Sexual predators incapable of hearing ‘No’

The week opened with genial fatherfigure Cliff Huxtable — better known as Bill Cosby — named a “sexually violent predator” and sentenced to three to ten years in prison. In a Pennsylvania court, Cosby was found guilty of three counts of aggravated indecent assault for drugging and sexually assaulting a Canadian woman, Andrea Constand,

The same week, Christine Blasey Ford, professor at Palo Alto University, testified before a U.S. Senate committee that she had been the victim of attempted rape by Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, 36 years earlier.

Kavanaugh denies all allegations. The pages of his high school annual suggest he has a malleable memory.

Also, former media celebrity Gian Ghomeshi published an essay in the New York Review of Books whitewashing his own sexual escapades. Although Ghomeshi was acquitted, Ontario Court Justice William Horkins made clear that he was not saying that “these events never happened.”

Rather, Horkin stated, “a reasonable doubt exists…because it is impossible to determine, with any acceptable degree of certainty, what is true and is false.”

Time magazine published a list of 139 men currently accused of sexual misconduct — a list that did not include Cosby, Kavanaugh, and Ghomeshi. Or disgraced movie mogul Harvey Weinstein. Or Olympic gymnastics doctor Larry Nassar, accused by more than 150 women and sentenced to 175 years in jail.

Or, for that matter, a President who bragged — on tape — of grabbing women “by the pussy… When you’re a star… you can do anything.”

Three threads run through this sorry tapestry. First, these are all men. Second, they’re all men in positions of power. Third, they all insist, and probably believe, that their offence — if they admit that anything happened at all — was consensual.

Which raises the inevitable question: what is consent?

I have argued before that consent is always conditional. It can always be withdrawn.

In a parallel context, the law requires that even a legally executed a Power of Attorney must be revocable. It is valid only as long as the person granting it is capable of cancelling it.

The same principle, I suggest, applies to any consensual arrangement. I have no doubt that some women have seduced men, for their own purposes. Mata Hari and Gerda Munsinger come to mind. And that some women have used their sexuality to solicit personal benefits — a movie role, a contract, an expensive gift. Or even just to gain bragging rights: “Hey, girls, guess who I slept with last night?”

But just because some women consent to sex doesn’t mean that all women will. Every time.

Sexual predators don’t understand that. They assume that once a woman consents to a flirtation in the bar, a kiss in the hallway, or an invitation to an apartment or hotel room, therefore she consents to whatever may follow.

Once they have convinced themselves that “this gal is asking for it,” they consider consent irrevocable.

There’s a joke sometimes heard in religious circles. In the Garden of Eden, God is supposed to have told Adam, “I’m giving you two great gifts, a brain and a penis. There’s only one restriction — you can’t use both of them at once.”

Men accustomed to getting their own way simply don’t hear a “No.”

Victims are commonly asked why they didn’t speak up sooner. Why wait ten years, 20 years, even 36 years as professor Ford did, to accuse a sexual predator?

The question itself reveals its bias. It’s asked by those who cannot imagine themselves being victims.

In nature and in society, a victim’s first response is to avoid further damage. Possums play dead. Wounded wolves creep away. Rape victims retreat into their own private cave of misery.

Think about it — if you’ve been cornered by superior physical power, coerced by a popular celebrity, pressured by someone who may control your job, your income, or your future… Are you going to risk further damage by attacking him publicly?

Does an injured mouse bite a lion’s tail? No, it hides.

As Cosby’s accuser Andrea Constand told the Pennsylvania court, “The shame was overwhelming. Self-doubt and confusion kept me from turning to my family or friends as I normally did. I felt completely alone, unable to trust anyone, including myself.”

Jim Taylor is an Okanagan Centre author and freelance journalist. He can be reached at rewrite@shaw.ca