The Issue of Malignant Vituperation and Reasonable Debate

"Before 2014, it was unimaginable to me that I would become a poster boy for men who are assholes. I had not been a network boss or an executive with institutional power; there had been no formal complaints at work that I was aware of over the years; there were no hush-money deals or nondisclosure agreements. As things came crashing down, I became obsessed with the inaccurate stories and the pattern of salacious details taken as truth in the echo chambers of social media outrage. That foreclosed any focus on my own accountability."
"Since then, I have spent almost four years reflecting on my relations with women I dated. For some, nothing I say here will be enough or be put the right way. Even as I feel deep remorse about how I treated some people in my life, I cannot confess to the accusations that are inaccurate. What I do confess is that I was emotionally thoughtless in the way I treated those I dated and tried to date. As well, I leveraged my influence and status to try to entice women and lead them on when they were interested. There are all sorts of old-fashioned words to describe men like this: player, creep, cad, Lothario."
"But it went deeper than that. I was demanding on dates and in personal affairs. I would keep lobbying for what I wanted. I was critical and dismissive. Some women I cared about went along with things I wanted to avoid my disappointment or moods. I ought to have been more respectful and responsive with the women in my life. To them I say, you deserved much better from me."
Jian Ghomeshi, essay: Reflections From A Hashtag, New York Review of Books 

The New York Review of Books editor, Ian Buruma, has left his post after an outcry over publishing an essay by disgraced former radio host, Jian Ghomeshi, seen here outside a Toronto court in May 2016. (Mark Blinch/Canadian Press)

Jian Ghomeshi, the radio host of CBC's extremely popular "Q" social-cultural-pop-interview program was easily identifiable as an ego-driven, self-promoting star. He was, in fact, the CBC's very special star. His program so wildly popular it was syndicated and could be heard on American radio. He fell steeply and swiftly from grace when a number of women, a few at first but at last count twenty in all, went public in revealing him to be a nasty little creep of a sexually abusive predator. A revelation that brought deep satisfaction to those who detested him, and profound sadness to those who revered him.

Evidently there were rumours of his relentless pursuit of women, his autocratic and insulting behaviour with women, from female interns on the program to more seasoned women with a certain celebrity of their own. No one at the CBC evidently took them seriously; he was, after all, their star. He was, however, a shooting star and he was shot down from the heavens above to his own very personal hell. The relentless flood of news about his character along with instant condemnation from all who knew him and knew of him now identifying him as a low-life, vicious predator.

Like a beaten cur, he couldn't believe what had happened to him. But he did have enough cerebral function left to realize that he had to hire a lawyer who would be not merely competent but outstanding in her defense capabilities and that lawyer was Marie Henein. When it came to his trial, the women who had agreed to be public about their accusations, questioned professionally by the expert Ms. Henein were revealed to have enabled their own humiliation. They were so anxious to be noticed by Ghomeshi that even after he had violently manhandled them they gushed over him.

They collaborated stories and evidence in a pact to humiliate him as he had humiliated them; while they had been complicit in their own humiliation, Ghomeshi hadn't the choice. But the deft defence mounted by Marie Henein led to a discharge; not guilty as charged. Despite which he was pilloried and continues to be. This is a man who may still be a creep, but from what he has written, he understands full well what brought his downfall, identifying his own character faults and deploring them and his previous relationships with women.

Those who cling to the #MeToo movement are, however, implacably unforgiving. Ghomeshi's case is certainly one that verges on the unforgivable, but he has learned a lesson from it, and it's time for him to be able to move on, a chastened and a better man than he was. There are countless men whose behaviour is far more egregious than his, more harmful, more enduringly and relentlessly destructive. These are the men who should be outed, and many are. The thing of it is, the #MeToo movement is insatiable in its voracious appetite for revenge, and that appetite sweeps into its vortex men undeserving of such condemnation.

In the public arena of the social contract between men and women it is undeniable that women all too often get the short end of the stick. That has changed and it is continuing to change. The men that have allowed themselves to fossilize into the old order can be dealt with in ways other than their complete character assassination and professional destruction by bitter, vindictive Valkyries. Clumsy advances, male entitlement choices, these are all social errors in communication, gestures and verbal insults. There are some, like Justin Trudeau, who will never be held to account.

But these are relatively trivial, albeit insulting in comparison to the social/sexual/violent crimes that destroy women's lives. Women themselves are known to be abusive to their sex partners on occasion if and when the mood takes them. Men, however, don't die at the hands of abusive partners at anywhere near the rate that women do. Still, women have made significant gains in forwarding themselves and their aspirations as never before. The beast in some men needs more taming, but the men don't need to be destroyed in the process.

"I am not going to defend his behaviour, and I don't know if what all these women [Ghomeshi's accusers] are saying is true. Perhaps it is. Perhaps it isn't. My interest in running this piece, as I said, is the point of view of somebody who has been pilloried in public opinion and what somebody like that feels about it. It was not run as a piece to exonerate him or to somehow mitigate the nature of his behaviour."
"The exact nature of his behaviour -- how much consent was involved -- I have no idea, nor is it really my concern. [I have] ambivalent feelings [about the #MeToo movement; partly positive as a] necessary corrective on male behaviour ... but like all well-intentioned and good things, there can be undesirable consequences. I think, in a general climate of denunciation, sometimes things happen and people express views that can be disturbing."
Ian Buruma, editor, The New York Review of Books

Ian Buruma, editor, The New York Review of Books   Vincent Tullo / The New York Times

And for this intrepid, honourable editor who simply wanted to place before the reading public whom he assumes is reasonable and intelligent, an argument for discussion, the wrath of Hell has descended. The outraged 'progressive' outcry that has accompanied the publication online of the Ghomeshi piece has not elicited a reasonable debate, but rather calls for this man's head -- on a pike, preferably. So, because the paying sponsors and advertisers of the venerable Review of Books see the writing on the wall from furious #MeToo-ers, he did the honourable thing, and resigned.

Another head rolled out from under the guillotine of vicious retribution visited upon any who dare question the public evisceration of any man deemed to have stepped beyond the boundaries of approved social conduct which places men in the position where women were traditionally expected to be; modest and silent and invisible.

Jian Ghomeshi and Marie Henein, National Post

Well, Now -- From this Corner the Contender for Prize Hypocrisy -- Female Accusers of Male Sexual Predation

"This development reveals a stunning level of hypocrisy by Asia Argento,"
"At the very same time Argento was working on her own secret settlement for the alleged sexual abuse of a minor, she was positioning herself at the forefront of those condemning Mr. Weinstein, despite the fact that her sexual relationship with Mr. Weinstein was between two consenting adults which lasted for more than four years."
Weinstein attorney, Benjamin Brafman

LOIC VENANCE/AFP/Getty Images

"It doesn’t really matter what I want."
"[The message sent to people who have been sexually assaulted after the two-and-a-half year saga is] don’t bother reporting. You are going to spend the next two, three years of your life being wrapped up in a system that really doesn’t care about you."
"[I] never needed any man to tell me whether I’ve been raped or not . . . . I still know what happened to me, and it doesn’t matter what the legal system thinks."
"I’m horrified by this entire system, not just by Zuker’s inadequate analysis of case law. The whole system is horrifying and people should be horrified."
"[Her self-incriminating text message...?] I didn't think it was relevant to him raping me."
Mandi Gray, teaching assistant, York University 

Mandi Gray, right, has said she probably wouldn’t participate in a new trial for Mustafa Ururyar, left, if one was ordered, noting the case has already taken two years of her life.  (Toronto Star / Alyshah Hasham and Anne-Marie Jackson)

Mandi Gray was a teaching assistant and graduate student at York University in Toronto who had an affair with Mustafa Ururyar, also a graduate student and teaching assistant there. Their casual affair in 2015 was of two weeks' duration, when they slept together with no otheer commitment of any kind. Completely consensual. From a party, she texted him, inviting him to come along to the pub: "Come drink and then we can have hot sex". He came, and they did. And she later failed to release the text message to Toronto Police when she accused Ururyar of raping her. He was originally convicted of sexual assault, but ultimately the conviction was overturned.

Another short story of false accusations has far greater repercussions in social media. The storm of revelations and accusations that erupted in Hollywood and then spread everywhere through the #MeToo movement when several actors, among them Asia Argento, accused Harvey Weinstein of raping them set a new standard in women finally getting their own back from men who had propositioned, manhandled, molested and raped them, usually from a position of power. Men in the entertainment business, in sports, in corporate life, high and mighty celebrities and local entrepreneurs alike, were accused and their lives forever changed.

Most of the accusations without doubt were credible, some veered on the edge of absurd with clumsiness being equated with violence. But there have been a number of occasions, such as the earlier court case with CBC's one-time darling Jian Ghomeshi -- whose ego led him to denigrate women and whose sexual appetite steered toward violent kinkiness -- was accused of rape. His lawyer revealed on the stand that the women accusing him sent cloying messages of endearment and conciliation to him, after the supposed rapes took place.

And now, Italian actor-producer Asia Argento, the first woman to publicly accuse Weinstein that led to a veritable landslide of other accusations, began the downward spiral of his life as a celebrated Hollywood producer, to a pathetic wreck of a man insisting he did nothing wrong, appears to have incriminating skeletons in her own designer closet. Child actor Jimmy Bennett was assaulted by her in a California hotel room in 2013; she at age 37, he 17, even while the age of consent in the state was 18.

While she accused Weinstein of rape, forcibly performing sex on her in a hotel room, she had committed rape on a child actor and settled with him afterward to the tune of $380,000 for his silence and agreeing that a photograph of them lying in bed together not be made public. However, once news became public of her accusation of Weinstein, Bennett, now 22, approached Argento to ask for $3.5 million in damages.

Child molesters are usually, but not always, men. Women are usually, but not always, the innocent party in forced violent sex. Women insist, and with good enough reason, that they be believed when they come forward with their accusations of man-handling of their intimate persons. And those women who falsely accuse men of molestation and sexual assault do no favours to the women who have genuinely suffered the misery of sexual assault.

The Global Emancipation of Womankind

"In fact, the very best predictor of a state's peacefulness is not its level of wealth, its level of democracy, of its ethnoreligious identity. The best predictor of a state's peacefulness is how well its women are treated."
"On issues of national health, economic growth, corruption, and social welfare, the best predictors are also those that reflect the situation of women."
"What happens to women affects the security, stability, prosperity, bellicosity, corruption, health, regime type, and (yes) the power of the state."
"The days when one could claim that the situation of women had nothing to do with matters of national or international security are, frankly, over."
Valerie Hudson, lead author, Sex and World Peace, 2012

"[Within five years' time] at least 95 percent of Canada's bilateral international development assistance investments will either target or integrate gender equality and the empowerment of women and girls."
Global Affairs Canada

With bicycles impoverished girls in Guatemala can travel long distances to get to school and stay at school. UNFPA Alejandro deLeon

A study produced by the McKinsey Global Institute two years ago stated that $12-trillion could be counted on to add to the world GDP simply through the advancement of women's equality. The study gathered the conclusions of various scholarly treatises all announcing that the most reliable predictor of a country's stability results from women's equality. The conclusion: the wider is the gender gap, the likelier it is that a country will be involved in civil war, pervasive social violence will result and conflict and aggression between states become a commonplace recurrence.

The previous Conservative-led government of Canada embarked on a mission to commit $3-billion on aid in a private-public partnership whose goal was to improve maternal, newborn and child health globally. The government of then-Prime Minister Stephen Harper was concerned with the issues of child exploitation, child marriage, forced marriages and most certainly female genital mutilation. Another focus of the goal committed to eradicating those pernicious, soul-destroying customs.

That focus and determined aspirational goal guided the UN to formulate its Sustainable Development Goals. With the reality in mind that an estimated 200 million girls and women have been victimized by genital mutilation common to 30 United Nations member nations all of which dedicate a cultural/religious function of contempt for the rights of women.
UNFPA

When a girl becomes pregnant, her present and future change radically, and rarely for the better. Pregnancy before a girl is physically, developmentally and socially ready jeopardizes her right to a safe, successful transition into adulthood. - See more at: http://www.unfpa.org/publications/girlhood-not-motherhood#sthash.6Dxbkzq4.dpuf

Freeing women from the constraints and restraints of living as inferior creatures subject to the control of men is now understood to be critical in poverty reduction. During his day, then-President George W. Bush spoke of women's equality as a "non-negotiable demand of human dignity". Sweden's Foreign Minister Margot Wallstrom committed her country to the establishment of gender equality driving Swedish foreign policy.

The empowerment of women represents the advancement of all humanity. Global poverty and instability are linked to the economic exclusion of women and their social, cultural, religious inequality common to countries in the Middle East, Africa and Asia. Canada, for one has moved its bilateral development assistance to target gender equality where 80 percent of spending on foreign aid will reflect outlays in the nation's contribution to meet this objective.