Jian Ghomeshi Has Only Been Cleared of 13% of Accusations Against Him


Statistically speaking, Ghomesi’s not guilty verdict only sort of exonerated him of his alleged crimes.

The women who testified against him at his trial are but 3 on a list of women who’ve come forward with tales that Ghomesi is a sexual predator and serial sexual assailant.

Their testimony was riddled with supposed contradictions and apparent collusion that has only helped fuel the belief of those who cling to the myth that women falsely accuse men of sexual assault at higher numbers than the factual reality.

The vast majority – 92% at minimum – of reported sexual assaults are true. That’s a fact. It can be looked up and verified.

But, there is a large segment of society (predominantly male) who prefer to push the lie that most men accused of sexual assault are innocent and victims of “lying women”.

The heart of what has come to be termed “rape culture” flourishes because so many men can’t, or won’t, confront the truth about their gender, which is that men labor (still) under a cloud of misinformation about women and consensual sex that they picked up from dubious sources and continues to passed from one generation of men to another.

It’s 2016, but the list of fallacies about women, how we react in any given situation where relationships and sex are concerned, is still stuck in the misogynist past.

Despite what we now know about how victims of sexual assault and domestic abuse behave in the aftermath of their assaults, men, the media, the judicial system, law enforcement and religious groups with a variety of agendas continues to ignore the facts.

The fact is that victims often behave inconsistently after they’ve been assaulted for a variety of reasons.

Sometimes it’s denial. Understandable given the stigma that is still attached to having been sexually assaulted. And it’s difficult to deal with the shock of what’s happened – often at the hands of someone known to and even trusted by the victim. It’s normal to not want to believe you’ve been a victim and to try and restore a past state that has been erased by a violent betrayal of trust.

Often it’s shame because society still believes that victims can/should do more to prevent themselves from being victimized. Ridiculous, I know. We don’t ask victims of muggings why they were walking where they were or why they didn’t fight back after all.

There is fear factor too. Victims can still be at risk of repeated abuse by those who assaulted them, and with social media these days, it is all too easy for victims to be shamed and vilified by people they don’t even know. Not to mention, but let’s, push-back from family, friends, co-workers (their own and their assailant’s) and the community they live in.

Finally, law enforcement remains mostly clueless about how to deal with victims in a way that doesn’t re-victimize them, which is a problem our justice system suffers from as well.

Sexual assault is a minefield because we still see it as “sexual” rather than assault and society cannot seem to shed the idea that bad things only happen to bad people where sexual assault is concerned.

I am not surprised by the Ghomesi verdict. Growing up female, I learned quickly that men will always be believed and women will not be when it comes to sexual assault and domestic abuse. And not much has changed since I was a kid back in the seventies except that we talk about it now where we didn’t back then.

But talk is mostly all it is.

We still have no consensus on what must be done. and there continues to be undue burden on women to “prove” they are worthy of being believed rather than facing the reality that this litmus test is what allows sexual assault and predators to continue victimizing people.

I kind of hoped that my daughters would live in a safer world than I grew up in but that’s not really happening. Today is simply more proof of that.

On Being an Immigrant


I wasn’t going to write about immigration today. I wanted instead to comment on the by-election in Calgary-Greenway and the US primaries in Arizona and Utah. But.

Yesterday I was caught up in a conversation about illegal immigrants in the United States. Many people – some who I know – find the current state of immigration affairs frustrating and even maddening. They can’t understand why people – primarily brown people though no one is impolite enough to point out ethnicity – can’t just access legal channels that would allow them to enter and build lives in the country.

Probably foolishly (okay, totally foolish and even stupid on my part) I entered the conversation.

Facebook is a slightly better venue for discussion of complex issues than say Twitter, which sucks sweaty donkey balls for it, but it’s still problematic. The problem part being that you start off talking with one or two other people and all is going well when someone hijacks it with a rant about how wrong you are and it’s a quick descent into the shitty bowels of Internet hell from there on.

Accessing legal entry to any country for the purpose of living there permanently is a multi-stepped process with rules that are usually not as transparent as they initially seem.

It can be costly and will be time-consuming, personally invasive and probably will make you feel very unworthy at least once.

By design immigration falls somewhere between grueling and jumping through flaming hoops. If it wasn’t, people would vote with their feet to better countries at rates that would overcrowd a few and depopulate many.

I am an immigrant to Canada, and I taught ESL (English as Second Language) when I was in the American Midwest, so I have more than a passing familiarity with the systems.

Coming to Canada was relatively easy for me. I’m white. I was a US citizen. I’m educated. And I was married to a Canadian citizen.

I showed up at the border, answered a few question, was given a few instructions on what to do next and handed a stamped VISA.

A VISA is the first step in entering any country and in Canada there are many avenues for acquiring one. We are an immigrant nation and since the 1970’s, we sort of pride ourselves on it.

The United States calls itself an immigrant nation, but it’s relationship with immigration has always been on a sliding scale between problematic and hostile. Currently, they are in an animosity stage again.

Illegal immigrants number around 11 million, which in a country of 300plus million is a pittance of the population but given the continued sluggishness of their economy, and the fact that globalization has ballooned their lower and working poor classes, illegal migration has taken on the out-sized outrage of people who are in desperate need of someone to blame.

There are many reasons for the fact that most undocumented migrants can’t legally access the immigration process, but the process has never been overly accessible, so that’s not new.

What’s new – since the 1980’s – is the slow strangulation of the US and Mexican border thanks to the “war on drugs”.

During the 20th century, migrant workers from Mexico, primarily, flowed fairly easily back and forth. It followed the seasons and the work. For the most part, these migrants did not live in the US nor did they want to.

The crack down on the border, however, forced many to relocate to the US in order to be able to continue working and over time, as children were born in the US and families put down roots, the populations grew and started to be noticed. Not in a good way. Especially when globalization saw manufacturing jobs leave the country and working class Americans were now competing with much cheaper foreign labor for the same jobs.

This is an over-simplified explanation, but it’s meant to explain how people got to the US and why something that wasn’t a problem 50 years ago is “suddenly” a huge problem.

Some people seem to think that it’s so black and white that the solution is “get in line and get legal or go back to your country”. It’s not.

The best example I can think of is a kid in one of my English classes whose family came to the Iowa city where I taught when he was about 11 from Guatemala or Ecuador.

It was turmoil that sent them north not economics, and it was fear that kept them from going back.

Jorge had just turned 18. His English was okay, but he’d been thrown into an American school system at a point in his education where his ability to read and write in Spanish wasn’t stellar and expected to pick up a second language – English – with very minimal instruction. Consequently, he struggled in school and was unlikely to graduate from high school on time.

Discouraged, he began to look for work but didn’t have a Social Security number, so even when he found work, the lack of that single card kept him from getting the job.

He came to me one afternoon and asked if I knew how he could get a Social Security number.

“You get one when you are born and your parents apply for the card,” I said.

“I wasn’t born here,” he told me.

He looked at his shoes and then back at me. His smile was sad.

“My friends say you can buy one.”

He was really asking me if I knew who he could go to in order to do that. I can’t begin to tell you how I felt in that moment.

He was a big kid. Taller than I am and fairly beefy. Strong and he could be quite intimidating until you got to know him. But he was the sweetest guy. Polite. Soft-spoken. A hard-worker and always happy and willing to help out when asked (he was too shy to offer).

Jorge was not the only student in my class who was undocumented. There were several. One girl who had disappeared a week or so earlier and I had just learned that she’d been forced to return to Mexico to stay with relatives to avoid deportation. Her immediate family was still in the country though moved on with her younger siblings, who were US citizens, to another town.

“I don’t know how you would do that,” I told him.

He looked at his shoes again. Shoulders sagging. He was smiling in his sad way when he looked up.

“You should ask Miguel,” I said.

Miguel as another student who I was fairly certain was also undocumented. He had loose ties to the local gang scene. Was probably a drug dealer. A goofy, happy-go-lucky kid who – for reasons that escape me – was fond enough of me to not give me a hard time in class, the way he did some of my colleagues.

Jorge nodded again. Asking Miguel for help would mean stepping over a line that Jorge – to my knowledge – didn’t cross.

He thanked me and then he left.

I never saw him again.

Weeks later, another student would confirm that Jorge had left the state and was believed to be heading south. Whether he returned to his country or sought refuge with relatives in the Southwest, I never found out.

Jorge, and kids like him, make up a sizable number of the illegal immigrants that people like Donald Trump and Ted Cruz vilify on a regular basis. Young people who are in the US because they were brought there by parents. Many were quite young and don’t remember the country where they were born. Often don’t speak much or any Spanish. Indistinguishable from native-born Americans in any way you can imagine.

I don’t have a lot of patience with the idea that they are horrible people and threats to the employment and good life prospects of other Americans. And I know for a fact that short of joining the military, they have no access to the VISAs they would need to start the process to become first permanent residents and then possibly citizens.

Becoming a permanent resident of any country is a process that is not easy, but it’s a process that is easily accessible only by people who already have a certain amount of privilege.

I had privilege and that’s why I could come to Canada and become a resident and then a citizen. I don’t take that for granted. I know exactly how lucky I am.

And because of kids like Jorge (and Miguel and Tran, a Vietnamese girl who wanted to be a nurse, and Katie, a Russian whose parents died of AIDS, and Mohamed, a Bosnian refugee, and Ahmed, Pablo,  and room full of others) I know that immigrating to the United States is not a black/white thing.

It shouldn’t be reduced to a meme or talking point.

And because of that, I am doomed to arguing fruitlessly on Facebook at about it.

On Writing


Actually, on NOT writing. Mostly.

“You should blog again.”

“When are you going to get back to your writing?”

From my youngest daughter, “I know you will finish your book.” And she didn’t even add “someday”.

I used to write a lot. Every day in fact. There are 1500ish posts here to attest to that. Not to mention (but why not?), posts and a few stray articles here and there on the wide web providing a testament to my more prolific writing past.

So, why don’t I fire up this old blog and getting my writing back on?

I don’t know.

There’s too much to write about is one of the issues. I simply don’t know where to focus my attention.

Fiction? Poetry? Politics? Social issues? Life in general? Self-help? Advice?

I’ve typed around, over, under and through all of these genres. I can’t say that I have a favorite, or a particular strength, which is probably part of the problem.

I’d write about everything if that were possible.

Maybe it’s possible. But I would have to rouse myself from my mostly retired state and find a whole lot of an ambition, a perennial problem for me.

I am just not an ambitious person. I have a lot of work ethic. It would be difficult not to given that I was raised by Depression Era farm kids. Work. Hard, dull and practical is what I raised to know. It was instilled in me at a very early age. And I resent it.

At some point, working hard morphed into working smart and that transformed me into the creature that I am. Someone who can get jobs done but views most energy expense in terms of bottom lines.

How negatively will my life be affected if I don’t bother? Or half-ass it? I am a Gen-Xer after all.

So in terms of writing, when it was something I loved – and I did love it – I could do it all day. It was day-dreaming on paper and later on – a screen. But once it became work, when I was mommy blogging and then working for Care2, my old work ethic kicked in and efficiency, out-put versus in-put mindset, took over.

How much effort do I need to expend to make X number of dollars or drive Z number of page views or snag a syndication run for Y blog pieces?

Sucked the joy right from the marrow with sharpened fangs.

Oh, I know. What horrible problems to have.

People were reading your writing and someone was rewarding you – with money sometimes even – for your efforts. Poor baby.

Yes, I get it. Fair criticism. Don’t think I haven’t scolded myself. I have.

The upside of walking away and turning inward. Getting back to the organic with paper and pen. Was that I found a bit of joy again. A little bit of that love.

But the downside was that I missed being read. I really do like people to read what I write. It’s a bit of an addiction.

I satisfied it with social media. A little. For a while. It’s a cheat.

However, I am here again and my novel is screaming at me from the corner of the living room where it is piled up but unable to be forgotten. So the time is now to get back to “work”. The dilemma is rousing myself daily to do it.

I am lazy at my core. I like reading. Thinking. Walking. Broken up by Interneting and house-wife’ng and momming. It’s not a bad gig. Truly.

Being writer is a job and kind of calling . Like teaching was a calling.

I’m not afraid of competing. I am a better writer on my worst day than many people are when they really try hard.

I am aware, however, that I will annoy, possibly infuriate, and very likely disappoint people. Despite what you might think, I don’t really want to do any of those things. Although sometimes it’s necessary.

So, if you decide to read – going forward or trolling back – best to bear in mind that I am a real person at a keyboard somewhere. I have good and bad days. My interests, and therefore my choice of topics, are varied. I am not static. In thought or opinion. I’ve held views that I don’t anymore. I’ve written things that I might not now. And I am just as likely to change my point of view as I am to cling to it.

In other words, if you have some sort of idea of who you think I am, discard it. You don’t know. You don’t even know what you don’t know.

This was a rambling post. Like splashing and treading a bit of water before settling in and doing laps.

There’s a lot to write about. Rob Ford. The Liberal Budget. Unisex wash and change rooms. Donald Trump. And why I’d still vote for Clinton before Sanders. Why Twitter still sucks hard. And less weighty topics like house hunting, being too lazy to take a proper holiday and why I love Ottawa.

I’ll get to it. But first, I need to do some laundry and make a cup of tea.