the saga of Jian Ghomeshi

[Karina1974]

I'm sure she'd be really pleased to know that you are posting about it on the internet too

As long as antmanb isn't using the friend;'s real name, what's the big deal?

I could post my s'path's name, cell number, address and workplace, as well as some YouTube vids of his nauseating versions of "My Girl," "Unforgettable," "Daddy's Home" and "Precious Love" but no one here would know him anyway so it's pointless, and I also don't want to give anyone indigestion from listening to such a liar trying to sound so sincere.

 

[DAngel]

I'm pretty sure that several of the posters here are old enough to remember when there wasn't such a thing as sexual harassment in the workplace, and any woman who complained about inappropriate behaviour was called a whiner or too sensitive . Or she didn't get the jobs or assignments she should have because she complained, or because she refused to do something. That was wrong. But sometimes I feel like things have gone a little too far in the other direction.

How so? Could you elaborate on that?

The recent NFL scandal tells me that we're not there yet.

 

[overedge]

How so? Could you elaborate on that?

The recent NFL scandal tells me that we're not there yet.

If you mean the Ray Rice events, that's a little different, because it's not sexual harassment in the workplace. Although I agree that the NFL completely mishandled that situation - and the NFL does a pretty good job of ignoring workplace harassment when it does happen, e.g. the player who was bullied and spoke out about it, and the player who claims he was forced out of his team because he spoke up for gay rights. (Sorry, I don't follow the NFL that closely, so I'm blanking on the names of those two players.)

What I meant was in a more general sense, that when one man is accused of harassment, there seems to be this assumption by some women that because he is a man he is automatically guilty, that this is just another example of rape culture, that no woman is believed when she speaks up about this, that all women are victims of harassment/abuse, etc. I don't deny for a second that harassment and abuse occurs, and that many women are ignored or downplayed when they try to report it. It's the generalities and assumptions about "all" men and "all" women that bother me. The patronizing implications of these statements about women is offensive - e.g. if you are a woman who says you haven't been abused, you probably have been but you just aren't acknowledging it. And the blanket assumptions about men are really disheartening to the men who aren't abusers and who don't appreciate being lumped in with those who are.

I'm not sure I'm explaining this very well, but since @PRlady made the post I was agreeing with, I'm hoping she might be able to explain this more articulately (and to correct me if I misunderstood what she said).

 

[Karina1974]

It's easy enough to say "I wouldn't put up with it" but often these guys are masters at doing things in such a way that it's not black and white but gray. I mean obviously if someone hits you, that's pretty black and white. But if someone says something suggestive, that's gray. Maybe you misunderstood or misheard. Maybe in the context of what went before, it doesn't seem totally 100% bad. Or maybe it is bad but because of what went on before, you feel like you can't scream about it because you will look like a hypocrite.

Believe me, I'm no stranger to the subversive way some of these characters work when they are trying to target their next chosen prey. I already went through it once, because I didn't have the life experience to pay attention to the feeling in my gut that told me, the very first time I met the guy I was involved with, that something wasn't right. I was 29 and stupid and I let him get to me. 10 years later, OTOH, I am 40, and sick and tired of the whole concept of "being in a relationship" still being held up by society like it is the end to all of a person's troubles and whoas, and we should all pity the person who is single. Bullshit. Want no part of it. You can have a good life without an SO. I have my apartment, my car, my cat, my contra dancing social circle, and a job that pays for it all. What the hell do I "need" a man for?

Maybe she felt like if she was physically violent with Jian, she'd be fired, not him. (And, she would be. You can't beat up people in the workplace because they said something you didn't like.)

No, but you can beat the shit out of someone for touching you in ways that are not invited, or if you don't have "that kind" of a relationship. She claims he fondled her. Once you put your hands on someone else without their permission, it's game over and you deserve the ass-kicking you (unfortunately) won't usually get if you are a guy trying that stunt with a woman. If I had daughters they would all have to take self-defense, and martial arts from a school that emphasizes the spiritual concepts as well as the physical skills. My s'path used to have a Karate school and he said some of his best students were women, and this was 20-30 years ago, when women "learning how to fight" wasn't something most parents would see their daughters doing.

Me, I'm asexual now (thanks to my s'path experience) so I would be finding some guy trying to initiate sexual contact with me to be especially offensive. I want to be left alone in that regard.

Maybe she thought, if she said something right there, the dude would make fun of her and everyone would laugh at her for not being sophisticated and for taking things too seriously. (Which is also a distinct possibility. We've all be victim of the "Aw, honey, can't you take a joke?" comeback. It puts you on the defensive and the aggressor in the driver's seat.)

So, what are you saying? That a woman doesn't have the right to decide where her personal comfort zone is regarding how other people speak to her, and that she doesn't have the right to lay down the law about it in as firm and decisive (and loud if necessary) as manner as she feels she need to?

This is a mentality we need to get away from. I personally have no problem telling someone to back the fcuk off if they are being disrespectful to me. Of course, being 5'10 and 200-something pounds and built like a Mack Truck makes it very easy for me to get the message across that when I tell you to get the hell out of my air space, you do it without another word. I don't care how it looks to other people.

Incidentally, it was a scenario very like that, that led me to tell the s'path to go to hell. We had tried to be platonic buddies after he announced that our intimate relationship must cease because he was now "with somebody" (he didn't know at the time that I knew all about his domestic situation and was pretty sure who the "new" gf was ). He started flirting with me over text one night and I told him to back off, because the insinuations he was making were innappropriate. Which led to him telling me I was imagining that he was trying to push for a tryst to happen that night. Which led me to tell him to feck off. For good. We have to change the nature of our relationship because you are with somebody now, fine, but do not come to me afterwards and start flirting with me. I ain't having it! Plus, I found out later on (because she said so) that he never mentioned a word about me to his new gf. Knowing him like I do, I think that is proof that he had something in mind, probably to lie to me and tell the relationship went kaput so he was free again.

TBH, it think things would have ended up imploding at some subsequent point if it hadn't then. I say we had a 9-year relationship... we were in No Contact for about half of that time, usually because I said or did something to piss him off, and he felt he had to "teach me a lesson." The one time different was the NC period before this one, because I also walked away that time, too. He told me later on that the things I had said that time "hurt" - why?? because they were true? That time I called him a chicken-shit coward who runs away when someone (me) points out faults about him that we BOTH know are true, and a charleton who doesn't even live by the very spiritual (Martial Arts) concepts he extolled in our conversations, because a man who "strives for perfection" doesn't cheat or lie to people while claiming to care about their welfare.

I do think the answer is to push back right away and be more willing to call people out on things that make you uncomfortable and to be more public about these things. I'm not saying we should stay in the dark ages where women whisper to each other about who to avoid being alone with in the elevator at conferences. What am saying is that while this might be the most effective way to deal with these men, it's not easy to do that and we need to recognize that. Otherwise it's like saying "why doesn't she just leave him?" to the battered wife and thinking you've provided some sort of support.

Oh, ITA with you on this point. When I spoke out last year and told off the s'path and made it very clear that he didn't have me the slightest bit fooled, that I knew exactly what was going on, and I was ending it, I shocked myself for the second time in 2 months - the first time was in July when I contacted his girlfriend and informed her that her man wasn't as much "hers" as she thought he was. If you had told me 9 years before that point this was how things were going to end, I'd have said you were crazy. I was a most doting and adoring member of his entourage at one time, and I would have done anything for him. Truth to tell, I'd known about the gf since 2007, and he claimed she had "issues with intimacy" and my attitude at the time was "whelp, her loss is my gain!" What I never knew until last July was that he had a second OW since 2009. And when I found out that his new girlfriend was the other OW, who knew damn well what kind of a man he was (because his first gf's daughter confronted her on FB about it, and then they both confronted him at a local Applebee's - afterwhich he texted me at 10:30 that night wanting to come stay over, not realizing that I knew why - because he had been kicked out and had no place to stay ), I did reach out to her and sent her a very very long FB message telling her my own history with him, throwing in enough information so she would know that I was legit. That was how I found out that she knew nothing about me, and she told me (I guess she had asked him about me during our FB conversation) he said we had only spoken back in July. I told her we did a lot more than just "speak." In July and before that, for that matter.

The difference between this time and 2011 is that I don't feel the slightest bit bad about what I did or said. I'm past the point where offending or hurting someone else who is hurting me first in order to hold my own ground and protect myself and my self-worth doesn't fecking matter to me anymore. If there is a point or a reason why I went through what I went through, IMO that is it.

 

[falling_dance]

Either we are having a moment where a lot of young-ish women who may not have previously identified as feminist just get fed up and tell the truth...or the whole "rape culture" thing is out of control and ordinary jerky behavior is being re categorized.

I added a like to this post a couple of days ago, mainly for the link to the blind item and the mention of Gamergate, which hasn't been much discussed over here (and which seems like a pretty clear-cut case of misogynous bullying with a side order of criminal threats), but I'm really not sure about this either/or statement. Couldn't both be true in some degree?

For the record, I tend to the view that the former is the case and that the latter has some validity insofar as movements tend to have their excesses, but that's about as much as I'm willing to concede right now. The recategorization of "ordinary jerky behavior" ("But they only mean 'gay' in the sense of 'bad' or 'uncool', not in a bigoted one!") can sometimes be a very good thing...

 

[overedge]

No, but you can beat the shit out of someone for touching you in ways that are not invited, or if you don't have "that kind" of a relationship. She claims he fondled her. Once you put your hands on someone else without their permission, it's game over and you deserve the ass-kicking you (unfortunately) won't usually get if you are a guy trying that stunt with a woman.

This is a workplace we're talking about. I can't believe you seriously think it's OK for employees to be beating each other up at work.

If one employee is trying to kill another employee, then physically attacking them in self-defense or to protect others is understandable. But if a co-worker says something offensive to you or touches you in a way you don't like, beating them up in response is *not* OK. The appropriate response is to physically get away from that person ASAP and then report them to your supervisor (and their supervisor as well).

 

[shiningstar]

A friend posted this on Facebook: "Here's Misogyny: an immediate impulse to believe four separate women accusing one man of sexual abuse are lying to ruin his life because they're jilted ex-lovers"

I do value our justice system and that a person is innocent until proven guilty. But, I think it's also important to remember that a very small percentage of allegations of sexual assault are false.

@Desperado That Q debate was tough to get through! I applaud Lise Gotell for being able to keep her cool, because I most certainly would not have been able to do so.

 

[alj5]

Well I'm not sad. I can't stand his voice on the air, and will only listen to Q if there's a pinch-hitter in the host chair or I really really really love the person he's interviewing. I've always been creeped out by his voice, and never knew why. Seriously, I even felt bad because I couldn't pin it down. Heck, I still feel bad because it's not like his voice says "sexual predator".

 

[liv]

My severe dislike of him even extended to Moxy Fruvous. When their song, *King of Spain* (or whatever it was called) first came out I was mildly amused by it, it was catchy... but soon after I would turn the channel whenever it came on and once I learned Ghomeshi was part of them it made the song even worse. That's how strongly I disliked him when there was no reason to do so.

My friend works at CBC as well... I should ask her what she thinks about him...

 

[MacMadame]

No, but you can beat the shit out of someone for touching you in ways that are not invited, or if you don't have "that kind" of a relationship.

No, you can't. You can't just beat someone up because they touched you. Especially not at work. The very best that will happen is you get fired. The worst is that you are arrested for assault.

 

[TygerLily]

Well, a fifth woman (not interviewed for the Toronto Star article) told her story to "As It Happens": http://www.cbc.ca/player/AudioMobile/As+It+Happens/ID/2577457919/ (I don't understand how trigger warnings work, but I think I should warn people that the content is disturbing.)

A sixth woman will be interviewed on "The Current" tomorrow morning.

 

[aliceanne]

This is something I have been wondering too. Earlier this week, I read the stories that TygerLily linked to above (about the allegations of abusive behaviour in the Canadian literary community), and a few others about the same allegations. And I have to admit that I found it really bothersome to read so many comments blindly supporting the allegations. The few posters who dared to suggest even *some* personal responsibility for what happens to you, e.g. maybe it is not a good idea to go drinking with someone whose behaviour you're not comfortable with, got very harsh responses. Of course it is not someone's fault if they get abused, and if men are the abusers, they are the ones who should be getting the pressure to change their behaviour instead of the women they are abusing. But one way for standing up for yourself is not to engage with people whose behaviour you don't trust, and that seemed to elude some of the posters.

This also reminds me of the Twitter messages I paraphrased earlier in the thread, along the lines of all men are abusive and all women are victims whose stories don't get believed. That really bothers me too.

I'm pretty sure that several of the posters here are old enough to remember when there wasn't such a thing as sexual harassment in the workplace, and any woman who complained about inappropriate behaviour was called a whiner or too sensitive . Or she didn't get the jobs or assignments she should have because she complained, or because she refused to do something. That was wrong. But sometimes I feel like things have gone a little too far in the other direction.

I can remember a time where there were rules against "fraternizing" with the opposite sex in the workplace. You could get fired for dating a co-worker. Preventing sexual harassment and extramarital affairs was a legal justification for not hiring women. My roommate who graduated with a degree in accounting in the early 70's was told point blank in one interview that they couldn't hire a woman because the other accountants wives wouldn't like her traveling with their husbands.

 

[overedge]

Well, a fifth woman (not interviewed for the Toronto Star article) told her story to "As It Happens": http://www.cbc.ca/player/AudioMobile/As+It+Happens/ID/2577457919/ (I don't understand how trigger warnings work, but I think I should warn people that the content is disturbing.)

A sixth woman will be interviewed on "The Current" tomorrow morning.

Here is a transcript of the As It Happens interview. From this story he sounds like one seriously f*cked up guy.
http://m.theglobeandmail.com/news/n...assaulted-her/article21376464/?service=mobile

 

[snoopy]

Is that something people do? Say yes it's okay to sucker punch me in the head multiple times? She kinda makes this implication that he should have asked first and if she said yes, well than yes go ahead and punch me in the head.

 

[overedge]

And even more evidence that Ghomeshi is f*cked up...and that people at CBC probably knew it.
http://m.thestar.com/#/article/news...t_of_violence_sexual_abuse_or_harassment.html

 

[MacMadame]

This is what I think: Jian is a genius for posting that FB post. (Yes, I've already said that.) Because he's turned the discussion into "they said it was okay" "no we didn't." So she's saying "I didn't say it was okay!" But that completely side-steps snoopy's question of "is it ever okay?" And at least one BDSM person has written that it basically isn't to most people in the BDSM movement because it's really, really hard to do that shit safely. And even if the BDSM community were to say "oh, sure, it's okay because it's consenting adults," I am calling BS on that one.

If it was me, I'd be on the radio saying "He punched me in the head until my ears rang and I couldn't think straight and WHAT KIND OF PERSON DOES THAT?" Excuse this PC "oh we're consenting adults" crap. Because there are lines that shouldn't be crossed because you can't really give consent. Just like an 8 year old can't give consent to sex, I don't think you can give consent to be punched in the head. Lightly slapped around, sure. But punched in the head is serious stuff. You can get a brain injury! And how are you going to give your "safe word" if you're in the middle of getting a freaking concussion while your head is ringing like a bell? You can't.

 

[overedge]

I have to disagree. Given what's coming out now, his Facebook post looks even more self-serving and untrue. I'm guessing that even people who don't know much about BDSM, or people who think it's gross or weird, can see the difference between what he describes and what these eight women are describing.

 

[Desperado]

Do You Know about Jian: http://www.nothinginwinnipeg.com/2014/10/do-you-know-about-jian/ - just wow

So many people knew something was up...

I'm now cynically wondering if the CBC, after what seems like years of condoning lewd work behaviour, is now presenting the stories of these women, not to help them and/or for the greater good, but just to retaliate in view of the lawsuit.

 

[overedge]

Now I'm even more creeped out thinking of Jian asking Tessa Virtue, "So, like, do you have any down time?"

 

[genevieve]

Dan Savage weighs in:
http://slog.thestranger.com/slog/ar...rviews-with-two-women-who-dated-jian-ghomeshi

 

[mag]

Dan Savage weighs in:
http://slog.thestranger.com/slog/ar...rviews-with-two-women-who-dated-jian-ghomeshi

It really does get worse and worse. I agree with the Dan Savage's conclusion. I am sure there are women out there who enjoyed their time with Jian, but that really isn't the issue. I am sure there are rapists who have girlfriends they don't rape and serial killers who have families they don't kill. It doesn't mean they aren't rapists and murders.

 

[Anita18]

Interesting. When I first saw that I wondered what Patrick's reaction was all about. Good on him and I've always liked him. To me, Tessa was unreadable.

Really? Tessa has the same exact look on her face when someone is talking to Alf (an extreme introverted lone wolf) and he really wants them to go away. Total fake smile, empty words with fake inflections. She definitely did not think him being in Sochi was "amazing." I wanted to get Jian away from her, stat.


Owen Pallett (I'm not Canadian but someone must know who he is) has an awesome takedown of Jian:

“We will never really know what happened.” Yes we do. Jian beat, at the very least, three women. Three women said so. “They were jilted exes.” Maybe so. They were beaten by Jian.

“They were freelance writers looking to get ahead.” Three women were beaten by Jian Ghomeshi.

At no point here will I ever give my friend Jian’s version of the truth more creedence than the version of the truth offered up by three women. Anonymity does not mean these women do not exist.

https://www.facebook.com/owenpalletteternal/posts/1491910081073780


Also, Jian's Facebook post totally does not do him any favors in my eyes. If women are coming out of the woodwork saying they were beaten without consent, he can't point to BDSM and get off the hook. The very crux of BDSM is consent. If you don't understand what the hell consent is, what you're doing is not BDSM, it's straight up abuse.

 

[PRlady]

What I meant was in a more general sense, that when one man is accused of harassment, there seems to be this assumption by some women that because he is a man he is automatically guilty, that this is just another example of rape culture, that no woman is believed when she speaks up about this, that all women are victims of harassment/abuse, etc. I don't deny for a second that harassment and abuse occurs, and that many women are ignored or downplayed when they try to report it. It's the generalities and assumptions about "all" men and "all" women that bother me. The patronizing implications of these statements about women is offensive - e.g. if you are a woman who says you haven't been abused, you probably have been but you just aren't acknowledging it. And the blanket assumptions about men are really disheartening to the men who aren't abusers and who don't appreciate being lumped in with those who are.

I'm not sure I'm explaining this very well, but since @PRlady made the post I was agreeing with, I'm hoping she might be able to explain this more articulately (and to correct me if I misunderstood what she said).

You're right. Although I agree that Jian is almost certainly an abusive pervert, and that the likelihood of eight women lying is about nil, IN GENERAL I am a little unnerved by the overstatements about rape culture. This could be a function of generation and age, but OTOH I'm a bona fide second-wave feminist 1970s version. Perhaps because of that, I think women freed themselves from a lot of pain and constriction by being sexually more open, competent and autonomous, and I'm a bit afraid that the current wave of focus on harassment and extreme versions of consent (i.e. the step-by-step stuff being advocated on campuses now) serves to put women back in a fearful box, where all men are potential abusers and all women potential victims.

A while back I had a serious argument with Prancer, one of the posters on FSU I respect most, about age of consent. Since I thought that at 17 I knew what I was doing, sleeping with an older guy, and she made very valid arguments about reasons for age of consent and stat rape. It's a tough area, the whole concept of women's responsibility for making their own own decisions and at what point that autonomy is overcome by age difference, or power differential, or even the fact that men are generally physically stronger than women.

I don't have any hard-and-fast conclusions about all this but if I were the mom of a college-age son in the US, I'd be very emphatic in instructing him on how to stay out of legal trouble. And that's sort of sad.

 

[snoopy]

I am going to add something touched upon in the article genevieve linked.

While I guess this is obvious on one hand, I think we still forget: how women communicate and how men communicate (or receive that communication) can be different - and that seems to lead to some of these conflicts.

The Savage piece notes that Jian likely interpreted one of his dates behavior as consent - the fact that she went out with him after he already roughed her up a little bit the first night. She, however, did not look at it that way. I can understand her behavior because I would be confused too - geez, did that really happen? What do I do? Maybe somehow I didn't understand? But I did also question why she went out with him a second time. And Savage himself notes that Jian might have taken that behavior as consent.

I am not clear as to exactly how men and women perceive communications differently but I think that is a factor in the discrepancies - possible here - and probably in the atheist community. Though not the gaming community. I think those guys are mostly just jerks.

 

[Anita18]

I personally think that women are taught to minimize their worries, essentially gaslighting themselves. "Am I weird for not being okay with this? Maybe I'm just overreacting." The longer it goes on, the more difficult it is to bring up.

And in my experience, when men are given an inch, they'll take a mile. Even Alf, who is typically very communicative and doesn't have fun when I don't have fun (he has stopped when I asked him to, and didn't whine about it), pushed physical boundaries early on without asking explicit consent. He's just lucky my reaction was mostly faint surprise and then a "Hmm ok."

 

[taf2002]

Really? Tessa has the same exact look on her face when someone is talking to Alf (an extreme introverted lone wolf) and he really wants them to go away. Total fake smile, empty words with fake inflections. She definitely did not think him being in Sochi was "amazing." I wanted to get Jian away from her, stat.

Then why did she pander to his ego? If I think someone is a creep I sure don't tell them it is "amazing" that they are in my universe.

I think everyone has that self-preservation "little voice" inside but for some reason at times people ignore it. Society doesn't have much sympathy for women who go to a man's home or hotel room & get raped. They say she should have known. I think way down inside they did know something was wrong but for various reasons they didn't listen to that voice. (BTW no, they weren't "asking for it" & it's still rape.) If your "creep alarm" goes off around someone, cut them out of your life as fast as possible. I had a man on a 1st date smack me on the butt once & I said don't do that. He did it again & even though it didn't hurt I took it as a sign of disrespect & wouldn't go out with him again. Who knows? It may have saved my life or at least a really bad experience.

 

[tarotx]

There is also the Ke$ha/Doctor Luke lawsuits as well. This is all coming to a head at once.

I personally don't know who this man that this thread is about but it seems to me that he's a sicky man who went into the BDSM lifestyle to be able to abuse woman and not to have a good time. I know how that can be a tricky shade of grey but there is a different. Abusers don't care about their partner having a good time too. Perhaps they even get off on that Grey the submissive finds themselves in because of him pushing consent boundaries. Just a Yuck individual at best. I hope he's being watched because he's going to blow up and serious injure someone and that could lead to even more of a sick mindset. And more people will be hurt. We won't even get into what he has done to the mental health of his partners-even those who did give consent.

He deserved to be fired years ago but that would just bring the sex activities of the company's workers public and I can see how his station could have have trouble knowing what to do here.

 

[antmanb]

I just don't buy that it can be communication problems. I don't have much first hand experience with this but have more than a handful of friends who are all big into the BDSM scene (admittedly they are all gay men ) and communication is absolutely key in any BDSM situation. "No" is never left to chance particularly if you're a beginner, and particularly at the more extreme ends of things which is why the safe words or signals are always unequivocally agreed before hand and have nothing to do with the scenarios you set up. There's a lot written about these kinds of scenarios given the power play involved but ultimately the person in control is always the person on the receiving end because they have the power to make it stop exactly when they say so.

My friends say, there is no way in a million years, you could ever presume consent to anything, especially with someone new to this, or new TO YOU and taking part in these activities because that's just not the way people taking part in BDSM activities tick. Even when scenarios are left fairly open and exploratory, some parameters are discussed before hand and safe words put in place. You would be unlikely to go out for dinner, go home, walk through the door and get punched in the face without having explicitly negotiated an attack scenario beforehand. Especially with new partners and beginners it is very clear when you are "playing" and when you are not.

 

[Anita18]

Then why did she pander to his ego? If I think someone is a creep I sure don't tell them it is "amazing" that they are in my universe.

Because she was at a party and was being filmed?

Alf will say things he doesn't mean just to be cordial. I don't think it's unusual behavior for people, woman or man. You don't want to cause drama or make a scene, but to me, her inflections and lack of actual interest would steer any perceptive people off. When someone is actually interested, they'll ask you questions instead of just going "Sounds amazing!" with a fake smile.

And she can always say "No thank you" or "Sorry I'm busy" when Jian started to push for more concrete things. That's always been a favored tactic in my family.

 

[viennese]

I personally think that women are taught to minimize their worries, essentially gaslighting themselves. "Am I weird for not being okay with this? Maybe I'm just overreacting."

"

Yes to this. And I think Dan Savage has it: Ghomeshi's M.O. while dating in his hometown was to do something like hair-grabbing, shoving on the first date. Then if the woman didn't run a mile, he interpreted that (plus flirtatious texts) as consent to escalation (slapping, hitting on side of head) on the next encounter.

Which is demented and dangerous. Not safe and sane and consensual.