OK, #MeToo, and almost certainly #YouToo if you're female

My old newspaper stomping grounds lured me out of column retirement this week to write a piece launching their #MeToo series. Here it is. You can find the Times Colonist version here.

***

I admit, the first day of the #MeToo phenomenon was a pretty brutal day to be on Facebook. So many terrible stories, though I felt genuinely heartened by the heartfelt, stunned response from men who clearly had no idea.

The critics are already popping up at this point, saying things like how wrong it is for women to have to be out there in public with their painful stories. Personally, I see real power in the #MeToo thing. Sexual assault and harassment remain one of the most common shared experiences of women around the world, and this is the first time I’ve really seen women out there about it in a big way.

I mean, seriously, can most of us even count how many times we’ve had weird and creepy experiences with a sexual overtone involving men? One of my family members and I were just recounting the time when she was 13 and some Italian on a crowded Venice ferry pressed into her from behind with his erection.

And on the one hand, I think, “Good grief, a child of 13!” and shake my head. But on the other, I know that my own understanding of “the way men are” came right around that age, too.

I’ve had many more reminders since then, from the scruffy clerk in the small Kamloops store who I realized was masturbating while I browsed, to the boss who lifted up my skirt to ascertain whether I was wearing stockings.

More intimate examples as well, of course, though the #MeToo phenomenon helped me see that there are lines in the sand for me, some things I will not put out to the world to reflect on. So just suffice to say, I know how it can be when the lines between intimacy and assault get blurred.

Throughout all of these experiences, I’ve continued to love and appreciate men. Never once did I classify what happened to me as being about all men, because I had met and loved far too many good ones to think that the issue was about all of them. I really hope we can get past any pitting of women against men in the conversation that’s to come around #MeToo. The issues are sexual assault and harassment, not gender.

That said, guys, it IS rather noticeable that this stuff almost always comes back on your gender. It does seem to indicate some troubling issue at the heart of male sexuality.

Sure, we could come up with examples to the contrary. But let’s stick with the obvious for now: Being sexually assaulted and harassed is a troubling rite of passage for virtually every girl/woman, and it’s almost always a man who is the perpetrator.

What’s the problem at the heart of all of this? Kind of a sexual privilege, perhaps. The men who have these anti-social, demeaning and even criminal behaviours believe that their desire trumps your consent.

I’m not even sure if the concept of consent is a consideration for them. Sometimes, the lack of it appears to be the turn-on, as anyone knows who has ever experienced a Thetis Lake flasher staked out on the towel beside them. At times it’s also very clearly a power move, kind of like a full-of-himself monkey who mates with whoever he chooses as a show of strength to the others.

But here’s one thing I do know: It’s got to stop. The Bill Cosby stuff, Harvey Weinstein, Jian Ghomeshi, and now accusations against David Blaine – it’s so awful.

And as women everywhere know, it’s not just happening to pretty starlets. Nor is it only rich, piggish men who are guilty. Imagine the weight of all our #MeToos if every one of us was honest about what has been done to us by men we didn’t want touching us.

There are many good men who are distraught by the #MeToo wave, asking what they can do.

First and always, listen to our stories, because we, too, need to see how disturbing it is to the men who love us that we are still having these experiences. We’re worried for our daughters, granddaughters, great-granddaughters.

And then, help us understand. Why do we have these experiences with men? What can men do to change in other men whatever behaviour is going on here? Men, we need you for that part, because such questions are mysteries to women. We have our issues as a gender, but grinding our pelvises up against strangers in public spaces or groping our young nephews is not one of them.

Talk, everyone. If #MeToo is to be anything other than a really rough few days on Facebook, women need to tear back the veil on our routine experiences of sexual assault and harassment. And men have to help us set things right.

Hard lessons from the Ghomeshi trial

     As news of the Jian Ghomeshi verdict started coming out this week, I felt like a human version of those three monkeys who see no evil, hear no evil and speak no evil - all stopped up so I wouldn't have to hear what was coming.
     I'd had a bad feeling about where things were going from the moment that the first witness was eviscerated by the defence lawyer about her behaviour after the alleged assault.
     The witnesses, like me, didn't remember things they'd done 13 years earlier, and clearly weren't prepared to have those things flung back at them in detail by the defence lawyer with the worst light possible shining on them.
     I don't know why they weren't warned in advance that unlike other crimes, a sexual assault allegation means everybody's going to be scrutinizing your behaviours before and after, looking for evidence that you're a lying slut. But the trial has certainly been a good reminder of that. We like our victims of sexual assault to be snow white, and immune to the complex feelings that come when you're assaulted by someone that you thought liked you.
    They also weren't prepared to go up against a man who obviously knew there might be a day in the distant future when the women he assaulted would disagree with his version of events, and so kept every email, every note, every easily misinterpreted thing that people say in the oh-so-complicated circumstances of being struck in the face or choked by celebrities they'd been attracted to.
     "I’ve never felt so bad about being myself than I do now," witness Lucy DeCoutere told Chatelaine magazine this week. Could there be a sadder statement than that about how well our court system serves victims of sexual assault?
     Read this post-verdict piece from Witness No. 1 and weep. The things this woman wishes she'd known before bringing her allegations are things that virtually none of us know. Most of us would come to the court system with nothing more but a few episodes of Law and Order to prepare us, and perhaps naively thinking that being a victim gives you some sort of protection from the violence of a criminal trial.
     Why is that? Why do we wring our hands about doing something about sexual assault - the vast majority of which happens at the hands of people we have invited to come closer, who we've initially given consent to, thus making things complicated and unclear from the outset  - yet still talk so little about what awaits people when they dare to bring charges?
     Ah, but now we're all quite a bit clearer about that last point. The Ghomeshi verdict hasn't brought any sense of resolution, but it did bring a crystal-clear focus on how inadequate our justice system is in handling complex cases of intimacy gone off the rails, especially when the accused is so very, very aware of masking his violent behaviours through the artifice of consent.
     The only good thing to come out of this is the web site that one of the witnesses has now launched, comingforward.ca. She told Chatelaine she hopes the site will help survivors of sexual assault "find some guidance before going to police and taking the stand.
     "Right now, there’s nowhere to look all of that up, and no one to talk to," she said in the interview. "I wish I’d known all of that from the minute I walked into the police station. But I still think — as horrible as the system is — more people have to come forward. If everyone stays quiet, it’s never going to change."
 
Find Canadian sexual assault statistics here.