The CFLS invites you to join us in celebration of our 25th anniversary, for our upcoming lecture and discussion on Monday, March 14th. This lecture will feature one of the winners of our inaugural Graduate Student Speaker Contest, Suzanne Zaccour.
In 2014, famous Canadian radio host Jian Ghomeshi was fired following allegations of violent sexual assault. He commented that his “tastes in the bedroom may not be palatable to some folks. They may be strange, enticing, weird, normal, or outright offensive to others [but no one] should have dominion over what people do consensually in their private life”.
In recent years, this kind of “rough sex defense” to cases of murder or sexual assault has received increased attention and criticism. The “rough sex defense” is not an actual defense in the legal sense. Rather, it is a narrative used by the defense claiming that the victim of an alleged rape or murder consented to the physical violence to which she was subjected. The strategy worries activists against sexual violence as well as BDSM participants, both groups criticizing the cultural confusion between sex and rape.
This presentation will explore the discourse of “normality” in Canadian sexual assault cases with a “rough sex defense”. It will look at defendants’ arguments that physical violence was “normal” for the complainant. I show that the narrative of normality contributes to the normalisation, under-criminalisation, and invisibility of partner sexual violence.
Content warning: This lecture addresses issues of sexual assault and related themes.
Please visit https://lu.ma/CFLS-Zaccour to RSVP and receive the Zoom link.
- Centre for Feminist Legal Studies