BDSM PSA

So, by now, most of us who are interested have heard that the CBC's Jian Ghomeshi has been fired over his sexual practices, which seem to be centered around the BDSM culture. For those of you unfamiliar, BDSM is defined as "erotic practices involving dominance and submission, roleplay and restraint".

He is suing the CBC for $50 million (taxpayer dollars), claiming both defamation, and an unjust termination based on his sexual preferences. And if they were firing him just because he was involved in BDSM, this would most certainly be the case. It would be the equivalent of firing someone because of their sexual orientation, or because they have tattoos. Not fair.

However, what seems to be missing for many people in the discussion of whether or not the CBC ought to have terminated his employment is the fact that three women have come forward with claims of sexual abuse. Ghomeshi has countered this, saying that he has never engaged in sex with a non-consenting partner, and that the claims of abuse are most likely lies planted by a crazy ex-girlfriend.

I can't speak to his crazy ex-girlfriends, but I can talk a bit about BDSM culture and abuse. BDSM can be violent--it is frequently centered around seeking pleasure in pain. To someone unfamiliar with the culture, it might seem like anyone engaging in this sort of sexual practice deserves whatever abuse they get. But this is not the case. Making this assumption is, in fact, the same thing as saying that a woman in slutty clothes deserves to be raped.

The reason? There is something of a golden rule in BDSM culture that REAL and FINAL power lies in the hands of the submissive. This means if at any point the submissive gets uncomfortable and says "Stop" or some other safeword, it is the dominant's responsibility to do as he or she is told. If the dominant (in this case Ghomeshi) were to ignore this rule, he would no longer be engaged in the same sexual act the submissive originally consented to. In BDSM, an act morphs from consensual sex to sexual abuse the moment final power is wrested from the hands of the submissive.

Now, I'm not saying that this is absolutely the case with Ghomeshi. I don't know, I wasn't there. But I feel like if this is a case of Ghomeshi repeatedly breaking the golden rule BDSM and hurting women who didn't know what they were getting into, the CBC is most certainly right in terminating his employment, because what we are dealing with is an illegal act of sexual abuse. Too often in our culture we are willing to write off the words of a woman claiming sexual abuse as just that -- a groundless claim. I for one am glad that the CBC is taking these allegations seriously, and I hope that there is a full and fair investigation.

It is also my hope that people won't lose sight of the three women who came forward. This isn't a question of whether a person should be fired for engaging in BDSM culture--the answer to that is a simple "absolutely not." The question here is, should a person be fired for perpetrating sexual abuse to which the answer, in my book, is yes.