By Matthew Behrens
(This story appears on rabble.ca as of April 19, 2021)
April is Sexual Assault Awareness Month,
and while there has been plenty of awareness this year, there remains precious
little government action on ending the scourge of male violence against women
and children, both at home and globally.
Indeed,
it seems there were more politicians’ tweets of concern and condolence over the
death of Prince Philip than there were in response to the mid-March release of
the Canadian Femicide Observatory for Justice
& Accountability’s report on Femicide in 2020, which documented the killing of 160 women and girls last year. A
woman or girl is killed (almost invariably by a man) every 2.5 days in this
country, a consistently high rate that has marked every year under Justin Trudeau’s
self-proclaimed “feminist government”. But this annual slaughter was part of
the news cycle for only a brief moment, with nary a call to address this ongoing
emergency from federal party leaders. As of April 13, the Observatory had recorded at least an additional 56 killings of women and girls since the
start of the year.
The 2020
femicide report found a greater proportion of women and girls were killed in
rural settings (54%) despite the greater representation of urban dwellers in
Canada. Women aged 55-64 were the largest proportion of victims, followed by
those aged 25-34 and 35-44. The largest proportion of male accused were 25-34.
More than 20% of victims were Indigenous.
Since
record keeping began in 1961, the Observatory notes over 10,000 women have been
victims of femicide in Canada. While mass killings of women in such horrors as
the Toronto van attack or the terrorist rampage in Portapique, Nova Scotia
generate headlines and one-day media discussions that tend to dance delicately
around the issue of whether armed misogyny is at the root, the Observatory
notes that any public outrage expressed during such times “does not seem to be
matched when men kill multiple family members, with the primary target being
their female partner. These are also often mass killings motivated by
misogyny.”
Misogyny and White Male Entitlement
Significantly,
the Observatory report says “the role of misogyny – and white male entitlement
– continues to play a role in women’s deaths…[Y]et, still today, we
continue to witness resistance to acknowledging the role of misogyny in
violence against women and girls, particularly if men and boys are also killed
alongside female victims. This, in turn, prevents our ability to address the
role of misogyny in addressing the persistently stable rates of violence
against women and girls in Canada and globally.”
In
the past five years, the Observatory has documented the killings of over 761
women, mostly by men who were close to them. In 2020, many cases of femicide
were preceded by “chronic abuse and violence toward victims who were ultimately
killed by their abusers.” Some of the women, the report notes, did have system
contact (i.e., police, courts). In one instance, they cite the case of a man
who had been taken into custody on 3 occasions, usually for breaching court
orders, and who was released to house arrest, upon which he committed the
femicide. In a separate case, the abuser had been released after doing time for
a previous assault against the eventual femicide victim; he had been arrested
four times previously for disobeying a no-contact order.
In
other cases, the report notes women faced barriers accessing women’s shelters
and expressed fears about the potential involvement of child services if they
reported their abuser. In many cases, friends and other family saw signs of
abuse but did not realize their extent. The report also discusses
“coercive-controlling behaviour” which men use against women, from
psychological abuse and stalking to sexual jealousy and viewing and treating
women as property. In a disturbing signal about the normalization of such
coercive-controlling behaviour, the Observatory points out that these “often go
unnoticed as red flags for the femicide that ultimately occurs and, therefore,
are significantly underestimated.”
The
report laments an institutional “inability to address negative and damaging
attitudes, beliefs, and stereotypes about violence in intimate relationships.
Evidence of the potential negative outcomes arising from such attitudes can be
seen in 2020 cases in which violence against women in the context of intimacy
continues to be minimized and normalized…for various cases, it was reported in
the media that police had been called to respond to arguments between couples
which were labelled by police as ‘minor’ or family members claimed that the
victim was involved in a ‘toxic’ relationship. Arguably, then, the power
imbalances in these relationships are not captured when such descriptors are
used and demonstrates how formal and informal responses continue to normalize
what is not normal – violence against women by their male partners.”
Acknowledging Without Acting
Meanwhile,
spokespersons for male-dominated institutions like the military and the police
are increasingly using the Trudeau-esque language of acknowledging the failures
to end violence against women as the standard response for failing to do
anything about it. It’s easy for men to be applauded for declaring that
something must be done to end male violence, but such words ring hollow amidst
the dearth of accountability mechanisms and system change required to ensure
transformational change.
On
April 1, Ottawa police officer Eric Post -- who for over 3 years had been suspended with pay after being
charged with 32 offences, including assault, sexual assault, and forcible
confinement committed against seven women -- pleaded guilty to only seven of
those counts in exchange for three years of non-reporting probation and
resigning from the force. Among the charges dropped were some relating to one
woman who took her life last year.
“I would fear going out for
recess duty… walking to my driveway… even walking to my mailbox…or fear he
would set my house on fire,” said
one woman in a victim pact statement read in court. Another responded to
the verdict thusly: "Eric Post gets a three-year probation for years of
torture? I'm thinking this must be an April fools joke? There were multiple
victims and long-term damage on each of us. I'm not sure I have faith in our
system anymore.”
Post’s lawyer showed how
little he understood about male violence against women when he tried to
downplay Post’s actions by saying there were no physical injuries but
acknowledging "lasting emotional and psychological impacts," as if
the latter were somewhere far down the hierarchy of pain and suffering.
Ottawa police chief Peter
Sloly, meanwhile, taking a page from the Trudeau Feminist Talking Points Playbook,
said,
“We are taking steps as an organization to ensure we are taking a
victim-centric, trauma-informed approach to supporting survivors as they go through
this difficult process.”
Nice as such words sound,
they are fairly meaningless coming from the head of a police organization. Ottawa
psychotherapist Mandi Pekan (a specialist in trauma, urban violence and
community development who also serves as project director for the Street Resilience Project) points out, “Trauma informed care is a cultural shift. It’s built into the
policies, procedures and protocols that actively resist re-traumatization.
Police cannot be trauma informed because they work for an organization that is
inherently traumatizing. Policing is built on a culture of ‘us vs them’
approach. This cannot prosper in a trauma-informed environment. It goes against
the [trauma informed] approach that actively renounces the ‘us vs them’
mentality. Throwing trauma trainings at police is not going to make them trauma
informed.”
Indeed, CBC’s The Fifth Estate detailed in
February the systemic sexism and misogyny of Ottawa Police brought forward by
14 separate women in the force over the past three years. “From casual sexism
such as being called ‘fresh meat’ to more serious claims such as forced
masturbation and rape,” the investigation “found
an entrenched culture of sexism that raises questions about how complaints are
investigated, and in some cases, according to the women, even suppressed within
the Ottawa Police Service.” Among those who have been accused of sexual
harassment are current deputy chief Uday Jaswal.
The structural misogyny
built into municipal police forces is a similar trait to what runs rampant through
the RCMP, which, despite apologizing in
2016, has never charged or truly held accountable any of the men responsible
for “rape, unwanted sexual touching, physical assault, sexist comments,
threats, gender discrimination, harassment and bullying.”
Sexualized Military Culture
Similarly, the Canadian
military, as documented in
2015 by the former Supreme Court Justice Marie Deschamps, remains built on an
“underlying sexualized culture…that is hostile to women and LGTBQ members, and
conducive to more serious incidents of sexual harassment and assault.” Just
this week, the Liberals and Bloc Quebecois teamed up to shut down a House of Commons committee investigating male
violence against women in the Canadian military. While there had been quite
valid concerns raised that committee members were using their time to take
partisan shots at one another without getting to the heart of the matter – the
epidemic of violence against women and LGBTQ in the military – the committee
could have pressed on, but failed to do so.
This Defence
committee – along with the Status of Women House committee – had been tasked
with investigating allegations against some of the top Canadian military brass,
including former chief of the defence staff Gen. Jonathan Vance and his
replacement, Admiral Art McDonald, both under investigation by the
military's National Investigation Service over separate allegations of sexual
misconduct. War Minister Harjit Sajjan and Trudeau’s
office were aware of the allegations against Vance, as was the previous regime under
Stephen Harper.
Meanwhile, Vice Admirald
Hayden Edmundson has also stepped aside
following the release of allegations that he sexually assaulted a 19-year old female
crew member in 1991. Stéphanie Viau told
CBC she was raped by Edmundson aboard HMCS Provider, and that she was now
coming forward seeking an investigation and charges in an effort to heal. She
told CBC that she had also been sexually assaulted by two other superiors prior
to the attack by Edmundson.
Despite knowing Edmundson
was investigated for a pattern of behavior including “suggestive or unwelcome
comments, sexual advances, predatory behaviour and inappropriate relationships
with female subordinates,” Vance promoted him in 2019 “to manage military
personnel command, which gives him authority over career consequences for
military members found to have engaged in sexual misconduct,” the CBC reported.
Survivor Stéphanie Viau wrote in
response, “How ironic that HE was placed in such a position. We will not be
able to fix this tolerated sexual misconduct culture with the same people that
nourished it.”
The
committee hearings had originally been scheduled following the courageous
coming forward of numerous women like Major Kellie Brennan, who told Global news: “I wasn’t
allowed to tell the truth until I was given permission to tell the truth. I
didn’t even know how to get that permission. I tried. I asked my chain of
command for permission to speak, and I listened to a whole range of reasons why
I should and shouldn’t.”
4,600 Claims
In addition, high-profile Lt.-Col. Eleanor Taylor
quit the military in March, writing "I am sickened by ongoing investigations
of sexual misconduct among our key leaders. Unfortunately, I am not surprised.
I am also certain that the scope of the problem has yet to be exposed.
Throughout my career, I have observed insidious and inappropriate use of power
for sexual exploitation. I am not encouraged that we are ‘investigating
our top officers.’ I am disgusted that it has taken us so long to do so.”
The most recent comments
echo those of women who, for years, have been speaking out against the epidemic
of male violence that is at the core of the military’s culture. There are
currently some 4,600 claimants
who are part of a massive class action suit against the military for sexual
harassment, gender discrimination and sexual assault.
Former Canadian Armed Forces member Paula
MacDonald told a
Parliamentary committee in 2019 that her military career “was
short, unfulfilling and painful. I voluntarily released from the service
because my chain of command refused to reasonably address the behaviours of
superiors who discriminated against my abilities and sexually harassed and
objectified me. I was subjected to increasing levels of violence from service
members who behaved inappropriately, and I left to protect my physical safety.”
At the time, MacDonald
noted that changes suggested by the Deschamps report “must be facilitated by the larger Canadian
government, because internal DND systems, developed by the CAF leadership,
favour superiors who behave abusively over victims of this abuse through
unit-led investigations.”
Meanwhile, a new poll
reveals that 78% of respondents agree that the Canadian military has a systemic
problem of sexual harassment, including among senior leaders. Women are more
likely to agree with this statement (83%), though men are not far behind (72%).
More than three-quarters of those polled agreed that the federal government
response is “all talk and no action.”
Despite such public
awareness of criminal violence, the Canadian military faces zero consequences
as an institution for its failure to protect the lives of the women in its
ranks. The self-proclaimed feminist government of Justin Trudeau continues to
devote almost $32 billion annually – the largest share of federal discretionary
spending – to an organization whose foundational culture is built on
hatred of women. If one consequence of
the War Dept.’s failure to seriously end violence within its ranks were a
significant loss of funding – perhaps redirecting those funds to the National
Action Plan to End Violence Against Women and Girls which Trudeau has yet to
implement – maybe then a federal department which is always coddled and never
held to account might face a serious reckoning.
Street-Level Misogyny
While
institutionalized misogyny continues to present itself as a massive national
security issue for more than half of the population, such violence on an
individual level continues to grow exponentially.
On April
11, a global study of street harassment in 15 countries (Brazil,
Canada, China, France, India, Italy, Mexico, Poland, Russia, Spain, South Africa,
Thailand, UAE, UK, and USA.) revealed almost 80 percent of women reported street harassment, with 50% of
those surveyed declaring that they did not feel safe in public spaces. In a
major indictment of the failure of both so-called democratic countries as well
as authoritarian regimes, 75% of those women “said they avoided certain
public spaces to try to avoid street harassment and 54 percent said they
avoided some forms of public transportation specifically.” During the pandemic,
72% of women reported that it appeared that harassers “were emboldened to harass because of the
increased anonymity a mask gave them.”
For
Canadians under the misapprehension that they live in a country led by a
feminist government, the survey numbers are a stark reminder of how little has
been done to end a culture of misogyny. Among Canadian respondents, 84% of
women reported at least one incident of street-level sexual harassment, with
54% answering that they have experienced, even during the social distancing
pandemic, “unwanted touching, hugging or kissing” and 38% reporting “somebody
hanging around me or following me with
sexual intentions.”
While
the federal and provincial governments have no serious plans to address such
male violence, it is left to community-level individuals and groups to do the
heavy lifting. One such effort is a series of bystander intervention trainings
being offered this month by the international Hollaback! organization, with Canadian trainings in English and French.
One
of those doing the training is internationally recognized
women’s rights advocate and public educator Julie Lalonde, whose acclaimed book
Resilience is Futile was published last year. Lalonde
recently testified at the Status of Women committee about her own experience of
relentless male violence following her 2014 appearance at the Royal Military
College to teach cadets about ending sexual harassment. In addition to the
hostile reception she received there – at what she named the worst audience she
has ever dealt with – during the years following her public discussion of this
toxic masculinist nightmare she received “thousands of threatening emails, social media messages and even
phone calls. I’ve been accosted at in-person events and I can no longer speak
in public without a security detail. I have paid dearly for my courage and so
it is very disheartening to see those of you with immense power shying away
from the work necessary to make change.”
Lalonde called on committee members to show
the courage of one cadet who, amidst the heckling and threats being hurled at
Lalonde at the RMC, stood up to the hostile mob. “He began to berate his
classmates for attacking me, told them they were being babies and went so far
as to say that ‘The way we talk about women at RMC is embarrassing.’”
For Lalonde, part of the way forward is going
beyond vague acknowledgements and using language that truthfully describes the
on-the-ground reality. “Are CAF members uncomfortable with terms like rape
culture, toxic masculinity, survivor-centred? Absolutely,” said Lalonde. “But
you cannot change something you won't even name.”
Performative gestures
In addition to naming, proper data collection
is also crucial. As the Femicide 2020 authors note, “the lives of
women and girls are at risk because we are not collecting, or making available,
the right information to support prevention efforts,” which would include, for
example, Statistics Canada’s homicide figures indicating whether a murder was a
femicide. In the absence of official data, researchers have to rely on media
and court records, while those collecting the data are “increasingly
withholding basic facts – sex, gender, relationship, method of killing, and so
on.”
The
Femicide 2020 report concludes that while governments say ending male violence
against women is a priority, “are these symbolic and often performative
gestures being followed with concrete action by way of investment of resources,
the establishment of long-term, sustainable initiatives, and an emphasis on the
vital, quality training of those working in responding sectors that needs to
accompany such changes?”
Indeed,
as the second anniversary of the final report of the Inquiry
into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls approaches, there is still
no federal response to the inquiry’s recommendations. On the first anniversary
in 2020, Crown-Indigenous Relations minister Carolyn Bennett blamed the
pandemic for its failure to act. “For that excuse to be used, that’s an
embarrassment to the government,” said
Lorraine Whitman, president of the Native Women’s Association of Canada,
at the time.
Last fall, the Ontario
Native Women's Association put together a report, Reconciliation with
Indigenous Women, that contained numerous recommendations for
what should be included in a national action plan to address male violence
against Indigenous women and girls. The organization’s executive director, Cora
McGuire-Cyrette, said
“We wrote this report to help the government, to say 'here is a pathway, here
is a plan you can take and implement as soon as possible,’” and indeed, they
did so during the same pandemic that was used as an excuse for no action from
Ottawa.
One of those who testified
at the inquiry, Charlotte Gliddy-Murray, told
CBC, “After the inquiry was done, I feel that the government just dropped us.
By us, I mean the family members. There was no follow-up whatsoever after we
gave our testimonies, and that is not right.”
Male Violence against Racialized Women
Often ignored or obscured
in this discussion is the trauma of male violence against racialized women. A
significant challenge to this reality relates to the dearth of proper data
collection (referenced as a major obstacle in the Femicide 2020 report) as well
as a failure by institutions and governments to undertake - let alone act upon
- an analysis of intersectional forms of oppression.
The patterns of
institutional violence against Black women that run the gamut from police and
social workers to health care facilities and economic apartheid are well
described in Montreal writer and activist Robyn Maynard’s landmark book, Policing Black Lives. As poet, educator and organizer El Jones writes,
“Women and their children are policed intergenerationally.
Black girls are labelled as disobedient and angry, records that follow them for
life. Black girls are hypersexualized, viewed as older than their age, and
disciplined and suspended more harshly. For both Black and Indigenous women,
girls, and Trans women under colonization, sexuality and reproduction themselves are criminalized.
Black bodies are surveilled at the most intimate levels.”
Jones proposes
that any effort to address these multi-system layers of violence must consider
how communities are resourced. “Grants that only designate funding for
organizations, use inaccessible language, or that demand formal financial
records are not built for Black women working in community,” Jones says.
“Mutual aid funding initiatives create models for communities to gather and
distribute funds directly to people in need…. I often say that a Black woman
given $10,000 can do more than institutions working with millions. Black women
run breakfast programs out of their houses, help neighbourhood kids with their
homework, mother community children, and prepare boxes for incarcerated community
members. Working with Black communities to identify the grassroots women who
are known to do the work and getting resources directly to them allows Black
women to do the transformative labour day to day that sows the seeds of
justice. If we want to end our reliance on policing, we must invest in Black
women first.”
Meanwhile,
violence against Asian women has also seen a significant rise, manifested in
everything from individual street attacks to the recent mass femicide in
Atlanta. The Chinese Canadian National Council’s report of
over 1,150 anti-Asian hate crimes during the first year of the pandemic notes
60% of targets were women. “There’s so much pain and grief,” said
Amy Go of the Chinese Canadian National Council for Social Justice following
the Atlanta massacre. “At the same time, as Asian Canadian women, none of us
were surprised. There was no sense of shock. It was as if we knew this was
coming … it just happened to be in Atlanta.”
While Trudeau expressed
his shock and dismay over the Atlanta murders, Avvy Go, Executive Director of
the Chinese and Southeast Asian Legal Clinic in Toronto, pointed out
that the 2019 federal government’s anti-racism strategy specifically failed to
mention anti-Asian racism. And while some funding has flowed for anti-racism
initiatives, critics point out that the focus on specific projects deflects
from the broader institutional barriers that remain unaddressed regarding
employment, immigration and income supports.
Meanwhile, as
Trudeau’s government puts out its boilerplate statements of solidarity with
Muslims marking Ramadan, his government is continuing to look the other way as
Muslim women in Quebec are subjected to apartheid legislation (C-21) that removes them from
public employment positions if they wear a hijab or niqab. Attacks against Muslim women in Quebec are not
unique to that province, though, as Edmonton
recently reported six separate attacks on Muslim women who were walking in parks, sitting in a car,
or waiting for a bus.
As always, the
failure of governments to take proper action are being remedied as much as
possible at the grass roots and community level by women directly impacted by male violence.
In Montreal, for example, Nisa Homes is
working throughout
Ramadan to fundraise for a transitional home for immigrant, refugee and Muslim women
and children fleeing male violence. While it is admirable that these efforts
are underway, it must remain frustrating to see institutions like the police and
military where such male violence thrives receiving unending amounts of cash
while those who tend to the survivors must hold bake sales and raffles to open
safe spaces.
An so, as the
final two weeks of Sexual Assault Awareness Month continue, may it be an
opportunity to build out of that awareness real action to end male violence
against women.
