Porn Shown in Halifax Bar Directly Leads to Sexual Harrassment

The story below, which appears in today's Chronicle-Herald, goes a long way in demonstrating the immediacy of the negative effects that porn can have on men when it comes to their treatment of women. A study conducted in the 1980s by Dr. Diana Russell was the first major research conducted into the causal relationship between male pornography consumption and violence against women. You can read the results of that study here.

Woman ‘disgusted’ by porn on bar TV
Cheers regular says couple of male patrons tried to force her to watch
By CHRIS LAMBIE Staff Reporter
Mon. Dec 31 - 5:36 AM

A 24-year-old Halifax woman says she felt sexually harassed when male patrons of Cheers Bar and Grill tried to force her to watch pornography on one of the bar’s television screens early Saturday morning.
The woman, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said she’s a regular at the Grafton Street establishment.
"Around 2 a.m., they thought it would be a good idea to put porn on the television," she said.
"I saw a crowd of people around the TV screaming. I went over to talk to one of my friends and this guy, who I didn’t even know, grabs me and tried to force me to watch it. When I was disgusted, he started saying really vulgar things to me. It was pretty bad sexual harassment that ensued because of the porn that was on TV."
The woman said she tried turning her back to the screen, which was showing a man and a woman having sex.
"One guy, who was very into it, grabbed my shoulders to turn me around."
The woman said she told the man he was acting inappropriately, but he didn’t stop. So she decided to get out of Cheers.
"But even as I decided to leave the bar, on my way out two other guys grabbed me and tried to force me to watch it, too."

The story clearly highlights that pornography results in forms of violence against women. Sexual and physical harrassment is completely unacceptable, and those who were responsible for the porn being shown on the bar's TV and those responsible for ensuring the personal security of patrons should be held accountable. I would encourage readers to lodge a complaint with Cheers and let them know that their actions were unacceptable and that they have contributed to the problem of violence against women.

A Year in Hollywood, or a Chronicle of Misogyny?

Today's Chronicle-Herald features a round-up of the year's "biggest" Hollywood stories. It is entitled "A wacky, tacky, skanky year," which should set off alarm bells as to what its content holds. Sure enough, it features a lot of woman-bashing, going from Britney Spears to Amy Winehouse to Paris Hilton to Lindsay Lohan before finally mentioning a single male's antics for the year. When a news story portrays women only in negative lights, using all the cliches that they can fit into a sentence (Britney was "drinking and partying" after everything she did, while Lohan's "firecrotch" came up somehow), that story is sexist and degrading to women. Men only feature into the story when it's for their despicable actions and statements towards women and minorities, demonstrating again the contempt that they have. Don Imus's "nappy headed hos" comment appears, as does Alec Baldwin's reference to his daughter as a "little pig," and the fight between Kid Rock and Tommy Lee is reduced to being about visitation rights to Pamela Anderson's breasts. The entire eye-rolling article can be read here.
How does this relate to violence against women? By holding women in the context of being "less than," there emerges a sense that they "deserve" whatever negative treatment comes to them. There was a news story yesterday about a woman in the United States who was gang-raped for fourteen hours, yet a mention that she initially came to the men's house to do drugs with them is going to be a centrepiece of the defence team's legal case, because their perspective is that because she came to do one activity with them, she is by default consenting to do other activities with them. In that sense, she "deserved" to be raped for doing something like going to do drugs with bad people, so the argument goes.
The manner in which Hollywood celebrities are treated--particularly women--is very telling of men's attitudes. They say that people "love to see a hero fall" or a celebrity "fall from grace." This is a cover story for the seeming reality that men love to see women degraded, shamed, and humiliated publicly. This is what they do to the most famous and powerful women in the world, and it affects how they treat women who are much less famous and much less powerful. No matter what their standing in life, women can be reduced to a thing, an object, something to be scorned and hated. This is the attitude that fuels misogyny, and it is continually stimulated by news stories such as the one in today's Chronicle-Herald.

Jail Time for Man Accused of Assaulting Two Women

This story comes from Friday's Daily News:

A young man who allegedly tried to kill his pregnant ex-girlfriend will spend the next two weeks - at least - behind bars. Jonathan Peter Rees, 18, made a brief appearance yesterday in Dartmouth provincial court in relation to a Dec. 21 attack on Ashley Laing and her mother, Heather Moffatt, in their Dartmouth home. The slim, dark-haired youth is charged with attempted murder, break and enter, two counts of aggravated assault, two counts of assaulting police, breaching probation, and breaching a recognizance.

Read the rest of the story here.