We can’t ignore the danger of misogyny
The past week has been a searing one for crime and punishment and misogyny — three words that have not always been linked so strongly as they are now.
Three notorious cases in which misogyny was highlighted played out one right after the other.
First there was last Monday’s horrific van attack in North York which killed eight women and two men and injured 14.
Almost immediately in the stunned aftermath, the attack became publicly linked to a since-deleted Facebook post of now accused killer Alek Minassian in which he appeared to identify with a misogynistic group of angry young men called “incels”— involuntary celibates, who blame their sexual frustration on women.
Two days later, in Denmark, submarine inventor Peter Madsen was sentenced to life imprisonment after being convicted of premeditated murder, aggravated sexual assault and desecrating a corpse in last year’s gruesome death of Swedish journalist Kim Wall, 30.
An ambitious and talented freelance journalist, Wall had gone aboard Madsen’s homemade submarine to interview him and was never seen alive again. Her severed remains were found dumped in the water.
The court heard Madsen, 47, was a consumer of snuff films, and that he had once posted a blog: “If you feel angry with your boss, stick a knife in her back … bow to your anger, use your knife.”
Thirdly, after a retrial in Pennsylvania, Bill Cosby, 80, was convicted on three counts of aggravated indecent assault of Toronto native and Temple University employee Andrea Constand.
Over the past few years, 60 women have come forward to accuse Cosby of sexually violating them, often after giving them drugs. Constand, 45, a former basketball star, courageously and gracefully carried all their hopes for justice on her shoulders as her case became the only one to be prosecuted.
These are profound moments in the history of hatred and violence against women.
We are still in the early process of learning about motivation in the case of Minassian, the 25-year-old Richmond Hill man now facing 10 charges of murder and 14 charges of attempted murder.
He is alleged to have run down pedestrians in a rented white van in the worst case of mass murder in Toronto’s history.
As the wrenching public vigils and private mourning continue, so does the theorizing.
A male friend I love and respect asked me: “Why are women appropriating this crime when we don’t yet know all the facts, when it happened to men too?”
We certainly need more information. But we also need to call out a possible online connection to misogyny the same way we would if there had been a homophobic post or a jihadist one, the latter of which often gets highlighted before the ambulances have arrived at the hospitals.
The other two cases are incontrovertibly linked to misogyny. Both Peter Madsen and Bill Cosby thought they had the power to do what they wanted to women. Both men showed zero respect for women.
I am not yet ready to let Kim Wall or Andrea Constand leave my mind without acknowledging the price they have paid, and the price our society will continue to pay if it doesn’t step up to deal with misogyny.
Kim Wall’s disappearance and murder haunted many female journalists.
As I wrote last fall, what happened to her evokes a “dispiriting reality that has as much to do with life as it does with journalism: Women alone — even professionals doing their jobs — are still vulnerable to attack.”
Wall, admired by many as a courageous, adventurous journalist, would be roaming the world today looking for stories if she hadn’t boarded the submarine of a twisted man desperately interested, as it was proven in court, in sadistically killing a woman.
While some media observers likened her tragic case to a Scandinavian murder mystery, the truth is that depictions of women being stalked, pursued, sexually attacked and murdered are a constant in our popular culture.
It makes me sick. After I was attacked once in my early thirties by a man who came through my window wearing a stocking mask (and rescued before he could harm me by another man who loved me), I vowed I would never again sit through another movie that featured a woman being attacked. If I had kept to that, I would have been estranged from popular culture.
Maybe there will be a movie made about Andrea Constand, who after Cosby’s conviction tweeted only: “Truth prevails.” She is a reluctant hero to me. The courtroom heard for the first time that Constand received a whopping nearly $3.4 million in a private settlement from Cosby in 2006. (Even a very rich man innocent of wrongdoing wouldn’t privately fork over that much unless he was desperate to stay out of criminal court.)
There are people who say if Constand took the money, why did she then participate in the criminal case? Because her case could be prosecuted within the statute of limitations, and because a private settlement does not equal public justice for a man like Cosby.
I mourn the loss of Kim Wall. I wish Andrea Constand a Cosby-free future in the fullest sense of the word. Her story held up. She was believed. Hallelujah and thank you #MeToo, for bringing more awareness to a courtroom in Pennsylvania.
Other Cosby accusers left that courtroom sobbing with relief and empowerment after the guilty verdict.
Misogyny is a specific hatred. Acknowledging it doesn’t demean all other hatreds out there. It doesn’t harm good men.
But denying it means women will always face danger. Instead of just living our lives.