Convicted On Sexism: How Does Sexist Reasoning In Favour Of The Complainant Work In Today's #Metoo Culture?

• Author: Izadi, Melody
• Position: Columns

In R. v. J.L. 2018 ONCA 756, The Ontario Court of Appeal allowed the appeal of an accused who was convicted of sexual assault. The trial judge convicted the accused because he felt that the complainant would not engage in the acts as described by the accused because she was a young woman. The alleged incident happened during a school dance, where the accused testified that the complainant engaged in consensual sexual activity.

As the Ontario Court of Appeal noted, the trial judge said aloud: "I cannot accept that a young woman would go outside wearing a dress in mid-December, lie down in dirt, gravel and wet grass and engage in consensual sexual activity."

In response and in review of this decision, the Court of Appeal found the following:

"In other words, the trial judge could not accept, or even have a doubt arising from, the appellant's evidence because the trial judge was of the view that young women would not do what the complainant was said to have consensually done. There is a real danger that this reasoning contributed to the trial judge's assessment of whether, on the whole of the evidence, the Crown had proven the appellant's guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. I do not share the trial judge's view that it can be taken as a fact that no young woman would consensually engage in the alleged behaviour."

The trial judge clearly had an impression and bias about how young women would act and what types of sexual activity a young woman would consent to. This type of reasoning is the antithesis to the very core of feminism: that women cannot be painted by a standardized oppressive paintbrush. All women do not do or refrain from certain things because of how ladylike something is. So too does the Me Too movement serve as a cautionary disclaimer that all women experiencing sexual assault do not behave in a cookie cutter fashion. The very point of this reality is that women, in all forms and ways, are challenging the social construction of what women ought to do: what all women must do, according to society.

For these reasons and in the climate of social awareness around these issues, the reform of the recent sexual assault laws has fallen into place...