One naked woman and a room full of hockey players. Whose idea of a fantasy is this?

Pollsters probably don’t but should put this question on a survey:  One naked woman and a hotel room full of hockey players. Whose idea of a fantasy is this?

The sexual assault trial of five hockey players in London Ontario will only determine whether what happened was criminal. Whatever the judge rules in late July, this much will always be true:  nothing these guys did is something to be proud of. Their only defence is somehow ending up in a hotel room and found a "f-ing crazy" girl begging for sex. 

The “she wanted it” fiction as a defence is as shocking as it is depressing.

It’s on full display in the lurid, high profile trial of rapper Sean “Diddy” Combs. He orchestrated degrading drug-fuelled sex marathons in which he expected his girlfriends to routinely sleep with multiple escorts-for-hire. “I’m not a porn star. I’m not an animal," "Jane” texted Combs, one of so many “I’m done with this” type of messages. “It’s dark, sleazy and makes me feel disgusted with myself.” 

Another girlfriend, Cassie, was 19 when she fell under the spell of a 36-year old multi-millionaire mega-star. No one expects Cassie to say she loved it when Combs punched and kicked her. So, why does the same woman lose credibility when she says didn’t like choking on urine when a sex worker excreted into her mouth? 

“He would mash me in my head, knock me over, drag me, kick me, um, stomp me in the head, if I was down,” said Cassie. Physical and sexual violence don't exist in separate worlds. Who can possibly believe that a woman who is repeatedly beaten suddenly becomes an equal with her abuser in the bedroom. That he honours her sexual desires. It defies logic.

In France, the horrific drugging and rape of an unconscious woman has pushed the ‘she wants it’ storyline to a preposterous brink. Police estimate close to a hundred men met her husband, Dominique Pelicot, in an online chat forum called “a son insu” meaning “without her knowledge”. Given that context, it’s even more ludicrous that the men say they thought they’d befriended a kinky couple who played a ‘wife is just pretending to sleep’ game. Her snoring on the recordings played at trial was so loud it filled the courtroom. The men believed what they wanted to believe.

In London Ontario, every single hockey player, on trial or not, knew something wasn’t right in Room 209.

The most humane storyline, and this is a generous characterization, comes from two hockey players who came into the room but didn’t stick around. They saw a naked woman lying in bed with the sheet pulled up under her chin. She didn’t speak except once, when she asked for some pizza. Not a whole slice. Just a bite. They said no. 

The woman known as E.M. didn’t know her hook-up Mike McLeod had invited his entire team to a group sex party. She didn’t know the guys. She didn’t know what was going on, where it was heading or how it would end. That’s ominous. It just is.

A woman will look over her shoulder when a man gets off a hotel elevator and follows her down the hallway. What's going through her mind confined for hours, in a hotel room, at times with as many as ten men? 

McLeod first lied to police saying it was a mystery to him why his teammates kept showing up to his room. His texts tell the real and quite precise story. At 2:10 “Whose up for a 3 way quick. 209-mikey.” At 2:15: “Come to my room if u want a gummer” (Gummer is slang for oral sex.) 

The scenes described in court are infantile, menacing and gross. Guys laughing and joking about shoving golf balls, even an entire golf club, into E.M.'s vagina. They chanted “Suck. Suck it!”, slapped her naked buttocks and spit on her. She performed oral sex on four guys, intercourse multiple times with one player simply bending her over a sink in the bathroom. She got upset and cried in the hotel room. She wasn't crying tears of joy and the guys knew that. Her tears seem to be what prompted McLeod, the group sex ring leader, to take out his phone to record her saying that she was ok with everything. Then he had sex with her again. He took two video recordings with his phone that night as insurance – proof that everything involving E.M. was consensual. Is this the only thing he took away from #MeToo? 

Alone, naked, for four hours in a room full of men. Did they even know her name?

E.M. left the hotel by herself just before 5:00 a.m.

Within minutes of leaving Room 209, she was sobbing uncontrollably on the phone with her best friend. At home, she sobbed so loudly in the shower that she woke up her dad. 

The next day, she texted with McLeod saying she was ok about going home with him but “it was everyone else afterwards that I wasn’t expecting. I just felt like I was being made fun of and taken advantage of.”

She told her best friend she felt dirty and used. 

I believe E.M. Nothing good happens when a woman is cornered by a group of men.

When I was seven years old, a bunch of Grade 6 boys started following me around the school yard. “Nico loves you!”, they laughed. “Come on. Just let Nico screw you! Hahaha” I was in Grade 2. I didn’t know what that word meant but I knew it was bad. One summer night, I was alone when I ran into them on a street in our neighbourhood.“Just let him screw you!” they shouted and started chasing me into a playground. Stumbling, my feet buckling in the loose sand, I ran towards the only way out: climbing up a craggy bank of rocks. At the top of the crag -- more rocks, a vast expanse of black burnt rocks, the defining feature of my hometown Sudbury. No trees, only tufts of scrubby wheat grass and nowhere to hide. I have no memory of boys in the rocks. I was laser-focussed on my escape. I got to the spot I was looking for, and began lowering myself down the rocks. Dangling, with my arms stretched over my head, my fingers gripping the stone and my feet searching for all the familiar steps -- a little ledge here and a jagged edge there. Finally, I dropped down into my best friend's backyard. It was over.

Years later, when I was 20, about the same age as E.M., I took an overnight train alone in France. It was a suffocating summer night, and at each stop, dozens of guys began climbing aboard. Guys, and more guys, all about my age, kept tumbling in. It was surreal and as the night wore on, the vibe became more sinister. I was the only woman on the train. I kept my eyes mostly on my journal, pretending to sketch, so the men sharing the cabin wouldn't turn off the lights. Out of the corner of my eye I saw what was happening in the hallway: guys laughing and pushing each other around, pointing and licking their lips, slurping their tongues across the cabin’s glass door. One guy kept to himself, staring at them. And me. Before midnight, I decided to push my way through the horde to see if I could find a man-free zone. One car. Then another. And another. Every single carriage was jammed with more wild-eyed drunks. I felt sick and confused. I’d recently seen The Accused, starring Jodie Foster as a woman who was pinned and gang-raped on a pool table in a roadside bar. Which guy on this train would grab me first? Maybe drag me into a cabin? Then throw me off the train? Would I live or die? How long before someone reported that a Canadian girl was missing in France?

After my failed walk-about, I returned to find the lights out in my cabin. I stayed on the outside, crushed in with men who seemed louder and more unrestrained. I stuck my head out an open window. It was sweltering but I didn't dare take off my armour -- a white long sleeved sweatshirt.

"You're in danger," said a voice in French. The quiet non-partier guy had approached me. “Do you know why we’re all here?” No, I didn’t. “We’re all young men going off to do our military service,” he explained. “It’s not safe for you. I’ll stay with you, and before I get off at 2:30 (a.m.) I’ll find you someplace else to spend the rest of the night.” And he did. 

Lucky me. That 20-something-year-old guy knew that a woman alone, outnumbered and surrounded by men, was in trouble. His instinct was to protect, not take advantage of me.

The hockey players wandering in and out of Room 209 knew something didn’t add up.

They say they were surprised when they came to the room and saw a naked woman, moaning and begging for sex. One player said he “looked to the guys and asked is this okay and normal and they said yeah."

As the saying goes, if it looks too good to be true then it probably is. We may not have official data. We can’t speak for every woman. But like water generally boils at 100 degrees Celsius – you can generally assume that a naked woman, in a hotel room full of men, is not having her idea of a good time.