blueheronteanook | You’d be completely at our mercy: how imbalanced power relations at the BHI enable sexual abuse (Reply)

Title: You’d be completely at our mercy: how imbalanced power relations at the BHI enable sexual abuse
Major Warnings: sexual abuse, sexism
Summary: An examination of sexual abuse at the BHI and things that make people more vulnerable to being targeted by it through a series of case studies.

You’d be completely at our mercy: how imbalanced power relations at the BHI enable sexual abuse

From the very moment that it has been introduced onscreen in Pale, the Blue Heron Institute has been shown to have a rampant issue with sexual abuse. Male students sexually harass or assault girls around them, whether student or not, while teachers and peers turn a blind eye as bystanders, or are actively predatory themselves. This isn’t just an isolated case of a few bad apples. Instead, the Blue Heron Institute (BHI) has a systemic problem caused by multiple factors converging together to create a permissive environment where perpetrators can freely target others without consequence.

In this essay, I will go over three different case studies to show how the social standing of different members of the BHI affects their vulnerability to sexual abuse. Generally, sexual abuse at the BHI happens when the perpetrator has more social power than their target, which prevents the target from being able to stop the behavior from happening. This social power is made up of many different elements, such as relationship to school authorities, likeability among peers, family situation, and status within the Practitioner world.

From previous posts, I may have gained a reputation of being nitpicky about specific details in Pale in order to criticize the text. This essay will be different. When it comes to sexual abuse at the BHI, I feel that Pale contains an evocative, nuanced portrayal of how such things are able to happen that parallel real-life dynamics, which serve as an effective way to communicate the dysfunction of the Practitioner world. It’s worth giving that a deeper look, as I aim to do here.

Definitions

Before I go any further, I want to define my terms. A lot of these words will mean different things in everyday use versus governmental, especially across different countries, so clarity is important.

Sexual abuse: a broad umbrella term for “the actual or threatened physical intrusion of a sexual nature, whether by force or under unequal or coercive conditions” [1]. This covers sexual harassment, assault, and any other conduct of a sexual nature that violates the dignity of a person, whether they are aware of it nor not.
Sexual harassment: “any form of unwanted verbal, non-verbal, or physical conduct of a sexual nature with the purpose, or effect of violating the dignity of a person, in particular when creating an intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating, or offensive environment” [1]. This includes things like unwanted sexual comments, requests for sexual favors, and attempts to view the victim’s body without permission.
Victim: someone who is subjected to or experiencing the above behaviors.

Perpetrator: someone who is doing the above behaviors to others.

Some organizations, particularly those involved in rape recovery, have moved towards using the term “survivor” instead of “victim”, because they feel it is a more empowering term that has connotations of resilience. Under normal circumstances, I would agree with that line of reasoning. However, in this essay, I want to point out the power dynamics that make sexual abuse possible at the BHI, so connotations of disempowerment are the point. These children are at risk due to the incredibly skewed power dynamics at the BHI.

You might notice the high emphasis placed on whether behavior was wanted or not. In general, this consent-based model is better for determining whether sexual behavior is a problem than judging based on a dichotomy of whether something is normal vs disgusting. Within Otherverse in particular, there is a lot of behavior that happens nonconsensually that is certainly normal among Practitioners, but shouldn’t be considered okay merely because it happens so often. If we judged by Practitioner standards of what is traditional, child murder would be entirely fine as long as it benefitted the family.

Additionally, judging by consent places focus on the experiences of the victim rather than little details of whether the perpetrator didn’t mean to cause harm or otherwise is an upstanding citizen in every other aspect of life. The fact is, an action that is thoughtless for the person making it can offend or intimidate the person receiving it, especially if the receiver feels they cannot get the other side to stop it in any way. I am more interested in examining why particular characters are allowed to cause distress through repeated unwanted behaviors to other characters at the BHI than speculating on whether these perpetrators are ontologically evil at heart and unforgivable by fandom.

Nicolette in the Belanger Circle

At the beginning of the story, Nicolette is a disabled teenage girl who has run away from her official guardians, who has been trapped into a position where she is subject to multiple types of sexual abuse. In a single interlude, Seth and Tanner make unwanted sexual comments towards her, Seth uses Practice to view her body without permission while threatening her, and Alexander acts to entrap Nicolette so he can traffick her when she turns 18 (Pale 2.z) [2]. Nicolette is Chase’s apprentice and indebted to Alexander, who is her de facto source of housing, food, and education. She has a secret plan to try to leave the situation, but it requires successfully tricking Alexander and the help of a third party (2.z) [2]. In the meantime, she is forced to put up with any sexual abuse that happens, no matter how bad it gets.

Both Nicolette and Seth know that Nicolette is at a disadvantage during their interactions. While he is grabbing her arm and threatening her, Nicolette thinks to herself:

Technically, she could have called him out on breaking the rule, left him forsworn or gainsaid him. Bonus for her, and a ding or a crippling loss for him. Except there was more in play. Politics, for one thing. He was related to Alexander. Alexander had the institute in part because he’d bartered with family, getting the power as a kind of loan to get it started, then bartering again to get the good words, references, and contacts to bring people in.

If Alexander’s distant nephew got in any real trouble here, it disrupted that whole engine.

If it was just that, she might not have held back. But he wasn’t wrong, she’d been marked. The mark came with bad karma, and bad karma tended to mean that things wouldn’t go smoothly. It may have been accidental, or something he’d done unconsciously, unwittingly absorbed by growing up in a family of practitioners, but he’d invoked that and it was in play. (2.z) [2]

Socially, magically, and physically, Seth has the upper hand. If Nicolette attempts to report the situation using the rules of the BHI, it is unlikely to result in Seth stopping his behavior.

After Seth grabs her, Nicolette manages to physically retaliate against Seth. She asks him to let go three times, framing the situation as matching his violence, and then scratches him with a magic item. This is a very careful process, which she thinks “play[s] out better in the long run” than persuading him to deescalate in the moment (2.z) [2]. However, this is not a true victory. In this altercation, Seth hits Nicolette in the head so her ornament falls out. This causes omens to enter her head wound to influence her, which she later reflects “had haunted her tonight” in a way that drives her towards escalated conflict with the trio (2.z) [2]. In both a metaphorical and literal sense, the stress of having to deal with Seth’s assault makes Nicolette lash out at others and puts her further in Alexander’s debt. Even though she was able to inflict temporary retribution on Seth, being in the situation at all is a loss for Nicolette that sets her behind her true goal of escaping Alexander.

Indeed, the leverage that Seth has over Nicolette is a fraction of what Alexander has over her. Alexander stops Seth from sexually harassing Nicolette in Alexander’s presence, but he does that in a way that affirms Alexander’s control over Nicolette:

“I was joking,” Seth said.

“Look me in the eyes,” Alexander said. “I’m not.”

The lighting of the candles had changed in the smallest ways. A few more shadows in the room. A few more reds.

Alexander’s voice was chilly, “If I sent you to talk to another family, would you address their matriarch or daughters that way? Their female apprentices?”

“No, sir. I really was joking,” Seth said.

“Then why would you say such a thing in my domain, with my apprentice?”

“I was going with the flow of conversation. I didn’t mean to offend you.” (2.z) [2]

Look at how the situation is framed. Seth making unwanted sexual comments to Nicolette is wrong because it snubs Alexander, not because it disturbs Nicolette. Seth is only concerned about offending Alexander, not Nicolette. Alexander is doing this because he wants to assert his control over “[his] apprentice,” not because he truly cares about Nicolette’s wellbeing.

After all, if Alexander only wanted to help Nicolette, he wouldn’t use his control as unofficial guardian to potentially force her into marriage. If Nicolette is in a contract with Alexander once she turns 18, his position of “master” gives him the right “to marry her off, or to marry her himself” (2.z) [2]. This ability to force Nicolette into an unwanted marriage to a partner she doesn’t choose, where she is at high risk of domestic abuse or maritial rape, is a clear case of planned human trafficking for the purpose of exploitation. Socially speaking, it is completely culturally acceptable among Practitioners for Alexander to demand such a thing from Nicolette once she is old enough. Magically speaking, if Nicolette refuses while still in the contract, she will be forsworn. The extreme power imbalance between Nicolette and Alexander allows him to get away with this.

Overall, how close a student is to school authorities strongly affects the risk that they will be sexually abused. When the perpetrator is supported by a teacher, is directly a teacher, or has extra authority over the victim on top of that, it becomes extremely difficult to leave the situation. Practice is used to enable sexual abuse at the BHI, both directly as a tool of the abuse itself or as a method of coercion so that the victim has no other choice.

Salvador’s social freeze-out

At the BHI, social power is so important that it trumps physical capacity for violence when determining who can get away with what among peers. That means that unpopular, socially awkward students are at higher risk of sexual abuse, because they have less people on their side if they decide to do anything about it. The case of Salvador, McCauleigh, and Fernanda shows this quite handily.

“Second or third thing he ever said to me was about my chest, then a year after that- last year, he asked, if I’m a gore-streaked dancer, could I give him a dance?” [McCauleigh said.]

“What’d you do?” Mal asked.

“Nothing. Rules at the school, not much you can do, and if I showed it bothered me, my family would get on my case.”

“Can’t imagine the people in charge would be super great at that,” Verona mused aloud.

“Yep. Only regular staff aren’t people who’d care. Alexander was the same, just hid it way better, Ray doesn’t always get that stuff, so it’s a crapshoot if you’d get help from him or just a really stressful time trying to explain it, and Durocher doesn’t like weakness. Which is fine, because I don’t either.”

“So he gets away with it?” Mal asked. “No kicks to the balls?” (17.13) [3]

Physical violence is not on the table, because McCauleigh believes that she will be punished for it. As a gore-streaked dancer, McCauleigh is almost certainly better in a fight than Salvador, but that won’t protect her from the consequences of breaking “‘rules at the school.’” She is not good at social interaction, as shown by her nightmare, meaning that she cannot finesse the situation like Nicolette did to find some justification to fight back (17.9) [4].

Additionally, McCauleigh does not trust any of the teachers to side with her, particularly Ray. In a later incident where she is disciplined for cutting off Corbin’s thumb, Ray internally monologues that McCauleigh is disturbingly violent due to the Hennigar nature (Break 1) [5]. He tells her that she needs to be “‘on a way to behaving more acceptably for this institution,’” or otherwise risk expulsion (Break 1) [5]. We don’t learn why McCauleigh did this, and it is unclear whether Ray has asked her. However, what is clear is that Ray defaults to assuming she is the problem due to how the rest of her family acts. If the way that Ray acts in that case is standard for how he normally reacts to student problems with McCauleigh, it makes sense that she would not trust him to be understanding about why she would feel the need to hurt Salvador to make him stop sexually harassing her.

Another possibility brought up and dismissed by McCauleigh is asking for help from her family. The Hennigars are powerful, but they are not on her side. She doesn’t want to seem weak to them from “appear[ing] bothered” by Salvador’s harassment, which is a necessary part of asking them to use their social standing to stop it (17.13) [3]. McCauleigh’s fear of appearing insufficiently strong before her family is entirely rational, as later in the story her family sends her to a camp to be brutalized for not wanting to fight (21.10) [4].

Thus, even though McCauleigh is physically capable of beating Salvador up for making unwanted sexual comments, she cannot do so without experiencing consequences for breaking the BHI’s rules. At the same time, she does not expect other, less violent methods of asking for help with the situation to work either. Because of this, Salvador is free to continue his behavior towards McCauleigh without her being able to prevent it or retaliate afterwards.

In the next section of this passage, we see what it takes to be able to successfully stop Salvador from sexually harassing his fellow students. Unlike McCauleigh, Fernanda has social leverage that she can use against Salvador.

“He said the wrong thing to Fernanda Whitt a few months before she had her big style upgrade and started playing the diplomacy game. She got most of the girls and some of the guys to refuse to give him the time of day, some of that went as far as people giving similar treatment to his dad. Pretty sure he got a big talking to, or he got scared it would keep going that way, he turned things around. Mostly.” (17.13) [3]

The contrast drawn between Fernanda and McCauleigh shows how personal likeability among one’s peers and relationships to those with authority affect one’s vulnerability to sexual abuse. In some ways, they are quite similar. Both of them are 13 year old girls at the BHI (4.7 Spoilers Student Guide) [6]. Both feel that they cannot rely on their families to act in their best interests.

As a member of the Whitt family, Fernanda is an emotion manipulator (4.7 Spoilers Student Guide) [6]. She has sought out Others to learn how social dynamics work, particularly “‘the games boys and girls play’” (6.z) [7]. Additionally, unlike McCauleigh, she puts in specific effort to appeal to different teachers, such as Ray (6.z) [7]. Therefore, Fernanda is extremely well-positioned to be able to respond back to Salvador’s harassment by organizing social exclusion of him until he stopped. That is genuinely impressive, and it was a good thing that she was able to do it.

Ability to perform gender roles is another factor of vulnerability. Fernanda is extremely aware of the gendered expectations placed on her. She wears makeup casually (4.9), and is aware of magical means to enhance beauty (8.7) [9]. By contrast, McCauleigh has a literal nightmare about not knowing how to put on makeup or shave her legs (17.9) [4]. Fernanda acts subtly to gain the favor of important people, including teachers, whereas McCauleigh is blunt and violent. Clearly, McCauleigh is not living up to feminine gender roles as much as she could be. While she isn’t fully gender nonconforming, this inability to completely match standards is a contributing factor to how peers and authorities treat her. Much has been said online about the ability of handsome men to get away with behavior that uglier men can’t [10], but here we see the opposite effect: a pretty, feminine girl is able to rally help against sexual abuse in a way that a less feminine girl couldn’t.

At the BHI, personal likeability and good relationships with authority are protective elements against sexual abuse, as these are a form of social power. Physical ability is less important, because of the possibility that a student might be punished for using force to defend themselves. Students who do not successfully perform their gender role have less social power and are thus more vulnerable to sexual abuse.

The Other side of it

Beyond the skewed balances of power among different Practitioners at the BHI are also the dynamics of Others vs Practitioners. There is a clear hierarchy at the BHI where Others are below Practitioners. Even friendly students like Zed consider themselves to have the authority to bind dangerous Others at will, and think about Others through the lens of the threat they pose to Practitioners rather than the other way around (4.4) [11]. In general, Others are disrespected, ordered around, sent to separate spaces, and killed by Practitioners [12]. Others at the BHI are at heightened risk from all sorts of Practitioner abuse, including sexual forms of it.

Would anyone at the BHI ever do such a thing? Yes. We see a case of sexual harassment of an Other at the BHI in 4.x. Early in the chapter, Seth assumes Snowdrop is a “‘minor Other’” who is familiar to a “‘master’” (4.x) [13]. He delivers a warning to her that is meant for familiars, where he is clearly more worried about potential harm to their bonded Practitioners than to the familiars themselves. At that point, Snowdrop reveals she is not anyone’s familiar, and spends some time feeling bothered about the dismissal of her worth (4.x) [13].

Shortly afterwards, Snowdrop is escaping from angry Brownies, where she encounters Seth again:

“Can I come with you?” she asked [Seth], looking around for any glinting eyes. One peered at her from under a door, then disappeared as Seth walked up.

“I’m going to make a deposit in the men’s washroom, so no.”

“But-”

“No. Maybe if you were, like, sixteen and…” He looked her up and down. “Actually, could look past the clothes.”

“Can you help me?” she asked, trying to keep to the question thing. “What do I do if the kitchen staff are mad at me?”

He snorted. “I don’t know, but I’m glad.”

“Glad?”

“Someone’s gotta take the hit. Now, excuse me. Try not to become too big a mess, because Nicolette’s in class and I’ll probably be the one tasked with cleaning it up before we end up traumatizing a client.” He fake-coughed. “I mean student.”

He stepped into the bathroom and closed the door. She heard it latch. (4.x) [13]

The age of consent within Ontario is 16 years old. Seth’s combined words and actions make it clear that he is evaluating Snowdrop in a sexual manner, when she is trying to ask for help. He implies that if he found Snowdrop more attractive, he might be willing to help, but he doesn’t, so she will have to fend for herself.

Through his words, Seth paints a clear hierarchy of which visitors at the BHI matter: first students as paying “client[s]” who must be kept happy, then familiars whose welfare affects those clients, and lastly all non-familiar Others at the very bottom. He feels that Practitioners should have power over Others by default. Snowdrop is not someone whose needs and wants are prioritized by the BHI, so he is free to harass her, similar to how he harasses and attacks Nicolette when he feels he has the upper hand.

Snowdrop has no way to get Seth to stop. Later in the chapter we see that she doesn’t tell anyone about this incident. Nobody at the BHI will side with an Other over Alexander’s family over an unwanted sexual comment under normal circumstances, and Snowdrop has an added difficulty because of her Rule of Discourse. Anything she says will be reversed to have opposite meaning in uncontrollable ways, which provides an extra communication barrier even if Snowdrop wanted to report this incident to anyone.

Obviously, most of the abuse of Others we see in Pale is not of a sexual nature. The reader might wonder, why bother to focus on this? Can Others even feel distress over sexual abuse or be meaningfully harmed by it?

Yes. Later on in 17.x, Easton looks at Shay’s exposed chest when she clearly wasn’t intending it, which leads to the discovery that she is an Other. At first, he thinks this makes her a threat, so she has to recount details of how her family turned her into an Other to prove she is not malicious, which is extra humiliating to have to do after he has already sexually harassed her. For the rest of the chapter, Shay is angry at Easton, to the point of repeatedly swearing at him [14]. She is clearly upset by this and does not want to spend any more time around him than she has to.

To sum it all up, being an Other adds another axis of vulnerability to sexual abuse at the BHI. Others are an unprotected class at the BHI who only matter as far as any Practitioner with social power cares about what happens to them. On top of that, the nature of a character’s Otherhood can put them at further risk, such as by creating communication barriers that make it difficult to tell anyone else what has happened to them.

Inadequate structures at the BHI

It’s very clear that the BHI has a culture where people with low social power are unprotected against sexual abuse by those with greater social power. McCauleigh defends this arrangement by saying the “‘system works sometimes,’” as Fernanda was able to get Salvador to stop sexually harassing herself and her peers (17.13) [3]. By saying this, McCauleigh shows belief that the BHI has a flawed, imperfect system that nevertheless can still be occasionally jogged into protecting its students. I want to go one step further and say that the BHI’s system is not just flawed with some gaps in its protection, but is actively meant to allow perpetrators to get away with sexual abuse.

Obviously, BHI authorities can’t enforce rules against incidents they don’t know about. In real life, many people don’t report sexual abuse, because they expect not to be believed. There are a lot of misconceptions about how sexual abuse happens, including the idea that many reports are made up [15]. The fact that these victims are Practitioners and Others changes this dynamic significantly. All of them are bound to tell the truth, and there is a talented group of Augurs who can see any moment in the past to aid in investigation. Shouldn’t victims be able to report incidents and have their words verified as truth?

Just because BHI authorities believe reports of sexual abuse doesn’t mean that they care about stopping it. Over and over again, we hear a repeated refrain about the BHI, that “‘the school rules prohibit harm’” (4.4) [10]. We never see a full list of the rules shown in text, but we are told a lot about how students experience enforcement of these rules, which is far more important. BHI authorities don’t consider it harm for someone to be sexually harassed, nonconsensually viewed for a sexual purpose, or forced into marriage, but they do consider it harm if someone protects themselves from sexual abuse using force. Something is only a problem if it threatens “the good words, references, and contacts to bring people in” (2.z) [2]. Most of the time, this means protecting perpetrators and school authorities closely tied to those perpetrators. Official response will take a form anywhere on a sliding scale of willfully ignoring reports of sexual abuse all the way to actively punishing those who fight back against perpetrators. This effect is described by a principle called Wilhoit’s Law, which says, “there must be in-groups whom the law protectes [sic] but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect” [16]. The actual result of the BHI’s rules are to protect perpetrators of sexual abuse from harm, not to protect those who might be victimized by them.

Conclusion

BHI culture is fundamentally broken. Perpetrators can sexually abuse anyone at the school with impunity, as long as their victim has less social power than them. The most at risk groups are female students who are unpopular and/or have uncaring guardians, as well as all forms of Others, because these groups have little ability to escape the situation and get help. Practice is sometimes used as a method to facilitate sexual abuse. Although student victims have Practice too, using it to stop perpetrators in the moment or afterwards as deterrent will usually lead to punishment by way of the school rules. At the same time, peacefully reporting incidents to school authorities is not a useful method to stop perpetrators either, because these authorities do not think that sexual abuse is a problem.

The issue of sexual abuse at the BHI is a microcosm of the issues in wider Practitioner society. The strong are allowed do whatever they want to the weak, and sexism runs rampant through their society. The BHI parallels the dynamics of how sexual abuse happens in real life school settings, particularly male-on-female abuse. (There are female perpetrators and male victims in real life, but this is not shown in Pale.) Those who are not considered perfect victims — pretty, likeable, able-bodied girls who fight back as hard as they can against an attacker they have never previously met before — are dismissed as not worth caring about and protecting. This depiction of BHI sexual abuse in Pale shows how perpetrators are allowed to target victims, both in the Otherverse and real life.

Citations

[1] Interagency Working Group on Sexual Exploitation of Children. “Terminology Guidelines for the Protection of Children from Sexual Exploitation and Sexual Abuse.” ECPAT, https://ecpat.org/luxembourg-guidelines/

[2] Wildbow. Pale, Stolen Away, 2.z. https://palewebserial.wordpress.com/2020/07/11/stolen-away-2-z/

[3] Wildbow. Pale, Gone and Done It, 17.13. https://palewebserial.wordpress.com/2022/03/15/gone-and-done-it-17-13/

[4] Wildbow. Pale, Gone and Done It, 17.9. https://palewebserial.wordpress.com/2022/03/01/gone-and-done-it-17-9/

[5] Wildbow. Pale, Summer Break, Break 1. https://palewebserial.wordpress.com/2021/09/02/break-1/

[6] Wildbow. Pale, 4.7 Spoilers Student Guide. https://palewebserial.wordpress.com/2020/09/10/4-7-spoilers-student-guide/

[7] Wildbow. Pale, Cutting Class, 6.z. https://palewebserial.wordpress.com/2020/11/28/cutting-class-6-z/

[8] Wildbow. Pale, Leaving a Mark, 4.9. https://palewebserial.wordpress.com/2020/09/19/leaving-a-mark-4-9/

[9] Wildbow. Pale, Vanishing Points, 8.7. https://palewebserial.wordpress.com/2021/02/02/vanishing-points-8-7/

[10] “Hello, Human Resources?!” Know Your Meme, https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/hello-human-resources

[11] Wildbow. Pale, Leaving a Mark, 4.4. https://palewebserial.wordpress.com/2020/08/29/leaving-a-mark-4-4/

[12] megafire7. “Practitioners and Others, a Binary.” https://blueheronteanook.dreamwidth.org/6646.html

[13] Wildbow. Pale, Leaving a Mark, 4.x. https://palewebserial.wordpress.com/2020/09/12/leaving-a-mark-4-x/