Jian Ghomeshi’s voice had become a fixture in our kitchen every morning, and to be honest, with little ones and lots going on, his interviews were my touchstone to music, arts, culture and ideas from Canada and beyond. I even took our son Horus (now 6 years old), a huge fan, to see Ghomeshi’s show, Q, live a couple of years ago.
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Ghomeshi’s pre-emptive and self-pitying 1600 word open letter to the Canadian public hit Facebook a couple of days ago. In it, he defends himself against the “categorically untrue” statements made by several women who have supposedly “colluded” to publicly shame the radio star by ostensibly revealing his sexual proclivities, motivated by retribution, desire and jealousy.
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I was sickened, but in no way shocked by the widespread acceptance—by some of my own feminist friends, along with almost everyone else—that these women were being vindictive, that Jian was being “smeared”, and that this was an organized, malicious and false attack from a jilted ex-lover.
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At this time, several women have now come forward with allegations that they were subjected to sexual violence perpetrated by Ghomeshi. As I write, the Toronto Star has just published a piece detailing the accounts of several of these women, among them the incredibly brave Lucy DeCoutere. The news seems to be far more disturbing than what most of us had suspected.
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And the chorus still goes, Why aren’t these women going to the police? What business is it of the media? Women lie about rape all the time.
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I was sexually assaulted by a very very minor “celebrity” 10 years ago. Speaking from experience, it is inconceivable and preposterous to me that anyone would fabricate such an accusation.
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I have never spoken publicly in any specific terms about my own experience of assault. And I won’t. My reasons are many, but one of those reasons is certainly illustrated by the vilification the women who initially came out against Ghomeshi have received. The shame, guilt, and anxiety that goes along with having been violated by a person in a position of power, privilege and/or influence is staggering, crushing and often all-consuming.
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I have children, a family, a career, and my own reputation to protect. At the time of my assault, I was a mess in so many ways; self-destructive, sad and lost. I also had a giant crush on my attacker, and I willingly put myself in a position that I see now was dangerous. It could be argued that I “ consented”, to a point. Is going into someone’s house implied consent? Does flirting with someone imply consent? Does agreeing to smoke a joint with someone imply consent? Over the years I have wavered as to whether or not I did “ask for it”. I was certainly asking for something: attention, interest, conversation, romance–as childish and naive as that sounds. I am genuinely conflicted as to whether or not there is really any blame to be usefully or firmly placed. The guy was an opportunistic, misogynistic jerk. Sometimes I wonder…who isn’t? In any case, I don’t want to put myself through the drain and embarrassment of a public coming-out, and I don’t want to have to defend myself against the threat of an accusation of mental illness (which in fact did occur, immediately after the incident in question). I am not interested in being a poster-girl for any social movement, and I can wholeheartedly accept the likelihood that my reasoning and my analysis and even my memory of this event is imperfect, and highly problematic, just as any human exchange is subjective and flawed. And then, of course, there is the cold hard fact that I’d have to be completely delusional to believe that there is any way, at the time, that the cops or anyone else would have give any credence whatsoever to a scrungy little north end alcoholic like I was.
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Perhaps surprisingly, for some, I don’t have any desire to see this person publicly shamed or punished beyond the sense of moral judgement that I hope resides in his own conscience. I present that idea as something of an admission, and I suppose I’m worried that this might be met with incredulity or even scorn from the good people who advocate for those who have experienced sexual violence. But I reject the idea that I have any duty to reveal anything about my private life experiences that I don’t feel comfortable revealing, for any reason, ever.
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The guy? I think has a child now, and I sincerely hope that for him, like me, parenthood brings with it a terrible flood of self-examination and even, possibly, some wisdom, maturity, compassion.
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And then there is the fact that this one particular incident of assault is just the most unpleasant in a string of transgressions that I have endured from countless men over the course of my life, which include inappropriate touching, groping, coercion, abusive language, along with a couple of instances of flat-out rape that occurred within supposedly committed relationships. Finally, let’s not forget the ubiquitous low-level fear that every single woman on the planet experiences, every single time she leaves her house, or, in all honesty, from the moment she wakes up in the morning, until the moment that she sleeps.
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Sexual aggression in whatever form, exerted by men towards women (and the variations of masculinized sexual violence that is perpetrated towards gay, trans, intersex and gender-fluid people) is so normalized, and so prevalent in our culture, that we often don’t even see it.
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Now let me break for a moment just to say that for once, when I bring up the subject of male violence against women, I would like NOT to have several dudes pipe up about that infinitesimally small minority of women who falsely accuse men of rape, or that infinitesimally small minority of women who also rape or sexually abuse. Not because those outlying victims (men, ostensibly) are statistically meaningless, or because I feel on some level that those terrible instances are somehow excusable because of their small number, or because I think that those victims might symbolize some kind of suitable stand-in as punishment for all the other men who have done wrong (a disgusting suggestion, that I nonetheless see implied by so-called “men’s rights activists), but because *this* (this article, as well as my point) is not *that* conversation. This conversation, about male violence against women, deserves to be seen, heard and acknowledged without deflecting or dodging. Male violence against women is a baseline, a state of normality, and that’s what we’re talking about right now. Male violence against women is foundational.
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And yet, with all the supposedly open discussion of sexual abuse that is being engaged in right now, and with the seeming awareness that the term “rape culture” implies, there is a deafening silence on the subject of the ubiquity of images and video available online to anyone, within 5 seconds, of women’s bodies. These are images of actual women—often very young women– being raped, sexually tortured, and humiliated for the sexual gratification of the staggeringly high percentage of men (and women too, of course) who consume these images for masturbation. This “material” is commonly referred to casually, dismissively, as “porn”, but it is my conviction that the majority of “porn” is in fact evidence of sexual crimes, coercion, human trafficking, exploitation and torture. Porn culture, rape culture. These are one and the same and the variations therein exist on a spectrum: all are expressions of a belief that women are chattel, commodities, objects to be assessed graded, taken, bought, sold, used, fucked, tolerated and then discarded.
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That the saturation of sexual/sexualized oppression in which we are all wallowing is so invisible to so many of us, is proof of its insidiousness.
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I do know that some women claim to, and perhaps do, love to sell their bodies for money, and it is not my aim to discount another individual’s experience. But let’s not pretend that “consent” is simple, or that economic disparity and desperation don’t complicate these so-called decisions in near-pathological ways.
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In my work as a birth attendant, I hear stories, and have witnessed first-hand, the problems with consent; its fluidity, and the way that the word consent can be used as a tool to manipulate and to bully. This happens as easily in the labour and delivery room as it does the bedroom as it does on the street, or on a set.
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We have to remember, too, that according to the law, consent is rendered moot when it comes to bodily harm. In an article published by the National Post Toronto lawyer Janet Leiper explains that “consent is not obtained if the person engages in activity because the other person has taken advantage of a position of authority or trust. Consent is not obtained in law where it is given as a result of threats, fear of force, fraud or actual application of force. Also, consent in sexual cases must be ongoing. A person must be able to revoke consent, by words or conduct, even if initially he or she did consent to sexual activity at the outset. And if a complainant is incapable of expressing consent, the consent is gone.”
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It seems fairly clear at this point that for the women who coming forward to tell their stories about Jian Ghomeshi, the issue lies entirely outside the realm of legal, acceptable behaviour. But I must confess that when it comes to BDSM on the whole, I’m not sure how to reconcile, for myself, the idea of personal choice, private life, and the degree to which I find it disturbing and yes, frankly distasteful, that for some people (whether or not they have acquired “consent”) hurting others is sexually arousing.
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Fundamentally, I have no interest in policing the practices, sexual or otherwise, of individuals. My moral certainty stands for myself only. I recognize that my perspective on porn and prostitution is a minority view. And yet it seems to me that seeking to derive sexual pleasure from the humiliation, pain and dehumanization of others—and let me be clear, when it comes to porn, we are talking about the *real* humiliation, pain and dehumanization of another person’s body in the vast majority of instances–inherently wrong, as unpopular or “prudish” as that might sound.
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My initial Facebook post on which this longer blog post is based, garnered a string of comments, one of which came from an online friend whom I respect. She asked about whether or not I have a (moral, implied) objection to amateur porn. I don’t believe this comment was designed to derail, but the question runs along the same lines as observations that “ Not all porn is [brutal, violent, torturous, humiliating]. No, not all porn. No, not all men. Again, I have no interest in arguing with reality, or with policing the behaviour of others. But considering the nature of the porn industry which involves production company conglomerates that own subsidiaries and a sea of flesh that just roils on and on and on, it is not possible to tell who is acting, who is amateur, who is under eighteen, who is drugged on camera, and who’s heart is breaking from the terrible cruelty of it all.
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In an excellent piece on porn culture written by Jonah Mix, Mix relates the consumption of porn to the philosophical conceit of the utilitarian calculus. He points out that those regular nice people who otherwise live their lives according to some kind of moral framework, must, in order to consume porn, suspend their sense of compassion and decency while they take their sexual experience at the expense of another human being’s dignity. Mix asks pro-porn men “a simple question: In your calculus, how many orgasms per rape? How many ejaculations per broken body? If one woman’s humiliation can get ten men off, does that justify it? What about a hundred? A thousand? And if an industry cannot exist without a certain percentage of the women involved – even a small percentage, one in fifty, let’s say – facing serious sexual violence, bodily harm, and emotional abuse, how much value can you possibly put on your cum so as to justify its continued existence?”
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Mix goes on to write that “for all the nonsense pro-porn folks spout about sexual exploration and agency and all the assorted buzzwords that would make you think we’re talking about something other than people fucking on camera, let’s all admit that pornography is first and foremost an orgasm delivery mechanism. That’s the purpose, from start to finish. Now, that doesn’t mean that you couldn’t conceivably pack in some other artistic proclamation or personal statement—but ask yourself, how much of a pornography industry would there be if men were al cosmically barred from masturbation while they watched? No matter how tastefully staged “good porn” might be, it would still be lucky to rack up more than about six hits online if men knew they wouldn’t be ejaculating by the end of it. And hey, don’t get me wrong: Orgasms are great! It’s not a particularly bold stand to come out as pro-orgasm; it is, however, generally frowned upon to say that any amount of orgasms can justify wide-scale sexual violence and woman-hating. And in the end, that’s what these folks have to argue in order to salvage their commitment to porn. When you take someone on a tour through the endless parade of dead-eyed cruelty that is the modern pornography industry, and their first response is to criticize you for only focusing on the bad parts and ignoring the good parts, what they’re really saying is simply, Yeah, that’s true, but maybe her rape was worth it. “
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This brings me back to Jian Ghomeshi’s Facebook address of a couple of days ago, and to the part where he refers to his sexuality as a human right. Well, no. That doesn’t work for me. Your right to express your sexuality ends where another person’s body begins. And while I wasn’t for a moment impressed by his prolix plea, I was entirely ready to reserve judgement, although at this point, I stand with the women who have come forward, named or anonymous. Ultimately, I’m not terribly interested in Jian Ghomeshi as an individual. But Ghomeshi’s apparent behaviour and the framing and assessment of his victims has created an incredible firestorm of opinion and analysis, and it has triggered so many women, like me, to think deeply about our own experiences. I am not the only woman who is deeply sick of rape, and sick of being scared of men. And I know I’m not the only person who is sick and tired of worrying about how to raise sons and daughters in a broken culture.
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A friend pointed out that shifting this culture “starts in the home, and [with] the quality of the cellular environment of the mother inutero…as well as secure early attachments…we as early mothers can make change in our society by coming to our own healing and being and setting a good environment for ourselves and our child…this is humanity’s work, to do the hardest job on Earth with very little training and often times the worst mentorship. Our little ones, they are our teachers when they come in, so pure still” She asks, “Yolande …I wonder how you would address your concerns?”
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It’s an important question, and a huge and difficult one. I have thought so much about this, because quite frankly, I feel desperate to somehow give my children a perspective on sex, gender, relationships and themselves, that challenges the paradigm of brokenness that I see everywhere around me–but I’m not sure how. I do agree entirely with my friend in that our development as sentient beings begins so early on. As many of you reading will know, I am passionate about the importance of the birth experience for mothers and babies, and the role that birth plays in attachment. As my kids grow older, I am also realizing that parenting them without shame, punishment or violence is so essential, and yet so hard to do, if we ourselves were raised with painful practices.
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I want my children to grow up seeing examples of healthy marriage based on honesty, trust, friendship, and love. I want my children to know that their bodies are useful, beautiful and entirely their own, and that their sexuality is healthy and precious and theirs as well. I want my children to learn to understand, with clarity, that other people have inherent value and dignity, and that all others deserve respect. I want my children to know that they can talk to me, and that I see who they are, and that I respond to them with authenticity. I don’t accept pornography in my home, on my computer or in my marriage, and as soon as my kids become involved with the screen in a meaningful way, I hope to maintain an ongoing, open dialogue with them about how to protect themselves and their own families from some of the really negative influences online.
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Looking back on my original Facebook post that speaks more briefly to all of this–to Ghomeshi, porn culture and misogyny–there are about 130-something “likes”, only a handful of which came from men themselves. The men who did like the post, are, for the most part, my usual suspects: the men whom I love and respect and know to be decent compassionate people. I am so thankful for the good men in my life.
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I stand with the women who are coming forward. And in all sincerity, I wish Jian peace, and I hope he gets help. Far from being a man-hater, (or a feminazi, thank you, what a disgusting, offensive and unacceptable term), I write all this and I believe all this not because I hate men, but because I love them, and I love people, and because I think men are better than we, as a culture, have been led to believe. In a world contaminated with the lie of “boys will be boys”, I am rooting for men’s humanity.