Dear Men: Fuck You

Dear men:

Fuck you. All of you. I have had enough of your gender. Yes, your entire gender. Yes, even the men in my life that I love. If you identify as a man, I just want you to go away to a place where I don’t have to interact with you for a very long time. Or at least until tomorrow when I’ve caught my breath and no longer feel so much fury at all the terrible things that you do.

Up here in Canada, it recently came out that a very popular radio show host, Jian Ghomeshi, sexually abused women for years. The news broke when Ghomeshi penned an open letter on Facebook after being fired from the CBC, framing the situation as one of being discriminated against for the consensual sexual activities he liked to partake in. However, what followed was a media storm revealing that there were many women claiming to have been abused by him, going back decades.

The media conversations about this event have been mostly positive in terms of promoting gender equality and combatting sexism. The newspapers are filled with stories about rape myths, the problems women encounter when reporting their assaults, and the methods men use to diminish their crimes. However, despite all of the amazing reporting that is going on, I have been witness to so many terrible debates and arguments that I am ready to explode, and that is why I am done with men.

The Ghomeshi debate has been a popular topic on Facebook, and this is where my patience started to wear thin. For every repost of a great article, there are dozens of ignorant and hurtful comments that tried to reframe the entire Ghomeshi situation to be about men. After reading abhorrent comment number 659,432, I decided I was done. I just couldn’t take another iteration of any of the following complaints. (If this was a drinking game, my liver would have been declared dead by now.) Thus, dearest men, if you say any of these things, please stop. Please go away.

1. Declare that men are raped too! Argue that feminists don’t care about this, and until they do, they are evil and worthless and everyone should hate them.
   1. If the subject of men advocating for themselves is brought up, state that feminists should do it or are preventing it from happening or men just can’t emasculate themselves in public this way.
   2. If someone mentions that feminists do work on male sexual assault, deny or ignore this claim. Or blame feminists again. (Because logical arguments aren’t winning arguments!)
2. Emphasise the need to be OBJECTIVE (as defined by not believing them crazy women folk).
   1. Objectivity means finding the one sentence uttered by a victim that can be spun into supporting the idea that the rapist is actually an okay dude. And if someone doesn’t pay attention to that one sentence (that in context actually doesn’t support the idea that the rapist was an okay dude), then tell them they are using “Fox News” tactics, and are contributing to a biased and discriminatory conversation.
   2. Do not realise that your definition of objectivity means that the voice of one man must be weighed more heavily than the voices of ten victims because they have reasons to lie while he is just defending himself.
3. Claim that this whole situation isn’t about rape. Rape requires penetration/force/maybe sometimes a hand/something else fundamentally incorrect.
   1. NOTE: Sexual assault in Canada is any unwanted sexual touching. No penetration is needed. Hell, there are times when genital contact is not needed. Sexual assault is a broad term encompassing a lot of terrible behaviour. The details about Ghomeshi’s behaviour fall squarely into sexual assault territory. Cite: Myself, a legal academic who specialises in sexual assault and finds herself repeating these words far too often lately.
4. Ignore the women involved in any Ghomeshi conversation. Assure fellow male commentators that you respect their opinions even if they differ.
5. Begin your comment by claiming that you are willing to be labelled a misogynist just so you can make sure that the conversation doesn’t become biased. You’ll totally take one for the team and withstand the feminist abuse.
6. Make any mention of a “feminist-dominated” society. (As proven by the fact that the media is talking about a man who sexually assaulted and physically and emotionally abused the women in his life for over two decades without repercussions despite his behaviour being common knowledge).
7. Blame women for not reporting their assaults as to not do so must mean that they are liars.
8. Be enraged that all the articles you read are blaming all men for rape. #notallmen!!!
   1. Further argue that rape culture is ridiculous, and all men hate rape. Rape culture victimises men, and it’s all the fault of feminists!
9. Contend that this whole situation was about people into alternative sexual practices who just didn’t talk things through enough. It wasn’t rape or abuse. It was just a mistake!
   1. Add to your argument by stating that “the government shouldn’t be involved in the bedrooms of the nation”, and pat yourself on the back for quoting someone famous. Even if the government isn’t involved in the conversation at all.
10. Assert that everyone has the right to be presumed innocent, and fight against the unfair court of public opinion!
    1. Watch as all criminal law people in the vicinity start twitching uncontrollably, explaining once again that no one has a right to a presumption of innocence outside the criminal justice system, and how does that even make any sense, and besides, there is no standard of innocence, it’s only “not guilty”, and then distressed keening.

The above is not an exhaustive list of all the exhausting arguments I have seen/heard put forth in the past week regarding sexual assault and feminism. Neither are the comments exaggerated. Every single one of them was pulled from a conversation that I witnessed.

Now, before anyone says that I should just calm down and ignore all the douchebags, I want to assert that I can’t. I am not seeking out these comments. They are all over my Facebook feed. On Twitter. In real life conversations. I hear them on buses, in cafes, and really anywhere where at least two people can be talking about current events. The only way I can protect my ears, eyes, and heart from these odious comments would be to cut men out of my existence. Thus, this is why I am asking everyone who is male identifying to just disappear for a bit. For those men who do not suck, for all the male feminists and allies, consider this part of your responsibility to the cause. Sometimes being an activist sucks, but c’est la vie. You can use your time to teach feminism 101 to the others.

So, fuck men. Fuck you and your collective inability to be decent human beings. Sure, there are women who suck, and there are people on other, far flung parts of the gender spectrum who suck, but right now, there’s a plethora of male-identifying assholes who need to go away as they are taking up the most space and saying the worst things. There are plenty of unoccupied islands on this planet, go hang out on one of them for a bit until you’re ready to be something other than abjectly terrible. Or more likely, until my rage dies down and I can respond to your endless discrimination and cruelty with something other than a great desire to sob.

Fuck you, men of the world.

Sincerely,

Maggie Gordon

Conversations about False Rape Allegations are Generally Full of Bullshit

Content Note: Discussion of sexual assault statistics and an empirical analysis of false rape allegations.

This week an article  popped up on CBC about MRA activists in Edmonton putting posters up encouraging women not to lie about sexual assault just because they regret having sex with someone. I posted it on my Facebook feed with a bunch of comments about my rage, and a few of my fellow feminist friends responded. We ended up discussing false rape allegation statistics and their lack of empirical accuracy when a male friend of mine decided to ask me the deceptively difficult question of what should a proper estimation of the rate of false accusations be? I gave a really long answer (for a Facebook post that is), and was asked to make it rebloggable. So here is my extended response (now complete with 50% more grammar!).

My short answer is that there is no answer. Simply put, there is not enough data for relevant statistical analysis that would give us any sort of accurate picture of false rape accusations. While there have been many studies conducted on this issue, they are essentially based on meaningless numbers. Many of them focus on data obtained from police stations and thus rely on unfounding rates. Unfounding means that the police have decided not to pursue a case, and they may have chosen this option for a variety of reasons other than just the belief that a false allegation has been made. In many situations, unfounding occurs because there was not enough evidence to support a court case. It is also not uncommon for sexist attitudes to influence unfounding rates. In one of my classes in law school, we compared unfounding statistics from across the province of Ontario, and it was quite shocking to see how the rates differed between jurisdictions. Unfounding rates in jurisdictions where police officers have special training in regards to sexual assault were significantly lower than in jurisdictions that do not have that sort of training (for example, Toronto versus most of the other Ontario areas), or jurisdictions that still use training that emphasises the false idea that most complainants lie (see everything written by Baeza and Turvey in the preceding link).

Ottawa Slut Walk 2011: Reclaiming Our Sexuality

TRIGGER WARNING: Discussions of Rape and Sexual Assault

On January 24^th, 2011, the Toronto Police were giving a presentation on campus safety at York when one of the officers, Constable Michael Sanguinetti, claimed that “women should avoid dressing like sluts in order not to be victimized”. Needless to say, many people were pissed. In my previous post, I spoke about Jane Doe’s rape and her case against the Toronto police, the events of which started in 1986. Part of the evidence that Jane Doe brought forward came from internal documentation showing that the police had been trying to address sexism within their ranks, particularly when dealing with sexual assault, since the 1970s. As we can see it is 2011 and the police are still operating on the idea that women are responsible, at least partially, for rape.