the Ghomeshi disaster

For those who don’t know the Ghomeshi disaster was/is a sexual assault trial in which Jian Ghomeshi has been acquitted creating a great deal of controversy and discussion. Men’s rights advocates are outraged, this poor, innocent man was allegedly framed, targeted, and very nearly had his life ruined. Many feminists are outraged too, there is no justice in the world, we must change the entire system, the law has failed, etc, etc.

I just keep thinking, sheesh, the rich and famous have such melodrama in their lives! How come sex scandals never happen to the little people? Well, for one nobody cares, but for another, we just aren’t this bloody stupid. Also, on the bottem there just isn’t this same investment in trying to protect our own perceived virtues.

Here’s the first article I wish to address,  “Lucy, the actress and Air Force captain speaks out about the crushing aftermath of the Jian Ghomeshi trial.” The jist of the story is that Lucy waited a decade before reporting that Jian allegedly choked her, an incident that was followed up by her sending him flowers and a love note of a sexual nature. Needless to say, her post incident response to him after the alleged assault did not go over well at trial becasue it tends to scream sexual confusion and a woman that does not even understand the nature of herself. In this interview she says things like “I don’t know what my motivation was, I don’t know. I’m doing pop psychology on myself, I don’t remember, I’ll never know why I wrote that letter. This is all a wild guess, right?  But it’s me guessing on my own psyche...“

I don’t wish to be unkind here, but women really need to not be in a position of trying to “guess” their own psyche. Know thy self! Seriously, one simply cannot be a victim of their own psyche, their own psychology, their own motivations, their own sexuality. Ghomeshi is a real lunkhead, but several of these women are clearly pursuing him, ….while expressing confusion over the fact that they are pursuing him.

The second article says “If you want the legal system to protect you, you better be a good victim” and proceeds to lament how “The message this ruling sends is unambiguous: if you want the legal system to protect you, be a good victim. Take detailed notes of your assault, ideally while it’s happening. Don’t laugh, don’t joke, don’t try to normalize the situation. Be consistent: don’t have complicated feelings, don’t contact your assaulter…”

Well, yes. Seems rather logical to me, but before we condemn a man, lunkhead or not, we must first make sure we have an actual victim. Laughing, joking, sending intimate emails, flowers, not quite being clear on how you feel or what actually happened, normalizing the situation, these are all problematic issues that should make anyone hesitant about revoking a man’s freedom.

It would be a bit like loaning your car to someone and a decade later deciding it had been stolen, so you send flowers to the thief….before turning him in for grand theft auto. So was you car stolen or not? I’m not really sure, I can’t be expected to know my own psyche, I don’t remember, etc etc, but this guy should go to jail becasue I have no idea what I’ve gone and done with my car.

People out in the culture like to speak of the rabid right, of alleged conservative Christian sexual repression and the opppression of women, and while there are pockets of this to be found in various places, we never speak of the harmful and repressive messages coming from feminists and progressives. For all their alleged language around sexual freedom and female sexual empowerment, the truth, the reality is quite a bit differant and it presents some genuine paradoxes that can truly mess with your head. Sometimes I think we have created this kind of cultural stockholm syndrome, where women have become so confused trying to rationalize two conflicting ideas at the same time that we no longer have any idea what is going on within us.

There is the paradox about how sexuality is something you are born with, written in stone, but also conversely, so flexible, such a social construct that your very gender can now be chosen at will. There is the paradox about the strong, empowered woman whose only path to womanly success is to imitate  and copy the perceived sexual behavior of men, completly denying her own femininty in the process. There is the paradox about how all sex with men is rape, about how men are tools of the patriarchy, so pursuing one is literally like sleeping with the enemy. There is the paradox of how we now possess full moral agency enabling us to make “choices,” which then leads us to have sex with people we don’t even like, for reasons we can’t even fathom, causing us to question our very moral agency itself.

Entwinned in all these crazy making paradoxes is also relentless feminist shaming, causing one’s very psyche to bounce about like a pinball trying to discern what is expected, what is normal, what is even going on? For example, one living in the midst of progressive feminism does not cheerfully announce, look at me, I aggressively pursued a complete thug who treated me poorly and than went back for more! Isn’t that fascinating? I wonder what that might say about the things lurking in the dark recesses of my heart? Perhaps I should explore my own motivations here, become acquainted with my own psyche, evaluate my own sexuality? But see, women cannot do that under this progress  system, becasue women must be far, far, more virtuous then the allegedly virtuousity imposed upon us by the far right, by the conservative Christian side of things. Women must never desire the enemy, women will never lie, not even to their own selves,  women are always right, women always perceive things correctly, etc, etc, this huge burden of virtuousity that is enforced and policed with a venegeance on the feminist side, on the progressive side. Also, I h0pe you don’t actually eat animals or use styrofoam cups, becasue those things are bad, too.

And so, under the guise of feminism, of progressivism, genuine rape victims are once again tossed under the bus in this trial that has made a disasterous mockery of sexual assault, and the message has been sent once again that women are not to really possess any moral sexual agency of their own or to own it themselves, and that one must stay in their feminist place, contemplating their perpetual victimhood. Now that will make you crazy.

It’s somewhat interesting to me, virtue, pride, and perpetual shame, are heavy burdens to bear and I don’t see that dumped on women so much from the non feminist, non progressive, more Christian side of things. There is something to to be said about being able to quip rather delightfully, what virtue? I’m a sinner! Ah yes, washed clean in the Blood of the Lamb for sure, but no longer forced to try to carry a burden of perpetual virtue signaling, endlessly trying to prove one’s own goodness, a never ending need to hide from one’s own shame…..

… and to attempt to off load all that shame on an innocent man, a lunkhead in this case, but one no more confused and disoriented than anyone else in this ugly little story.

Even “virtue” can be built on a house of cards, wrapped in layers of deception, choking off the very life within us.