A thoughtful rumination on knowledge, complicity and responsibility.
Some of your friends knew the accused parties. Some knew the aggrieved women. Not all of the stories were straightforward. Some friends felt torn about accounts being aired online, in public, destroying reputations—about whether to call certain incidents “rape.” Others had no such hesitations. Tempers flared.
What do you do, you thought then, about actions that make women feel unsafe, violated, but do not cross the line of criminality? About gray zones? About the creeps in your midst?
Now, you think: If something seems kind of wrong, it is all too possible that it is very wrong…
If things are fuzzy, the human default is often to do nothing. It’s genuinely difficult to conceive and accept that something extreme may be happening, unless you witness it firsthand. Unless it happens to you. And as some of the women’s accounts make clear, it can be hard to absorb even then.
The worst thing, you realize, is that you tended to look down on [his] conquests. As if anyone who fell for his come-ons was a fool, instead of merely lacking the advantage of inside knowledge.
No wonder the women didn’t hope to be taken seriously. No wonder most filed no grievances, and none of them laid charges, nor spoke out in public, until they learned they were not alone. They expected not to be believed, and worse, that they would be hounded and humiliated
It’s about Jian Ghomeshi, and journalism. But we all know it could just as well be about philosophy.