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CBC Bizarreries
Mar. 25th, 2014 09:56 amLast night there were two closely following occurrences on CBC Radio One which really had me shaking my head.
The first was the weather after 10:00, which was a forecast for Friday night. Last Friday night.
The second was a discussion on Jian Gomeshi regarding "rape culture", with a typical talking head, two sided discussion. I could imagine a useful and nuanced discussion regarding this, but this was neither: they must have gone out of their way to find somebody (Heather Macdonald) who would do all of the following: try to redefine the term to apply only to university and college campuses; try to restrict the discussion to situations involving excessive consumption of alcohol; recommend that young men should be encouraged to show "chivalrous" behaviour towards young women[1]; favour measures placing the onus on potential victims rather than potential predators; reject findings because of a gut feeling that the numbers weren't believable; try to use the issue as a springboard to a "young people are sliding downhill" attitude; argue that the fact that parents / young women want to get into campuses (specifically, Yale) which have some publicity around having difficulty with student sexual assault is evidence against rape culture (on campus) rather than an illustration of rape culture (in the general society).
(For the record, I think that especially in light of the fact that Canada replaced the offence of rape with several variants of "sexual assault" decades ago, and in light of the fact that a number of the standard components of "rape culture" seem to be non-specific to sexual assault or gender relations at all[2], the term "rape culture" could probably stand to be replaced with a better term.)
I have low expectations of the CBC generally, since they gutted CBC FM. However, this was definitely extreme even for them.
[1]Since "chivalrous" behaviour embeds a whole set of assumptions about inequality of power / privilege it's basically another side of the same coin as denigration, not a counter to it.
[2]I observe that the component made up of "boys will be boys" extends not just to serious mistreatment of women but to (sometimes quite serious) vandalism of physical property (and, at least in the not too distant past, mistreatment of visible minorities[3]) in the name of "pranks", which implies to me that what drives it is not just related to rape culture but a more general problem society has with expecting and enforcing mature behaviour.
[3] Cf. Joe Hall's "Full Moon and Welfare Cheques".
The first was the weather after 10:00, which was a forecast for Friday night. Last Friday night.
The second was a discussion on Jian Gomeshi regarding "rape culture", with a typical talking head, two sided discussion. I could imagine a useful and nuanced discussion regarding this, but this was neither: they must have gone out of their way to find somebody (Heather Macdonald) who would do all of the following: try to redefine the term to apply only to university and college campuses; try to restrict the discussion to situations involving excessive consumption of alcohol; recommend that young men should be encouraged to show "chivalrous" behaviour towards young women[1]; favour measures placing the onus on potential victims rather than potential predators; reject findings because of a gut feeling that the numbers weren't believable; try to use the issue as a springboard to a "young people are sliding downhill" attitude; argue that the fact that parents / young women want to get into campuses (specifically, Yale) which have some publicity around having difficulty with student sexual assault is evidence against rape culture (on campus) rather than an illustration of rape culture (in the general society).
(For the record, I think that especially in light of the fact that Canada replaced the offence of rape with several variants of "sexual assault" decades ago, and in light of the fact that a number of the standard components of "rape culture" seem to be non-specific to sexual assault or gender relations at all[2], the term "rape culture" could probably stand to be replaced with a better term.)
I have low expectations of the CBC generally, since they gutted CBC FM. However, this was definitely extreme even for them.
[1]Since "chivalrous" behaviour embeds a whole set of assumptions about inequality of power / privilege it's basically another side of the same coin as denigration, not a counter to it.
[2]I observe that the component made up of "boys will be boys" extends not just to serious mistreatment of women but to (sometimes quite serious) vandalism of physical property (and, at least in the not too distant past, mistreatment of visible minorities[3]) in the name of "pranks", which implies to me that what drives it is not just related to rape culture but a more general problem society has with expecting and enforcing mature behaviour.
[3] Cf. Joe Hall's "Full Moon and Welfare Cheques".
