Thursday, 30 October 2014

So...... Is the CBC actually trying to lose its case?

Or is it trying to gauge the opinion of its listeners or increase its listeners' outrage so that the CBC can say that people wouldn't stand for this behaviour and thus, it was reasonable to fire Gomeshi and it will win the case?

It's hard to tell.

This morning I wrote a post called "Shame on As It Happens". I have just finished streaming the interview with Lucy DeCoutere on The Current (http://www.cbc.ca/thecurrent/episode/2014/10/30/from-smooching-to-smacking-there-was-no-build-up---actor-lucy-decoutere-speaks-out/). It was not as bad as the As It Happens interview but ....

I must say that I am puzzled. This woman sounds as if she is just learning that she should have been more upset 11 years ago than she was. No wonder Jian thinks that he always had consent. Clearly, he didn't in this case. However, she didn't call him on the violence; she didn't bring it up; and she dated him more than once after it occurred. The cynic in me wonders if she thought that this might be a good career move now, because she clearly states that it wouldn't have been a good career move to have said anything previously (& she is probably right about that).

Women need to take some responsibility in all of this. For over ten years, this man has thought that what he was doing was just "hunky-dory" and it doesn't appear that either the women involved, or the men who were his friends said anything to dissuade him of that fact. That doesn't make his behaviour morally defensible, but if we as women don't want to stand up and be willing to be counted, why are we surprised when there are so many more victims. These are not children, all of them are grown women and were when the assaults occurred. Is it ridiculous of me to think that, at some point, at least some of these women should have done something more than just walking away & metaphorically shrugging their shoulders? They can't all have been so traumatized that they couldn't act. But then, they belong to the "post-feminist" generation - the ones that don't need its insights.

They also all seem to believe the propaganda that the police wouldn't have done anything. This is not the seventies or the eighties. There are female police officers and the male police officers who are in domestic violence and sexual assault units who are well trained and sympathetic. Social media (and that includes TV and radio) only tells its audience about the bad ones. The police and the justice system can do nothing at all if no one comes forward. From my experience, in cases of harassment and potential violence, for example, even when they can't arrest someone, they can scare the hell out of them. Real life is not a TV show.

"Women done got themselves some education". They don't seem to have gotten any smarter.

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