I know, you were totally thinking I hope Kampf responds to my post. Sorry, but here I am. First off, I agree with you. I'm not quite as convinced, but yeah, I still think he's guilty as well. I'm generally not going to believe the defendant when there's so many accusers unless there's some really damn compelling evidence of a conspiracy. I completely agree with the reasons you gave about why an abuse victim would interact with her abuser after the fact. I mean yes, I'm neither a woman nor a rape victim, but it doesn't strike me as strange at all. However, you have to see how that behavior looks so suspect to some people. I also agree with you on human memory, and there's mountains of evidence in psychology to back that up so it's not like it's a controversial point. But again, when someone can't keep their story straight, and gives different accounts from one day to the next you have to understand how bad that looks. And it should look bad. Not the color of his car and shit like that, but you need to be ready for court in any criminal case (I'm not sure how that was even a point of contention, no one was arguing she didn't see the car, right? What was that even about and how was it even supposed to be relevant?). When someone decides to make an accusation they need to write down every interaction near the dates as best they can remember, and then memorize it as much as possible before court. Yeah, there's reasons to not want to do that, but if you want to get the guilty verdict you probably should. Where you and I diverge is I think the problem is this: These crimes so often don't have witnesses. In a perfect world they'd all be reported immediately and have a better chance, but unfortunately that usually doesn't happen. However, we can't convict people at someone's word. I don't think you're quite saying that, but you don't sound very far off at several points in your post, and I hope it's obvious why that's such a bad idea. Yeah, it sucks, and I wish we were better at prosecuting it, but reasonable doubt exists for good reason. You wrote so much about this rape culture stuff, and I just can't see it. I'll try to explain my position as best I can. Skepticism is not rape culture. Skepticism is not being pro rape. Disbelief is not rape culture. Before I read about this at all, I had pretty much just assumed that false accusations virtually never happen. Maybe in situations where someone was trying to cheat a celebrity or rich guy out of a heap of money, but other than that there doesn't appear to be a clear motive. However, people don't necessarily follow courses of actions that make any sense. The whole false rapes are less than 1%, practically never, or whatever arbitrary amount claim gets told all the time- it's just not true based on the studies I've seen. The lowest percentage concluded to be false that I've ever seen, using a burden of completely proven to be false was 6 or 8% (can't remember which off the top of my head, maybe I'll find that study later). Others using that same burden have been as high as 41%. Keep in mind too that these findings are on the lowest possible end. Just as it would be completely unreasonable to say that every accusation that doesn't result in a conviction is false, it's just as unreasonable to say every accusation not proven or admitted to be false is automatically true. Yeah, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense to put forth a false rape claim, but people do all kinds of nonsensical things for every kind of bizarre reason. The results of studies on false rape claims are all over the place, but I've never seen a study with a shred of credibility that suggested they were virtually non-existent. If it does exist, I would like to see it, but know too that it would be an outlier against lots of other findings. If I had to guess I would put it somewhere in the range of 20-35%, but who the fuck knows? Anyone who says they can give you an accurate frequency is full of shit. I know you never outright said false rape claims practically never happen, but you appeared to imply it a lot and so much of your post was about how skepticism is rape culture or being poorly informed. The evidence suggests it happens a surprisingly significant percentage of the time. Being skeptical doesn't make anyone ignorant, nor does it make them an asshole, rape advocate, rape culture supporter, or anything else. Skepticism actually seems to be the best informed approach. Skepticism is not disbelief, it's just skepticism. As for the other things, I can't touch on all of it since you wrote a lot and I already have as well, but a lot of what you're saying just isn't true. Sure, to a point girls are encouraged to be less confrontational than guys. They are not told to act this way toward abusers. Certainly not in society at large, explicitly or implicitly. They're never told not to stand up for themselves. It's not generally thought that rape never happens with people the victim knows. I'm sorry, but none of that shit is even remotely true. I don't think it's at all accurate either to say most people hardly ever believe the accuser. While I'm sure they exist, I've never met a person who thought nearly all rapes were immediately reported to the police. Where you really went overboard though is here: I know you were on a rant here, but you can't possibly think this. We can discuss this case, the difficulty of prosecuting rape or whatever else into eternity, but let's please drop this idea that rape is considered no big deal, or that no one ever believes the victims. It's a whole heap of nonsense, and I think you know that.
First, just to clarify since my post was long and this probably got lost: in this case in particular I don't think Ghomeshi was guilty of rape, in my probably totally uninformed opinion. I think he's an asshole who needs to learn and play by the rules of having rough sex, but not a rapist. But I do think it demonstrates a lot of the failings of how rape cases are handled in general. I don't think that rape cases should be guilty until proven innocent, or that a defense team doing their job equals denial of rape as a whole, or that there isn't any room for possibility that it's a false accusation (although I do think there's room in statistics for false accusations for cases where there's an issue about the very definition of rape, rather than straight up deliberate lying). But when so much of their tactics and the jury's predisposed bias is based on these large, basic misunderstandings of rape and issues revolving around it, I do think that's a problem. For example, I do understand that knee-jerk reaction of being confused and suspicious of a continued relationship of any sort with their rapist. Even I have a similar gut response with things like domestic abuses cases where my immediate thought is "okay, so just leave." A lot of this is a failing on the prosecution side to seemingly never go into these things in court, but I do think it points to a need for a change in the conversation about rape if this basic misunderstanding is trotted out as evidence again and again. How we do that, I have no idea. I know that in the two times I've discussed this here alone it's been met with "yes but you see how I'm just going to continue choosing to believe that means she's lying, right?" So trying to fix that when there is still so much debate about what even "counts" as rape seems more or less impossible. These issues and experiences are all mostly just talked about amongst women, so a good start, I think, is for when women bring men into the conversation that they should listen instead of immediately jumping to attempt to discredit everything that's said. At least to start. I know that you basically don't believe that sexism exists in the western world, so while I appreciate you being as nonconfrontational as possible about it, I'm not going to bother responding to most of the middle of your post and trying to convince you otherwise. (That probably sounded sarcastic, but I DO appreciate it. It's just not worth it.) So since this was your biggest issue, I'll say that, yes, the iPhone comparison was partially dramatic just for drama's sake. But, while I don't believe it completely literally, it is something I think, yeah. When there's a huge issue of the most reliable form of evidence used in prosecuting rape cases being left untested and when it's perfectly fine to destroy that evidence when it's still viable, that to me shows how low of a priority investigating rape cases is and if something's a low priority that means it's not something they care about. So, yeah, it really does feel like reporting a rape case is often the equivalent of reporting your stolen iPhone where you and the officer both know that they're never going to do anything to find your iPhone and you've lost it forever and you're really just reporting it because it might make you feel a little better. (I was also thinking specifically of this incident several years ago where there was a spree of iPhones getting stolen in my neighborhood at the same time as there was a spree of rape attempts in another neighborhood. After three phones got stolen they set up a cherry picker police camera and had cops patrolling the area 24/7. After 4 rape attempts the neighborhood was begging the police to take it seriously because they weren't showing up to the calls and were refusing to take in evidence like security camera footage or ripped clothing. After 6 attempts their solution was to have a couple of cops stationed by the subway and warn women getting off that "there have been a lot of attacks in this neighborhood lately, you might want to wear a longer skirt next time you're out." And my neighborhood was poor and black and the other was rich and white so it's not even like those factors were coming into play.) Women know these things - and things I haven't even touched on, like how even when you do go to the cops their first reaction is so often disbelief and dismissal - and it's a huge reason why they don't go to the police about their rapes. Pretty much every woman I know has had some experience on the scale of "harassment--->rape" and whenever we talk about involving the police the first response is "why bother? It's not like they're going to do anything about it" and the next is "no one's going to believe me anyway." That's the message these things are sending. I think if there were changes in how rape cases are handled from the police station to the court room, that would change. Although I also think, to bring another totally uncontroversial issue into it, that there's some similar snake eating its own tail issues as with the relationship between black people and the cops. I'm sure that there are plenty of cases where if the woman didn't let all of this stand in their way and did go to the cops they would've actually been helped by people who care. But just like with fixing the relationship between the black community and the cops, that responsibility lies mostly with the police. This is especially true in the case of the NYPD, where they've had more than one employee colloquially known as "rape cop" in the past five years alone, and where a few of my friends have talked about cops stopping them late at night in less than great neighborhoods and not letting them leave until they gave them their number. It's just a shit show from the bottom to the top and women don't feel protected by it.
It's a vicious cycle that feeds on itself and effectively makes false report statistics worthless. The higher the ratio of false reports there are, the less victims are believed, which causes more victims to stay silent, which then leads back to the ratio of false reports getting skewed, which leads to more disbelief toward victims, and around and around we go.
In this particular case, even the judge's statement says the major reason for the acquittal was the inconsistent and contradictory testimony by the accusers. I get the sense that if they were forthright and truthful in their testimony he'd have received a different outcome.
I don't think he was guilty of rape either. After all, he was on trial for assault, not rape. The reason I pointed to the studies on false accusations was to make the point Trakiel was saying (not sure if he was disagreeing with me or not). The findings actually suggest, if anything, that the findings are worthless in a courtroom. For one, they're all over the place, and secondly, they even admit in their conclusions that they can't say the results from their own study are even accurate regarding the limited amount of cases they reviewed. Pretty much what the judge said in his verdict: A lot of articles upset about the result tried to claim the judge was a misogynist ruling on victim blaming and an expectation of how victims should behave. They also loved the phrase 'memory on trial' (not that that's necessarily wrong, but it's not how the court reached its verdict. I'll come back to that.). The media needs to shut up with their opinion on how the verdict was reached and read the actual ruling (and some did). The other reason I mention the findings is because while I do not think they are relevant to court, I absolutely do think they're relevant to how we should view accusations. I am so fucking sick of people throwing out bullshit statistics as if they were facts. For one, they're not facts, they're findings. More importantly, if you are going to reference the findings you need to reference the actual findings, not just make up your own because you don't like what they say. The reality with this particular case is that the witnesses intentionally lied both to the police, and under oath. Not about random irrelevant details, but about details that pertained to the case. They did this a lot, not once or twice, and did it in a way that most definitely could not be explained away by problems with human memory. I won't go into it further, but if you read the verdict the judge makes that quite clear. So someone can be pissed off about the verdict, but they don't really have a reason to be pissed off about how that verdict was reached. I would say too, that while I hate the power mobs have a lot of the time, I think this is one instance where it might have actually worked out. Ghomeshi 'won' in court, but he lost everywhere else. Dude has nothing left, and based on his narcissistic personality that so many people who knew him described I think this is going to completely ruin him. Yeah, he's not going to prison (yet) but he's far from a winner here. All that said, there probably is major problems with how these cases get prosecuted. I don't see how anyone can be expected to hold up under this Socratic method style of questioning. Courts should probably do more to demand that the defense establishes relevance to their line of questioning, rather than going over endless past details and seeking quotes out of context to try to paint a certain picture of the victim. I also don't like the idea of a victim being on the stand for days on end when it isn't necessary. But, and this is an important one; an accuser's behavior with the assailant both before and after the crime is 100% relevant. A lot of articles I read complained about this, and they're dead fucking wrong. It absolutely matters, and just as they claim 'rape culture' is propagating myths about victim behavior they are very often doing the exact same thing. I get that they don't like that sexual assault focuses so heavily on a victim's credibility, but that's because there's so often so little else to go by. Proving/prosecuting these cases is never going to be easy, but we can probably get better at it. Blaming someone, who at least to me, appears to be an above average judge doing his job doesn't seem to be the way to get there. Regarding how the cops investigate, I think you probably know a lot more about this topic than I do, and I can't really say one way or another because while I'm sure what you are saying totally does happen, I have no idea how to put a metric on what the average cop does or how often.
Her testimony was one of the most disastrous. Emails and love letters after the alleged assault talking about her enjoyment of it and wishing to do it all again.
And that was the really confusing thing... it's not like he was the one saying it, SHE said both "I loved him and wanted to do it again" followed immediately by and "I hated it and he assaulted me". Totally conflicting testimony, and yet she thought it was normal to have a complete change of heart/mind well after the fact, and that the first part would somehow be ignored because it wasn't the outcome she wanted.
I'm not sure she thought it would be ignored so much as she thought it should be ignored. I mean, I hate the idea that victims are only supposed to act a certain way, but at the same time it's pretty insane to suggest you can be certain there was no consent when the accuser has talked to the assailant so positively about the incident in question. Probably and maybe aren't grounds for a conviction...
My impression with the whole Ghomeshi trial is that you have tons of problems in a case like this, no matter what. An accusation that relies on no physical evidence is bad enough, but then to rely on people's memory ten years AFTER the fact is impossible. No one is capable of remembering nuance accurately after so much time has passed; it's hard enough to collect accurate testimony when those involved are interviewed the week that it happens. When people undergo a trauma, their brains function differently. How those women perceived what was happening and, subsequently, how they remember it will be greatly influenced by that trauma. Memories are deliberately forgotten or shuffled in an effort to protect the psyche. So perhaps they remember it one way, but emails reveal that the sequence of events and their behaviour during that time are greatly different than what they recall. It's the unfortunate nature of any kind of assault/sexual assault, particularly when the victim is known to the perpetrator. I'm surprised the crown didn't have more of their shit together and tighten up their stories before they testified. They had to have known that his lawyer would do her best to rip them to shreds; why not run through some mock testimony a few times with a hardass lawyer, just to make sure they're consistent under pressure? Like I said: I think he probably crossed lines and assaulted these women. He also likely has problems with how he sees women in general, if any of the investigative pieces written about him are true. That, and the CBC has a HUGE problem with workplace culture as it relates to bosses and subordinates. At the end of the day, though, if it comes down to he said/she said and all the shes are inconsistent, unclear and downright incorrect then he has to walk. I can't see his career recovering from this, though.
I totally get how I don't get how abuse survivors react after abuse (and likely never will), but DeCoutere's article, to me, strains her credibility. "If anybody – the police, the Crown – had told me about what post-incident contact is or why it matters, that would have gone a long way." Can anyone really believe this? That no one on her legal team, or in her general world, ever pointed out that post-incident contact matters in rape/assault cases? Even just on her own, as a young modern woman who has likely heard of similar cases -- the notion of post-incident behavior being relevant was completely foreign to her, up until the point that witch lady brought it up on the stand? Either she found the absolute worst legal team possible, and/or she's unbelievably naïve (emphasis on unbelievably). A battered and abused wife staying with her abuser for years -- while it's a strange and sad situation, I understand it. Love is weird, women often depend on their abusers, and years of grooming and manipulation can make people act against their own interests (to say nothing of situations involving kids). Based on DeCoutere's on words, I think she had a crush on him, they kissed, he went way too aggressive...and she liked it (and that's ok if she did). I think that mostly because she wrote to him: "You kicked my ass last night and that makes me want to fuck your brains out. Tonight." A woman trapped in a long term relationship staying with or even defending her abuser is one thing. Continuing to court a celebrity crush that you have no real ties to, after he apparently traumatized you, is another. Then there's the letter she has no memory of writing -- a six pager with an opening paragraph talking about how she misses the patience and respect for words that hand written letters resurrect, goes on to swoon about how enigmatic and alluring she finds him, that she had to go back to Toronto to solve the mystery that is him, and signs off with "I love your hands". This doesn't sound like a confused survivor acting outwardly strangely, this sounds like a woman who enjoys being a Submissive. At the very least, she remembers writing the letter, just like anyone under 60 would. While I agree with everything Audrey has written, and it's awesome that this little wiener has been exposed/had his career ruined, I think this case in particular does way more harm than good for the very real problem of women seeking justice for abuse they have faced. I also think there's an element of the wider conversation that desperately needs to be had, but isn't, because it's hard to articulate, and some people don't want to have it. Things like recognizing that sex is inherently a violent act, the majority of women like to 'feel taken', most communication (especially romantic) is non-verbal, and that verbal consent is generally a mood killer for all involved -- I'd even bet big money that some women are now more attracted to him. It's a difficult topic to navigate, but I don't think hash tag activism is the best way to go about it.
One thing you're missing here is that she didn't have a legal team, she was a prosecutor's witness. Jian had a legal team. In my opinion, it seems to me that the Crown really dropped the ball on this one, either by letting it get as far as it did in the first place (were the charges a result of social media pressures?), or by not doing their due diligence for the trial.
The sexual assault cases that get so much media attention are kind of like the racism stories in that they seem to pick the worst possible examples. Sulkowicz? The UVA rape on campus story? These are the worst stories to draw on to prove a point about sexual assault, unless the actual plan is to pick among the most difficult to believe stories possible so you can shout 'Misogyny! Education! Evil rape culture yada yada' because those scoundrels don't agree on the accused's guilt. I know it's not like these are selected on purpose (usually) and there are less fubared stories reported on, but the frequency these get chosen seem out of place with the vast majority of potential stories out there that would perhaps better illustrate a point. Regarding Ghomeshi, when you read about what a narcissist he was and how he apparently had no male friends it really adds a layer of fucked up to the accusations, assuming they're true, which I think at least some of them probably are. It really sounds like he's not the kind of person who's just into kinky shit because it turns him on, but more like he needs to beat up on someone physically weaker so he doesn't feel so small inside. I know, I'm jumping to conclusions here and it's totally possible that the people describing his personality are doing so through the lens of the accusations coming to light. I'm sure most people into BDSM are more or less normal, but I imagine there are some seriously emotionally disturbed people in that scene as well. Consent, yeah. I think the reason it's not talked about so much is you know it's not going to accomplish anything. Pretty much everyone knows how it works and that the idea implied consent is a rape apologist's tool is fucking nuts. She unzipped my pants and started massaging my dick, but how can you know if you don't ask, ya know? There's cases where I think consent isn't so black and white, but they are few and far between and the whole educating people on consent thing is kind of stupid. BDSM is different for obvious reasons.
I think that's the part that annoys me the most...the conversation regarding consent, assault, workplace dynamics and rape culture (god I hate how that term is used lately) really needs to be had, and the opportunity was blown because the Crown mishandled the evidence and witness preparation/testimony. If you want to clarify an issue within the courts (and I think consent needs to be clarified), why pick a bad case to do it? Why not have a big trial with a better chance of a meaningful outcome? Granted Ghomeshi's "celebrity " brought its own attention, but regardless. Now it will be that much harder to address these issues in the public's opinion. I felt the same way with the Michael Brown debacle in the US. There are so many clear-cut examples of police brutality and misconduct, yet the public hysteria focused on one where the sequence of events was ambiguous. Both examples were handled very poorly by the state.
In this article, she mentions that the Crown (prosecutor) actually moved her time of testifying ahead by 3 days. So she never had time to even rehearse being cross-examined. She basically went in cold. There is no doubt a seasoned defence team like Ghomeshi's was going to tear her story apart.
In her Guardian article that I posted she said she "spent 12 months preparing for my two days of testimony. I felt ready to face whatever his notoriously cutthroat lawyer Marie Henein had in store for me." 'Legal team' is the wrong term, but does anyone believe she was wholly ignorant of the relevance of post-incident behavior until after she took the stand? Again, a woman who's even slightly dependent on her abuser, or been manipulated over the course of a relationship -- I totally understand how she might not press charges or even defend him. DeCoutere had met him a couple times, didn't even live in the same city, there's no reason to believe he held some sway over her career (was she even still acting at the time?), and her next day message was not forgiving him, rationalizing or making excuses for what he did, or saying she knows deep down he's still a good guy, it was "You kicked my ass last night and that makes me want to fuck your brains out. Tonight." Now of course it's possible that she liked him/it at the time, and has since come to feel completely different. That's not 'bitches be crazy', but regret is not enough to send someone to jail, even a maggot puss ball like him. That's what I was trying to articulate at the end of my last post, beyond this case: the grey area that is sex, and yes, even consent. No one seems eager to acknowledge that everything about the mechanics -- from kissing to fucking -- happens to women, and they want it to happen, almost always without verbal consent, because it's more exciting that way. There are plenty of non-verbal forms of consent, and sadly many men need education on such cues, but girls generally become less attracted if a guy asks for a first kiss ("If he has to ask, he shouldn't even bother", is how one girl friend explained it to me), and things only get murkier from there. Would love to hear from a female board member on this stuff, even if just to explain how I'm talking out my ass.
You're starting to sound pretty damn weird. What do you mean sex is inherently violent? Is kissing violent? Is getting a blow job violent too? And what do you mean sex only happens to the woman? The fuck? They never kiss back? Never ride the guy? Try having sex with someone who isn't a corpse sometime. This sounds like some serious pseudo sensitive guy bullshit. Oh wait, nooooo, I just don't get it. I don't know what the fuck is going on when I have sex. Yeah, cool story.... I really wish I was so gender enlightened. I hate when people talk about sex and consent the way you are because it makes it sound like you think women are so fragile and helpless, and it's just too much. If a guy misreads a sign, and there is a big fucking difference between between misreading 'she's into me' and 'we're in my bedroom and she's undressing', she can always just say no. What is with this shit that women can't vocalize things like adults. No way. They can only sign it in quadarkian slabaja. We need to teach the guys how to read that shit. So important. Now, there is a conversation to be had about guys doing out of bounds stuff in the middle of sex without talking about it, but that's a little different. I promise you figuring out consent really isn't that fucking hard and I'm flabbergasted as to why you (and not only you, but a lot of people apparently) seem to think it is. Also, "I was drunk" does not equal "I was raped." I hope we're not going there as well.
Superfantastic, I've been agreeing with your posts in this thread for this whole discussion. Until now. While I'd never presume to speak for all women, or even the women on this board, here are some thoughts: I wonder if you realize how deeply misogynistic this sounds. And I'm not being a chest-thumping feminist, either. You're presuming that: 1. The notion of verbal consent is foreign. 2. Women are passive receptacles when it comes to sex. 3. The underlying tone makes it seem like women are the exclusive owners of sexual violence and assault. Boys and men can and are victims of rape - ask any large group of boys who have had exposure to Catholic priests, sports coaches or any kind of juvenile detention. Never mind violence in the home. Emphatically NO. The mechanics of sex are not 'done to women.' Women can initiate, they can penetrate and - take a deep breath - they can also be the perpetrators of the assault. To suggest anything otherwise is stupid and unfair to men, who are marginalized in the sexual violence discussion way too often. I'd agree that most action and permission are undergone without explicit verbal consent. This is an excellent area to focus education and awareness on. That people have the right to be asked first, and that doing so can be done in an erotic and non-threatening or non-mood killing way. If you don't believe that, then I'd suggest you examine your baseline assumptions about sex and consent. Red flags. First, I think the operative word in that sentence was "girls." I suppose immature women could be put off by someone who grants them a boundary. Also, there's no way to answer this broadly, but ask yourself: how did you ask? Did you ask permission like you were asking your grandma if you could have a cookie before supper, or did you ask with some confidence and swagger? Because believe me, you can ask for consent in a way that makes it hot. Not that I'm here to give pointers, but imagine asking permission in a suave way, being granted it, then telling her, "Good. I'll kiss you later." Nothing about that says, "He's weak." And if she thinks that you are, then SHE may have some problems and you may want to reconsider the encounter. Consent can get murky. Here is a great blog post on consent accidents. Not every mishap immediately means sexual assault or rape, though. In particular when alcohol is involved. If one partner is so scared that they freeze up (a survival mechanism that's hard wired into the brain), and the other partner continues on unaware that a problem has occurred, no one is necessarily to blame. That doesn't mean it doesn't cause trauma. So while I will grant you that the lines are often grey, and regret does not equal rape, I think your underlying assumptions that women are passive and asking consent isn't sexy are a touch upsetting.
I love this example, the classic divide between males and females. Guys operate and want a simple yes or no, on or off. Girls, it's not what is said it's how it's said. You want to be swept off your feet with suave swaggering breezy lines. Ive not read into the current consent discussion, my eyeballs almost detached reading that link with the verbage they used, I don't know how you bridge this devide.
It's just the way the species is wired. Men compete for sex (and therefore women are the gatekeepers), while women compete for relationships (it often comes down to the man to decide if you are in one). It's biology's version of a brake. One gender pursues; the other is pursued. It often translates to the threshold for sex in men being very low, and the threshold for sex in women much higher. From an evolutionary perspective, it would be much harder to successfully rear children if both genders were equally as open sex. If both were operating at a low threshold, you'd have a lot of babies born without a male protector (because neither adult was interested in a relationship). If both genders played hard to get, no on would initiate. Speaking in a mass generalization and over simplification, of course. Also, I'm not suggesting that you need to be James Bond to get laid. I'm suggesting that it's possible, if you lack confidence or skill with the opposite sex, to have THAT be the reason you're rejected, and not the fact that you asked permission.