Jennifer Lawrence, Jian Ghomeshi, and Harley Quinn: how the feminist media enables violence against women

It’s been almost a year since Jennifer Lawrence’s nude photos were leaked publicly; and similarly almost a year since Jian Ghomeshi was fired from the CBC over allegations of sexual assault. These events are two sides of the same coin. Both of these stories, and the way they unfolded in the media (according to my limited exposure), had a big impact on me. I talked and wrote about them a lot privately at the time, and have been brooding over them ever since.

Lately, living in Toronto, this has been stirred up again because we have been bombarded by hype about a new movie coming out next year: Suicide Squad, a superhero movie with a host of Batman villains as protagonists, including the Joker and his abused girlfriend, Harley Quinn.

I’ll get to Harley Quinn at the end. But let’s start at the beginning.

Jennifer Lawrence: “either your boyfriend is going to look at porn or he’s going to look at you.”

When the photos of Jennifer Lawrence (which she apparently had taken herself) were stolen and then distributed online, she did an interview with Vanity Fair magazine and made a quite amazing, indeed shocking, statement. Explaining where the photos came from she said, “I was in a loving, healthy, great relationship for four years. It was long distance, and either your boyfriend is going to look at porn or he’s going to look at you.”

I find this stunning! Jennifer Lawrence is reputed to be the sexiest woman in the world. Twenty-three, beautiful, famous, rich — an incredibly desirable, even powerful woman — and yet she feels, apparently, that she cannot expect her boyfriend not to look at porn while they are apart, and therefore she has been successfully blackmailed into sending him pornography of herself. She didn’t say she did it for fun — she said she did it in order to keep him from looking at other women naked in sexual positions. And she describes this as a ‘loving, healthy, great relationship.’

Does this make sense? This is practically the most desirable woman in the world, and she cannot expect her boyfriend to be faithful enough to her not to look at other women having sex. Why is the most desirable woman in the world acting so desperate?

What’s the situation here? What has happened?! This is a big deal!

What we are seeing here, and I see it all the time with people I know, is that young women do not think they can expect or demand anything from their boyfriends or that they have any weight to throw around in the relationship. The man has all the leverage. They are stuck in an attitude of ‘I have to do this or else he’ll leave me/cheat on me’, of ‘I have to do this to keep his love.’ It may not be conscious but the actions reveal it.

This is above all in relation to sex and sexual fidelity. Do young women really want to have sex with men they barely know? Do they want to have sex right away at the beginning of a relationship? To sleep with multiple men before getting married? To get an abortion if they get pregnant — rather than have the father take responsibility to raise the baby with them? To tolerate boyfriends or husbands going to strip clubs (I have heard wives complain about this without actually condemning)? To tolerate their boyfriends looking at porn, and masturbating over other women? To make their own homemade porn in the hope (realistically pretty unlikely) that it will keep their boyfriends faithful?

Do women really want to do these things? Although I see women do them all around me, I don’t think they really want them. They don’t come naturally — it often requires alcohol to induce a woman to sleep with a man she doesn’t know well. Do you know of a woman sleeping with a man she’s just met where alcohol was not involved? I can think of one, but this woman had been abused as a teenager and her promiscuity was clearly related to mental illness and the trauma of abuse. I suspect this is a lot more common than we know.

No, I don’t think women want to do these things, not deep down.

It doesn’t sound like Jennifer Lawrence really wanted to send her boyfriend those photos. Even if she had no qualms about the act itself, it was clearly a dangerous thing to do and did indeed result in bad, embarassing, painful consequences for her. (I wonder how much pain her ex-boyfriend suffered because of the photo leak? I imagine very little.)

Jian Ghomeshi: “sexual preferences are a human right.”

That was the woman’s side of the coin. With Jian Ghomeshi we see the man’s side.

When Jian Ghomeshi was first fired from the CBC he made a self-righteous Facebook post to defend himself. I diagnosed it at the time as deeply manipulative and subsequent events proved me right. But it is also deeply revealing. It is worth quoting a few lines:

I have always been interested in a variety of activities in the bedroom but I only participate in sexual practices that are mutually agreed upon, consensual, and exciting for both partners.

About two years ago I started seeing a woman in her late 20s. Our relationship was affectionate, casual and passionate. We saw each other on and off over the period of a year and began engaging in adventurous forms of sex that included role-play, dominance and submission. We discussed our interests at length before engaging in rough sex (forms of BDSM). We talked about using safe words and regularly checked in with each other about our comfort levels. She encouraged our role-play and often was the initiator. We joked about our relations being like a mild form of Fifty Shades of Grey or a story from Lynn Coady’s Giller-Prize winning book last year.

[Now,] someone [is] reframing what had been an ongoing consensual relationship as something nefarious.

But with me bringing it to light, in the coming days you will prospectively hear about how I engage in all kinds of unsavoury aggressive acts in the bedroom. And the implication may be made that this happens non-consensually. On Thursday I voluntarily showed evidence that everything I have done has been consensual.

Let me be the first to say that my tastes in the bedroom may not be palatable to some folks. They may be strange, enticing, weird, normal, or outright offensive to others. We all have our secret life. But that is my private life. That is my personal life.

There is one theme running through this whole document. And it is the principle of consent. The idea is: no sexual behaviour, not even sexual violence, can be condemned if both parties (here the woman) consent.

The really key sentence is the one I quoted in the heading. “Sexual preferences are a human right.”

Sexual preferences are a human right. In this context, what does this mean? It means a man in his forties has the right to insult, slap, beat, and otherwise abuse young women in their twenties if they will agree to it.

This is just crazy talk. It is always wrong to insult, slap, or beat your girlfriend, or any woman for that matter. It does not matter if you can get her to agree with it — in fact that tends to make it worse in that you are managing or manipulating her into agreeing to her own degradation and abuse. And if she initiates it or asks for it — doesn’t that suggest that something has gone wrong for her, maybe she has been abused before, and the last thing she needs is for another man to do that?

But in all the media controversy in the following days and weeks, what was never questioned was this principle. Sexual preference is a human right, and all that matters is consent. In essence, the whole world of public discourse accepted the moral principles which this sexual predator laid out above. There was no moral disagreement, no disagreement over principle, only a disagreement over the factual question of whether the woman had consented. Apparently some hadn’t. If they had, there would be no story here. Just a man living out his human right to abuse women

This is the flip-side of the Jennifer Lawrence story. We see here the man’s perspective: ‘I have a human right to do whatever I want to a woman sexually.’ And from the woman’s perspective: ‘I have to provide what he wants sexually or else he will leave me or cheat on me.’

The ethic of consent is no protection

Arising out of these stories, the business of consent has become the great moral crusade in relation to sex and violence against women. It is being taught to elementary-school-age kids and plastered all over college campuses and vented in the media endlessly. Consent, consent, consent.

Here is the problem. Even if you accept no moral principles governing sex, if you want to protect women from harm consent alone is not a sufficient ethic.

I didn’t hear a single voice in the mainstream media criticizing Jian Ghomeshi’s interest in violent sex in itself. It was always taken for granted that this is fine so long as it never crosses the line of consent. Well, what that means is you are breeding a generation of men who enjoy abusing women. Violence is a more and more significant theme in pornography, and apparently most men nowadays routinely look at internet porn. (And now we have the film Fifty Shades of Grey introducing it to the mainstream, and to women.) The self-proclaimed feminists in in our midst apparently have no problem with men practising violence against women. This generation of men who love to insult, slap, and abuse their girlfriends or, like Ghomeshi, the women they work with — is it realistic to think that they are going to be scrupulous about consent? Is it realistic to think that none of this harms the women involved?

Is it realistic to think women sending photos of themselves over the internet will be protected by a scruple about consent?

The media outrage over these stories was focused on consent. The lesson we were supposed to take was that it is wrong to hit a woman, or to distribute her photos, without her consent. But that was only on the surface. The real lesson being transmitted was: these activities are inherently okay. It is normal and okay for a woman to send pornography to her boyfriend. It is normal and okay (as was described numerous times by women involved with Ghomeshi) for a young woman to go alone to the home of a strange man in the middle of the night. It is normal and okay for a man to ask you, or tell you, to let him abuse you during sex. It is normal and okay to agree to it.

Oh, but you can say no. And men are supposed to listen if you do.

I’m raising daughters, and I ask anyone else with young girls in his life — apart from all moral questions, does this seem like a formidable protection for them as they enter adult life?

Isn’t it actually, a practical guarantee that they will put themselves in dangerous situations?

And be hurt, and suffer, whether they talk about it or not, and swell the ranks of women who seem to think the only way a man will love them is if they let him do whatever he wants sexually?

Feminists don’t care about protecting women

If the feminists in the media cared about protecting women, about women growing up healthy and happy and unharmed by sexual abuse, about women knowing that they are valuable and desired, they would slam on the brakes and turn the Sexual Revolution in full reverse.

It is obvious, incredibly, shockingly, painfully obvious, that the Sexual Revolution has been terrible for women. What it amounts to is elevating men’s instinctive (and even non-instinctive, perverse) sexual wants into a morally superior right, and then holding women to that standard. It is a victory and vindication of male appetites. If men could have their way — I mean apart from being strictly trained in a religious code — they would have sex with women early and often, and not be required to make any commitment, not put anything on the line, just go on enjoying their own life their own way but with a lover or live-in girlfriend or assembly-line sexual encounters. Before the Sexual Revolution they had to exercise some restraint in their own self-interest, because they could get a woman pregnant — and then unless they escaped they would have a big problem on their hands. So there was a natural check on male appetite. But with the assumption of contraception and abortion it became possible for men to act on their appetite for sex without any restraint at all, because they could expect the woman to contracept or to get an abortion if she got pregnant.

But this would only work if women cooperated! And this required a Sexual Revolution. The Sexual Revolution was primarily a victory of getting women to approve, justify, and try to cooperate with or emulate men’s natural appetites. To get women to try to fit themselves into what men want.

And now, today, men feel their sexual appetites and selfish behaviour are beyond criticism! Like Jian Ghomeshi they get self-righteous and pouty if you disagree, or expect some restraint, or don’t give them what they want. They feel entitled to look at porn (which is a form of cheating); to masturbate (doesn’t a woman want her man, especially her husband, to give her 100% of his sexual energy? isn’t that what she wants to give him? so why is he getting himself off apart from her?); to have sex when they want and how they want and with as little commitment as they want. And women, apparently — look at Jennifer Lawrence — feel obliged to cooperate with this. It’s feminism.

What Jennifer Lawrence does not realize is that she is incredibly valuable and desired. She could ditch her man and have ten thousand men lined up to pursue her. And not just Jennifer Lawrence, but every healthy young woman is desired to an astonishing degree, and can exercise a great deal of choice and discretion. Men want women very badly. Women used to know this. And if they know this they have incredible power over men, and can expect things from men and get them. This may be harder now, because the Sexual Revolution has made men feel entitled, but you can easily eliminate those douche-bags. If you refuse to sleep with a man early in the relationship, or even until marriage, if the man wants you enough and is not a worthless fool, he will accept it and he will work hard to marry you. And there will be men out there who do want you enough. They will work hard, earn more, buy you a house, put the kids through school, quit drinking, in order to be with you. You just have to expect it.

Chris Rock understands this: why does a man work hard to get a Porsche or a nice house? To get a woman! “If a man could get laid in a cardboard box, he wouldn’t buy a house!”

These sad stories about Jennifer Lawrence and Jian Ghomeshi are the natural result of making the Sexual Revolution a plank of feminism. We can expect to see much more of this, and worse, and to see it taken even less seriously in the media. Already I have read talk about a rehabilitation of Jian Ghomeshi.

The Harley Quinn connection

I could talk here about Fifty Shades of Grey, but why bother? Anyone with a shred of common sense can see what is wrong with it.

No, let’s talk about Suicide Squad. It has been filming in Toronto since April so I have heard a lot about it, seen pictures, now seen the trailer. Judging by the hype it looks to be the new big thing in superhero movies. I enjoy superhero movies, but I will not see this one. Why? Because of what they will do with Harley Quinn.

Harley Quinn is the Joker’s girlfriend in the Batman comics. She is an abused and mentally ill wreck, sometimes suicidal, and the Joker manipulates and abuses her himself. As far as I know she has not been in a theatrical film before.

Judging from the photos and trailer, I know what they are going to do with Harley Quinn in Suicide Squad. It is a very horrible and dangerous thing. They will unite two qualities in Harley Quinn: she is mentally ill and abused; and she is sexy. Indeed I expect they will make some very intensely sexual and arousing scenes centred on Harley Quinn.

They do this all the time in film nowadays. If I’m wrong about Suicide Squad it’ll be something else. And it teaches men two things:

1. By making her abused-ness and crazi-ness part of her sexual appeal, it teaches men that abuse and the mental illness associated with it are themselves a turn-on.

2. It teaches men to seek out the vulnerable, abused, mentally ill women for sexual relationships. 

What it teaches women I don’t want to think about. But clearly we are encouraging more women to be abused, and for already abused women to be manipulated and taken advantage of and perhaps cyclically abused.

My advice

If I could offer one piece of advice to every young woman, it is this: refuse to sleep with a man until he marries you. This will do two things: first it will eliminate all the lazy, selfish, and worthless men who will just waste your time. Second it will motivate the serious man who really wants you — motivate him to his own good and yours. He will probably try to get his life and career on track so that he can marry you decently. And you will not be kept waiting for half a decade. He will make things move faster than that.

There is another benefit! It makes it easy to break up. This is one of the biggest lies of the Sexual Revolution: everybody thought love and relationships would be freer if we could have sex without those moral restrictions. Wrong. What sex is for, biologically (in addition to making babies) is to attach parents to one another like glue — that’s in our evolved biological nature, because having two parents who are attached to one another and stick together makes it much more likely for the children to survive and thrive. Sex does this whether we believe in free love or not. Biologically, emotionally, it makes us more attached to our sexual partner. And so when you have sex early on in a relationship, what you’re doing is gluing yourself psychologically to that person long before you know if you this is a good person to be glued to.

This plays into sad stories like the Jennifer Lawrence one. She could have just broken up with that a-hole instead of spending four years with him and putting herself in harm’s way to try and hang onto his fidelity. Instead she could have dated a man who would be faithful to her. But once you sleep together, especially for the woman, it is so psychologically difficult to break up. It is emotionally on par with a divorce. This is a terrible way to date!

Just quit doing it. Since men have been getting the sex easy and cheap for so long, women don’t realize they are valued. But they are — to a man, a woman is the most valuable thing on this earth — I am serious! And if you stop giving away the sex they will very quickly see that. And you will not have to bribe them with porn, or go along with nasty sexual perversions. Please, please — it does not have to be this way. You can have better than this.