Open thread for discussion of Jian Ghomeshi acquittal

@ WWTH

It’s also such misandry and doing womaning wrong, because it had a feeeemale director. Katie Aselton, who also kicks ass as one of the lead characters, really made the movie look as cold and threatening as the world can be for women. I had no expectations going in, but was very pleasantly surprised, not only as a feminist but as a horror fan. It’s a good watch even if you don’t appreciate the social commentary. But I personally appreciated the substance.

@VP

Another thoughtful bit of discussion:

The Ghomeshi Verdict: Re-imagining How Future Sexual Assault Cases Are Heard
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/naomi-sayers/the-ghomeshi-verdict-reim_b_9544430.html?utm_hp_ref=crime&ir=Crime

@rick:

I stopped following this case cause I knew he’d be exonerated. I recently saw an article about the victims “colluding” with each other. Not sure if that’s what worked to get this verdict, but its indicative of how rape is framed depending on its social context. In the West, unless its the maniac-in-an-alleyway trope, rape does not exist. We are too “civilized” for that, and of course, civilized here is translated as white, European, straight and male. So women who accuse men of rape in this context are “falsely accusing” because rape does not exist in the civilized western world. Whereas, elsewhere, it is part of “their culture”. The Cologne attacks are a perfect example of this dichotomy. Those rapes were “real” because they were committed by non-white, “foreign” men, outsiders on the edge of civilization. Cause its always them, and never us… cue the rightist blathering… and on and on and on…

My thoughts exactly. And that’s why I quit following the trial too, for the most part. I’m not usually an “Oh god, I can’t look” person, but…when they started whacking the complainants, I literally could not bring myself to sit through it. It was getting too much like seeing a bear-baiting session in progress.

It was also too much of a reminder that when a man is supposedly tried for assaulting a woman, it’s really the woman who is on trial. HE wasn’t even called on to testify in his own so-called defence. It was just his lawyer, ripping one woman after another apart and bamboozling the judge (who has a history of letting men off even when there’s DNA evidence to convict!) Where is the justice in that? Won’t somebody think about the fucking MENZ?

Who is on the phone and has no time for customers who buy books to match the couch.

But how does he feel about thick leather-bound editions of Yeats?

(I do not have the fortitude to talk about the case or even look up all the gory details, sorry.)

Partially i think it’s because when we say “rape” or rapist” we are conditioned to act with revulsion because it’s a concrete statement, but the act is sometimes so subtle and often seems to come out of nowhere from a person we like and trust that survivors don’t feel right calling it what it really is (Not to mention how much we are conditioned to forgive people who hurt us). And that means people simply refuse to believe that a person who was hurt in that way wouldn’t immediately feel it and run away from the person who did it…

And sometimes, it’s so subtle that there’s not even any kind of “hurt” involved. Whenever I was assaulted, it was always by guys I liked as a friend. And it never left so much as a mark on me, physically anyway.

Once, it was a guy who used to give me rides home from the local writers’ group meeting — an older guy, married. After he’d sprung his unwanted sexual intentions on me, I avoided him and caught rides home with someone more trustworthy. What clinches it as assault in my mind, and not a mere “misunderstanding” between a naïve young thing (I was 20 and virginal) and the poor old well-intentioned coot she’d inadvertently “led on”, was the fact that he waited until I was buckled into a moving car before he made his move. I couldn’t escape. He had me right where he wanted me. I was SO disgusted, and not just with him. I blamed myself for never having seen it coming.

And once, there was a friend I went out with one night, and made out with on the floor beforehand. Good-looking guy. Kind of fancied him, until. I never saw him again after that; it was him doing the avoiding, not me, which cements in my mind the understanding that he knew what he was doing, and he knew it was wrong. That was the part that I now recognize as his guilt admitting itself. That he knew he’d raped me. That maybe he’d done it to others before me, too, because he seemed just a bit too smooth, too practiced, to have just been totally spontaneous about wanting a BJ and not bothering to ask first.

It took me years to even just call these experiences “assault” or “sexual assault”, because there’d been no overt violence involved, and I wasn’t hurt or traumatized in any way. I didn’t get PTSD or blackouts, didn’t engage in any unusual behavior at all. I was still entirely myself, before, during and after. I was more stunned than anything else, that they would just do that. The only thing that was hurt was my trust in them, and my understanding that yes, I too am now a date-rape (and sexual-assault) statistic — one of the vast unknown number of ones that never press charges, because everybody blames us, and nobody wants to count us; we’re a waste of police time and resources, as we’re often given to know. We don’t fit the “true victim profile”, because we’re not cowering in corners wetting ourselves. I don’t even like to see myself as one, because “victim” is practically a cussword in these oh-so-libertarian times. And because like so many others, I bought into the idea that there are “right” and “wrong” ways of being a victim. And because the word carries such connotations of abuse and bruises, and I have none to speak of, because the assault was less an abuse of my body than it was of my trust. But there it is.

And even after more than 20 years, I’m still having trouble saying it of myself. Because to say it is to admit that this rape-culture thing really IS a thing, and it’s more endemic than even I, a long-time feminist, could ever have thought. And that fucking scares me, even more than the guys who assaulted me did.

Matchstick, Refinery29 also has a decent overview of the events of the case.
http://www.refinery29.com/2016/02/102715/jian-ghomeshi-sex-assault-trial

Cases like this are why I have a note saved in the Notepad function of my phone reminding myself that if I get raped, which means any form of unwanted genital contact, I should call the police and preserve the evidence until I can get a rape kit and a police interview, which would (hopefully) lay ground for me to make a criminal accusation against the rapist.
I don’t intend to suggest that any other reaction is wrong-everyone handles traumatic events differently and I can understand why other people act differently in the wake of the same situation. It’s just the only reaction I can imagine where I leave the situation with the sense that I did everything I could to fight back, self-advocate, and make the rapist pay for what they (but statistically more likely, he) did. Personally, I’d rather fight with every possible means available to me, even if nobody else believes me and seemingly the whole world’s against me, than hold back due to the severe societal pressure and end up wishing I’d done more.
It’s late and my emotions are running high-if you think I’ve said any of this in a problematic way, please tell me and I’ll address your concerns tomorrow or later in the week, when I’m thinking more clearly.

I’ll bite. Credentials, please, Vajassa.

VF-FA you sound awfully like a fairytale creature that lives under a bridge to me.

There was of course plenty of evidence – and the court recognised that the acts of violence had taken place just as described.

Yeah, that was waaaaaay too obvious.

Just for my curiosity, are there any bona fide feminist groups who legit refer to each other/other women as “sisters” in a non-ironic way?

My wife and I were asked about ten years ago (when we were both very young and not yet married) if we were “sisters”. The person asking looked left-wing/hippie/(possibly lesbian) enough to me that I responded “No, we’re partners”‘ to which she replied with a laugh “That’s what I meant, dearies! Sapphic sisters!”

That’s the only time “sister” has ever been used to me as meaning “member of a group” unironically.

I think.

:p