permaculture

[Toby Hemenway <toby@patternliteracy.com>]

This is an important and complex issue that I think needs to be discussed a 
great deal more in open and safe forums. While I personally—even if I were 
not monogamously married—would never become romantically involved with a PDC 
student (I’ve been hit on by students), and don’t approve of it, the issue of 
power imbalance in a PDC is very different than in, say, a college or 
high-school. Most PDC participants are mature, sexually experienced adults, 
unlike college or younger students, and the teacher has far less sway over 
their lives. Maybe I’m naive, but I cannot imagine a PDC teacher implying 
that a student would not get a certificate because they wouldn’t have sex, 
and that’s just about the only real power a PDC teacher has. There is, of 
course, the “charisma/mentor” factor that could be used to be sexually 
attractive to students, and that’s been done. But that is a very different, 
far less imbalanced dynamic than a professor intimating that you’d get a 
better grade or recommendation to grad school if you acquiesced.  

And—I am going to name some names here, because I think it is unethical, and 
certainly unverifiable, to claim bad behavior without doing so-- Mollison set 
an unfortunate precedent in that he had sexual affairs with numerous 
students, sending a message to early teachers that it was okay. Plus the 
zeitgeist of the eighties, when those early courses were happening, was a lot 
more “anything goes” than in more recent years. 

To complicate the picture further, Bill married at least two of his PDC 
students. I was present for one of these episodes, and in fact the woman 
involved, in her late 30s, was clearly the initiator. And I can think of at 
least 3 other PDC teachers who married their PDC students and had 
long-lasting marriages. Should that have been forbidden? Would the marriages 
still have occurred if the adults involved had, say, waited till after the 
PDC was over, thus ending the teacher/student dynamic? I do not know the 
answer.

In other words, to say “PDC teachers are hitting on their students in an 
unfair power dynamic” is not at all an accurate assessment of what goes on.

To be very clear: I am not condoning sexual involvement between PDC teachers 
and students; I personally don’t want it to happen, but I think the 
“consenting adults” criteria carries a lot of weight. Homosexuality is a 
relevant example. I think multiple viewpoints and experiences need to be 
heard, and consensed agreements need to be made by the larger community long 
before we resort to a top-down imposed rule such as “PINA needs to punish 
it.” (I understand that that is not what Ben is recommending, but others 
have.)

I would very much like to see a safe, non-accusatory, open discussion of this 
issue, in which specific cases were brought up, especially by those involved 
in them, and where there is an unprejudiced evaluation of what kind of harm 
has been done in the permaculture community by real cases of behavior.

Toby
tobyhemenway.com

Just out: my new book on urban permaculture, The Permaculture City. Order it 
at your favorite bookseller or get a signed copy from me at  
http://tobyhemenway.com/book/the-permaculture-city/



> On Jul 19, 2016, at 6:30 AM, Ben Martin Horst <ben.martinhorst@gmail.com> 
> wrote:
> 
> Hi Wes and others,
> I think this deserves its own separate thread. You write:
> 
> "One of the big things i have been struggling with has do do with the
> ethics of PC teachers that hit on the female students at their sites and
> courses and how are we going to address this -can we  set a committee that
> will take complaints  we have nowhere to direct people that have
> complaints-this i feel will undue our movement faster than all the stuff i
> have read on this list serve."
> 
> The unfortunate likelihood is that whatever you're seeing as a man is
> probably just the tip of a much larger iceberg. I think we should be clear
> in calling it what it is: a teacher hitting on a student is sexual
> harassment, as it necessarily involves a power differential. Sexual
> harassment is illegal in the United States and many other countries, and
> hugely detrimental to students and, as you note, to the permaculture
> "movement."
> 
> The following paragraph is clipped from "A 'Pattern Language' for Women in
> Permaculture, originally published in the August 2013 Permaculture Activist
> (now available at
> http://seedsustainabilityconsulting.com/women-in-permaculture-article-in-permaculture-activist/
> ):
> 
> "Men can be allies to women in many ways, and are especially invited to
> take an active role in anti-harassment policies, because men do most sexual
> harassment of women. 'Sexual harassment is handled badly in two ways: when
> we ignore it, and when we communicate policies in a way that is too heavy
> handed,' according to Starhawk. EAT has a policy against teachers getting
> romantically involved with students during courses. They also set a tone
> early in the course by discussing healthy boundaries with students, like
> 'no means no, and yes means yes.'"
> 
> It seems to me that there is a role for a larger body in monitoring the
> ethics of PDC instructors, taking complaints, and withdrawing credentials,
> as necessary. Wes, you would certainly know better than I, but it seems to
> me that PINA is the only reputable body that is large enough and has any
> sort of structure in place to accomplish this.
> 
> -Ben
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