It Bothers Me.

This is going to be a challenge to write, on several levels.

One, I find the subject matter repulsive in the extreme. As I hope I made clear in my last post, BDSM is so far out of my comfort zone that I actually recoil whenever it comes up. I can intellectually grasp the appeal of bondage, sort of, but anything involving pain or humiliation mystifies and horrifies me. In any other context, deliberately causing pain to another human being is inhuman and monstrous, and deliberately courting it is proof of extremely low self-esteem at the very least. But in the most intimate of contexts, it's "just another way to love".  I'm not sure I can express just how much this bothers me.

Two, and related, I have no idea what I'm talking about. There must be a lure to BDSM, and a powerful one: otherwise  Fifty Shades of Grey wouldn't be the top-selling book written for adults in all of history.  (Gag...literally.) What that appeal is, I can't even fathom, and I freely admit I don't want to fathom...but I simply have to accept that for every man who fantasizes about  hurting a woman, there seems to be a woman out there fantasizing about being hurt.

Three, it's controversial, and therefore no matter what I say, I'm going to unwittingly offend someone. It seems I can barely open my mouth or flex my fingers without pissing somebody off. I know I'm not supposed to care about that...but I do. Since the world has lost its sense of nuance at some point when my back was turned, and it took mine with it, writing about topics like this is like walking through a minefield on stilts while juggling swords and flamethrowers. I just did it up there myself: I'm sure women don't want to be hurt, exactly...nuance, nuance...pain in the service of sex seems to exist in some alternate universe where "hurt" ceases to have meaning.

Until it doesn't: that's when charges and courts ensue.

__________

Jian Ghomeshi. Guilty or not guilty?

We won't know until March 24...which hasn't stopped people from declaring either way.

I've watched this trial with a kind of creeping horror, not just because of the subject matter, but because the legal process has been so...cringeworthy in this case.  Three women, each utterly shredded by Ghomeshi's lawyer, in a viciously public way that had to be at least as traumatizing as any alleged assault. Marie Heinein, "the most sought-after trial lawyer in the city" according to Toronto Life, once had this to say about her profession:

"As criminal lawyers we represent people who have committed heinous acts. Acts of violence. Acts of depravity. Acts of cruelty. Or as Jian Ghomeshi likes to call it, foreplay."

--which just goes to show that lawyers believe what they're paid to believe.

Heinein has, as I said, completely destroyed both the reliability and the credibility of each of the three complainants--which doesn't mean Ghomeshi is innocent, but it sure does raise reasonable doubt in the eyes of many legal professionals.  And that makes me ill. Yes, you're supposed to judge these cases strictly on the evidence that's presented, but...

I mean, come on, it's a matter of public record that he cracked a woman's rib. He actually admitted as much by SHOWING A VIDEO OF THE INJURY to his bosses at the CBC, which led to his termination. There have been TWENTY THREE women who have come forward with allegations of assault. Twenty of them are irrelevant as far as this trial is concerned: again, strictly legally speaking, this is understandable, but  emotionally it makes me want to scream. Or weep.

(I was accused of making that cracked rib up. I didn't. People have crappy memories, it seems.)

A woman named Karen Logan (or what I can't help but think might have been a man using her account) posted this in response to my skepticism about Ghomeshi's innocence:

"Injuries are common and death is not unheard of in BDSM sex. That doesnt make him a criminal. I leave that up to the judge to decide. Also....out of all the women accusers...these ones were the best the prosecution could come up with. It was unfortunate they didnt tell the police and crown everything. It would have never made it to court. Not my opinion but expert opinion"

The fact each woman had repeated contact with Ghomeshi shortly after the alleged assaults is not in and of itself damning to their cases. Case law recognizes that this is irrelevant. The fact none of them chose to mention that contact to investigators, each claiming amnesia about it until it came up in court (how convenient)...that's quite likely fatal.

All the same: I can understand why you wouldn't choose to publicize the fact you wrote a letter extolling the virtues of the hands that just choked you, or saying this:

"You kicked my ass last night and that makes me want to fuck your brains out. Tonight.”

Flowers. Loving emails. All three women (and probably many more) exhibited this behaviour, to varying degrees, after saying they were assaulted. In DeCoutere's case, above,  the "love-bombing" went on for months.

 It looks bad. It looks very bad. I've been told by a woman that it isn't bad, it's common for victims of abuse to act this way. I can see it in the case of wives married to monsters: you're manipulated, over years, into believing you deserve nothing but abuse, in a sick way actually craving it: but these relationships weren't marriages. They barely qualified as dalliances.

Nevertheless, it happens. Apparently quite often.

Were his victims coerced into acting this way? Jesse Brown thinks so. An anonymous source provides him with a chilling account of Ghomeshi's M.O. before, during, and after dates, a scheme geared around manufacturing the illusion of consent. (Lost in this is that you cannot consent to physical injury in Canadian law).

None of this came up in court. If any of it is true, that fact puzzles me mightily. One thing the Crown got right in this case: it's about Ghomeshi, not the women he allegedly assaulted. But Heinein made the trial ALL about those women. I would fully expect at least one of them to blurt out "he made me do this". None of them did. What does that mean? That it's not legally true. Which may have little or nothing to do with its factual truthfulness.

Damnit, this is hard.

Let's for just a moment discard our preconceptions and assume Ghomeshi is exactly, and only, what he says he is: a man who likes to engage in rough sex with willing women.  Even if that's the case, he was doing it all wrong. Even I, as totally ignorant as I am, know there's an intricate dance of consent involved...and not consent by duress, either. A safe word needs to be established, or a safe gesture if a gag of any kind is involved. Aftercare is critical. There is no one so contrite as a top who has just upset a bottom in a dominance/submission scene: the sub actually has all the power. (That alone took me years to fully grasp.) Ghomeshi, according to those who knew him, faked some of this and ignored the rest. Add in decades of anecdotes about creepy-stalkery behaviour (none of which is admissible in court), and it's hard to understand why he could very well walk away from all this. If that happens, he might even sue. Imagine that.

If nothing else, I can certainly understand now why victims of sexual assault do not report. It's the one crime in which the victim is put on trial.

"If you're raped, don't charge the bastard with rape. Charge him with indecent exposure. It is much easier to get a conviction for that charge than for rape. The defence is not allowed to ask anything about your sexual history or how you were dressed at the time. Forensic evidence is unnecessary. The total public embarrassment to you is cut more than in half. What's the guy going to do, leap up in court and say, 'It's a filthy lie, Your Honour, I raped that bitch'? In many states, a man convicted of indecent exposure will actually draw more prison time than a rapist. And weenie-waggers do harder time than anybody but a short-eyes -- in fact, the scheme sort of incorporates the Law of Talion. An eye for an eye..." 
--Spider Robinson, "Lady Slings The Booze"

But there's yet another side to this. Ought we simply to, as the hashtag had it, #BelieveHer, no matter what she says about what happened? That would be at least as much a travesty of justice as a guilty man getting off scot-free. It makes consent impossible to obtain for certain. In the absence of physical evidence, how do I prove I never raped someone? I can't prove a negative. A mere allegation of rape or any other kind of sexual assault would ruin my life--which is why I don't hug people near as often as I'd like to. A hug from me is a very strong declaration of trust in you.

I want to be sensitive to victims of assault and rape, at the same time cognizant that sometimes women come up with false allegations. Determining the truth of the matter is much more difficult than it seems. In this case, I've made my mind up: I've heard too many stories about the disconnect between Ghomeshi's charming, liberal, feminism-espousing aura on the radio and his actual behaviour with women. But none of those stories are under consideration here.

It bothers me. It bothers me a LOT.