johns and Jians

Standing on a crowded subway train, I had a Now Magazine open to a page spread that gave a full view to the woman peeping over my shoulder of either a Jian Ghomeshi trial analysis or an article about migrant sex workers at odds with well-meaning activists who want to end human sex traffic as a form of slavery. My only thought on human traffic is that an actress from The Walking Dead and the recent sequel to Dumb and Dumber had famously helped out with a sort of "underground railroad" operation to rescue some women who had been exploited that way. Law enforcement may state that they will focus on johns or clients, eliminating the demand for the supply. But then it could be argued that if the supply remains the same and demand is reduced then the price goes down and lower-end clients are attracted. And if those guys absorb all of the arrest risk, they might even take measures to make sure they won't be arrested. Sex workers of any stripe might be in more danger of violence. Just as rape or sexual assault victims in the future might more commonly disappear so the offenders won't be spending ten years waiting for a ticking Cosby or Ghomeshi time bomb to go off. What's in the Now magazine diverges quite a lot from my own concerns that these issues dredge up. Now usually takes the uber-progressive stance, while an umbrella like progressive or feminist or Christian or Humanistic just clouds the specifics. One might sympathize with sex workers not wanting to have contact with police, while at the same time understanding that no segment of society (even police) should be a permanent blind spot where it is understood that there just won't be investigation or policing of any kind. It would be like advertising the section of a bank where the CCTV cameras don't work. One might understand that a woman must be free to express herself as she sees fit in the say she dresses and use her body in sex work if that is her choice; the same could be said about the client using his body as he chooses. Is he merely circumventing the conventions and leagues of society or enjoying a thrill in an otherwise tame surface life, or is he cultivating a detachment from the feelings of a sex partner and a focus on his own whim that can escalate by increments into the demands of a rapist? If the latter possibility is true, then the availability of prostitution may provide baby steps for even the most cowardly character to embolden himself in the various forms or gestures of sexual assault or rape, overt physical struggle or covert with a drug in a drink. That sensibility might not grasp the idea that whatever joy or elevation comes from sex itself is part in parcel of a shared moment of individuals conspiring together like sharing a secret or simply accepting and wanting the contact of another human being. Not that some johns don't have that motivation. But it is all about the anomaly. The Crown prosecutor in the Ghomeshi trail seems like the only person in Canada who did not know how it would play out. The only reason the rest of us knew was by looking at the pattern. It is more difficult to prove rape or sexual assault than it is to create the impression that a witness is not credible. Certain things could have been checked as the witness was prepared. In movies or TV, we see practice runs with hard questions double-checking claims about whether the alleged victim tried to contact the offender at any time afterward. The prosecution team might make sure psychiatrists are brought in as witnesses to establish officially the well known human nature to behave irrationally following an event that is hard to process. They certainly could have done their due diligence to verify that a car specified as the location for an assault was of a make and colour the accused in fact owned and used at the time. Since there is the possibility of a witness lying, a continuity error can't be dismissed. Because there is so much unpunished or unreported abuse, assault and rape around the world, any high-profile case will have the added burden of being an effigy of evil and sadism incarnate waiting for a bonfire. A Ghomeshi or a Cosby might be notorious for behavior that is only finally talked about openly once that individual is vulnerable and people might well want to imprison someone simply for being an asshole. We now know Ghomeshi is not fondly recalled by those who worked with him. We can wait for someone to do a super-cut of interview clips where he is rejected by female guests of Q he asked on dates over the air, like Andrea Martin and Carrie Fisher. Either they dodged a bullet or he did, because entertainment icons don't have to worry about their future and would not likely have taken any quarter from him. The trial of an individual for several different crimes or counts of an offense might be efficient, but it also seems that we assume testimony for one specific incident supports the fact of another alleged incident witnessed by a separate person. But the only thing it bolsters is the character sketch of the accused and the likelihood of a seemingly soft-spoken and friendly persona to do something violent, criminal or otherwise creepy. We might conflate an impression of the accused as a person (two-faced, kinky, mean boss, hypocrite) with whether each allegation witnessed by one person in each case. If fifty women stood watching as Bill Cosby put something into a woman's drink and then grope her once she was asleep, those testimonies would support that case. As separate individuals with unrelated claims, they can only damn the accused in the court of public opinion. If Jian adversary Billy Bob Thornton were said to hit a woman, he would not be a pristine God falling from Mount Olympus. Nobody is salivating to prove Billy Bob is not Bad Santa or not someone capable of a dark side. Had Bill Cosby refrained from lecturing young black men about droopy drawers and staying with the mother of their children and education in general, he might not have angered Hannibal Burress and whoever used a cell phone to record the anti-Cosby bit and he might still be rambling on the Tonight Show for a polite Jimmy Fallon. If Toronto didn't have such a small entertainment community, downsized broadcasting industry, and executive indifference to building on-air personalities or talent in general let alone celebrities, a Jian would not be such a big fish rising under a girl swimmer. Is anyone from CBC checking out Second City or Lunacy Cabaret or other comedy shows around the city? There are veteran comedy folk still getting air-time, as well they should, but there could easily be open floodgates of exposure for a true cutting edge, new blood, and new faces. No need to compromise themselves or be quiet about rotten behavior when there is more investment in opening doors and building new brands.

Rape and Blog Panic Buttons

They say that if you are being attacked by a rapist it is more likely to draw help yelling "Fire!" than, "Rape!" I wonder if that has changed over the years. We ignore car alarms. I have not seen anyone scamper away guilty when a car alarm goes off. It is likely just the average car owner who may or may not know how to use the controller and shut the damn alarm off. This last half of the year a couple of blogs hit me as very annoying car alarms. One was about Louie CK's TV series and the other was about the (at the time of this writing) unaired Family Guy episode which crosses over with The Simpsons. The Louie episode reportedly involved a scene where (writer-director-star) Louie playing version of himself attempts to rape his co-creator, co-star Pamela Adlon!!!!!!!!! (animation trivia: Pamela was the voice of the boy Chris on King of the Hill; she's better known as Marcie Runckle from Californication though) I had not yet seen that episode, despite being a regular viewer, and I thought this was a disaster. I could not reconcile that image. The still was simply Louie and Pamela at the door and he is leaning on the door to block it. Well, I saw the episode with reduced entertainment value because of the misleading blog and lo and behold leaning on the door is the absolute worst of it. The episode was about his vulnerability and his sputtering lack of game in trying to re-introduce an interest she had in him previously. It was an awkwardness with which many of us are familiar, the need to be heard out, as if there is something reasonable you can say to make a moment happen. Yeah, he gave her an awkward kiss and she ket him with a wince. And yeah, it is rude to push a door closed and seem to trap someone even though realistically there is no trap. He is guilty of attempted sex, or attempted seduction - and failing to do a good job of it, and having poor timing - but not attempted rape. She ends up moving in and they are a couple an episode later. The danger of a blogger sounding a false alarm is that, frankly, if what I saw on Louie is "attempted rape" then the term is of less concern. The Family Guy or Simpson Guy "rape joke" people were up in arms about was not a joke about rape after all. Having seen excerpts from the episode, it was a scene where Bart is showing little Stewie (his guest on the show) how he has fun doing crank calls. He does one of his trademark phone calls to Moe at the bar with a name that sounds like a sentence when spoke in full so that Moe can be embarrassed after asking patrons. Then Stewie takes a turn, calls Moe, and instead of a harmless play-on-words he tells Moe, "Your sister has been raped" and hangs up telling Bart that yes indeed it is fun to do crank calls. The joke is not making light of rape; it is actually a stark contrast between benign brat Bart and the evil Stewie, obviously intended to address the accusation that one is too much like the other. While these trivial things are going on, in reality a 36 year old woman participated in a rap contest and apparently her rhyming improvisations won a contest which caused some of her male competitors to attack, rape, stab, shoot her and leave her for dead. She survived, but it is ghastly to think that such a demonic sort of poor losers would have that reaction. It wasn't what she wore. She went to a music competition and got targeted for being talented. This underscores a signature quality of a rapist: a loser mentality. I don't know what the campaigns against rape and exploitation will do to communicate with rapists. Peer pressure won't persuade them, because their peers are likely rapists/losers too. I don't know the solution, and saying this in a blog is ineffective because it won't be solved by blogs. Especially crying over TV shows when the real thing should get more coverage. I don't know if people need to get angrier. Like there is a house currently ablaze and you can actually yell "Fire!" to get any attention.

Regulating Behaviour, Total Freedom, and Blame

A question was asked on a Facebook link to a blog about conservatives pushing the idea of dressing modestly and so on to reduce the risk of rape. The friend who posted it asked, "Somebody please explain why women should change how they dress and live and men can't stop committing rape?" So I tried to answer that with the following. ______________________________________________________________________________ Why do we presume to speak for rapists? And to what extreme should people be encouraged to live "dangerously" ? Should you feel free to leave your drink unattended? Should you neglect to bring friends to a club to watch each other? If I ever have a daughter I'll be advising she practice defensive driving because there are idiots and half-asleep and texting people on the road. That might make me square or controlling to some. You could argue that if you change your dress or party ways the proverbial "terrorists win." And that may be true. Clubbers are in another world from me, lousy music and too much volume for a useful conversation. People feel sexual liberation is paramount, but that's where it gets into informed choice. If you want to live in a log cabin where bears roam, then maybe keep a gun. If you want to stroll Detroit at midnight alone in a bikini that still has cash tucked into it from the strip club, because you are so sure of the humanity of all men, hopefully the police will find you before anything happens. An lone rapist is likely too cowardly to approach a confident woman, and may prefer to home-invade an old lady, but gangs or swarmings happen and people still play "knock-out" and even if you have the "right" to cross a street on green it's still wise to look both ways before stepping off the curb because bikes and cars can lose control. I can sit here with my Princess Leia Yavin battle map desktop and say rape is 100% unacceptable and the victim is not at fault, and my opinion won't matter. But if I am working a security detail and someone wants to enjoy the extreme sport of swimming in a shark tank, I'm going to say no and reason with the person capable of reason rather than lecture a shark after the attack. _________ After being challenged on the above points __________________________________________________ You did ask, whether with irony or not. Any guy going off to prison thinks there is a chance he will be over-powered and raped. Someone from Now magazine wrote that off as "homophobia," but he would have to start clearing out his desk if he referred to a woman's fear of rape as "heterophobia." The "big bad wolf" speech as you call it is at least not CRYING wolf. I recall one day years ago clicking through channels Geraldo and Oprah both had a rapist on. Geraldo's approach was to say to the live satellite feed screen the rapist was on, "You disgust me, sir !" to a round of cheap applause. Oprah was seated beside her guest-rapist and asked information about his process - that he watched for patterns of behavior; one victim habitually left her back door open while taking garbage out to the curb, so he used that as the moment to slip in so when she locked up he was already inside with her. So rapists telling "their side" actually has been done. It's the difference between banging one's head against the wall in willful ignorance or being aware. Brian DePalma made two movies about the same premise, Casualties of War and Redacted - the one guy in the unit who does not participate in a rape. We can't help asking what would I do? Is there a solution? How often does that happen? If I were a ranking officer, would I pep talk the troops with my personal view? It would be: See these movies and know this. If you rape, you are the enemy, not a soldier on my side. No friend of mine is a rapist either, so the loyalty card won't play. Anyone complicit in it would also face court Marshall. I guess RoboCop had the ideal answer to rape, as Ellen page in Hard Candy. But a true rapist watching the latter may conclude only, "don't let your would-be victim pour the drinks." PEER PRESSURE, however, will not play out like a PSA where the guys ask why the wife has a black eye and admonish an abuser with "that's not cool, man." It's clearly hard enough to persuade sane, civic-minded people with reason ("Now we have freedom AND responsibility, baby, yeah!" to quote Austen Powers) without believing that reason and logic will reach a rapist. Maybe one who has remorse, like the Oprah guest, will say something useful. But it is pure folly to count on control from those defined by loss of control or a psychological compulsion to exert temporary dominance over someone else. There IS a shark out there, Mayor Vaughn. Close the beaches.

Why I'm Anti-Feminist and why Feminism does NOT equal equality

Had to share this in my blog. Not a fan of abortion, but I agree with much of what you said. "Slut-shaming" seems like a perfect term for this era being raised on advertisements and pandering. When people cross the street, I hear them complain that bikes and cars don't watch or abide the lights consistently, and yet the complainer persists in failing to LOOK BOTH WAYS before crossing, as he/she learned as a child. They see the green light and care only that it is their RIGHT to cross the street. Some drive defensively and avoid daydreamers and accidents; we also have to walk and live defensively. It is crazy to blame a rape on what someone is wearing, because responsibility lies with the rapist - or under the rapist - who in turn is expected to read rape-shaming blogs and tweets and socially responsible Facebook updates and learn to be a non-rapist. If I equate the aggressor with an animal - a predator - the answer from a "feminist male" will be, "Well I sure don't feel the impulse to rape when a woman is dressed sexy." That's because he is not the dangerous offender we are talking about. Bono sang, "I don't believe in forced entry / I don't believe in rape / but every time she passes by wild thoughts escape." I was once with my nephew at a hotel pool and my mother quietly made an observation that "girls today have no modesty" because there were girls anywhere from tween to 16 flaunting bodies and tattoos that cause an adult to turn his head and then blush and flinch away. The fashion industry has no problem photographing them and sexualizing them.



Some refreshing arguments, well put forth.  Had to share this, even if there are

sub-issues with which I disagree.  Not that anyone is asking.  I'm no fan of

abortion, legal or illegal.  That is to say that I don't respect it, and the rush to

whitewash it as a way to feel good about having done it I do not respect.

The fertilized human embryo with 46 chromosomes, begins a process that may

end 100 years later, that of a growing and aging human being.  It may be

spun as the same as a (23 chromosome) sperm, but THAT can be called a

belief, just as "the baby becomes quick at birth" is a belief.  Gestation being

a stage of human life is not a matter of belief nor of opinion.

  ----------------------------------

That aside, I like this woman's willingness to challenge the popular opinion

of her peer group.  I personally think that in theory feminism is a good thing,

in the sense that equality is a good thing.  Equal freedom and responsibility,

as well as equal treatment and accountability are vital.  If that - in practice -

is officially part of feminism, then there is no problem.  Otherwise, the word

seems arcane.

Justin Bieber on rape and abortion ?

Remember when the Internet had a collective meltdown over what Justin Bieber said about abortion to Rolling Stone? Well, the magazine apparently made a slight “editing error” (their words) when it came to his answer. “The full quote, his response to whether abortions should be allowed in cases of rape, reads: ‘Um. Well, I think that’s really sad, but everything happens for a reason. I don’t know how that would be a reason. I guess I haven’t been in that position, so I wouldn’t be able to judge that.’” Do with this information what you will.

That's the blurb I've recently seen posted. I left this remark in the comments:

I missed hearing about the fuss over the truncated version. He seems to be giving a sensitive answer that should alienate nobody. It's a little fishy that he was asked anything other than a softball question. A question about abortion seems designed to trip up someone with his target audience. It could be noted that a fetus gets DNA and RNA from the mother but only DNA from the father, so it is more a part of her. Also, intelligence is supposedly passed maternally, so the kid is not likely a destined rapist. And there is a 51 percent chance the unborn mystery guest is female, so even less likelihood she will rape anyone. People will abort, but let's not varnish the why: she likely thinks she is getting back at the rapist, who most likely would be delighted to show she aborted. Forcing someone to give birth might very well be an extension of the rape, but if I were talking to the pregnant woman I would not spin the fact of gestation as a mere phase of human life. Justin is right in saying that it is sad.