The warnings of George Orwell play a significant role in the official philosophical anxiety of SethBlogs.

ORWELLING UP SERIES:

I: FEATURING DJ MORALS

II: FEATURING CBC FEMINISM (you are here)

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In the first episode of ORWELLING UP—which I wrote while I was reading George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four—I questioned the notion of excommunicating artists for behaviours in their personal lives. Now, upon finishing Orwell’s dystopian imagining, I’ll peek in on what I increasingly perceive to be CBC Radio’s Orwellian policy on “thought crimes” against their patron ideology, feminism.

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In George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four “nothing was illegal,” but, if you were caught doing something aberrant (i.e. outside the undefined but easily inferred Party lines), “it was reasonably certain that it would be punishable by death, or at least by twenty-five years in a forced labour camp.” Similarly, CBC Radio never speaks of a feminist policy. However, the consequences of drifting from CBC feminist party lines are undeniable:

(1) If you have incorrect opinions, you will generally be excluded from this grand, publically funded conversation. And

(2) If you do Houdini your way through that first barrier, but you nudge a toe out of feminist line, you will be challenged by the normally gushing hosts.

Meanwhile, the benefits of colouring neatly between the feminist lines are equally obvious:

(A) If you never question feminism, and always treat individual feminists as infallible equality-seekers, you will have a much greater chance of being promoted to valuable hosting and guest roles, regardless of your talent and intelligence in the areas you are discussing. And

(B) If you say something that is evidence and/or decency free, you will be supported with adulation, so long as it supports the orthodoxy of feminism.

In this blog, I have criticized what I perceive to be examples of CBC’s unstated but relentless pro-feminist slant, and how its hosts never question feminist dogma. Such yielding to this particular Big Sibling is understandable given both the risks of being pushed out of CBC for “thoughtcrime,” and—if I may offer a matching Orwellian term—the benefits of demonstrating virtuethink.

But these pressures to conform are never officially acknowledged. Indeed, if questioned, the host would likely say they were always expressing their own opinions. And they’re very convincing. Many of them probably are sincere (they were, after all, likely chosen for that apparent sincerity). But, if feminists are right that their excommunicated hero, Jian Ghomeshi, was a long closeted misogynist, then they must admit that any of these other beloved feminist personalities might also be faking their commitment to the faith for the benefits of such conformity.

This unstated but ever-present thought policing is a disservice to both critics of feminism, as well as proponents, who are able to release morally and intellectually inept statements into our public airways without challenge. And, while that surely feels good to them and their congregation at the time, it deprives them of the scrutiny we all need to improve our thinking. Meanwhile, those outside of the margins of correct feminist opinion are nearly always dismissed as sexists and/or misogynists because they hint at opinions that feminists have already deemed incorrect. CBC Radio thus treats intellectual debate as unnecessary (and potentially harmful) in such cases.

In this episode of ORWELLLING UP, I consider a June 20^th CBC Q interview in which both the throughtcrime and virtuethink styles of silent feminist influence took turns leading a discussion. The conversation starred the ever warm, eloquent, and feminist-flavoured Gill Deacon interviewing Ali Wong, a rant-and-dirty-joke-wielding comedian who had both pleased and displeased feminist pastors.

Wong’s correct thinking was itemized first. Deacon played a clip from the comedian’s special, Baby Cobra, in which the then 7.5 months’ pregnant comic noted that male comedians just having a baby can merrily:

“…get up on stage a week afterwards, and they’ll be like, ‘Guys, I just had this baby. It’s so annoying and boring. And all these uppity dads in the audience are like, ‘That’s hilarious. I identify.’ And their fame just swells. Because they become this relatable, family funny man all of a sudden.”

Meanwhile, Wong hollered, just-becoming-mom comedians are a little too “busy!” producing and nursing the baby to return to the stage so quickly.

I thought this was a fair diatribe, which seemed to me not so much a hostile complaint about men as much as a playful, old-style, battle-of-the-sexes teasing of them.

CBC interviewer Gill Deacon, though, helped herself to a feminist reading of the comedy, marking the rant down in her Approved Feminist Grievance column as she celebrated it as a “fairly spot on” identification of a “double standard.”

I heard no evidence, nor claim, from Wong that she had been accosted by a double standard. A double standard implies that she was being dealt with by a different standard than her male rivals. That would mean her business and/or audience was not open to her pregnancy-or-post-pregnancy comedy in the way they would be if she were male. She made no such argument. As far as I can tell, she’s just claiming that it’s extra difficult for soon-to-be or just-become mothers to do stand up comedy. Fair enough. That doesn’t mean that there is sexist discrimination going on in this case; it might just mean that pregnancy and nursing needs can be hard on one’s comedy career. And, given that women are more often pregnant and nursing than men, they have that burden more often.

Curiously, then, after Deacon rewarded Wong for a feminist claim that she had not made, she scolded the comedian for some decidedly unfeminist material. Consider this interaction:

DEACON: You are a very professionally accomplished woman… You also joke a lot… about wanting to be a housewife… Is that really a fantasy of yours? You kind of make it seem like housewives are the geniuses of our time.

WONG: …I’m joking, because I obviously really love doing stand up. The desire, though, to not work anymore is real…

DEACON: And there’s no bells of concern that go off for you at all when your mind starts to go there?

WONG: No, I mean I think that’s real. I think a lot of my other friends, who are professional women, are like… “What the Hell am I doing?” when they see women who have super rich husbands… It’s all a fantasy…

DEACON: You say that feminism’s ruined it for us. Now we’re expected to work. Have you heard any complaints from women in any of your audiences with jokes like that?

WONG: Not really. I think most women understand that I’m joking…

DEACON: It doesn’t come across that clearly that you’re joking, I have to say. I found myself going, “Hmm, does she really think this? It’s hard to tell.”

WONG: Um, yeah.

DEACON: It sounds like I wasn’t all wrong. You kind of… do believe in the fantasy.

WONG: Yeah, part of me believes in the fantasy. But part of me also knows that it’s a fantasy. And the reality of it comes with consequences…

DEACON: ….At the end of your special, you do twist things around a little bit to sort of prove that point. But do you worry that men in your audience might think that they’re seeing what women actually secretly think?

WONG: I don’t really worry about that. I’m worried about if they’re laughing. I’m not worried about what really they’re thinking. …I’m not a teacher. I’m not a politician. I’m a stand up comic.

Notice that Wong had not only committed the speechcrime of joking about having blasphemous thoughts, but, with a little prodding, Deacon detected that Wong was doing more than just joking. Wong was admitting to taking genuine pleasure in imagining something unfeminist. She had committed a thoughtcrime: she had coveted an unapproved feminist lifestyle! If this weren’t bad enough, she had allowed men-folk to overhear her forbidden dreams.

So, far from being a freeing ideology that allows people more choice in their lives, this version of feminism is telling women not that they can be career-oriented if they choose, but that they should be. And not only should they be, but they should never enjoy dreams of greater leisure. That would clearly be fantasycrime! And, if you’re going to have these evil fantasies, the least you could do is not let the drooling men hear about it: men are too simple to understand that one woman’s favourite imagining neither means it automatically overpowers her simultaneous desire to have a career, nor does it represent all women at all times.

Next, Deacon “pushed [Wong]” for telling her audience about sexual desires that were also not feminist approved.

Wong responded to these shake-of-the-head questions by pointing out that her comedy is not a TED TALK: her goal, she said, is to just make people laugh.

Deacon did not seem impressed to hear it.

“So it’s just going for the laughs?” she asked.

Wong had clearly once again committed both a thoughtcrime (the desire) and a speechcrime (talking about it).

I’m not objecting to Deacon questioning anyone’s moral justification for their creative renderings. If Deacon wanted to explore the social implications of an artist’s material, that would be fine. However, my greatest trouble here is that Deacon and her fellow feminist interviewers at CBC are incapable of nuance both in their support and condemnation.

First, there is rarely exploration into the details and/or veracity within feminist—or, in this case, feminist-seeming—arguments. I have little doubt that pregnant women and new mothers have a particularly daunting time in stand-up comedy, but a good interviewer might have explored why the comedian thought that was so, and whether it was, as Deacon diagnosed it, a double standard, or an unavoidable consequence of biology, or something in between. Instead, in CBC Feminism’s world, any claim that a woman is treated worse than a man is approved without question or contextual consideration. Essentially, You have said something that confirms the Party doctrine, therefore I agree.

Then, on the disapproving side of the conversation, if ever someone says something that doesn’t coincide with the correct feminist opinion, the blasphemer is first given the option to renounce the position, and when, in this case, the comedian held onto her incorrect thoughts, there was no exploration of whether the comedian was nevertheless morally justified in her comedy. Instead, Deacon simply pointed out that Wong really did seem to be sincere about her wrongthink, and moved onto the next question.

This lack of nuance suffocates these conversations. We are left with vacant approvals and accusations without any moral foundation to hold them up. Instead, CBC Feminism (intentionally or otherwise) relies on fear of Party excommunication to keep their members from diverging too far from virtuethink.

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ORWELLING UP SERIES:

I: FEATURING DJ MORALS

II: FEATURING CBC FEMINISM (you were just here)

The warnings of George Orwell play a significant role in the official philosophical anxiety of SethBlogs.

THE ORWELLING UP SERIES:

I: FEATURING DJ MORALS (you are here)

II: FEATURING CBC FEMINISM

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I am currently reading Orwell’s most famous contemplation of a thought-controlled society, Nineteen Eighty-Four, and as I read about Winston Smith and his work at the Ministry of Truth, I find myself increasingly perceiving Orwellian thoughts and policies around me.

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On the May 1^st “Stepping up and speaking out” episode of CBC radio’s Unreserved, Rosanna Deerchild interviewed Deejay NDN (Ian Campeau), who says he now restricts the content he plays (and listens to) on the basis of two moral maxims:

(1) If the lyrics are “oppressive,” and/or

(2) if the musician is “oppressive” in their personal life, then Campeau will not play the associated tunes for his audience, nor will he keep them on his personal playlist.

For instance, when it comes to sexism, Campeau says:

“I guess it was kinda just like waking up to the idea of misogyny, and how I fit into the role of perpetuating it… And, you know, playing specific artists who have [been] known to have been misogynistic or have been harmful to women. I just choose not to promote them anymore. And it’s just kind of, you know, I just don’t align with those ideas anymore.”

Maxim 1 is, I think, an understandable rule of play. I can appreciate why a DJ would not want to lend their volume to content they believe is unethical.  Yet I think this is a delicate and potentially damaging code of curation; if we’re not careful, we may find ourselves excommunicating music that seems unethical, or tiptoes near the promotion of troubling ideas, but is actually commentary that is morally and/or artistically beneficial. As Campeau says:

“I try to not listen to any music that’s oppressive in any sort of way… it’s been a real learning curve and real, you know, prioritizing of values.” For instance, “…you have things like Kendrick Lamar’s last album, which was incredibly racially advanced in the way he was discussing topics… but he was still misogynistic within it, so as much as he was trying to elevate his community, he was still oppressing half of it.”

I see a few moral quandaries that will be difficult to solve here, but ultimately I think it’s reasonable for a private curator not to propagate art to which they are morally opposed. Regardless, my concerns are doubled in the second maxim, so I’ll focus my criticism there.

Maxim 2 calls for the DJ to assess the moral merits of people whose artwork they would otherwise endorse. For instance, Campeau says he’s:

“…not going to play Chris Brown anymore after what happened with Rihanna, that was a really easy choice…”

[Brown was charged with assault and making criminal threats towards Rihanna, and he pled guilty to “assault with intent of doing great bodily injury.”]

But, Campeau says, this culling of his playlist

“…gets really, really tough when you start realizing how all of your heroes are not exactly what they appear… There are so many… things like David Bowie, Led Zeppelin, Africa Bambaataa… like, there’s all these people who have done harm, it seems that everybody seems to be okay with that as long as they make good music?”

Campeau’s  (hereafter DJ Morals’) code of ethics calls for a purity of artistic souls, which—if it catches on as an ethical maxim—will unduly limit the art we’ll be able to experience.

BILL: Are you going to see the new Hamlet production?

TED: Haven’t you heard? It’s been discovered that Shakespeare once said something sexist, so he’s officially been removed from the Approved Artists List.

BILL: Seriously? Damn, I liked him.

TED: I know. So did I. But we can’t very well endorse that kind of sexism by enjoying his so-called art.

BILL: Of course. You’re right. To be sexist, or not to be sexist, that is the question.

TED: Um, even alluding to one of his quotes is kind of sexist. Sorry, I can’t be friends with you anymore.

BILL: Fair enough.

Now, dear DJ Morals, I’m not saying you shouldn’t criticize behaviour that you think is harmful (I’m doing so right now ;). I’m arguing that, unfortunately, artistic and moral merit are not always linked. And so, to limit your catalog of musicians to those who have lived perfect moral existences will clip the wings of the music you play.

There may be enough “moral” musicians (or at least potentially “immoral” ones who haven’t been caught yet) for individual DJs to still put out good stuff, but since DJ Morals is making a moral argument (he said he’s aiming to “end racism in Canada” and “to change society…” such that his “daughters [feel] safe walking home alone at night”), he’s arguing others should follow his lead. And, since he is clearly a member of the movement of so-called “social justice” which currently dominates popular media, his policy could conceivably be confused for good ethics and become the common moral code of music appreciation.

Consequently, as our ethics become more nuanced over time, there may be increasing numbers of artists (including the next Beatles or Wayne Gretzky) who will be ineligible to perform for us. And, if it’s the case that historically oppressed cultures are more likely to be uneducated, perhaps they’re more likely to be caught on the wrong side of the moral law, and so DJ Moral’s policy may disproportionately affect the artistic output of the very communities he argues need “elevation.”

Moreover, while our ethics may be improving over time, our public moral consensus is still fallible, and so if we limit ourselves only to the artists who are currently morally correct, we may be closing our minds to new moral considerations.

This moral purity requirement for performers isn’t a far-fetched fantasy/fear. As I discussed in THE SEPARATION OF WORK AND PLAY, there are many popular pundits who already demand that sports leagues suspend players who are accused of crimes. Blasphemously enough, I don’t think workers should be suspended for anything outside of work that doesn’t make them a danger to their co-workers, but at the very least, I am baffled that even those who are still legally presumed innocent should be excommunicated from their profession on the grounds that they are believed by the public to be guilty.

Even more drastically, recall that Jian Ghomeshi was fired from the CBC, not for illegal acts, but for admitting to his bosses that he took part in consensual sexual behaviour that they deemed immoral. If the rumors are true that—along with being a doubleplus sexual wrongdoer (to use Orwell’s “newspeak”)—Ghomeshi was a workplace bully, then that would have been an understandable reason to fire him. But the CBC has no place in the bedrooms of its hosts.

Nevertheless, the CBC and DJ Morals are burgeoning Big Brothers. They seem to believe it is their duty not simply to discuss morality with their audience, but to punish those they believe have crossed moral lines in their personal lives. This would be dangerous enough if the CBC and DJ Morals were infallible ethicists, but what if they’re moral morons? The CBC daily demonstrates their eligibility for such a description with their sexist policy on all gender discussions. Meanwhile, DJ Morals is an admitted former enjoyer of misogynistic rap music. (I have always despised such lyrics, so—by his moral math—it seems I get to announce that I am a better person than he is.)

Our ongoing attempts to improve our ethics have potential for much good. But we must be careful in our zeal to promote good behavior to avoid becoming thought police who not only challenge the ideas and behaviours with which we disagree, but also vaporize anyone who disagrees, or is accused of terrible actions or words outside of their artistic life.

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THE ORWELLING UP SERIES:

I: FEATURING DJ MORALS (you were just here)

II: FEATURING CBC FEMINISM

SethBlogs does not believe in trial by faith even when applied to a preacher of the religion in question.

GHOMESHI’S FEMINISM SERIES:

I: FAITH-BASED JUSTICE

II: YOU’RE EITHER WITH US OR YOU “DON’T GET IT”

III: BEYOND BELIEF (you are here)

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Before the Jian Ghomeshi trial, I criticized those who seemed willing to convict Ghomeshi in public without a fair trial. Now I am depressed to see how many people are still convicting him after a fair trial found him not guilty. In response, I offer this open letter to those confident adjudicators of justice, asking them to reconsider.

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Dear Believers:

Outside the courtroom where former CBC host Jian Ghomeshi was acquitted of sexual assault and choking charges, you held up signs stating, “We believe Survivors,” and “Stop Victim Blaming.”  I understand that you are defenders of victims and justice, and that you’re confident that both were failed in this instance. You are not alone. In my city of Vancouver, not long after the decision, a traffic-stopping march was organized to protest Ghomeshi’s freedom.

You also have some support from your friends in the media. I’ve heard pundits on TV and radio lamenting the failure of our system in this case. While they haven’t said as directly as you have that Ghomeshi is guilty, I have heard many of them state that this verdict is a symptom of a system that is unfair to female victims.

“Well you see those messages on the signs rights there…” said Riaz Meghji of City TV Vancouver’s Breakfast Television, referring to the protestors outside the Toronto courthouse. “The idea of stopping victim blaming, the idea that violence didn’t happen: these are powerful sentiments surrounding the conversation of sexual assault of what we’ve seen over the last few months of women having the courage to step up and tell their story.”

Nevertheless, despite your confidence that justice failed in this case, I wonder if you’ve considered some unintended consequences of what you’re advocating.

For instance, what do you have in mind when you instruct us to believe women?

I can understand that if someone you care about were to tell you they’d been assaulted, then—unless you knew them to have an adversarial relationship with the truth—I think there is an appropriate social expectation for you to believe them.

Presumption of truth-telling becomes trickier, though, for those in powerful roles such as  journalists, police officers, crown attorneys, and judges, who can significantly disrupt the lives of the people described in the untested “truth.”

To avoid the catastrophe of innocent people being convicted of crimes they did not commit, Canada has a justice system in which there is burden of proof (beyond a reasonable doubt) required of the state before our society will agree to put a person in prison. There are various types of evidence that can help to build such a case, and certainly complainant testimony can contribute to that. However, since we know that people sometimes lie, distort, and even misremember, surely there must be a means of scrutinizing their testimony.

If we were to follow your demand of automatically believing women we would have to put people in prison whenever women accused them.

Are you sure that’s what you want?

As Ghomeshi’s lawyer, Marie Henein, put it in an interview with CBC’s Peter Mansbridge:

“It is pretty significant that in one of the highest profile cases… Where people expressed opinions not having heard a word of evidence. That you knew that you could walk into court and that there would be an impartial person that would decide on the evidence that is heard… That’s something that we should be incredibly proud of in this country… You can tweak the system. You can criticize the system in a knowledgeable way. And it does, it constantly gets re-calibrated as it should. But slam-dunk results? Guaranteed results? Presumptions? That’s not what a fair system is about.”

Are you so certain that the burden of proof isn’t something special that protects us all from human rights violations that we have witnessed in other countries and other times?

A neutral observer might assume I’m straw-manning you (i.e. representing the least persuasive interpretation of your argument instead of the most compelling), and that by “believe victims,” you just mean that—when we meet people who say they’re victims—for compassion’s sake, we should err on the side of believing them.

However, the fact that you’ve maintained your loyalty to your “believe women” maxim even in this case is telling. Even, that is, in a case where all three witnesses were caught deceiving the courts in their testimonies, you still chant your faith-based slogans.

In contrast, former crown prosecutor, Sandy Garossino, said on CKNW:

“It’s not about, say, misremembering the make and model of the car; it’s about having the make and model of the car be part of your narrative… So then’s it’s about, well how truthful are you as a witness? Are you telling the truth? Because that’s not just a fuzzy memory, that’s actually an invented memory. And these kinds of problems were all through all of these witnesses’ testimonies. That same witness insisted that she had had no further contact with Ghomeshi. She insisted—she was swearing on a stack of bibles that she didn’t make any email contact with him… And then when confronted, ‘Well, here are your emails. You did reach out to him. You did try and contact him. And here’s your photo of yourself in a bikini.’ She just said, ‘Well I was just trying to trap him so I could confront him.’ Well that’s just not believable.”

Yet, dear believer, you still insist that believing these women is a moral imperative.

And again you’ve got some support from your friends in the media who believe in your “believe the victims” signs. Consider Global TV news anchor Chris Gailus in another interview on CKNW:

“It just points to how heavy the burden of proof is on the crown. This was really all about judicial process and the legal system. It really is troubling no doubt for a lot of women who were in positions where they have been abused, but in this case, based on the legal system that we live with, there just wasn’t enough proof, and the judge simply didn’t believe to a great enough extent that the women were honest and sincere in how they reported what happened to them, so we’re left with a decision that is baffling to a lot of people.”

Actually, Mr. Gailus, there was no proof that Ghomeshi committed the crime. Proof implies incontrovertible facts that demonstrate the guilt of the accused. We have no such evidence. All we have are statements made by people shown to have deceived the court within those very statements.

As Garossino put it:

“You can’t come to the court and mislead the court, and deceive the court, as the judge found that they did, and still be believed. I mean, the judge just couldn’t accept it, and I don’t know any criminal lawyers who would.”

Even if a presumption of truth from female complainants were the best standard for acquiring justice, is there not a point at which a reasonable person should reverse those first assumptions?

Please imagine for a moment that you were a jury member in this case. I ask you to reconsider the following three issues before deciding how you would decide.

(1) My and your first inclination is likely to assume that, if three people are making similar but separate accusations, that any coincidence of obscure details is, in itself, evidence. (How likely is it that three people would have independently invented the same story unless there was a pattern of behaviour by the defendant?)

However, my belief in the unlikeliness of coincidence was shaken when I learned that the three complainants did not come forward at the time of the alleged crimes, but waited until

(A) after Ghomeshi was fired from his CBC job for bedroom behaviours that it deemed unacceptable (but admitted they had no evidence was illegal or nonconsensual),

(B) one of the complainants then came to the media to make her accusation before going the police, and

(C) similar alleged victims were then encouraged to come forward by both the police and the media (who called any such accusers “courageous”).

So I know you still believe the women individually, but do you agree that the overlap in their testimony is no longer evidence, itself? Apparently, in the legal system, the judge cannot consider what is called “similar fact” evidence as supporting evidence when there is information (beyond guilt) that could easily explain the similar facts. (Clearly, in this case, we can reasonably say that the first complainant’s statements to the media could explain the similarity in testimony from someone who might have heard those statements). Therefore, the judge was required by law to look at each of the charges independently, and not as evidence for each other.

If that sounds wrong to you, please imagine that you were on trial for a crime. Would you think it was okay for coincidence to be counted as evidence when the coinciding testimony arose after one of the accusers made her case to the media? Before you answer, keep in mind that, in court, Ghomeshi’s lawyer was able to demonstrate that two of the accusers communicated with each other about their testimony in a long email exchange before they went to court.

(2) It was shown in court, by their email exchanges, that after allegedly being assaulted by Ghomeshi on dates with him, the complainants maintained flirtatious contact with him.

Now, I know that the “believe women” movement tells us that we cannot put any expectations on how women will behave after abuse. But before you yield to that contention, please consider that the allegation here is not that Ghomeshi was in ongoing abusive relationships with these women, who felt powerless to leave their shared home, or didn’t want to lose access to their children. These women went on dates with Ghomeshi, where they were allegedly, and non-consensually assaulted, and then continued to seek his company. While their stories could be true, is it reasonable to think they’re likely true? Would you, as a jury member, be willing to send a person to prison for decades based on such testimony? Can you truly expect a judge to think it’s reasonable that, after going on a date with someone and being seriously assaulted, that—instead of going to the police—a person would continue to try to date their attacker?

(If you’re interested in considering this argument in more detail, see Janice Fiamengo’s case against the reasonableness of such a belief.)

(3) It was shown in court that all three complainants told significant and relevant falsehoods under oath. Among their nontruths was claiming to not have had further contact with Ghomeshi after the alleged assaults.

So, taking into account that these complainants waited to make their accusations until after Ghomeshi was publicly humiliated, and two of them discussed their testimony with each other in advance, and all three hid (and apparently lied about) the fact that they continued to try to date Ghomeshi after they were allegedly assaulted, do you think it’s appropriate to apply your “believe women” faith in this case?

If so, then any suggestion that I am straw-manning must be put to rest: it really does sound like you’re arguing for a blank “believe victims” cheque.

And, forgive me, but do you have any worry that your commitment to faith over evidence is analogous to witch trials of the past?

If you (and your equally virtuous friends in the media) were not aware of the above facts of the case, then I can understand why you might have assumed that Ghomeshi was probably guilty. (I, too, have a bias towards thinking the police and the crown have good reasons for bringing people to court.) However, if you’re going to protest a verdict as unjust, surely you have a moral obligation to learn a little about the case first, and whether the judge might have had a reason not to trust the complainants.

Admittedly, some of you have said you did follow the case, but you still say the trial was unfair because it turned into an interrogation of the complainants.

Consider the argument of one of your allies in the Vancouver march who said:

“I feel there was a series of events where women were being put on trial versus listened to. That it was never really Jian Ghomeshi’s trial. It was actually about the women. And I think that got flipped around in very manipulative and deceptive ways.”

And one of your signs outside the courthouse expressed the point this way:

“The harsh reality is that once a sexual assault survivor is put on trial and not the alleged perpetrator, the public can no longer expect the court to be a trusted source of justice.”

I agree that it’s unfortunate that alleged victims’ claims have to be tested in court. I have no doubt that it’s a painful experience. But, for those of us who do think we need to prove guilt before putting someone in prison, can you suggest an alternative?

Ghomeshi, in fact, is the one who was on trial (that is, he’s the only one in court who might have gone to prison for a couple decades if convicted). The prosecution presented the best evidence it could find against him. There was no circumstantial and physical evidence available, so the trial consisted solely of the testimony of the complainants. Yes, we should listen to them, but do you not think we must also be allowed to examine the veracity of what is heard in court? Otherwise, once again, we are yielding to the notion that complainants, by definition, tell the truth. 

CKNW talk-show host Lynda Steele asked:

“I want to know, though, how did this become about the women? I mean wasn’t this supposed to be about what Jian Ghomeshi did or didn’t do?”

Yes, the trial is about what he did or didn’t do, but again the only basis we have for thinking he did do something criminal comes from the testimony of the complainants. The judge’s only means of assessing whether Ghomeshi assaulted them is exclusively derived from whether the accusers could convince him that they were telling the truth. Therefore, the defence attorney’s use of their own emailed words to demonstrate their difficulty with honesty in these very matters, is not putting the complainants on trial: it is testing their reliability in this case (the very reliability that you’re asking the judge to take as unassailable).

If such testimony-contradicting evidence weren’t allowed in Ghomeshi’s defence, then what would be?

Even if your intuitions are to believe women, are you sure that’s what you want from an impartial justice system? Would you want that standard of “justice” applied to someone you cared about if they were accused by a woman of assault?

If so, I admit that your faith is unshakeable. In honour of your unwavering belief, you are hereby given a lifetime pass from taking part in jury duty. Simply bring your “Believe Women” signs to court, and you will be excused.

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GHOMESHI’S FEMINISM SERIES:

I: FAITH-BASED JUSTICE

II: YOU’RE EITHER WITH US OR YOU “DON’T GET IT”

III: BEYOND BELIEF (you were just here)

“A person who only knows their own side of an argument knows little of that.”

—SethBlogs paraphrasing social psychologist and Heterodox Academy co-founder, Jonathan Haidt, paraphrasing philosopher and free speech defender, John Stuart Mill.

THE FREE EXPUNGE OF IDEAS SERIES:

I: I MAY AGREE WITH WHAT YOU SAY BUT I’LL FIGHT TO THE DEATH YOUR RIGHT TO SAY IT.
II: NO QUESTIONS ASKED
III: ONE OPINION FITS ALL
IV: NOTHING TO SEE HERE
V: DEFINE YOUR WAY TO INFALLBILITY (1 of 2)
VI: THE INFALLIBILITY CLOAK (2 of 2) (you are here)
VII: THE SHAME OF THE GAME

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In Part I of this essay, I argued that there is a distinction between Definition Feminism (the pursuit of gender equality) and the work of Action Feminists (those who advocate in feminism’s name).

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“There’s a special place in Hell for women who don’t help each other.”

—Madeleine Albright, campaigning for Hilary Clinton in 2016.

HIDING UNDER DEFINITION FEMINISM’S COAT:

By utilizing appeals to our compassion (for women) and to our fear (of being branded misogynists), Action Feminists have convinced the mainstream media and politicians not to question their status as perfect representatives of gender equality (i.e. Definition Feminism). Thus they use their cloak of gender egalitarianism to shield themselves from criticism that their actions may not live up to it.

They have achieved this result through a variety of false equivalencies:

(1) CRITICISM OF ACTION FEMINISM = “HATE SPEECH”:

SITUATION: I was going to send one of my arguments to the Hourglass Literary Contest, but I discovered in the magazine’s guidelines that they “do not tolerate… anti-feminism” because they have deemed such criticism to be a form of “gender hatred.”

I think we can assume, by their open-ended use of the term “anti-feminism,” that the writing contest is not contemplating any distinction between the ideals of gender equality and the alleged efforts to produce it. No, evidently, criticizing feminism in any form is intrinsically “hate speech,” and thus is forbidden.

More significantly, as I described in FREE SPEECH FROM FEMINISM, various critics of Action Feminism in Canada and the US have been protested by Action Feminists on the grounds that they are promoting “hate speech.” In some cases, the protesters have been so assured in their convictions that they have pulled fire alarms to disrupt the blasphemous talks. And the mainstream media rarely questions the righteousness of such accusations and tactics.

CHEATS: If one pays attention to the actual content of feminism critics, it is clear that most of them are Definition Feminists. They too are arguing for the most gender equal-society we can create. But they disagree with mainstream Action Feminists about whether we currently live in a patriarchal society, rape culture, and systemically-unfair-to-women economic and political system. Moreover, they argue that in certain arenas in our Western society, male people have generally fewer privileges, yet more obligations, than female people.

Of course—like Action Feminists who assume women are always worse off—such critics of feminism are fallible. They might have their facts wrong; they might be offering bad solutions, and so on. But such disagreement over the facts does not prove sexism.

CONSEQUENCES: By arguing that opposing claimants to the best path to gender equality are “hate speakers,” Action Feminists scare away reasonable criticism of their work. As I argued in THE USEFUL CRUELTY OF SCRUTINY, any ideology that does not benefit from rigorous criticism is in danger of being overtaken by its worst ideas.

CONCLUSION: This contest to be the go-to representatives of gender egalitarianism ought to be covered by the media with a neutral curiosity. And the rest of us should do our best to criticize the media when they fail in that duty. Otherwise, they have no incentive to risk the misogyny-badge they would likely receive for asking feminists tough questions.

(2) CRITICISM OF ACTION FEMINIST DATA = RAPE APOLOGIA:

SITUATION: Whereas in science, skepticism is a tool to reduce mistakes, in gender studies discussions, skepticism of Action Feminist data is considered to be hateful towards the victims described in the data.

For instance, Action Feminists have produced statistics that seem to suggest that approximately 20% of American college women will be sexually assaulted. However, critics—such as philosopher Christina Hoff Sommers—have argued convincingly that there are serious flaws in the studies (such as non-representative samples and strange interpretations of data) which have facilitated these shocking results. Dr. Sommers says that the best data shows the numbers are closer to 2%. A common Action Feminist response, then, is to accuse Dr. Sommers of being “a rape apologist.”

CHEATS: There is nothing in Dr. Sommers’ argument that suggests anything but contempt for rape. She merely disagrees on the facts of how prevalent the cruel crime is.

To argue that anyone who is skeptical of the scariest rape statistics is a “rape defender” is to put Action Feminists, themselves, in danger of being called rape apologists. After all, if they’re sure that 20% is the right number, it just takes one alternate Action Feminist to argue the number is 25% to make the first suddenly a rape apologist unless they immediately accept the higher number.

CONSEQUENCES: Is it not obvious that this kind of “You accept the scariest numbers or you promote their cause” argument is inevitably going to facilitate a culture of rape research that is skewed? (As I’ve argued before, such a system provokes “rape culture” culture.) Indeed, under such high-stakes pressure to conform, how many social scientists will have the courage to resist?

CONCLUSION: As Dr. Hoff Sommers argues, serious problems deserve serious statistics. The only way to achieve a true understanding of these issues is if we are allowed to make sure Action Feminists are not accidentally and/or intentionally steering the numbers to fit their expectations; and the only way to do that is to require that Action Feminists be subject to scrutiny like everyone else. “You’re with us, or you’re a misogynist” reasoning cannot be allowed to dominate the conversation.

(3) CRITICISM OF FEMINIST ANALYSIS = A LACK OF COMPASSION:

SITUATION: When critics of Action Feminist data argue there are flaws in the design and/or interpretation of feminist research, they are accused of disrespecting victims, and denying the “lived experience” of women.

CHEATS: Anecdotal evidence is not valueless as an intuitive starting point for investigation, but it is not necessarily representative of a population either. In scientific research, those intuitions and individual experiences may guide the researcher as to where to focus their lens, but that is all it can do. Particular experiences cannot override the resulting data.

Such a recognition that our intuitions do not always generalize does not mean we shouldn’t try to help those who are suffering, even if there are fewer sufferers then we anticipated.

CONSEQUENCES: Action Feminists often get away with conflating legitimate skepticism of their conclusions with contempt for the victims they claim to speak for. They have been unnervingly successful in muddying these moral waters by utilizing noble-sounding phrases such as “believe victims,” and “listen to women.” With these emotional, faith-based slogans, Action Feminists have successfully created and nurtured the notion that questioning social scientific research is denying the “lived experiences” of individual victims.

CONCLUSION: The truth is becoming tangential to these discussions. We must stop allowing unearned conclusions to be claimed without criticism.

(4) INDIRECTLY CONTRADICTING FEMINISM = MISOGYNY:

SITUATION: Action Feminism’s hold on our public conversation is illustrated not just in their reactions to cases where their allegedly omni-benevolent work is checked, but also in circumstances where a public figure says something which indirectly doesn’t coincide with a feminist conclusion.

Recall the case of General Lawson, wherein the commander of the Canadian armed forces tried to explain the continuing presence of sexual harassers in the military by suggesting they were “biologically wired” that way. This was on the wrong side of the Action Feminist position that nurture (as opposed to nature) is always the culpable parent when it comes to creating bad characters.

There was bi-partisan agreement amongst Canadian politicians (and the mainstream media that covered them) which contended that Lawson had been “offensive.” He apologized, but not without a call from then third party Liberal Leader (now Canadian Prime Minister) Justin Trudeau for the General to be fired.

Meanwhile, brilliant screenwriter (and Action Feminist) Joss Whedon similarly discovered the danger of indirectly crossing feminist orthodoxy when he wrote a movie in which a female superhero lamented her inability to have children.

Even though her male superhero counterpart was similarly disillusioned by his childless future, Action Feminists on Twitter railed against their feminist ally, Whedon, for allegedly imposing a traditional gender role on one of his female characters.

CHEATS: Action Feminists are helping themselves to unearned interpretations of meaning. In Lawson’s case, they are suggesting that—by blaming biology instead of society for bad sexual misconduct—he is not holding his soldiers accountable (since no one can control their biology). But, as I argued in WIRED FOR OFFENCE, if feminists are right that nurture is responsible for all of our moral defects, the soldiers have no power over that cause either.

General Lawson stated unambiguously that he was targeting the sexual harassers in his charge. Thus, even if his one-sided understanding of the cause of the problem was silly, it seemed to have no effect on his intention to hold the assailants accountable.

Meanwhile, in Whedon’s case, there’s nothing wrong with criticizing his artistic choices, but why are Action Feminists so certain that individual female characters represent a writer’s views on all women? (Indeed, feminists don’t need to travel far in the Whedon resume to see that he has written many “strong female characters.”) Moreover, why all the rage? Does everyone have to blindly follow every expectation of Action Feminism or be Twitter assassinated? Action Feminists seem to forbid any diversity of thought.

CONSEQUENCES: Action Feminism’s speed of rage when confronted by innocuous, indirect disagreement surely encourages the sort of politically correct, sycophantic non-speak we hear from so many politicians and pundits (as I described in HOW TO AVOID QUESTIONS, AND INFLUENCE PEOPLE). Few people with a platform have the courage and/or will to cross feminist dogma, and so they play it safe, leaving meaningful and diverse conversation as the casualty.

Meanwhile, it is often said that there are fewer nuanced roles for women in Hollywood than there are for men. If this is true, one possible contributing factor is that Action Feminists, such as the above Twitter assassins, have scared some writers away from creating interesting female characters. As Action Feminists demand female leads be beacons of feminist strength in all ways, the resulting characters become a wee bit boring. Writers can only have so many shiny lights of independence in one movie, so, when it comes to filling the imperfect (i.e. interesting) character roles, I can imagine some screenwriters erring on the side of making them male to avoid being accused of sexism.

CONCLUSION: When Action Feminists attack, we need to do a better job of politely asking them to justify their assumptions.

(5) CRITICIZING FEMINISM WHILE POSSIBLY BENEFITING FROM IT = UNTENABLE:

SITUATION 1: When women criticize Action Feminism, they are often asked why they are betraying a cause that is trying to help them.

CHEATS: It turns out that some people don’t define their values just by what helps themselves most. Moreover, some female critics of Action Feminism may believe that, despite Action Feminism’s theoretical concern for women, it does women more harm than good in practice.

SITUATION 2: Men who criticize Action Feminism are often told that “Feminism benefits men, too.”

CHEATS: In certain cases, I’m sure feminism does benefit men. If, for instance, feminism has helped to free us from the universal assumption of gender roles, that’s probably a benefit to many individual men and women. But that doesn’t mean such people can’t criticize Action Feminism for oversimplifying the issue with, for instance, their insistence that gender is entirely a social construct. Moreover, there’s no reason that said “benefitting” person can’t have other moral disagreements with the work of Action Feminists.

CONSEQUENCES: Both men and women are told to support Action Feminism, not because it’s the right thing to do, but because it’s the selfish thing to do.

CONCLUSION: We should demand that Action Feminists not use people’s sex or gender to guilt them into agreeing with them. Instead, we should remind people that moral value is not necessarily predicated on personal value.  Moreover, the identity of one’s gender has no relevance to the validity of one’s moral argument.

(6) CRITICIZING FEMINISM = BEING OPPOSED TO ANY OF ITS GOOD DEEDS:

SITUATION: Consider feminist singer/songwriter, Katie Goodman, who song-ranted at young, female celebrities who said they weren’t feminists. She explained that, in fact, if they liked the benefits that feminism had helped them to achieve, then they were obligated to accept they were feminists. Sang she:

Yeah, babe, you’re a feminist

Just take a look at the checklist:
Do you like voting?
You like driving?
You’re a feminist.

Past feminists gave their lives
To let you vote and be more than wives
Saying you’re not a feminist gives them hives

CHEATS: Here Goodman is ignoring any possible distinction between between Definition Feminism and Action Feminism. Just because I am critic of the general way in which Action Feminists ply their trade, does not mean I am obligated to disagree with every opinion they espouse, nor every good deed they achieve.

If Action Feminists deserve credit for de-coupling sex from the franchise, great (although, as Janice Fiamengo describes, the situation may have been a little more complicated than celebrated), but such moral achievements don’t prove that every act performed by Action Feminists is as virtuous as their best.

If you’ll forgive the harsh analogy, I also think giving toys to needy kids is a worthy endeavour, but that doesn’t mean I’m not allowed to criticize other activities of the Hell’s Angels.

CONSEQUENCES: This is a problem with committed ideological affiliations: they disallow nuance. You’re expected to either take on the label of the ideology (and the baggage that it entails), or you must admit you’re opposed to everything ever done in its name.

CONCLUSION: We need to start openly criticizing demands for intellectual simplicity and point out that Definition Feminism and Action Feminism are not always identical.

(7) HAVING A MORAL HIERARCHY DIFFERENT FROM FEMINISM = MISOGYNY:

SITUATION: When critics rank non-feminist imperatives over the goals of Action Feminism, such dissenters are immediately accused of being opposed to those feminist hopes. For instance, Action Feminists have attempted to change the legal system to make it easier to prosecute alleged sexual assaulters. This sounds like a noble cause, but the problem is that Action Feminist “solutions” may be putting due process in danger. However, when critics point out such concerns, they are accused of being “rape culture” advocates.

CHEATS: Action Feminists appear not to understand the vital concept of moral hierarchy. If, for further instance, I value free speech over freedom from hate speech, many Action Feminists contend that I must agree with any bigoted language that free speech allows. They do not accept the possibility that someone could value public decency while choosing free speech as the more important necessity of a civil society.

Action Feminists, of course, are entitled to their own moral hierarchy. If they want to argue that the good of convicting a higher percentage of guilty people is worth the sacrifice of also convicting more innocent people then that’s a legitimate philosophical stance to take. Similarly, it’s legitimate for their opponents to argue that keeping innocent people out of jail is more important than catching higher numbers of bad guys. It’s an interesting moral dispute. But to claim that due process defenders are misogynists is an intellectual cheat of the lowest order.

CONSEQUENCES: As vital moral questions arise, criticism of Action Feminist solutions is demonized and thus dissuaded. Without such a filter, both the best and the worst ideas of Action Feminism get through. Soon, we may lose our rights to due process and free speech without having made our best cases for protecting them.

CONCLUSION: We need to demand that Action Feminists argue fairly and not sideline important discussions with wild accusations of misogyny.

(8) CRITICISM OF FEMINISM WHILE NOT BEING FEMALE = IRRELEVANT:

SITUATION: Perhaps the most aggressive of Action Feminist silencing language comes in the form of the term “male privilege.” (I will write more about this term in a spin-off rant.) Men who disagree with Action Feminists are often dismissed because of their sex. That is, given they are male, they are described as definitionally privileged, and consequently disabled by their life-long advantage such that they cannot recognize their privilege, and therefore cannot be expected to speak reasonably on sexism.

CHEATS: I’m not sure why Action Feminists are so confident that privilege universally harms perspective, and disadvantage automatically improves it. But let’s assume that those claims have proven to always be true.

We’re all privileged and disadvantaged in some ways. And certainly, particular groups sometimes have widespread advantage or disadvantage. Whether men or women as groups are more advantaged or disadvantaged is an interesting question to which Action Feminists argue they have the unequivocal answer: any claim other than universal male privilege is apparently laughable.

To make this broad case, Action Feminists point out certain inequivalencies of results, such as fewer women in high-paying jobs in general, and in politics and STEM fields in particular. But, if results alone prove inequality of opportunity, then there are lots of statistics that show men are also sometimes less equal (higher sentences for the same crime, lesser custody rights, gender quotas against them, more workplace deaths, more homelessness, fewer shelters, less medical research, and (thus?) higher suicide rates, lower life expectancy, and more). 

Clearly, privilege isn’t as simple as checking one’s sex or gender. But by dogmatically treating “male privilege” as a tautology, feminists have managed to undermine our collective skepticism. Indeed, men who don’t acknowledge their privilege are dismissed as the worst misogynists of all.

Thus, men wanting to stay on the right side of Action Feminists not only cannot disagree with the ideology, but also must confess their complicity in provoking it.

Moreover, even if one does legitimately come to the conclusion that men in general are more privileged than women, that does not justify assuming that every individual man is privileged. For instance, let’s say there’s a 20% advantage for men over women going into STEM, but a 10% advantage for women over men going into novel writing. While the former case might mean that men on average will fare better just because of their sex, the aspiring male writer may still be systemically disadvantaged in his life.

CONSEQUENCES: Along with anti-male hiring policies in work and politics, pundits and politicians’ genders are often taken into account when assessing their arguments. Sometimes, for committing the crime of being male, pundits’ arguments will be dismissed on the basis that their privilege is showing.

Also, sometimes individual men are excluded from discussions so as to ensure a panel is more gender balanced. In contrast, if a panel is unanimously female, Action Feminists celebrate the result as an achievement for inclusiveness.

CONCLUSION: If we’re going to examine unfair advantages in work and play, we must not assume the very thesis that Action Feminists have a vested interest in proving. If Action Feminists claim a particular disadvantage, we should give it no more automatic weight than we would someone claiming any other fact of our society.

Moreover, we cannot allow Action Feminists to exclude certain people from participating in discussions on the basis of their sex. Ideas should be measured by their content, not by their owners’ chromosomes.

THE SHIPS ARE SAILING:

“If you’re not a feminist, then you’re a bigot. I mean, there is nothing in between. It’s like being pregnant. You either are pregnant, or you’re not.”

—Gloria Allred, feminist activist and lawyer.

These many examples of Action Feminist silencing behaviours have consequences beyond their individual cases. Surely, as politicians and media professionals witness the career disintegrations of resisters to Action Feminism, it is understandable that they prefer not to put themselves in the same line of fire.

Consider incoming Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s delivery on his promise to gender quota in a balanced cabinet. Whether you agree or disagree with affirmative action discrimination, it is a decision that has serious consequences. Many moral questions should have been asked by the media of this Prime Minister.

(For instances, if we let quotas instead of qualifications determine who is elevated to the top government positions, aren’t we by definition going to have a less accomplished group? Moreover, is it fair to the individual men who otherwise would have been promoted based on their merits that they be excluded because of their sex? Is there any evidence that such men were unduly advantaged in acquiring their resumes, or is it possible that other factors—such as general differences in female and male career interests—played a role?)

But, instead of the obvious critical questions, the Right Honourable Justin Trudeau was asked the soft-as-a-feather question of why gender parity was so important to him. And he simply replied:

“Because it’s 2015.”

This resulted in approving laughter from his new team, but no follow up query from the media.

Indeed, in my perusal of the mainstream media coverage, the only criticism I encountered of Justin Trudeau’s gender quota policy was one which argued that it would hurt women. I don’t doubt that such a quota system can have unintended negative consequences for women who, in particular cases, may be unfairly assumed not to have earned their position via merit. However, why is the media not looking at the consequences of this policy on men, as well as on the quality of the government?

“Because it’s 2015” may sound vapid (and it is), but it also contains a warning:

Given we now live in the modern era, it is embarrassing for us to still exist in a system which privileges men over women. And, if you question my policies, you are suggesting that it’s okay for men to be privileged over women. Go ahead and challenge me on these points, I dare you.

I submit that Prime Minister Trudeau didn’t justify his gender quota system with clear moral arguments because he didn’t think he needed to. He figured the media would cower to his implied warning, and realize it was safer to leave the matter be: and he was right.

Action Feminists have succeeded in making all criticisms of Action Feminism taboo. Indeed, even the most scary ideas within Action Feminism are now able to hide under the coat of its noble, Definitional godmother.

Recall singer/songwriter Katie Goodman’s rhetorical question for women who don’t want to call themselves feminists:

“A feminist is described as a person who believes in social, political, and economic equality of the sexes. Why is this so confusing?”

It’s confusing because many people who advocate in feminism’s name are calling for policies that do not match the ideals of gender egalitarianism.

The key to saving ourselves from the worst ideas of feminism is to demand the right to distinguish between the various ships that carry her name. Not all Action Feminisms are gender egalitarians; and not all critics of Action Feminism are opposed to gender equality.

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THE FREE EXPUNGE OF IDEAS SERIES:

I: I MAY AGREE WITH WHAT YOU SAY BUT I’LL FIGHT TO THE DEATH YOUR RIGHT TO SAY IT.
II: NO QUESTIONS ASKED
III: ONE OPINION FITS ALL
IV: NOTHING TO SEE HERE
V: DEFINE YOUR WAY TO INFALLBILITY (1 of 2)
VI: THE INFALLIBILITY CLOAK (Part 2 of 2) (you were just here)
VII: THE SHAME OF THE GAME

To paraphrase Bill Maher, some of the alleged offenders described in the following argument may not be worth defending, but their rights are.

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Let me first state my contrary bias. On the spectrum of government control and anarchy, I am in favour of laws restricting behaviours that explicitly harm others. Moreover, where laws are not appropriate (such as in the case of free speech), I like to see jerks get their social comeuppance as much as the next karma connoisseur. However, I am wary of the current state of moral fervor dominating public discussions wherein those accused of committing crimes, legal or otherwise, are not only publicly shamed, but are also called to be fired or reprimanded by their employers, even where their alleged fouls have not been proven and/or have dubious relevance to their work. For instances:

(A) A common jerk made profane remarks to a reporter while she was in the midst of a live feed. She called him out. He defended himself. The resulting video found an audience. Someone figured out where the jerk worked and alerted his boss. The jerk was fired from his five-figure job.

(B) An NFL player was charged by the police with a hit and run, DUI, and vandalism. The next day, the athlete was released by his team.

(C) A CFL player (known already for ignorant opinions) shared on Twitter a link to a Holocaust-denying video. The player was fined by the CFL.

(D) A British Lord was photographed socializing with prostitutes and was consequently pressured to resign his position. He resisted at first, but eventually relented to public and fellow-Lord pressure. (Although there was, apparently, no legal basis for him to be removed.)

(E) NFL superstar Ray Rice was seen on a hotel security video in an altercation with his fiancé: as she approached him in an elevator at a rapid pace, he punched her in the face, knocking her unconscious. Rice pled out of a criminal conviction by agreeing to 12 months of counselling. Initially he was suspended for two games, but after public pressure, he was released by his team, the Baltimore Ravens, and suspended indefinitely by the NFL.

Now, if employers fire their employees because they have good reason to believe they might harm their co-workers on the job, or already have done so, I have no objection. My concern here is with cases where employees are relieved of duty because their bosses have deemed them morally unfit for work (usually at the behest of popular opinion).

While I, too, will not type a sad-face emoticon for the fool who lost his job after verbally accosting someone trying to do theirs, I am nervous about the lack of public resistance to employers extending their gaze beyond their employees’ on-site activities with the aim of pronouncing judgment on their off-site behaviours. As we presently stand, the general assumption seems to be that—where someone is accused and/or convicted of a crime outside the job or of saying or doing something politically unwise—our society is right to pressure the accused’s employer to fire that person.

That, to me, is a scary state of employment affairs. I suspect most of us wouldn’t want our doctors or bus drivers to refuse service because of such character flaws, so why are we so quick to allow vigilante karma officers to run our human resources departments? And now that we’ve opened up Pandora’s judgement, how far might the employers take their newfound lease on pink slips?

BOSS: Nicely done, Johnson. You’re doing a better job of recycling your newspapers and respecting your elders, but I think you could donate more money to UNICEF, and I’d like to see you spend more time with your kids and less time coveting your neighbour’s wife. Have those things done by the end of next month, and I’ll consider keeping you on… Oh, and by the way, in this election, I’m voting blue. See that you do as well.

Who’s going to be in charge of defining these moral no-go zones? We can all agree that punching someone in the face (unless in opposition to an attacker) is morally egregious, but what about less morally obvious codes, such as religious doctrines? If enough people in the public are opposed to gay marriage, is it okay for a company to fire a married gay person on moral grounds?

Unfortunately, there is little public appetite today for employers to make a nuanced case for why they are not in a position to evaluate their employees’ outside-of-work conduct and speech: public morality, after all, is not known for its ability to recognize such distinctions. To the no-nuanced public, if an employer does not punish their employees when they are accused of a crime or of saying something deemed offensive, they clearly condone such behaviour.

This puts employers in a dicey spot where they either condemn their employee for something beyond their expertise and jurisdiction, or risk the wrath of their customers. Given such a choice, many employers are relenting to the public’s demands for their employees’ excommunication.

Thus, I think the potential for injustice caused by our guilty-until-proven-innocent and readily-offended public morality is dangerous, and we need to recalibrate our expectations of employers when it comes to assessing their employees’ outside-of-work activities.

I submit that the starting point in these discussions ought to be that employers do not have a right or obligation to punish their employees for anything that happens outside their jurisdiction. Instead, companies should be expected to prove that they have just cause (i.e. something relevantly injurious to the company’s functioning, such as a conflict of interest, or a conflict of safety) to fire an employee. If pundits and other public moralists (and even our legal system) were to accept this as a first principle of employer-employee relations, employers would, I submit, feel less pressure to make unjust terminations to appease public wrath.

With that “don’t fire employees without workplace cause” frame of reference in mind, I think the most complicated scenario for employers and critics to consider is the case where an employee (usually possessing a high profile) commits a moral infraction that could hurt the brand of their company.

Consider the NFL’s indefinite suspension of Ray Rice for punching his wife. The claim was not that Rice’s violent behaviour made him unsafe for his workplace, but instead that his actions were so despicable that the NFL needed to send a message of condemnation of violence against women, or be seen as a league aiding and abetting men who beat up women.

I can understand the mathematics of such a brand-protection argument. Given that entertainment, much like politics, draws crowds as much by personality as it does by talent, if an athlete’s reputation for violence leads some of us to think badly of their employer’s brand, then in a sense their performance could be questioned.

Nevertheless, I’m not convinced that the needs of the brand should outweigh the rights of its workers. I see two categories of circumstance to consider:

(1) First there are disputed cases, such as when someone is charged with—but hasn’t yet been proven guilty of—a crime. In spite of the suspect’s right to a fair trial, their employer may feel the perception of their guilt is already tainting their good brand name. Sadly, though, mob opinion is rarely a meticulous means by which to assess a person’s guilt, and so employers using it as their lead moral advisor will surely sometimes fire innocent employees.

Therefore, as painful as it may be to see an allegedly violent offender roaming the field of our favourite sports team, I see no solution other than to allow the justice system to be in charge of taking away the criminals it deems unfit for society. And, if the courts do not put a perceived villain in prison, I think it is oppressive to allow companies—at the behest of popular opinion and brand protection—to make like kangaroos and presume their employees’ guilt.

(2) Second, there are the cases where the problematic actions of the high-profile employee are not in dispute, such as when the celebrity has been either convicted of a crime, or captured on an uncontested video saying or doing something that a company would not want associated with their brand. Again, from a fiduciary point of view, it is understandable that organizations would want to exile high-profile employees who have behaved in ways that the public condemns.

Nevertheless, I still fear that such brand-harming justification gives too much power to our sometimes puritanical public opinion to rule our lives outside of work. Again, I can imagine exceptions—such as when an employee’s personal reputation is the primary basis for their employment (as in the case of a celebrity spokesperson)—but in situations where one’s personal life is irrelevant to the actual tasks one is paid for (as when one carries a football for a living), I propose that we reconsider the notion that it is appropriate for employers to require their employees to stay on brand while they are off duty. This isn’t to say that employees should be allowed to directly insult their workplaces while at an outside-of-work microphone (that strikes me as a conflict of interest), but—beyond such exceptions—I do not think that employers should be allowed to limit their employees’ freedom of association and speech.

Moreover, are we sure we trust our ideological social justice leaders—who advise our employers—to provide sound and ethically-sourced judgments?

For concerning instance, whether one believes that feminism is a force for equality or a force for sexism (or both), it’s hard to deny that it currently has a controlling influence on our public morality. Consider the difference in our understandable contempt for Ray Rice’s assault on his wife, and our lack thereof when confronted by a parallel incident in which another NFL football player, IK Enemkpali, punched a teammate, Geno Smith, breaking his jaw to the point of knocking his compatriot out of action for 6-10 weeks. Given this happened in the locker room in front of witnesses, the team rightly fired the fist-throwing athlete, but note that there was little if any of the public moral scorn that Ray Rice received for his similar assault on his fiancé. In fact, some observers have even blamed the victim, Smith, stating he was acting aggressively towards Enemkpali, and thus provoked the violent reaction. (Recall that Rice’s fiancé was behaving aggressively towards him, too: but not many would want to defend Mr. Rice on those same grounds.)

Moreover, in response to the Enenkpali assault, SportsCentre supplied for our entertainment the “Top Ten Teammate Fights.” (Again, can you imagine a “Top Ten” segment serenading Rice’s crime?) Then, within a couple days, a second team hired the offending player on the grounds that his punch was a one-time error.

I don’t object to this decision; if the new team thinks Enemkpali can improve their results and doesn’t think there’s a pattern of violent work behaviour that would pose a risk to his new teammates, I think it’s reasonable for them to take him on. But the fact that the team was able to do this without the same moral condemnation that has left Ray Rice still without an employer is evidence of our current feminist-leaning moral infrastructure.

(Consider also an incident in the NHL wherein super-villain Milan Lucic followed an opponent—who didn’t have the puck—during an NHL game and, just for vicious fun, whacked him between the legs: Lucic was not suspended but fined $5000 of his $6 million per year salary, and I suppose, probably suffered the indignity of making a sports station or two’s, “Top Ten Ooooh Moments.”)

If it were just violent abusers of women who suffered under this feminist double standard, I wouldn’t be particularly troubled. However, as our Western culture becomes increasingly submissive to the uncompromising expectations of feminism, buoyed advocates are demanding (and sometimes receiving) firings for not only violent offences against women, but also failures to be feminist in thought.

Recall General Lawson, who “offended” all three major Canadian political parties for suggesting that biological wiring was complicit in creating sexual harassers in the military. Liberal Party Leader Justin Trudeau called for him to be fired for this innocuous, if unsupported, claim.

More troubling, consider the career crucifixion of Nobel Laureate and medical researcher Dr. Tim Hunt who, at the World Conference of Science Journalists in Korea, made a joke that was clearly intended to satirize himself as a fossil of gender relations in science:

“It’s strange,” he said, “that a chauvinist monster like me has been asked to speak to women scientists. Let me tell you about my trouble with girls. Three things happen when they are in the lab: You fall in love with them, they fall in love with you, and when you criticize them, they cry. Perhaps we should separate labs for boys and girls.”

For those not tuned into his humour frequency, he followed up this jest with a clarifying remark:

“No seriously, I’m impressed by the economic development in Korea. And women scientists played, without doubt, an important role in it. Science needs women, and you should do science despite the obstacles and despite monsters like me.”

After the most controversial aspects of the joke were released to the Twitter mafia (without any of the clarifying content that surrounded it), Hunt was forced to resign from all of his scientific positions. No matter how offended one may be by a joke, we should all be worried to see a world-class medical researcher cut off from helping us all because of things he said while giving a toast. I don’t begrudge criticism of what people say in public, but are we sure such controversial humour disqualifies Hunt from being a good scientist? If Dr. Hunt had harassed or bullied his colleagues (female or male) in some way, then the benefits of his good science may not be worth the harm to his co-workers and subordinates; however, many female supporters have come forward to say that Dr. Hunt has long been a champion of their work.

(And, once again, you don’t need to search far into the internet to find examples where feminist scholars have said much more earnest and sexist comments without any official discipline. For just one recent example, consider the Gender and Diversity Professor at the Sauder School of Business, Dr. Jennifer Berdahl, who speculated in her blog that former UBC President Dr. Arvind Gupta had left his post after only one year because

“…he lost the masculinity contest among the leadership at UBC, as most women and minorities do at institutions dominated by white men.”

She was not officially disciplined for such masculinity-deriding commentary; admittedly, she says that some higher powers-that-be have criticized her for it, but the result so far has not been any official censure for her sexist-seeming choice of words. To the contrary: the Faculty Association has demanded that her lead critic, John Montalbano, a faculty advisory board member at the Sauder School of Business, and the person who funded Berdahl’s position, resign his commission for using his station to criticize a faculty member.)

Whether or not you agree that our society is currently driving under the influence of feminism and other specialized moralities, surely all of us should be concerned when fellow citizens, who are legally entitled to work, are barred from doing so because of perceived or real moral errors outside of work. While Ray Rice may be a terrible person and certainly did something awful, allowing his employer to fire him for a crime he committed outside the borders of their institution solidifies a precedent that should make us all raise our eyebrows. More crucially, while I, too, prefer respectful discourse, when employers can decide to fire their employees because they find their outside-of-work words “unacceptable,” that scares the moral fervor out of me.

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A sequel to this daunting discussion is now available in THE SEPARTION OF WORK AND WORK.