It’s become a truism to observe that the legacy of CBC’s pop culture show Q’s fired host, Jian Ghomeshi, will be to open the doors wide to a national, even international, conversation about the extent of violence to women both outside and inside the workplace.
Would national Liberal leader Justin Trudeau have moved so quickly last week to boot two now former Liberal MPs out of his caucus after two female NDP MPs spoke to him of inappropriate behaviour by the two men, had Mr. Ghomeshi’s very public firing for behaviour on the same spectrum not been so prominently in the news?
The chances are that he would not have taken this step quite as quickly as he did and apparently without any consultation except with the complainants.
The next day NDP Leader Thomas Mulcair complained that the two female complainants from his caucus had no expectation that their complaints would lead to such a public airing of the matter when Mr. Trudeau called a press conference to name his own party’s apparent perpetrators and to dismiss them. Mr. Mulcair stated that his MPs could feel re-victimized by the publicity although Mr. Trudeau certainly did not name them nor did he indicate of which party they were members, apparently, and ironically, leaving this to the NDP themselves.
Federal Green Party Leader Elizabeth May quickly went on the record in support of Mr. Trudeau’s actions, saying that “he was damned if he did and damned if he didn’t” act promptly and decisively when the allegations had been brought to his attention.
Mr. Trudeau’s response in the light of all that has happened since the country heard about Mr. Ghomeshi’s firing was likely coloured, to a greater or lesser extent, by the CBC’s dismissal of its media star and the “going public” shortly thereafter by the two women who claimed he had abused them in non-consensual situations.
These two public events—Mr. Ghomeshi’s firing by the CBC and Mr. Trudeau’s firing of two Liberal caucus members about a week later—have bookmarked this debate, at least so far.
But the conversation goes on in every major news media that must be taken to be a very positive thing to all of the people, not all of them women, who were already concerned at the way girls and women are still very much objectified in our society.
No charges have yet been laid against Mr. Ghomeshi although two women have formally complained to Toronto police about his past actions in their relationships following his dismissal by the CBC. In anticipation of charges being eventually laid, Mr. Ghomeshi announced last week he had hired a prominent defense attorney.
Mr. Ghomeshi’s popular Q radio show, that runs weekday mornings, made him a national star, and this fall from his status as a prominent positive to that of a prominent negative reference gave the national conversation an enormous kick-start.
Whatever happens to Mr. Ghomeshi in the long term will happen.
What is much more important is the new voice that has been made available to women, and men too, at every strata of Canadian society.
Just now, as previously noted, the discussion so far has been maintained by and among the nation’s chattering classes and in the past two-plus weeks, this has played out on all major national television networks, large daily newspapers like the Toronto Star and Globe and Mail and on Ontario’s own TVO network where evening host Steve Paikin has led several discussions on the topic.
But the possibilities for positive changes based on this high-profile incident are limitless: Mr. Ghomeshi’s first accuser, actress Lucy Decoutere, is also a career army officer who holds the rank of captain.
Within the nation’s military organizations, like the one to which she belongs, there have long been charges of ingrained sexism with women the target group. We have heard the same charges leveled at the RCMP and various other police organizations across the country.
Ms. Decoutere, in making her brave public declaration and then taking her concerns to the Toronto police force, becomes a national role model for all women in uniform.
The assertion that violence, sexual or otherwise, by men directed against women is unacceptable at any level is self-evident, a simple truism and is based on such a simple thought that, in an ideal society, such a statement should not ever have to be made.
But, unfortunately, it’s necessary to re-state this over and over and parents of both genders should use the current conversation as a prompt to teach their sons the proper ways of interacting with girls and women just as their daughters must be taught the total unacceptability of being on the receiving end of this kind of social behaviour and what to do about it.
Mr. Ghomeshi’s firing and the ensuing discussion, leading directly as it did to Mr. Trudeau taking the two female NDP MPs complaints as gospel and then firing their imputed abusers apparently on their say alone, must surely add credibility to the demand by the collective Canadian aboriginal community that the government of Canada must convene a commission to investigate the disproportionate number of missing and murdered girls and women from First Nations backgrounds.
The whole topic is of vital importance as our society proceeds into an environment that is more and more influenced by the Internet and social media, the only real antidote to which is one-on-one common sense and the goal of an enhanced collective wisdom (something we once had, seem to have lost, and need desperately to reclaim).
If Mr. Ghomeshi’s personal debacle has turned a brighter light on these topics of vital importance, then the only way to keep it lit and focused is to demand changes for boys and men to act respectfully and responsibly towards girls and women.
