I'm back again.
First of all the stone:
We had some nasty stuff happening in CBC Canada - our national partially tax funded broadcaster - when a very popular male host of one internationally popular programme "Q" was outed as a sexual predator par excellence. It turns out he'd been abusing women for nearly thirty years. Horribly. Hitting interns on the head, etc. etc., beating girlfriends around and filming the acts. It has opened up a can of worms for women very rarely seen in this quiet, polite little land of ours. I won't link to all of it here BUT if you Google "Jian Ghomeshi" you will get a shyteload of disgusting and upsetting material. Trigger Warning.
Then the diamond:
It has opened up a dialogue about the rape culture and feminism the likes of which I've never seen before. Women coming forward, like myself, to discuss their own sexual assaults, hidden because of the hopelessness of dragging the cases through court and rarely succeeding and meanwhile wrecking one's own life in the process. Some of my blog friends have also come forward. Rape and sexual assaults are breathtaking in their scope and seeing the final light of day on so much of it is validating and heartening and so very wonderful. To breathe the air of truth again is so very powerful. As is the solidarity. I truly believe I don't have one single close female friend who hasn't been sexually assaulted or molested or any one of the filthy perversions of it and just kept quiet. Often as a child. Like I was. Or as an adult again I kept quiet. We've been trained to do this, keep quiet, be nice, don't say dirty things. He didn't mean it. Or better yet - he'll make life hell for you. I wasn't believed or heard and told to shut up. No more.
This whole horrible secret and depraved sexual violence of the CBC's cash cow has been split wide open. Much like Jimmy Savile and the BBC.
We just didn't have to wait till JG was dead before it was out there for all to see.
Oh my, so glad you are back online. Missed you and think you for responding to my sad post
ReplyDeleteand I am smiling now. Maybe I should not write when so down
but for some reason it helps..
The only way male sexual violence will be stopped is for women to report it and make a huge fuss every time it happens. But as you say, women are reluctant to report it for any number of very good reasons, especially the fear of retaliation or punishment. So men assume they can get away with it and it just goes on and on.
ReplyDeleteI think in the interests of justice you might wait until someone has been convicted of a crime before calling down every type of condemnation. So far he hasn't even been charged yet alone convicted and while I have my own feelings about the case I'm keeping them to myself until he has had his day in court. The uproar smacks all too strongly of the witch trials of days gone by.
ReplyDeleteThe last comment was from paulo1 but the only way I could get it accepted was to choose the anonymous choice.
ReplyDeleteNice to see you back WWW.
ReplyDeleteIn my lifetime convicted rapists in Canada were flogged as part of their incarceration. Too bad the and the do gooders got their way and the floggings were banned as inhumane.
A retired prison guard I knew told me that they never saw the guy they flogged back inside for another treatment. Deterrence maybe?
You are so right about the prevalence of sexual assault and molestation. I went on a weekend workshop some years ago, on an unrelated topic, and not one woman there had escaped the experience....from childhood.
ReplyDeleteThis was one of the first opportunities I'd had for a free and frank discussion about sexual abuse: it was liberating and actually informed my attitudes in future work.
It's especially difficult when it happens when you are a child. So many times children are not believed, or they suffer a second trauma (like being removed from their family) as a result of telling or are told not to make a fuss (as in my case). We need a wholesale change in the way we handle sexual abuse/assault.
ReplyDeleteThat said, I am 100% opposed to flogging rapists. I'd never heard that, but that's is a horrific and inhumane repsone to any crime. I don't believe becoming brutes ourselves is EVER the answer.
"We need a wholesale change in the way we handle sexual abuse/assault"
ReplyDeleteWhat might that'wholesale change' be other than a platitude hmmmm?
Although I always enjoyed his interviews, I thought there was something creepy about jg, something akin to a car salesman with too much hair oil. He was just too smooth and full of himself.
ReplyDeletejg has run off to the States for now, I hear. I hope there will be a prosecution and conviction. I hope there is some sort of financial penalty, perhaps money paid to women's shelters.
I wonder whether he thought he would never be caught. What goes on in the mind of such a man? Did he really think he was invincible? Toronto is not that big after all, and the arts scene is correspondingly small compared with places such as NYC.
I do not believe in revenge. When it happens, who benefits? I just hope that jg is never in a position in the future in which he has any power.
I was not mistreated as a child, but I was tampered with quite a bit when I got a kidney infection and needed a lot of treatments "down there." Later on I came close to getting raped and escaped by acting crazy.
ReplyDeleteMy last job before I retired was with incarcerated sex offenders. The word to describe their attitudes is that they think they have"impunity." To their way of thinking it's "cultural," how it's always been and so on. That all men are that way or would be that way if they could get away with it, etc. Unless you can convince them they have done something wrong, immoral, hurtful, they will re-offend. If it's a compulsion, unless you can break their compulsions they will re-offend. The problem is you can't tell whether they are truly remorseful or "cured" or are faking it. They have plenty of enablers.
I believe in sex offender programs, though, because (yes) they work and really bring down the recidivism rate! The philosophy of the good programs is that if an offender gets out and is doing well financially and so on but re-offends, he's a loser. If he is only doing so-so but managing his life and not re-offending, he's a winner.
Lots to say here. But we must understand that these (mostly) men are as much a part of society as the rest of us are, and we have to deal with them.
Miss you
ReplyDeletehope you are fine...
What goes unreported or underreported in my back yard will be at least ten times more than the statistics that any other country can generate. The insensitivity of the establishment and even parents trying to hide because of the shame is nightmarish here. Luckily it is all beginning to change for the better with many movements initiated by NGOs and we are beginning to see some very big wigs being outed here too.
ReplyDeleteGFB: "A retired prison guard I knew told me that they never saw the guy they flogged back inside for another treatment." Maybe they just get more cunning and make sure they don't get caught again?
ReplyDeletethanks for the many comments here, all very provocative and sometimes painful.
ReplyDeleteAs a victim myself I've moved beyond the rage and the "lashing out" mentality. Brutal punishments are barbaric.
A model that has some degree of success is restorative.
Rape is power driven and violent and impersonal.
We need to start with the multi billion dollar porn industry that drives young men's/boys sexual proclivities and views women as receptacles enjoying constant humiliation and pain.
XO
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