Today Jian Ghomeshi dropped his bogus $55 million law suit against the CBC. Suit dropped with cost. Meaning that Ghomeshi has dropped the suit, and is now required to pay the CBC’s legal fees, totaling $18,000.
How fitting that this suit has been dropped on the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women.
Now to wait for Ghomeshi’s day in court, as at least 3 women have filed complaints with the police.
Today I was reading an article posted on the CBC about a vulgar joke hurled at a Montreal reporter. Of course, the usual sorts of comments followed, like, “printing this only takes away from real victims”, “can’t you take a joke”, and “stop giving them attention, and they’ll go away”.
The fact that so many people seem to think that street harassment is just a joke, and that those subjected to it aren’t real victims outlines exactly how normalized this kind of behaviour is. As a culture, we feel as though we can derail and silence people, mostly women, who have been groped, or harassed in public spaces. I find it disturbing how many people are willing to wave off discussions of street harassment and assault in the same week that a young woman was sexually assaulted and left for dead in Winnipeg, and another woman was sexually assaulted a short time later.
Let me spell it out for you: street harassment isn’t flattering, It isn’t a joke, and it isn’t something we can ignore until it goes away. It’s a symptom of a much larger problem, and talking about it in our communities is just one of the steps we need to take in order to make those same communities safer for half the population. Street harassment is about power, entitlement, and dehumanization. If you don’t believe me, then let me ask you this: If street harassment is just about flattery, then why do those who engage in it become abusive when a victim tells them to stop? Why are victims followed, and stalked? If it’s just about complements, then why are the comments made sexually explicit?
If you can listen to the stories, and see the stats on street harassment, then how could you possibly say that there are no “real victims”? Our culture needs to collectively get our heads out of our asses.
Trigger Warning: Discussion of sexualized violence, catcalling, and rape.
I’m not going to split hairs, here. We live in a culture that not only condones sexual aggression in men, it encourages, and excuses it. This past week, we have seen the release of a video produced by Hollaback!, a non-profit dedicated to ending street harrassment , as well as the termination of CBC’s Jian Ghomeshi, following allegations of sexual abuse. Today I’d like to discuss both the reactions to the video, and to Ghomeshi’s termination, and how they’re related.
We’ll start with the video. Less than 24 hours after it was posted, actor Shoshana B Roberts (featured in the video) received online rape threats.
This is a perfect example of how our culture does it’s best to try and silence women who speak up about gendered violence, or attempts to minimize, and dismiss the issue being discussed. The comments on the video ranged from the usual victim blaming/shaming:
To outright threats and violence:
And finally, to the overwhelming majority of posters with claims like:
Well the “big deal” is that “Nearly 1 in 2 women (44.6%) and 1 in 5 men (22.2%) experienced sexual violence victimization other than rape at some point in their lives“, and the vast majority of this sexual violence is perpetrated at the hands of men. Street harassment is not about innocent compliments, it’s about entitlement, and intimidation. It’s about power. It’s about making sure that women know their place in society. If you doubt these claims, go ahead and ask yourself if the men who harassed Roberts in this video would have said anything to her had she been a man, or even just accompanied by one. If you’re being honest with yourself at all, you know that the silence would have been deafening.
Both women and men alike were more than willing to excuse these men, because gender roles are still strictly enforced, and we’re taught from birth to believe that “boys will be boys” and that male sexual aggression is to be expected. We’re also conditioned to see women as the gatekeepers of sex, and this is what people use as a justification, at least in part, for victim shaming and blaming. We exonerate the shitty behaviour of men by placing all of the culpability on women, and when this power structure is criticized by women, or when women choose to speak about their assault or harassment, the backlash is overwhelming.
Roberts and Hollaback! were accused of editing the video in such a way as to present the harassment as worse than it was, and in some cases, of hiring actors in order to stage the video outright in a bid for donations. Of course, we know that most women have experienced Street Harassment, and that it significantly impacted their perceived safety in public, so why is it the case that there is still such a massive denial that this is a problem? To put it simply, by challenging the current, and incorrect, narrative on sexual violence and street harassment, what you’re actually doing is challenging power structures that have been in place for literally thousands of years. You’re asking men to examine their male privilege, and then give it up in order for women to achieve equality. Is it any wonder why somebody might be resistant to such a thing?
This is not to say that many women aren’t resistant to it as well, there were plenty of women who were very vocal about their belief that what was recorded on the video was not harassment. This is because women are taught that it is more beneficial for them to stay in line with the current power structure than it is for them to question it. Case in point: the rape threats received by Roberts almost immediately after the video was posted.
We live in a culture where most women will experience street harassment, and 1 in 5 women will be the victims of sexual assault, so it’s hardly difficult to grasp why women might want to avoid drawing further attention to themselves from an online community that has no qualms about releasing personal information, or threatening mass shootings. It’s also pertinent to point out that these power structures are so normalized, that they seem invisible to anyone that benefits from them in any way (women can also have the privilege of being Cis-Gender, Heterosexual, White, Middle or Upper Class, Able-bodied, Thin, etc.), and those that benefit from intersecting oppression don’t exactly have a great personal motive to dismantle that oppression. Women are also devalued, sexualized, abused, and objectified every single day, and that can make it really hard to see the forest for the trees.
Which brings me to how this ties in to Gian Ghomeshi’s termination from the CBC radio program, “Q”. After his termination, Ghomeshi published a Facebook Status stating that his termination had been the result of a “jilted ex” spearheading a smear campaign against him after he ended their relationship. Over the next few days, reports by women of sexual abuse at the hands of Ghomeshi surfaced, and social media exploded.
As with the video, there were the usual droves of people more than willing to call the women liars, and accuse them of being in it for the potential financial gain, which is interesting since Ghomeshi was literally the only person actually demanding money. There was a massive resistance to admit that maybe society has a problem with women when there are plenty of people who are more open to the idea that 9 women are lying, than that 1 man is.
As with street harassment, sexual abuse is not actually about sex. It’s about power, control, entitlement, and intimidation. It’s about wanting to hurt someone because you know you have the power to get away with it. It wasn’t healthy sexuality, or a normal, healthy BDSM relationship, because there was no consent given by any of these women.
The same kind of gendered power structures are at play when it comes to the reactions to both the video and Ghomeshi’s termination. For the exact same reasons, people were able to feel confident in calling women liars, or otherwise characterizing them as untrustworthy in comparison to their male harassers, and abusers. For the exact same reasons, Ghomeshi felt as though he could avoid any controversy by sweeping the allegations under the rug, because he believed that all he had to do was put the weight of his fame and power behind an already existing prejudice towards women. For the exact same reasons, people shrugged at the sexual harassment displayed by the men in the video, and the sexual abuse admitted by Ghomeshi. The willingness to do all of this is rooted firmly in our culture’s normalization of male sexual aggression, and in our belief in women’s culpability for that aggression.
We need to acknowledge how gender roles and expectations harm both men and women. We need to act in solidarity with one another, and dismantle these power structures. We need to believe victims when they tell us about their assault, and harassment, and we need to stop making excuses for perpetrators. If we fail to do these things, the cycle of violence will continue, and then, nobody wins.
SHES TOO LOUD 