I had this thought, too. There was a quote in one of those articles where he said he and his girlfriend used to joke that they were a lighter version of the "50 Shades of Grey," characters. That put up a red flag with me, if only because it speaks to a lack of knowledge/training with BDSM. 50SoG was nothing but one long exercise in consent violation and how NOT to do it...it worked out for the antagonist because the protagonist wound up liking it. In reality, that novel is a deplorable example to base any kind of kink play on.
I'm thinking the one woman's complaint to her union probably had a part to play in his dismissal. I'm guessing from CBC's point of view, this formal complaint makes a paper trail, that would make it look really bad if something did come of the other allegations. I could see a lot of people throwing the word 'coverup' around in that situation. But, that was a lot of 'if', 'guess' and 'I think'. It's not up to us to say whether it was or was not a consent violation, we were not there, but when I read this article I kept thinking "RED FLAG!!" For a large portion of us who are active members of the kink community, anything short of explicitly stating what you intend to do prior to sexy times starting and having a very open and frank discussion where remaining silent is not an option is largely considered a consent violation. A huge amount of kinksters negotiate their plans in broad strokes and also nth degree of detail to try and avoid just this. It's by no means perfect, but it's better than saying 'i'm going to get aggressive' before you slap a chick. While it's probably not admissible in any form of court, if he were smart he'd at the very least have a text or an email or something showing he talked to these girls about it, and they agreed, in detail. They could always say they safe worded or changed their minds after that message so it's not failsafe, but It's better than nothing, since there's very little CYA in kink.
My problem with Ghomeshi's case is that it's several women making the same accusations. If it was only one I would lean more towards the ambiguity of miscommunication, or even that it was possible she was having a revisionist view on whether she was a willing participant. Ghomeshi's defense just doesn't add up. His ex-girlfriend who has allegedly been stalking him and other women he's been involved with to get revenge - how is she going to convince these other women to give a recollection of abuse to the Star if no wrong doing occurred? Then he also claims CBC agreed that proof of consent in each case was provided, that Ghomeshi wasn't guilty of any wrongdoing and decided to fire him anyway. I'm not saying he should be condemned just yet, but his story has some major holes in it. Assuming it's ok to strangle someone because you said you were into aggressive sex makes him either look totally devoid of empathy or that he didn't want to hear no as an answer and was intentionally misleading. Even with consent given I have to question his decision making because going this far the first time you have sex with someone is asking for trouble, and as a celebrity no less he should be smarter than that. The comments sections in these articles invariably breaks down into the same conversation every time. Girl 1: This is ridiculous, you can't cry rape if you give consent and then blame the guy for not picking up on some ambiguous hesitancy. Girl 2: No shit. Guy 1: NO, NO IT'S TOTALLY RAPE. A REAL MAN KNOWS HOW TO LISTEN. I RESPECT WOMEN. Girl 1: But don't you think women should have some responsibility for their actions? Guy 1: NO WAY. I can already tell you are a self hating conservative Christian whore. I'm an intellectual. Girl 3: Guys have no idea how much pressure girls are under to perform sex! OMG, you have no idea what it's like to be a woman. Guy 2: We need to educate people! We have to do something about this! Guy 3: B-b-but what if the girl is like ok but she's not like OK. What do I do? Should I just keep asking until she's like OK OK OK OK? Can someone help me with this? Girl 3: Legally, it's rape if she's had two beers. Guy 1: YOU NEED TO RESPECT WOMEN. Girl 4: Consent can NEVER be implied. Just because she says yes it doesn't mean she wants to, she's under a LOT of pressure. I'm sorry, but even with this being such a delicate topic I have to laugh sometimes. I'm thinking society agrees on what level of consent is acceptable on the 7th of never. I would also say that in 95% of situations it is not nearly as difficult as these articles suggest.
I don't know if this guy's case has legs against his employer but this is just another outrage media related firing. CBC might have had more information than his Facebook post suggest and took action which is a reasonable reaction or more likely they just wanted to break all ties to cover their asses before a media shit storm , no matter what the circumstances, to head off a Duck Dynasty/Paula Deen/Ray Rice like fiasco. This is a huge media company and in today's climate it's probably safer for them to can his ass now and maybe lose a lawsuit to him down the line than it would be to face endless media scrutiny if they even hinted at blinking when it came to firing him. It is interesting he went whole hog explaining his predilections towards the rough sex community. It seems he or his PR people thought connecting it to a sexual minority might be beneficial in today's climate towards sexual preferences.
Honestly? Ghomeshi's PR people are playing to the crowd here. Between the 50-shades references (designed to get the lonely housewife's support), the "how could you do this to me, my dad just died" (a fair statement, but hardly relevant to this situation. And this situation got its legs long before his father passed away) and the "I've always tried to be a good soldier" (wow, way to pull the heartstrings of a country mourning the loss of a real soldier who was just murdered)... it's just patronizing and pandering. Ghomeshi has the court of public opinion on his side and he fucking knows it. The girls that won't come forward against him, I don't blame them one bit. One girl wrote an article about a bad date with a "radio celebrity/former member of a band" that was widely known to be about Ghomeshi a few years ago, and she was absolutely ripped apart by the online trolls. Here's the problem with taking on someone who has an entire country of support behind them, whether warranted or not. Ghomeshi is a "golden boy". Even my damn grandmother says "he's just misunderstood". Well, shit.
I think the obvious parallel to this story isn't the teacher banging the student, but the NFL suspending/not suspending players accused of domestic violence, or the NBA not firing a racist owner. Society needs to answer the question: do employees have privacy from their employers, or do they not? Because you can't run around asking companies to be a parallel system of justice when the courts or police don't intervene but then turn around and say that people's sex lives need to be private and kept out of the workplace.
Even money says this guy is a huge prick with a gigantic ego and CBC has been quietly looking for a way to dump him, regardless of ratings, because sometimes it's easier to take the financial hit than deal with the person (See Ross Perot and GM). All of sudden their prayers were answered in the form of some weird sex scandal and they jumped on it. Just a theory, mind you, but file it away in the back of your mind that the underlying cause of this may have nothing whatsoever to do with sex.
The information on this story tells us one thing. Kink is scandalous all by itself. The information given by the accuser is tainted by its anonymity, it's presence in a tabloid journalism context and not in a legal context, and the light of the wealth and celebrity of the accused. The information given by the accused is tainted by his media presence and PR management and the fact that he had the wealth and industry insight to spin this story so aggressively. Taking any of what's available to casual readers disconnected from the situation and jumping to any conclusion is just naive at this point. It seems like a huge stretch that he was fired from such a big and visible role over just this, but Jesus fuck people are leaping to a lot of conclusions about everyone involved based on very limited, and incredibly tainted source data. Moxy fruvous - king of Spain has been on my playlist for years. It's in the back of my head every time I read anything about this story, which makes the whole thing seem fuckin surreal. I can't help but want the ex to be named Lisa, so she can be his unspeakable ex wife queen Lisa.
This is fair, but if I'm just going to guess wildly based on my experience: "Radio station fires prominent host because of his private sexual kinks" is way less likely than "Asshole uses 'don't kinkshame me!' as a cloak for his sexual assault." I've never seen one of those happen. And I see the other one happen all the freaking time. It's one of the reasons I've often felt uncomfortable around dudes who are big into the kink community.
This isn't my scene, so I'm curious about the above. In my admittedly garden variety sex life, stopping the flow to have an extended discussion about what will occur next, or having that discussion before things even get started, would be a hell of a libido killer. During all my first times, it was some variation of a breathy "Do you wanna?" Or " "do me!" rather than any kind of conversation. Is that discussion part of the whole process, sort of like fore-foreplay? Is it a turn on talking about what you're going to do?
Even if you've only had garden variety sex, you've never hard a partner with particular likes or dislikes?
It might help to think of sex and kink as two different things. The people I know who really enjoy kink (one of my best friends is a domme and at any given time she has two or three subs she goes with) don't really do it for the sex. Sure, it can be quite sexual and it can involve actually having sex, but what seems to be the driver is getting into someone else's head and seeing what makes them tick. My friend says that the reason she does it is because she loves to figure out people's proclivities and the why of the situation...as in, "Why do you like having this done to you? What emotions are we triggering right now?" Which means that what is actually being done, from her perspective, is kind of irrelevant because it isn't the point. Given ^ that aspect, it puts it in a different light. The whole pre- and post-scene discussion become as much a part of the process as the scene itself. Sex is something entirely different, in my opinion. Like you said, it can be as straightforward as tension building then a "Let's do this!" moment and the whole driver isn't necessarily to find out what's going on in your partner's mind at all...it could be just about getting off. I don't know if that helps, but it's how I understand kink. Kink != Sex
Of course, but for me, finding those likes or dislikes has never involved a lengthy discussion. Usually it involves starting in on something and reading non-verbal cues, or active verbal direction - "Yes!", "Harder!", "Get your fucking tongue out of my nose!". Sometimes it involves asking permission during sex - "will you sit on my face?", or simply a 'Is this ok?" as I'm starting a new approach/act. Very occasionally has it involved talking about something outside of the act, and then it's short and sweet - "the next time i see you I'm going to bend you over the sofa" or "can you buy me a new vibrator this so we can play with it?". No involved conversation takes place where we outline what we may or may not do, provide consent and establish parameters. Dccoo1 answered my question, at least from his point of view.
When you have a limited menu of options, it's easy to scroll through them with a "yup" or "nah chill." When you expand both the number of options available and the intensity/danger of them, there's just no way to do it without negotiation beforehand. You're not gonna do shibari on a whim. Or fireplay. Or hook somebody to the ceiling (hi scootah) without talking to them first, during and after. In my opinion, that's the price you pay for the highs of kink. Also, people's kinks are so specific. So specific it can be annoying sometimes. They love being called a dirty slut, but whore is off-limits. You can spank them until the cows come home, but "cunt" is a no-go. Slap my face until I cry, but don't tickle me ever ever ever. It might seem wild and crazy, but (like poly, actually) in practice it's way more organized and boring than ppl assume. In my experience.
In my experience, those conversations tend to happen way before you're ever about to have sex. Part of the fun is figuring out what everyone's into and, besides, if it's going to involve...accessories... you're going to need to be prepared. Also, I've found that kinky people love talking about kink anyway. I have plenty of friends who, if I ever happened to bang them, I would already pretty much know what they're into and what their limits are. If you're just trying things on a whim or forging ahead without knowing for sure beforehand, it gets real tricky and I don't think people who care very much about their partners would mess with that too much.
Audrey, you're more on the free/open side of the sexual spectrum. With girls I've hooked up with, rarely have we talked about what we're into before getting into it. It's been more in line with what Misanthropic talked about. A lot of my friends have co-signed this. Most girls I've heard talk about what they're really into that has been outside of the "I like when he pulls my hair", have been unattractive or wifed up already. All of my pre-sex flirting and etc has been breathy questions into her ear and neck while getting into it. As everything up to that point has just been dancing around sex. I can't ask right out either without being labeled a creep or a weirdo. Hence as I kinda referenced earlier, no idea why this guy went in on first, second, or third dates with all of his kink. That shit needs to get ramped up. After the first time, its much easier to ask questions and see what she's into. This consent thing is scary as hell and I got scared early as young black dude hooking up with girls. The last 4-5 chicks I had sex with, when they said they wanted to, I laid on my back with my hands behind my head and said "Go for it." Once they hopped, then I knew they were down for the basic stuff on the first night. The next time or the before the third time, I'd start asking questions and find out the good stuff. My gf now likes some basic rough stuff, choking, hairpulling, spanking, but she didn't ask for it on the first or second hook-up. That came out like the 5th or 6th time.
Anyone else have that nails on the chalk board feeling when the words "kink" and "play" used in these conversations? Particularly "play." Very childish word for the acts going on. Little Jimmie goes and plays with the kids down at the creak. You are hog tying someone, suspending them from supports you've connected to your ceiling studs, and your using a sawzall equipped with a dildo. That's not playing around, find a more mature word before I lose it. Kicking a man in the balls until he vomits blood is not "play." FUCK! Hey look! Another super relevant efukt video on the topic at hand!
Yeah, I was actually indirectly tacking on to your post earlier where you talk about that stuff as you go down the line instead of breaking it out undiscussed the first time you have sex. (By "way before you're ever about to have sex" I meant, like, when you're just having regular conversations and not already making out/half-naked/hormones raging and minutes away from actually banging.) Those kinds of conversations are just much more likely to happen, and are much more necessary to have happen, when you're into something outside of the norm.
Not sure if you guys are still following this, and I can't link from my phone, but it's up to 8 women accusing him now. And the PR firm dropped him. I feel pretty comfortable restating my stance that it's not about kink-shaming.