adequate way to address this. The main reason I think that is because I’ve become convinced Brent is deliberately lying to everyone in the community in order to prevent warnings from circulating to new women he targets. I last talked with him this May, and at the time he told me he hadn’t been on a date in two years, which reassured me that he knew he harmed the people he dated and was trying to fix that by not dating people. I found out last week that, in fact, a few months before he told me that, he was taking a new partner to rationalist parties. 

I have heard the same thing from another person. She, unlike me, learned that Brent had a new partner; she expressed concern to Brent, and he assured her that a list of people were all responsible for looking out for the new partner and being a support network if the new partner needed to get out. She checked with those people. They did not know they were supposed to be serving that role. [see update: this was a conversation with one of Brent’s friends]

I am very wary of callout posts. I know they can destroy lives. I know this one might. But I believe these people, and I support their choice to go forward in this particular way. Subtler ways were tried, less disruptive ways were tried, nicer ways were tried, and it really looks to me like Brent used the fact we were trying them in order to continue accessing potential victims. I think it’s time people know these facts about him.

I will no longer attend community events that Brent sponsors. I think he uses them to establish social proof which we should not be extending him. I know that he builds cool stuff. I am more interested in investing in the cool stuff that the young women he has harmed will be able to build in a community that does not tolerate this. 

I am happy to discuss this further with people. 

• 19 September 2018
• #cw: abuse
• 272