XPost: can.politics, bc.politics, ab.politics   
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   From: Panca@nyet.ca   
      
   And still another example of what the Jian Ghomeshi case has caused to come out   
   of the box of Pandora:   
   __________________________   
   Leah McLaren - Special to The Globe and Mail - Friday, Nov. 07 2014   
      
      
   Women shouldn’t have to wait years for sexual offenders to apologize   
      
   When I was in my early twenties and a contract employee at The Globe, I went to   
   a staff Christmas party hosted by my boss. I was standing in the crowded   
   kitchen, chatting with a bunch of jolly, drink-flushed senior journalists, when   
   I felt a hand slip up the back of my skirt and fondle my bottom. I moved away   
   but the hand followed. At first I assumed it was my boyfriend, but then I   
   realized it wasn’t and the blood drained from head. I turned around to face a   
   colleague. He was swaying, obviously drunk, but managed to meet my eye. His   
   face was utterly blank. Back in the office on Monday, it was as if nothing had   
   happened. We never spoke of it.   
      
   For years, as most women do, I’ve racked my brain to figure out why I failed   
   to   
   react in that moment. Why didn’t I shout or hiss or just wind up and smack   
   him?   
   Why did I stand there like a frozen idiot, listening to the senior journalists   
   joking while my colleague, unbeknownst to everyone but the two of us, brought   
   new meaning to the word “handling editorâ€�?   
      
   The answer is easy; I didn’t want to make a fuss. I didn’t want to become   
   that   
   girl, the one people gossip about in the cafeteria line, which I undoubtedly   
   would have been if I’d filed an official complaint. But looking back on it   
   now,   
   I can’t help but marvel at the misery of those two choices: Either stay   
   silent   
   or point a finger and accept a starring role in the newsroom scandal of the   
   year. The system seemed broken somehow. What did I stand to gain?   
      
   He was a respected editor who was older and more experienced than me. Managers   
   at the paper admired his skill and story sense and I had been explicitly   
   instructed to let him take me “under his wing.â€� For the most part, he was a   
   thoughtful and thorough editor.   
      
   I, on the other hand, was a contract employee, anxious to prove myself and   
   desperate for a full-time job. I felt I needed my editor’s approval for both.   
   The thought of getting bogged down in some sort of drawn-out complaints process   
   before I’d even been offered a real job was unattractive. I’d seen what   
   happened to women who went down that road and I wasn’t prepared to be one of   
   them. It was, now that I look back on it, a depressingly familiar story.   
      
   I wasn’t traumatized, but the whole thing bugged me. It bugged me that I’d   
   said   
   nothing. It bugged me that he got away with it. It bugged me that he had lots   
   of interesting, liberal female friends who clearly thought he was a sensitive,   
   thoughtful guy. And in many ways he was – just not in every context. It   
   bugged   
   me, but did I think he deserved to be frog-marched out of the building with his   
   belongings in a cardboard box? That seemed a bit extreme. And so I kept my   
   mouth shut.   
      
   And I would have stayed that way, except last week something happened that made   
   me change my mind.   
      
   Since the Jian Ghomeshi scandal erupted, there’s been a great deal of talk   
   about the explosive “cultural conversationâ€� that’s taking place across   
   the   
   country on the subject of sexual harassment and abuse. It’s been a great   
   catharsis in many ways – and I am impressed by the women who’ve come   
   forward in   
   that case. I’m astonished at the courage it must have taken for those women   
   to   
   stand up and accuse an adored cultural hero of sexual assault. And let me be   
   very clear: I am not comparing the nature of my experience to theirs. There is   
   world of difference between an unwanted fondle and a closed-fist punch to the   
   head.   
      
   At the same time, there was – and is -- something about the †  
   conversationâ€� that   
   bothered me. Something hypocritical and queasy-making. I couldn’t quite put   
   my   
   finger on it until I read an essay about the Toronto media community’s moral   
   complicity in the Ghomeshi scandal and the culture of sexism and abuse it   
   exposed. The essay – which many friends were passing around admiringly on   
   social media -- was written by the man who’d groped me.   
      
   The sheer hypocrisy of that fact took my breath away. Reading the piece also   
   made me understand what had been bothering me about the so-called “cultural   
   catharsisâ€� all along. There were so many victims, so much righteous moral   
   outrage and hyperbole, but apart from Ghomeshi, where were all the   
   perpetrators? I suddenly knew what we were missing here and that was an honest   
   admission of guilt.   
      
   If we are going to have this conversation, I thought, let’s at least have it   
   honestly.   
      
   So I sent my former editor a message, reminding him of the incident and telling   
   him how it had made me feel and why I’d kept quiet for as long as I had.   
      
   And you know what he did?   
      
   He did not deny it or even contradict my version of events. He didn’t lash   
   out   
   or try to discredit me. He said that during that period 15 years ago he had   
   been drinking heavily and had been prone to blackouts. He did not offer this up   
   as an excuse but as an explanation for why he has no memory of the event. He   
   said he felt terribly ashamed.   
      
   And then he apologized – abjectly and sincerely – several times.   
      
   As soon as I heard his apology I was overwhelmed. All the anger evaporated from   
   me instantly. The incident, which had bugged me for so long, was finally over   
   and done with – poof! – just like that. Why on earth had I waited 15 years   
   to   
   ask for a simple and well-deserved apology?   
      
   Afterward, I spoke to The Globe and Mail’s HR department which was helpful. I   
   didn’t make an official complaint because for me the matter was over. Once   
   they’d spoken to the parties involved and were satisfied, the case was   
   effectively closed.   
      
   And then, to my immense surprise, I felt remarkably better – like   
   anvil-off-my-chest better. The whole process of just talking about it made me   
   want to run into every newsroom in the country and stand up on a desk and shout   
   out a memo to my juniors: “Hey younger, hipper versions of me: If you have   
   been   
   harassed or hassled or groped – stand up and be counted! Confront your   
   colleagues and talk to your boss. Just don’t stay silent like I did because   
   in   
   retrospect, my silence didn’t help anyone. Not him or me or the culture of my   
   newsroom. Silence, when it comes to stuff like this, just sucks.â€�   
      
   Yes, I was groped by my editor at Christmas party 15 years ago, and for a long   
   time it bugged me. But now I have spoken up. And he has apologized. And the   
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)