Rosie Dimanno is a Toronto writer who yesterday published an op-ed piece so undeniably backwards that I had to make a public response.
Here is the link to her article: https://www.thestar.com/opinion/star-columnists/2018/01/25/patrick-browns-downfall-an-affront-to-fairness.html
Here is my response:
I find it highly interesting and yet somewhat unsurprising that Toronto Star editorial pundit Rosie Dimanno yesterday published a highly questionable piece regarding the most recent earthquakes erupting across our socio-political landscape.
I can’t help but wonder if Dimanno ever really knows what she’s doing. In producing many of the usual, self-serving arguments made by sexual predators in positions of power, she is making it easier for them to justify their odious behaviour by drowning out the voices of the real victims.
Dimanno has taken a page straight from the Trump Media Manipulation!™ Playbook in order to distract us from the real and much more complex issue of systematic sexual abuse, by loudly and dramatically decrying unfairness--a clarion bell for us, because it is something towards which we all strive as Canadians.
Our writer has then followed through with the tried-and-true, Trump-style shifting of the blame by pointing the finger elsewhere, and doing so supposedly in the name of justice. How has she done this? Disconcertingly, she has done so by stomping on the easiest targets in society and everybody’s favorite scapegoats, the victims of sexual abuse.
Wow.
We know for a fact that the majority of harassment suffered by women is perpetrated by someone they know, and these women typically become trapped into compliance out of fear (as do many children--perhaps this is the “infantalization” Dimanno thinks she sees, which in reality is acknowledgment of the fact that someone might be intimidated or scared by someone bigger, stronger, and/or more powerful than they are).
The facts state that the vast majority of the sufferers of abuse choose to keep silent about their pain--even to the point of suicide--rather than speak up about a toxic work environment or be able to side-step an inappropriate and/or unwanted romantic overture. Dimanno has definitely seen it in her own workplace and cannot claim ignorance; she will doubtlessly recall the case of Raveena Aulakh.
The numbers and statistics regarding the sexual abuse of women--which Dimanno chooses for some strange reason to ignore completely in an ostensible appeal to fairness--are clear. Abusers are far more likely to be people in a position of trust and power, or otherwise be familiar to their victims. Date rape happens frequently across Canada, almost every day, in every community. But Dimanno chooses to disregard these statistics because they don’t fit into her tidy, fictitious, and entirely erroneous world view.
Dimanno minimizes the real problems--i.e. the statistically glaring problems with our justice system and how it’s clearly failing women--by arguing that there is no problem (a classic gaslighting technique), and going so far as to grandly pronounce that “the law does not draw gender distinctions.”
Really. Oh, so we all go home and live comfortably and securely then? No, obviously we cannot. Because the fact is that the written law might not make these distinctions, but the practice of law clearly does, hence Horwath’s statement that the justice system is failing women. Again, stats show that male and female complainants are most certainly not treated equally.
Thus, Dimanno’s claim that activists want to change a system in which people are treated equally is a carefully constructed lie. Not “fake news”. Not a “disingenuous assertion”. It is a lie. It’s a lie that is quite cowardly made under the guise of an editorial, and again, dubiously in the name of fairness. A lie, saying that the activists who have been fighting against inequality and for fairness their whole lives, are actually the ones making “hysterical and intolerable demands.”
Wooooooooow.
Let’s look at how Dimanno deals with Brown’s situation. Dimanno obviously wasn’t present during the situations of Brown’s alleged assault many years ago. But that didn’t give her any problems imagining what went on, and she even felt it was okay to present her version as if is were fact--as if she knew what actually happened. She claims she has “always cleaved to the healthily agnostic” in sex assault accusation cases where it’s one woman’s word against a man’s. And that is supposed to assure us that she’s speaking accurately and fairly in publishing her version of another woman’s sexual assault?
Are we really going expect that Dimanno is going to be fair to a woman she doesn’t know, regarding a situation that she admittedly knows little about, other than whatever is in the public domain? Of course not, because Dimanno has her agenda to push. She’s not going to let the silly trouble of fairness to the victims get in her way. A male public figure has been accused! She feels she must rush to the rescue... I guess?
The first part of her piece is devoted to showing how it’s not fair to judge people in the court of public domain--but she then proceeds to ridicule and denigrate the potential victims of sexual assault, where? In the court of public domain. In her article. That she chose to have published. With her name on it.
Wooooooooooooooooooooooow.
“If you can’t handle the heat, stay out of the bedroom.” Dimanno’s closing words come with yet more kicks in the teeth to the dignity of women everywhere.
With her final statement, Dimanno is effectively insinuating that it’s still okay for men to be pushy and aggressive in the bedroom. The corollary of her pithy statement is thus: “Women, if you can’t fight a man off of you or say no when he’s doing or asking you do to something that you don’t want him to, then you are weak and shouldn’t have sex in the first place.”
Really, Dimanno? Wooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooow.
Dimanno asks, ‘Where is the assault? Where is the intimidation? Where, even, is the harassment?” I can’t help but be reminded of the fish in the bowl who, when asked what the water is like, replies, “What water?” The assault, intimidation, and harassment are all around you, Dimanno.
Does a man really have to be as bad as Weinstein, Louis C.K., or Ghomeshi for us to take a look at a situation and say, this guy probably shouldn’t be in a position to lead our province? Do they have to have committed sex crimes so reckless and profligate that victims are able to concretely and doubtlessly come forward without any fear of retribution or failure in a court of law, when so many other cases fail because of technicalities?
Do we really want to set the bar that low for Canadian men? No. We want to set the bar higher, because so many of our men are better than that. We don’t want a race to the bottom. We want a better, fairer Canada. And heeding the words of Rosie Dimanno is, most assuredly, not the way to a better, fairer Canada.
Katherine Zei
Raveena Aulakh: http://business.financialpost.com/technology/toronto-star-announces-third-party-investigation-of-newsroom-culture
Rest in peace, Raveena.
