I've got this close friend who is a dominatrix, an expert at BDSM. She has worked professionally in the sex trade since I met her. When I'm feeling vanilla, I go to her to get perspective.
She often laments when she hears friends experimenting with choking during sex. "They all think they can do it. If you do not know what you are doing, and trust me, you probably don't, then the outcome can be so dangerous. Choking is not a joke."
I thought of her the minute this whole Jian Ghomeshi scandal broke news. His initial Facebook post claiming consensual yet daring sex acts with women who are making public waves against him caused the entire Canadian news media to start talks of BDSM.
News flash: Hitting someone during sex does not make it BDSM. BDSM is about the exchange of power in role play. It's about experimenting with submission, domination, sadism, and masochism all within a relationship of trust. (After a week, and many, many more women opening up and telling their experiences with Ghomeshi, we slowly unfold his violent dating history.)
A part of me feels sorry for Ghomeshi because it really blows when your big, bad secret is revealed. In so many ways, his life is over. That's where my concern for him starts and stops.
There's this thing called "karma" and some people say it's a huge bitch. I do not think Ghomeshi's issue is karma, but the result of being a person who feels entitled to women's bodies, who allows their deep-seeded emotional issues to twist into spurts of physical violence towards women he desires.
As Courtney Love once said, "Treat a woman like a dog and she'll piss on you."
Well, Ghomeshi must really love dog piss because he's currently swimming in it.
I had a really interesting conversation with a male friend of mine the other night. Recently, a girl accused him of assaulting her. She came up to him at a busy party and started screaming. He calmly asked her to talk and they spent a few hours hashing it out. She used the word rape. He asked her to explain what happened in her experience.
Apparently, they were both wasted, proceeded to go his place to get even more wasted, just the two of them, and things started up. Clothes came off, they made out. He pressed on for more. She was into it for a bit, but tried to shut it down. He tried a little again. She said no. They both went to sleep.
Their talk ended in an embrace. No, he did not rape her by the heteronormative definition of the word and she took that claim back.
There was no penetration, but he was pressing, aggressive to the point that made her feel extremely violated.
"I'm not that kind of person. I felt so bad that I made her feel like that," he confessed. "But it's hard. Girls don't act like they want to take their own shirts off and then most of the time, when I go for it, it's what they wanted me to do. As a man, I am expected to make the first move and initiate sex. Then, I do it and I assaulted her? The last 20 times I did that in that exact same situation, it ended in a good time."
Maybe. Maybe not. Maybe some of those other girls just did not say anything. Who knows? You see, the great thing about listening to each other's stories is that we learn more about people we don't necessarily understand. I like to think that women's voices are getting stronger, united, properly listened-to, and respected in our culture, and that men are discussing their fears and concerns with gender more openly as well. This is a good thing for humans.
Sexual dynamics may seem complicated, but really they are not. I've been sexually assaulted and taken advantage of many times. Unfortunately, as I have learned, this is just part of being a woman. It is not OK, by any means, but it is a reality that we are fighting to change by not keeping the truth hidden in secret under shame.
Feminism has saved my life a million times over and I think it will continue to do so for others, including men like my friend. Feminism saved these women who have taken the step to come forth against Ghomeshi and his inappropriate violence against women: A weighted, painful issue that remains a constant in our cultural conversation.
Sex is selfish when not built on mutual respect. Experimentation in BDSM is healthy when consensual, but as we have learned with new testaments of personal experiences with Ghomeshi by Lucy DeCantoure (as well as eight other women), this was just undiscussed, unwanted choking, and hitting.
Simple, horrible violence.
