Misogyny day
Feb. 12th, 2016 05:22 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sabotabbyZoe Quinn's Tumblr post about why she dropped charges against the shitbag who's been making her life, and the lives of many women on the internet, a living hell, hit me really hard. Especially as I'm following the Ghomeshi trial, and the particularly odious Rosie DiManno columns where she calls out Ghomeshi's victims for not acting the way she'd like them to and not remembering trivial details from a traumatic event that happened years ago. I'm not linking to that.
Memory's tricky. Cops are coached about how to act on the witness stand, but I found out recently that in general, the Crown isn't allowed to coach witnesses, just the defence. The result is that women who testify against male abusers typically get torn apart, and that's part (though by no means all) of why rapists don't get convicted.
The games played on Quinn and on Ghomeshi's victims. I know these games. I have rarely posted publicly about my biological father, even in this little dead zone of the internet with my pseudonymity. But he used to play these memory games on me when we would fight about whatever. I would bring up an incident in which he'd been abusive, and he'd question me on these little irrelevant details, and thus make me doubt my own memories of the events. I think this is why I have difficulties remembering large swathes of my childhood. Reading about someone doing this to other women (was your hair up or down? What colour and model was the car?) is just beyond horrifying.
Quinn in particular hits home because she could be me. All she did was be a woman on the internet. She made stuff. It sounded like cool stuff, I dunno. It doesn't matter. She put herself out there as a creative person doing a thing, and some psycho from her past (ladies who date men, don't we all have at least one of those) rallied an army of misogynist slime to destroy her life and her family's lives.
And he's going to view this as a victory. They all will. Same if Ghomeshi gets off—doesn't matter if the criminal justice system doesn't determine innocence, just guilt, people are going to defend this guy and he's going to get to go on with his life while the victims' reputations will be tarnished forever.
I think Quinn is right to walk away from it all. The law isn't going to defend her. It was never meant to do that. You don't call the cops when you're raped, you don't expect them to understand Twitter, you can't possibly be that naïve anymore. The law exists to protect the already powerful and their property. And in the eyes of many, women are very much still the property of men.
Free speech only exists if a white guy wants to disparage those under him and escape criticism for it. Quinn's free speech doesn't get counted.
The message we're given, again and again, is to shut up. Unplug. Stay out of the public eye. If someone hurts you, acquiesce. Don't fight back. Don't take up space or make demands. Sit with our hands on our laps and hope that someone notices our purity and takes pity on us. It's not something I'm inclined to do, but then, it's not like it doesn't inform my life anyway.
My heart goes out to Quinn and to the women brave enough to testify against Ghomeshi. The system failed you. It was always meant to fail you.
Memory's tricky. Cops are coached about how to act on the witness stand, but I found out recently that in general, the Crown isn't allowed to coach witnesses, just the defence. The result is that women who testify against male abusers typically get torn apart, and that's part (though by no means all) of why rapists don't get convicted.
The games played on Quinn and on Ghomeshi's victims. I know these games. I have rarely posted publicly about my biological father, even in this little dead zone of the internet with my pseudonymity. But he used to play these memory games on me when we would fight about whatever. I would bring up an incident in which he'd been abusive, and he'd question me on these little irrelevant details, and thus make me doubt my own memories of the events. I think this is why I have difficulties remembering large swathes of my childhood. Reading about someone doing this to other women (was your hair up or down? What colour and model was the car?) is just beyond horrifying.
Quinn in particular hits home because she could be me. All she did was be a woman on the internet. She made stuff. It sounded like cool stuff, I dunno. It doesn't matter. She put herself out there as a creative person doing a thing, and some psycho from her past (ladies who date men, don't we all have at least one of those) rallied an army of misogynist slime to destroy her life and her family's lives.
And he's going to view this as a victory. They all will. Same if Ghomeshi gets off—doesn't matter if the criminal justice system doesn't determine innocence, just guilt, people are going to defend this guy and he's going to get to go on with his life while the victims' reputations will be tarnished forever.
I think Quinn is right to walk away from it all. The law isn't going to defend her. It was never meant to do that. You don't call the cops when you're raped, you don't expect them to understand Twitter, you can't possibly be that naïve anymore. The law exists to protect the already powerful and their property. And in the eyes of many, women are very much still the property of men.
Free speech only exists if a white guy wants to disparage those under him and escape criticism for it. Quinn's free speech doesn't get counted.
The message we're given, again and again, is to shut up. Unplug. Stay out of the public eye. If someone hurts you, acquiesce. Don't fight back. Don't take up space or make demands. Sit with our hands on our laps and hope that someone notices our purity and takes pity on us. It's not something I'm inclined to do, but then, it's not like it doesn't inform my life anyway.
My heart goes out to Quinn and to the women brave enough to testify against Ghomeshi. The system failed you. It was always meant to fail you.
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no subject
Date: 2016-02-12 10:50 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-02-12 10:56 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-02-12 11:35 pm (UTC)But he used to play these memory games on me when we would fight about whatever. I would bring up an incident in which he'd been abusive, and he'd question me on these little irrelevant details, and thus make me doubt my own memories of the events.
Ugh, gaslighting is a particuarly insidious form of abuse. So sorry you went through that. *hugs*
And very well said. So maybe the right answer to that "what about free speech?" thing is "It would be a great idea".
no subject
Date: 2016-02-12 11:53 pm (UTC)Thanks. It was truly a revelation when I discovered that there was an actual word for it.
And very well said. So maybe the right answer to that "what about free speech?" thing is "It would be a great idea".
Yes, this. And the day I see the defenders of free speech speak up for someone who's not a white dude will be the day I believe they stand for something other than the right to say the N-word and not get called out on it.
no subject
Date: 2016-02-13 12:25 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-02-13 12:50 am (UTC)Henein's awful, though of course everyone is entitled to a good defence. I can't believe she's getting away with these lines of questioning.
no subject
Date: 2016-02-13 05:01 am (UTC)This is the bit that makes me angriest. All the rest is just details and examples. Horrible details, and examples that hurt real people. But until there is systematic change, it will keep happening.
no subject
Date: 2016-02-13 02:18 pm (UTC)And the people justifying everything because of that failure. I guarantee 100% of my male students will take Ghomeshi's acquittal, if it happens, as proof of his innocence.
no subject
Date: 2016-02-13 08:16 am (UTC)A dead woman is the gooder woman but I'm a rebel at my own hearth wishing there was no cause and one could have a bloody rest, sometime soon.
No (rest if female, ever).
(I'm writing to you but on another channel just haven't taken the time yet so just to say.)
no subject
Date: 2016-02-13 02:17 pm (UTC)There's a reason why every fairy tale starts out with a dead woman. It's the way they prefer us.
no subject
Date: 2016-02-13 04:14 pm (UTC)=========================================
dimanno_taking_aim_at_a_2b_boondoggle
Fifteen years ago, I witnessed a mall security guard beating the crap out of a homeless man. I called the cops and stayed till they arrived. The guard was never charged. Furious, I wrote a column about the incident. The guard sued me for libel.
Molloy was the judge at my trial and was decidedly unfriendly to the defence — which would be me. It was palpable that she did not have a high opinion of newspapers. The jury came back with a weird verdict: They found the facts to be true but nevertheless awarded $5,000 in damages because they decided the opinion expressed in the column was unfair; they didn’t like the language.
no subject
Date: 2016-02-13 04:30 pm (UTC)I'm loathe to diagnose people over the internet, both because I've never met her and because I am in no way a medical professional, but one thing I got really good at when I worked in publishing was figuring out if someone was crazypants from their writing and general demeanour. I was able to figure out if a potential client was going to, say, threaten to sue us for editing their completely incoherent 200-page manifesto about how their lawyer had screwed them over in the custody dispute—and refusing to pay us—within about 10 minutes of meeting them. There's a certain pattern of disorganized thinking that I'm quite familiar with from self-published authors.
Anyway, she has it. I find her columns completely incoherent. It's either the sign of a mental breakdown (which can totally happen over the course of a lawsuit) or a sign that she was always like this but the Star has cut down on their editorial budget and there's no one there to shape her prose into something more coherent.
That's my completely non-professional opinion, anyway.
no subject
Date: 2016-02-13 09:34 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-02-13 09:47 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-02-15 09:15 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-02-15 10:33 pm (UTC)I suspect there is an actual rulebook, as in my father went through a weird phase of cult-like tapes that might have taught him how to do it. Or maybe he learned it from his parents. Who knows?
no subject
Date: 2016-02-15 11:29 pm (UTC)Do you too wish you could reach into someone's mind and make it more to your liking?
Well, friend, have I got a book for you! Thought Reform for Dummies promises better behavior in three weeks flat, OR YOUR MONEY BACK! Whether it be through careful gaslighting, malnutrition, or sleep-deprivation, we'll have your ungrateful property marching to your beat in no time!
But wait! There's more! Sign up now, and we'll throw in a legal protections booklet absolutely FREE!
no subject
Date: 2016-02-15 11:38 pm (UTC)