In a week where headlines have been dominated by shocking revelations about Jian Ghomeshi, one of Canada’s favourite radio personalities, I can’t help but think back to a debate dealing with rape culture I heard on his CBC Radio show Q in March 2014.
Rape culture, a term coined by feminist academics, refers to collective cultural attitudes that normalize and trivialize sexual assault. It silences survivors of sexual violence and enables perpetrators.
Jian Ghomeshi opened the debate by posing this question to two panelists: “Do we live in a so-called rape culture? Is that term accurate or is it alarmist?”
To answer Ghomeshi’s question you need look no further than the scandal in which he’s currently embroiled.
As of Oct. 30, nine women have gone to the media and accused Ghomeshi of non-consensual violence, sexual abuse, or harassment. None of them had reported it to police at the time.
When asked why she stayed silent, one woman who worked at CBC at the time of the incident said she feared Ghomeshi was too powerful.
“I felt like Jian was CBC god,” she told the Toronto Star.
Author Reva Seth spoke out on Oct. 30 about a 2002 incident where Ghomeshi put his hands around her throat and violated her. She told the Toronto Star she debated coming forward but ultimately decided against it because she believed “she would be ‘eviscerated’ because she had willingly gone to Ghomeshi’s house, drank and smoked marijuana with him, and had a sexual past.”
These women’s stories have something in common.
They said they didn’t think they’d be believed. They said they were kept silent by the legitimate fear that speaking out would be devastating for their personal and professional lives.
The Ghomeshi case is not isolated. It’s systemic, and it’s societal.
According to Juristat Canada, 90 per cent of all sexual assaults against women by a non-spouse were not reported to police. Within this same group, 63 per cent of violent sexual attacks were also not reported to police.
We live in a rape culture.
I’m sure Ghomeshi was counting on the widespread belief that women falsely report rape out of vengeance when he penned a letter telling his side of the story. In it, he characterized himself as the victim of a “campaign of false allegations pursued by a jilted ex-girlfriend and freelance writer.”
Ghomeshi is intelligent, successful, and charming. He doesn’t fit the stereotype of a sexual predator, a monster hiding in a dark alley.
But any public support Ghomeshi enjoyed initially has faded, as one “jilted ex-girlfriend” became three women; became eight women; became nine, all separately corroborating similar stories of non-consensual violence.
When Lucy DeCoutere bravely became the first woman to put her name on an account of abuse by Ghomeshi, she inspired the hashtag #IBelieveLucy and soon after #BeenRapedNeverReported, giving a platform to people who had never felt able to tell their story before.
In the last year, we’ve seen rape culture thrust into public discussion several times. Two examples are the death of 17 year-old Rehtaeh Parsons, who committed suicide after photos of her being gang raped were distributed online and the publication of messages sent by University of Ottawa students in which they “joked” about raping a student leader.
A public dialogue about rape culture and its implications is opening and it’s a conversation we, as a society, sorely need to have. Let’s turn our fascination and anger at the Ghomeshi scandal into something useful and examine the attitudes that allowed it to happen in the first place.
