CFLS Lecture: “It wasn’t rape, it was BDSM!”: consent, normality and sexual history evidence in Canadian “rough sex” cases, with Suzanne Zaccour
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.
Suzanne Zaccour (suzannezaccour.com) is a doctoral candidate in law at Oxford University. She holds a double diploma in civil law and common law from McGill University, an LLM from the University of Toronto, and an LLM from the University of Cambridge. In 2019-2020, she clerked at the Supreme Court of Canada. Her research focuses, among other topics, on violence against women, inclusive language, and family law.