Article content continued

It is unclear whether Brown knew how old she was (the age of sexual consent in Canada was raised from 14 to 16 in 2008). We are told Brown provided both women with alcohol. Both had sexual contact with Brown for a short time, after which they left his house. Nothing in the account indicates Brown persisted in sexual conduct after he was asked to stop. In one case, he drove the complainant home to her parents’ house afterwards.

The story paints the complainants as sexually inexperienced girls seemingly incapable of exercising their sexual selves, including making autonomous decisions about when and how to engage in sex. This prompts us to filter reality through a perpetrator/victim lens. As one complainant described him, Brown is “an old, single, politician preying on young girls” (Brown would have been 29 at the time the alleged conduct with her took place).

Let me be clear. I am not contesting that these events happened, nor that they constitute behaviour unbecoming of a politician.

What I am contesting is the way in which certain narrative choices reinforce already problematic ideas about women’s sexual being-in-the-world. The notion that women are, in 2018, less able than older, powerful men to know – and thereby express – their minds in ambiguous sexual contexts lies at the heart of the patriarchal culture that #MeToo questions.

As told, the Brown story suggests that sex is something that happens to women by men, but also that women need men to help them navigate compromising sexual scenarios (the woman who worked for Brown consulted her father about him, who “corroborated her version of events”). This frame does not accord with reality; in fact, it only makes sense if we are committed to a conservative branch of feminism that takes for granted that society is organized around male dominance over women.

At this critical policy juncture, when we are beginning to hear and digest critiques of the #MeToo movement, it is time to evaluate the way we tell these stories.

The second thing I ask of my students is that they learn to be comfortable being uncomfortable. Women’s stories need to be told. But if they are not told in a way that gives voice to the complex, often disparate and contradictory realities of sexual life, we will end up shifting the culture in regressive ways.

— Matthews is an associate professor at Osgoode Hall Law School

twitter.com/heidi__matthews