Ça suffit!!! -- ENOUGH!

For over a decade, DJ! has published blogposts that expose the malevolent weapons deployed by patriarchy to enforce its gynophobic ideologies.

Fern writes and tweets mainly about choice with respect to women's reproductive rights, and its sociopolitical significance. I focus on individual and systemic manifestations of a system that upholds men's privilege and impunity in matters of physical and sexual violence against women and girls.

Around 2016 I lost patience with the drawn-out process of writing blogposts about these issues. So much unrelenting VaW everywhere across the planet, that tweeting / retweeting was expedient. 

Every act of violence against women and girls boils down to the same element: men are "allowed" to do what they do and the challenge is to not get *caught* and if that happens, count on the old white boys to affirm the male imperative to hunt down their prey and have fun, doing harm.

This. 

“I think this Tuesday, Dec. 15, will be a dark one for all victims of sexual assault, because I am an example of the limits of the justice system when it comes to sexual violence. I profoundly deplore that the myths and the stereotypes of another era, that were often brought up by the defence, could be echoed in that courtroom. It is a negative message sent by the justice system to victims,” Charette said.

“Finally, to all the victims, I would like to say this: Don’t be ashamed. Despite the disappointment of today, I invite you to denounce (sexual assaults). Things are starting to change.”

Change..? Seems so, so slow. Peter Nygård was arrested in Winnipeg for extradiction to the US to stand trial.

His arrest on sex trafficking charges came after U.S. federal authorities raided Nygard’s Manhattan offices earlier this year [...] after 10 women sued Nygard, saying he enticed young and impoverished women to his Bahamas estate with cash and promises of modeling and fashion opportunities. Several plaintiffs in the suit, filed in New York City, said they were 14 or 15 years old when Nygard gave them alcohol or drugs and then raped them. 

 

Last, and certainly not least. 

In a series of sexual-assault rulings this fall, the Supreme Court has sent a message to appellate courts that they should listen to lower-court judges who believe the complainant.

The court has ruled in seven sexual-assault cases this fall, and in all seven, it has taken the side of the complainant and prosecution. In five of those cases, appeal courts had thrown out convictions registered by trial judges, saying their decisions had been unfair to the male defendants. In the other two, trial judges convicted the men and appeal-court majorities upheld the convictions. [...]

Women’s advocates say the Supreme Court is maintaining its fairness.

“I really don’t see this in any way being about a loss of objectivity and fairness or jumping on the MeToo bandwagon,” Megan Stephens, the executive director and general counsel for the Women’s Legal Education & Action Fund, said in an interview.

The court, she said, is sending a message to appeal courts not to second guess trial judges on credibility and reliability assessments. “The primary message coming out of the Supreme Court is ‘don’t forget, you owe deference to those trial judges’. ”

Assessments of credibility (honesty) and reliability (accuracy) are central to the trial judge’s job. Appeal courts generally defer to these assessments because it is the trial judge who sits in court and hears directly from the witnesses. Witnesses do not testify at appeal courts. But if an appeal court believes the trial judge made a legal error in their approach to assessing credibility, it can throw out a conviction and order a new trial.

There were no legal errors. The criminal defence lawyers who appealed their clients' guilty verdicts would not accept the judges' judicial decision based on the testimony of witnesses / complainants whose credibility they attempted to destroy for their clients to *win* and to affirm their right to rape.

As these two squalid predators did, and were acquitted of their crimes, free to sexually assault again with impunity.

Legal errors. Did Judge Beaudoin commit any of those? Or was he merely conned by the prolific liar and accused serial sex predator Paul Batchelor?

Change. Whatever. Du n'importe quoi.