Ms.Marx: On Pop Culture

Framing protests in the media

2012-01-28T19:57:00.003-05:00

This post is from a presentation I gave at the University of Toronto a few days ago, where I spoke about the media's role in social movements. In discussing how issues were framed, I compared two newspaper articles covering some arrests at a budget cuts rally in Toronto. One article was in the National Post (found here) the other was from the Toronto Media Co-op (here).

Here are the headlines of the articles... National Post is on left and Media co-op on the right

“Four arrested after Toronto budget-cuts protest turns violent”

“Police crack heads as major budget cuts reversed”

Just reading the headlines, you have an idea of who is to blame. Did the protest turn violent, suggesting protesters started it, or did the police crack heads?

As for how many people were there

More than 100 demonstrators

“Approximately two hundred people were in chambers for the vote; almost ten times that number remained outside, prevented from entering by a line of police officers mixed with City Hall security.”

So, for those who read the National Post, this could seem like a really fringe thing... only 100 people... but if you read the media co-op, you would be told that there were move than 2000 in attendance, which gives the protest a lot more legitimacy.

What about the police officers... how threatening did they look?

“officers clad in yellow rain jackets and black bicycle helmets”

“horse mounted riot squad”

I don't know about you, but I would be much more afraid of a riot squad than a few guys in raincoats and bicycle helmets... the power relations would be much more obvious.

Who started the violent acts?

“demonstrators surged against the line of police”

”Attempts to enter the building for the vote were met with violence”

In both scenarios, protesters approach the officers, but it makes a huge difference if they were "surging against the line of police" or merely trying to enter a public building!

Lastly, were the police violent?

“three male protesters had been handcuffed and lined up against the wall of the building — one bleeding from his head.”

“Several arrests were made, people were beaten and choked, and an elderly man was thrown to the ground. At least one person was taken to St. Michael's hospital.”

In one article, some guy is randomly bleeding and nobody knows how. In the other article, there are specific and precise accounts of violent acts done by the police. We can use the pictures included in the article to take that further...

This photo, from the media co-op, shows a clearly violent act by a police officer...

The image from the National Post shows some angry protesters yelling while police officers watch calmly

The National Post also mentioned disturbances arising among the "ranks of occupy Toronto protesters"... you know, just in case anyone had stopped being afraid of them.

Which of these stories are read influences what readers think about the issues, the specific event in question, and their conception of protests and protesters more generally. Unfortunately, the National Post has a wider readership than Toronto Media Co-op (which usually only goes to already leftist people).

In my presentation, one of the things I mentioned was that we need to demand leftist journalists within mainstream papers (actually, I think I said that for every Margaret Wente, we need a column by Karl Marx). We need to demand that right wing propaganda is corrected and the media is held accountable for misinformation. I think think that letter writing campaigns are helpful, but at this point we might need to go further than that. I am wondering how an occupy media campaign might look and where it could take us.

Blog for Choice 2012

2012-01-21T10:45:00.005-05:00

For the past few years, I have been involved in blog for choice (see posts here and here).

This years' question disappoints me however. I received an email from the organizers of Blog for Choice day, and was asked to reflect on this question in my post

What will you do to help elect pro-choice candidates in 2012?

First of all, Blog for Choice day is the anniversary of the American Roe vs. Wade court decision, so it makes sense that it is a very US-centric day, but, in light of the American election in 2012, this question becomes especially important to many American pro-choice activists and much less relevant to those of us who do not live in a country that has a major election of any kind coming up (yes, I know we can continue to lobby and whatnot after an election, but that isn't helping candidates).

Anyway, the question becomes even more frustrating and problematic for people who do not support the supposedly democratic political system. I, personally, think that the electoral system is a joke... I believe that by giving us two (or three or even five) candidates, and calling a select group of people citizens and allowing them to vote, it presents the illusion that we actually have a choice. But if you look at the candidates, we are basically selecting from A, A or A.... maybe NDP or Green party candidates can sometimes make up something that almost represents choice B in Canada, but in very limited ways. The way politics is currently organized upholds heterosexist, racist, patriarchal capitalist social relations. Anyway, this critique is not new, so I won't go into any more detail on it right now.

But to answer the question, what will I do to help pro-choice candidates (or members of parliament) in 2012? Absolutely nothing. I will, however, continue to write letters to newspapers and giving presentations as well as helping to organize and attend rallies when I believe it is useful to do so (such as on this and this occasion). I will continue to blog about the importance of choice. I will also continue to call out Harper (here and here) when he makes asshole decisions that affect women's ability to access abortion all the while saying that he will not bring up the abortion debate in parliament. But I will not help political candidates because I refuse to participate and further legitimize what I think is an illegitimate system.

Also, here is a cute failbook picture because it makes me happy.

Yet another offensive facebook comment conversation

2012-01-16T20:40:00.004-05:00

I have been debating whether to post this or not because of thoughts I have been having about the ethics of posting about people in a blog that is no longer all that anonymous. This conversation was from facebook several months ago, and I have decided to go ahead and post it now because it still kind of bothers me and I find posting to be incredibly freeing in that once it is posted, it is no longer something that I think about.

Anyway, a friend on facebook updated their status asking if there were any men with a drivers license who needed a job, to which I asked if the work could be done by a woman (because I always seem to feel the need to comment on things that seem like they might be sexist). When I found out that it was for an actual company, I asked which one, so I could send some female friends down to apply, considering that sounds like a human rights violation.

One of her friends wrote

you must be gay!!! thats a gay woman's answer!!!

Because I guess only gay women care if men can apply for a job that they cannot. A mutual friend told them that their comment was totally uncalled for, to which this person responded

Am I wrong?????? If so I apologize. But I bet I'm right.

Why is it that he only has to apologize if I am not gay... if I am, then it is perfectly acceptable for him to talk about my sexuality on someone else's facebook wall based on a one sentence comment about why women couldn't apply for the job as well.

When I informed him that you don't have to be a lesbian to be a feminist (because I don't know when to walk away from an argument online) he responded with

it's ok really, i like pussy too.

and

Are you??? and i'm surprised you never spelled it " WOMYN"

So, I guess my point is if you think someone sounds queer in a facebook comment, great. But don't feel the need to post about it repeatedly. I was tempted for a while to comment on every post he wrote saying something like "you must be straight, with a comment like that" but figured it he wasn't worth the time and effort.

Also, am I the only person that seems to have repeated offensive conversations on facebook?

Trans woman turned away from YWCA

2012-01-09T10:04:00.006-05:00

The Sudbury YWCA is facing a human rights complaint after turning away a transgender woman who needed a place to sleep after having problems with her partner (CBC's coverage of the story here - I can't seem to find any coverage in the local papers).

The executive director of the YWCA said that trans women are not allowed to stay at the women's shelter but they are directed to another safe space. Apparently, they do not do a very good job of it though, because the woman in question ended up spending the night at a downtown park.

Before turning her away, they subjected her to a series of questions about her genitals... whether she was pre or post-op, whether she urinated sitting down or standing up... questions that would never be tolerated if they were asked of a cis-woman.

I am not a trans person, and therefore am not really able to understand what she was going through, but I also cannot understand the position of turning away someone who needs these services just because the presence of a penis tells society that her own personal experiences of gender are not real (or something to that effect). I don't get it. And I don't think I want to understand that line of thinking, either.

It seems to me that people who don't conform to the gender binary should be allowed to decide whether a man's shelter or a women's shelter is a safer space for them (especially in the absence of non-gender specific spaces) and I am guessing for a trans woman, the safest place is probably a shelter for women.. please correct me if I'm wrong. And as someone who has spent time in a shelter for battered women, I don't think I would have felt in the least bit threatened by her presence.

Yet another example of how transphobia is still considered to be acceptable...

Beauty ads in feminist articles

2011-12-29T14:39:00.003-05:00

Don't you love how posts that are supposed to help with self-esteem contain ads or links that do just the opposite?

In the following picture, an article on helping children value thier inner beauty is accompanied by a link to another article called "How to get Victoria Beckham's Legs" at the top and centre of the page.

Girls' self-esteem will not be helped by tips on how to get the best-looking legs possible. Also, I think that we should move away from the term "inner beauty" and use an entirely different word. The concept of inner beauty as being something that we should strive to achieve suggests that the word "beauty" is important, and I don't think that we can ever move beyond dominant conceptions of beauty while using this word.

Similarly, this is one of my favourite feminist blogs, called feministing, but it has ads on the top of it; this particular ad being for eliminating belly fat.

I am guessing that they don't get to choose who advertises on this space. I am also quite sure that the writer of the article about girls' self-esteem did not pick the articles that are linked on that page. But it annoys me that this content can be so difficult to avoid, even when reading articles or blogs that are considered to be feminist and are actually trying to fight against these problems.

murderers, occupiers and mobsters, oh my!

2011-12-29T08:04:00.003-05:00

I couldn't sleep last night, so I turned the tv on and the news was playing. I almost never watch the news, but last night I decided to keep it on while I tried to sleep. A news story about hackers came on that I found particularly annoying. The video is here, but I'm not sure how long the link will work for.

First, they showed a person using a smartphone, then went on to talk about the dangers of web connected cars; apparently hackers can unlock them or even apply the brakes when you are driving. Seriously, I'm not sure which hackers with the sophistication to break into car computer systems are going to want to apply the brakes to your vehicle. But, be afraid, relatively wealthy people with computerized cars, very afraid.

Here is where it really pissed me off. Check out this quote...

far more dangerous are the threats to embedded medical devices. A hacker could stop an insulin pump, turn it on, and drain all of it's contents. Banks are also being warned about the occupy movement, that they might team up with so-called hack-tivist groups

So, they bring up the occupy movement right after talking about a way that this hacking could be life threatening. They don't actually link the two together, but they definitely do not break up these to sections. So you go straight from thinking about how hackers can kill people to learning that the occupy movement might team up with hackers.

Then, just in case we aren't afraid of the occupy movement yet, the next sentence goes on to talk about crime syndicates getting your banking passwords, and how we can protect ourselves against these cyber threats.

So, murderers, occupiers, mobsters. Great links to make.

Those in power are afraid of occupiers, so they have to make sure that everyone else is too because if they weren't afraid of us, the system as we know it would have to change.

Thanks CTV news.

Crossdressing as a form of humor

2011-12-22T12:44:00.004-05:00

This post is inspired by criticisms of a new sitcom (here), that I am actually not going to talk about at all, but figured that I would mention...

Yesterday, when I arrived at daycare to pick up my kids, two boys (about 10 years old) were dressed up as girls, wearing sleeveless dresses and high heeled shoes from the dress up bin.

This, in and of itself, is not a problem. I love when kids play dress up, I have a wide array of dress up clothes in a dress up toy box at home and there are no gender rules when it comes to who can wear what costumes. The problem that I had was with regards to how they were wearing the clothes, the way this was seen as humorous by the other kids, and the reasons behind this humour.

At first, I tried to tell myself that it was the element of it being unexpected that was funny to the kids... like when I make used to make my kids laugh, as toddlers, by putting one of their toys on my head like a hat or by using a shoe like a telephone and pretending to be confused when it didn't work. But I think this is more than that... little girls at the daycare dress up in men's clothing all the time, wearing suit jackets and ties or a variety of other outfits that are gendered as masculine. I have yet to witness this being seen as funny. But as soon as these boys came out of the change room in dresses and heels, the daycare exploded in laughter.

If femininity was equal to masculinity within society, this would not be funny. It becomes funny for boys to wear strapless dresses, high heeled shoes, and to walk with exaggerated hip motions because femininity has less value than masculinity, and the children at daycare know it.

I'm not saying that drag is misogynist, I love drag for a variety of reasons that I am not going to get into in this post, but I am mentioning this to differentiate someone who is gendered as male dressing in ways designated for females as a joke and those who do it for reasons related to gender identity, expression, or to expose problems with the gender binary (among other reasons).

I believe that for someone who is gendered as a male to dress in female clothing for humor (with some exceptions)is not unlike a white person wearing blackface; it is someone from a dominant group making fun of an oppressed or marginalized group.

I'm not entirely sure what the solution this specific issue would be... I don't think it would be appropriate or helpful for daycare workers to enforce gendered dress up rules; gender policing would make things worse, not better. But I do think that education could help, try to teach children why it isn't funny. I also think that the only real solution would be to end patriarchal social relations that lead to this being funny in the first place.

Gender and Sleds

2011-12-20T11:08:00.003-05:00

I was looking at sleds for a possible christmas gift for my children, and was annoyed with the gendering of these sleds. There were a total of 12 sleds at the department store I went to; one was wooden, one was a pink and purple Dora the Explorer sled (meant for young girls) and the other 10 were various "boys" sleds... Bakugon (if you don't know what this is, consider yourself lucky) Spiderman, Ironman, and other such comic-type characters that I did not recognize in battle ready positions. Apparently girls don't go sliding as much as boys.

Even the helmets for when they are sliding/snowboarding, had only one option meant for girls, being disney princess (which my 9 year old has outgrown) and tons of "boys" options. Luckily, one of those was a rather plain black and white one that I felt was relatively non-gender specific.

Also, I am wondering what the implications are regarding the infantalization of girls, as Dora is geared towards preschoolers whereas comic books are typically meant for older kids.

Now, I have nothing against getting my daughter a spiderman sled, but my son would think it was for him and I'm not sure my daughter would like it... she's all about the pink and frilly. She rides her brother's Marvel comic book sled all the time, but I'm not sure how she would feel about owning one. It seems as though it doesn't matter how much I tell them that these products are needlessly gendered, I am only one voice, and their peers and the media tells them otherwise.

I am not advocating for making a bunch of pink sleds for girls to ride... All I wanted was a sled in pretty much any colour that didn't appear as though it were being marketed only to children of one specific gender. I'm sure I can research it online and get the kind of sled I am looking for, so I'm not posting this looking for sled advice, just commenting on the annoying gendered sleds.

psychology today on vaginas

2011-12-16T13:12:00.006-05:00

I saw an article entitled "15 crazy things about vaginas" through facebook that i thought of writing about, then a friend brought up the article in conversation, and I decided to go ahead with this post (found here)

Here are a few comments on some of the points.

1. Pubic hair is not just a biological accident that forces us to the waxing salon. It serves three critical functions. First, it protects the delicate vagina. Second, it serves as a reproductive billboard to alert potential mates that you are biologically (if not emotionally) prepared to procreate. And last, it's a pheromone carpet and traps the scents that lead potential mates to the promised land. So you might think twice before you shave it all off. It's there for a reason. Embrace it.

So, the first reason, which seems to be the most important is talked about in passing, without saying how or why it protects... but sociobiological arguments that have nothing to do with how we currently have sex are emphasized and appear to be more important.

3. The average vagina is 3-4 inches long, but fear not if your guy is hung like a horse. The vagina can expand by 200% when sexually aroused, kind of like a balloon. Remember, the vagina was made to birth babies, so it's exceedingly
elastic. If you have pain when getting it on with someone large, you can use
dilators to help stretch the vagina so you can accommodate the whole package.

Hetero-centric. Vaginas exist for penises. And if the penis doesn't fit, the answer isn't to have different types of sex, but to learn to accommodate it.

5. Yes, it's true -- your vagina can fall out. Not to belabor the sock metaphor, but it can turn inside out just like a worn out sweat sock and hang between your legs as you get older. But don't fret; this condition -- called pelvic prolapse -- can be fixed.

Isn't that a pretty thought? So many things that we can talk about without having to make women's bodies seem even more disgusting... warn out sweat sock? Really?

6. Vaginas have something in common with sharks. Both contain squalene, a substance that exists in both shark livers and natural vaginal lubricant. (Cue music: "She's a maneater...")

Ewww... vaginas are disgusting... and psychology today is misogynist. I'm not sure how they get away with the maneater comment.

7. You can catch sexually transmitted diseases even if you use a condom. Sorry to break it to you, but the skin of the vulva can still touch infectious skin of the scrotum -- and BAM! Warts. Herpes. Molluscum contagiosum. Pubic lice. So pick your partners carefully.

This is the first practical thing that was said, but again, very heterocentric.

8. The average length of the labia minora is less than ¾ inch long (yes, someone got out a ruler and measured 2981 women). Only 1.8% of women have labia longer than 1 ½ inches. But remember, every vulva is different and special. Some lips
hang down. Some are tucked up neatly inside. Some are long. Some are short. Some are even. Some aren't. All are beautiful. You're perfect just the way you are.

If you don't want to make one type seem preferable to another, why use words like "neatly"? Also, they tell us what normal is with statistics and measurements and everything, then say not to worry if we aren't normal. If we don't want to worry about not looking "normal", why tell us what "normal" is in the first place?

11. Only about 30% of women have orgasms from intercourse alone. The clitoris is where the action is. Most women who do orgasm during sex have figured out how to hit their sweet spot, either from positioning or from direct stimulation of the clitoris with fingers.

Heteronormative...

13. Vaginal farts (some call them "queefs" or "varts") happen to almost all women at one time or another, especially during sex or other forms of exercise.
So don't be embarrassed if your hooha lets out a toot. You're perfectly normal.

I don't not trust anyone that refers to a vagina as a hooha.

15. Safe sex (or even just orgasm alone) is good for you. Benefits include lowering your risk of heart disease and stroke, reducing your risk of breast
cancer, bolstering your immune system, helping you sleep, making you appear more youthful, improving your fitness, regulating menstrual cycles, relieving menstrual cramps, helping with chronic pain, reducing the risk of depression, lowering stress levels, and improving self esteem. So go at it, girlfriends!

I'm confused about the separation of safe sex and "even just orgasm alone". To me, this gives an assumption about what counts as sex (vaginal intercourse)... I think it should say something more like "sex and masturbation are good for you." Also, why is it "just orgasm alone"... prioritizing certain acts above others? Maybe this is unintentional, but this kind of language can shape how we think about sex.

This is an example of why I sometimes really don't like psychology as a discipline. The idea that these medical "experts" get to shape so much of what we know and how we know it. The underlying assumptions in this article, such as heterosexuality and what counts as sex, never have to be explicitly stated, and come to shape what we "know" and how we think. Hopefully this pop psychology is far worse than academic psychology. Also, I don't mean to offend psychologists as a whole because I know some that do fantastic work and I know some sociologists who do terrible work.

Would you like fries with that diploma?

2011-12-09T15:05:00.004-05:00

This is a comic I made for a zine, using my campus map and attempting to turn it into a factory pumping students through on a conveyor belt to McJobs or unemployement.

I have been reading and thinking a lot about privatization within universities lately. Maybe not universities so much as within the particular institution that I currently attend. In the almost 6 years I have been here, I have seen so many changes occur, and like many academics, I am getting increasingly concerned about the future of my program and university educations more generally.

I have done a few presentations lately on the cuts within the university, and the main point that I have been trying to get across is that this is an organized attack on the quality of education and the quality of jobs on campus in the name of profits.

My university, like many others, has been changing from a public institution of knowledge to a private service where students purchase a degree and investors purchase research. Within neoliberalism, an attack on the idea of public goods is rather typical -- whether it be education, health care or social services -- the idea of publicly funded anything is counter to neoliberal ideologies, and for the wealthy to become as rich as possible these ideals must permeate into other areas of our social worlds.

With regards to employment on campus, there have been many changes. The highest paid positions are increasingly becoming even more high paid (our president just recieved a $79,000 wage increase) and the lowest are becoming even lower paid (from full-time to part-time). The combined salaries of the 10 highest paid people in the university are higher than all 240 GTAs combined. This past summer, 25 unionized positions were cut, as they were deemed redundant, and yet they are being replaced by contract workers. There are rumors that there will be another 25 jobs cut this coming summer.

The cuts to services on campus have been terrible. We went from having 6 counsellors to 2, and there is currently a 4 week wait to talk to someone. Tutoring services used to be free for all students; now they only exist for those with special needs and the rest of the work falls to GTAs and professors. There used to be a shuttle to take students around campus, as the parking lot is quite far from some of the buildings and it is sometimes -40 degrees in January and February, but this shuttle was cancelled despite rising parking costs.

My undergraduate program was quite small. When I started, there were about 10 full-time faculty and several sessionals. Last year, there were 6 full-time faculty and many sessional professors. Next year, it looks like we may only have 2-3 full-time faculty as well as fewer sessionals than in previous years. We are also be one of the only sociology programs that I have heard of that does not have a (non-sessional) female professor!

If these were strictly cost-saving measures, as the university claims, cuts would be felt across the board. There would be no raises or bonuses for upper admin, and there certainly would not be more upper administrators right now than there was 3 years ago.

One of the reasons I think this is happening is because of the change from universities being run by academics to them being run by business people. The current president was just named one of Canada's top 40 people under 40, and has a background in business. He does not have a PhD, and has no experience teaching in universities. How can we expect that the needs of educators will be met when those making the big decisions are not educators, but business people trained to make a profit? Our university is not a corporation, and I resent it being run like one.

Another consequence of this is what happens to academics. Academic freedom is lost. Researchers only take up certain types of studies because searching for knowledge is no longer funded. Those that speak out against certain companies or corporatization more generally can be reprimanded as it can affect corporate donations. So, business friendly administrators receive profit and power while employees see eroding wages and working conditions and students see diminished quality and access.

The only way to fight back against an organized attack like this one is with a coordinated response. Students and workers will have to work together across campuses if we expect any kind of meaningful change.

Jokes where men get raped still aren't funny

2011-11-18T08:41:00.002-05:00

In case it isn't clear from the title, this image could be triggering for some people. I sometimes question whether I should include the image, because I don't want anyone reading it uncritically, but I also feel as though I cannot talk about it in any detail without including it... I apologize in advance if anyone is offended by it (I sure as hell was).

I saw this on a memebase site, and I just want to reiterate that rape jokes in which men are the victims are still not funny. The point of this "trolling" site is to do things to deliberately trick or annoy people, sometimes they are very funny, but they sometimes really cross a line.

It's simple, both parties should enthusiastically consent to sex, and that this consent needs to be ongoing. If one party changes their mind and the other continues, it is sexual assault. It doesn't matter why the other party changes their mind, just that they changed it. The thought of what this would actually look like makes me a little sick to my stomach.

Male victims of sexual assault have the lowest reporting rate because it is often not thought to be serious when it happens (the whole can't-rape-the-willing bullshit). This can make it incredibly difficult for male victims of sexual assault. Females sexually assaulting males is relatively uncommon, especially compared to statistics with women, trans people or children as the victims or male on male assaults, but it does happen and it is not funny. Let's stop complicated things... if any of the involved parties do not want to be involved for whatever reason, it is assault.

I also wrote about a similar "joke" here, but it had the woman as the victim.

Wente, poor men, and the mancession

2011-11-14T14:02:00.003-05:00

Wente has done it again, with another brilliant article on what is wrong with the world... or at least the country... found here.

In this article, she talks about how men in Canada have it so rough because of our "mancession" (when men do not have jobs, but apparently women do).

If you ask Statistics Canada, men have a slightly higher unemployment rate than women (8.7% for men, 7.2% for women in 2010). That is only part of the story, however, because when you look at the employment rate, men's is much higher.

When men are not gainfully employed, it is a crisis because "without work, there's no path to manhood" (according to Wente). I could go on about the implications on manhood here, but suffice to say that it must suck to be gendered as male during an economic recession when the only way to become a "man" is through paid employment.

When women are not employed in the paid workforce, it is often called being a wife and/or mother, or taking a break in one's career to raise a family.

According to Wente;

the biggest economic challenge we face today is not income inequality, greedy corporations, Wall Street corruption or the concentration of wealth among the top 1 per cent. It’s the increasing failure of young men with high-school degrees or less to latch on to the world of work.

I thought it was the virtuecracy, greedy public union leaders, and single mothers who feel entitled to an education.

Make up your mind Wente, you are confusing me!

Assault prevention tips for men

2011-11-10T18:04:00.003-05:00

I have seen this before, and I am pretty sure I posted about it like 2 years ago, but now it comes as a pretty picture that is being circulated on facebook!

I think my biggest critique is that number 7 should be highlighted... maybe put as the first or last one or something because, statistically speaking, it reflects the most frequent assaults.

I hope this points to how absurd some of the ways that we ask women to regulate their behaviours to prevent assault actually are. Reading this still makes me want to laugh and cry at the same time... at first, it seems kind of funny, the "rules" are so absurd that I almost want to laugh, but then I remember that they are written down here because there are a lot of men (and women, but mostly men) that don't follow these simple rules.

Sexism and neoliberal language in comments from the Wente article

2011-11-07T05:57:00.005-05:00

Overall, most of the response I have received about the article in the Globe and Mail has been quite supportive, but not all of it. I may actually need to start screening comments, thanks to Margaret Wente. Last night, this message came in;

You got completely pwned! You're just another moron with an MA is Queer Theory...and you thought you were going to land a job in a non-profit...what a loser!

I wonder what qualifies this person to start judging others for bettering themselves and getting a degree. Not that it matters, but my MA is in sociology (or applied social research) and my main topic is access to education... I'm not sure where this queer theory stuff comes from, except that I post about it often on this blog.

Similarly, on the Globe comments, there have been people who have jumped to this assumption that I am a typical "welfare mom" without ever bothering to find out more about my individual circumstances.

I have read relatively few comments (there are about 2000 of them in total right now), and it seems as though most of the comments are about Wente's article being terrible - bad ideas and poor journalism. However, I am intrigued by some of the negative comments about me. As soon as the words "single mother" come up, certain types of comments begin.

One commenter suggested that the only way for me to earn money with a liberal arts degree is if I have a nice rack and can work at hooters. Do I even need to point out how sexist, objectifying and degrading this assumption is?

Another suggested that I go on Maury and have my kids' paternity tested so that I can collect child support. I was married, I do know who fathered my children. And the commenters do not know whether or not I receive child support at all.

And my favorite comment was along similar lines. After asking whether or not I knew the "stud" who "did the deed," this brilliant Globe reader went on to say "I am glad to know her name (and hope she does not change it) as under NO circumstances do I want such an idiot applying for a job in my company"

A reader then replied (I would love to find out who this was) informing that commenter that I am "a brainy person who won a ton of scholarships" and then said "I think you are pretty safe she would have nothing in common with your business"

These comments are sexist in many ways. If it were my ex-husband, as a single father, being retrained for an education, would his decisions be put on trial like this? Or would he be seen as a saint for taking care of his own children? But then, when he was injured and laid off, he was handed a financial package for retraining through Second Careers were he could get another degree debt-free, so I guess he would not have found himself in the same situation. I could not access second careers because being a stay-at-home-mom and a housewife is not a first career, even when done within the bounds of the nuclear family.

I have also been amazed by the ideology behind some of the comments. Even people who think that I was unfairly attacked sometimes write about how sociology used to be a viable option, but is no longer a productive way to contribute to society. Contributing to society means earning money, clearly. We should all find jobs that conform to capitalist and business needs.

Does anybody bother to question why it is that a liberal arts degree "is worth nothing?" (as so many commenters' stated)?

What sociology does, for me anyway, is make visible the social relations that are behind structures that appear to be naturally existing - such as capitalism itself. Throughout the liberal arts, we can trace out how capitalism developed and why it emerged as it did. We can see that it is not naturally existing, it is not ahistorical, and it is not the only successful option that has ever been presented. This is not good for business.

Through sociology, we can also look at the systemic forms of oppression that are being used to benefit those who are at the top of the hierarchy within neoliberal capitalism. We can look at how the moral regulation of single mothers (such as the comments I wrote about here) serve to uphold the status quo. We can look at how sexism, heterosexism, racism, ableism, and social class (among other factors) work to uphold a system where some people have everything they need (such as Wente) as they are born into wealth. Others, such as myself, are vilified for bad choices.

As long as they can pin poverty on the poor, the government can continue to funnel more and more money tax breaks for wealthy corporations. Commenters are quick to point out that a portion of my tuition comes from the government or that my subsidized childcare is paid for by their taxes. Do they realize that RRSP contributions for middle class families cost the government more than post-secondary education? Or social assistance? Or daycare? But, like wealthy corporations, the middle class are not seen as dependent on "the system". Why is that? I think that Wente, and her corporate friends, are even more dependent on "the system" than I am. And that is why they have to work so hard to get the rest of us working against our own interests, which is why her article exists in the first place.

A second post about Wente

2011-11-05T15:08:00.003-04:00

I have read this article by Margaret Wente a few times over now, and I am still trying to put together exactly how horrible I think it is. In this post, I am going to respond rather directly to her arguments, although most of them are so absurd that I don't think it is all that necessary, and I will soon write a post about the broader implications of these neoliberal attitudes, especially with respect to single mother students, which, coincidently, is directly related to my thesis research.

The article is about how I am representative of Occupy Toronto (funny, since I have been critical of the movement here and here, but how would she know that, not making any effort to contact me... and I'm not even from Toronto), and it is condemning me personally for getting a degree in sociology, for being a single mother, and for wanting to find work that would involve helping the poor at the expense of the rich.

First of all, according to wikipedia, Wente was born into a wealthy family. She is the 1% (possibly even the 0.01%). It is no wonder that she is fighting back against a movement that is questioning the idea of wealth.

Also, she has a master's degree in English from the University of Toronto... how is that any different from my degree in sociology? Are there lineups of jobs for English majors? If so, can you point me in that direction because I have a few friends in that field who have been looking for work (as well as fields like mechanical engineering, which she indicates is a better option for people looking for work). Or is it ok for her to get an arts degree because she is independently wealthy?

She writes

Ms. O’Gorman is in a fix. But I can’t help wondering whether she, and not the greedy Wall Street bankers, is the author of her own misfortune. Just what kind of jobs did she imagine are on offer for freshly minted sociology graduates? Did she bother to ask?

Yes, in fact, I did. Moving to sociology from social work was a decision that took me more than a year to come to. I am afraid to think about what the world would be like if everyone in the critical parts of social sciences and humanities decided to (was forced to) abandon their degrees because jobs might be hard to come by... it would be like Orwell's 1984! Or if arts degrees were only attainable to those who sought to uphold the status quo.

I think it is absolutely crucial that we have people earning degrees in sociology, political science, philosophy, history, english, as well as other critical disciplines. I believe what is learned in these disciplines is more important than ever right now, as neoliberal views (such as her own) bombard the media and try to get us all to think like business majors bent on helping wealthy corporations profit at our own expense.

I also really don't care that a lot of the job opportunities available are funded by the government. It's as if she doesn't realize that the money spent on these jobs (or that used to be spent, might be more apt) is money that comes from all of us, not just herself and her wealthy friends.

She refers to me as the "virtueocracy"

The class of people who expect to find self-fulfillment (and a comfortable living) in non-profit or government work, by saving the planet, rescuing the poor and regulating the rest of us. They are what the social critic Christopher Lasch called the “new class” of “therapeutic cops in the new bureaucracy.”

First of all, I resent being referred to as a cop in any form, but that is definitely not the biggest problem with this article. I am not sure why rescuing the poor has to come at the expense of regulating the rest of us. What about the ways that the rich are becoming richer at the expense of regulating the rest of us? Just look at the housing crisis in the US or the banking industry more generally.

Wente was right about one thing - she writes that "this social model no longer works". It doesn't- neither the neo-liberal model that she is advocating for, nor the "liberal democracy" in which we have been living. Both have failed. But without the theory and knowledge that comes from disciplines like sociology (or the social sciences and humanities more broadly), how will we ever be able to see the ways in which the poor are being regulated by the super-rich, and how would we conceive of a way out of this mess? Oh, wait... that's the point.

So, who is to blame for the economic crisis? Luckily for us, she answers this question;

It’s not the greedy Wall Street bankers who destroyed these people’s hopes. It’s the virtueocracy itself. It’s the people who constructed a benefit-heavy entitlement system whose costs can no longer be sustained. It’s the politicians and union leaders who made reckless pension promises that are now bankrupting cities and states. It’s the socially progressive policy-makers in the U.S. who declared that everyone, even those with no visible means of support, should be able to own a home with no money down, courtesy of their government. In Canada, it’s the social progressives who assure us we can keep on consuming all the health care we want, even as the costs squeeze out other public goods.

If my research on single mothers and social policy has taught me anything, it's that we no longer feel entitled to benefits - if we ever did. We feel shamed at every process of applying for benefits, and shamed for working at low-paid jobs, and shamed for not being able to fit into the ideal of the nuclear family through tactics such as Wente's article. But you know who does feel entitled to benefits- corporations through tax breaks and corporate tax cuts. They are not shamed into thinking they are leaching off "the system". And why can the costs of social benefits no longer be sustained? Might it have something to do with the redistribution of wealth?

And Wente, being Wente, has to throw in a dig to the unions, of course. It is always the fault of us high paid unionized employees. The cushy public sector jobs, right? Well, I'm the president of a union local in one of those cushy public sector locals, and about three-quarters of the membership is barely clearing minimum wage, we don't have benefits or pensions - and we all have university degrees! But you know who is making more - upper admin are making as much as 3 to 4 times the salary they did a decade ago. But they don't have a union, so they can't be to blame. It's my fault for bargaining that clause ensuring that we don't have to pay out of pocket for teaching material that is to blame.

We are also blaming the US housing crisis, but not because of "socially progressive policy-makers", but big banks who concocted a scheme that would allow them to make even more money off the poor which is widely believed to be a huge factor in causing this recession! Doesn't it take two people to go into a loan? The borrower only wants to live the "American dream" and provide a home for their family, believing that because they work hard, they will make it soon. The lender knows just how much the mortgage rate will go up, and must know that they won't be able to pay it. I don't know how she can even make this claim in a newspaper.

And, as for health care in Canada, if we were to put more money into the social determinants of health, such as poverty - nutrition, housing conditions, education, etc- we would save on health care in the long run. But putting that same money into wealthy corporations in the form of tax breaks only serves to pad the pockets of people who are already wealthy and has been shown not to create jobs.

Also, when she says that I didn't bring my children to the protest because I was worried about security... what I really said was that I was worried that the police would arrest all of the occupiers and that would traumatize my children. I had no fear AT ALL over their safety with respect to other occupiers. It was the first night of Occupy Toronto and we were not sure whether the police would let us stay in the park overnight. And for the commenters' that asked if my kids were in subsidized daycare when I was protesting... No, they were with family. Funny that their first assumption is that they were at daycare and not the kids' father or something.

The biggest problem that I see with this whole article is that she completely ignores the systemic and structural barriers surrounding the topic.... the entire post is classist and sexist, which is something I will get to in my next post (probably Wednesday).

I am Margaret Wente's new target!

2011-11-05T12:58:00.004-04:00

Now I'm officially a leftist... personally attacked by Margaret Wente in the Globe!

Did it occur to her that it might be a good idea to figure out how to support her children before she had them?

Not that this necessarily matters, or any mother should be shamed for having children, regardless of the circumstances upon which they became a single mother, but I was married to a welder, who had a good job. I owned a house. We had two children. Then, he had an affair. So I left him and went back to school to better myself.

I started in social work, where there are a lot of good jobs, but found myself being taught how to fix people to conform to the system. I wanted to fix the system. That's how I fell in love with sociology, and why i decided to go for my master's degree.

But, like she said (about me)

If she’d only applied a bit more critical thinking to herself, she might be able to pay the rent.

Anyway, an awesome facebook group just popped up called "I blame Margaret Wente" with the caption

Margaret Wente believes that Occupiers are blaming the wrong people in identifying capitalism as a fundamental problem. She says "It’s not the greedy Wall Street bankers who destroyed these people’s hopes. It’s the virtueocracy itself. "

Well, if Wente can pick the "virtueocracy" to blame, I'm going blame her. And capitalism. But I'm especially going to blame her for her badly-argued, feebly-researched, mean, system-apologist excuses for "journalism." Because surely she is responsible for at least that.

Won't you join me? This week, whenever we identify some wrong in the world, some injustice, some oppression, some situation whereby some groups of people mysteriously end up immiserated in relation to others, let's blame Wente

Also, I will write more about the educational aspect of this either this evening or tomorrow!

A debate on communism

2011-11-03T15:25:00.006-04:00

I had a debate with a friend on facebook last weekend that I thought was worth posting some reflections on, as a similar topic has come up in my blog comments section recently - at least in the context of openly calling oneself a communist. To me, this particular debate seems to be over what communism actually means, and on separating the history of what has been called communism from what communism actually is or can be. I have heard many of these argument many times, so I wanted to focus on these a little bit.

For obvious reasons, I cannot post all 39 comments, but I hope to get the point of the argument across as best I can.

The original status update was

Why is it that when I talk to a person who associates themselves with the right I get called a communist? And when I talk to a person who associates themselves with left I get called a libertarian? Come on now. I am better morally than either of the two possibilities that have been presented. Communism leads to totalitarianism. Libertarianism is absolutely oppressive. Fuck both of them, I want a new ideal to strive for.

My response;

communism does not necessarily lead to totalitarianism... that is just how it has played out on certain occasions.

So he said;

at risk of sounding like a neoliberal--which is not what I'm promoting at all--communism is absolute tyranny over individual. It requires that your needs be the same as everybody else, it requires a homogeneity of thought that impinges the creative process. There is nothing desirable about the equality that the communist promotes. I would prefer a principle which limits oppression over the individual, rather than increases it.

I have heard this argument many times. That communism cannot account for individual differences, which I think is absurd. How does capitalism account for individual differences? By upholding sexist, racist, heterosexism, ageist and ableist hierarchies?

And how would communism create any kind of homogeneity of thought impinging on the creative process when so many Marxist work is based on the creative capacities of the people or on reaching our full human potential? To me, capitalism (and any form of organizing with differential power relations) requires a homogeneity of thought... as Marx says "the ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch ruling ideas". If workers didn't uphold the ideas of the ruling class, they would revolt.

I was on my cell phone at this time and had limited ability to respond, but I wrote;

it is a misconception that communism would require homogeneity. Look at the famous quote "from each according to ability to each according to need". Difference is accounted for. Your argument is like saying you don't like cats because they're yellow. It makes no sense! Don't confuse Stalinist Russia with communism.

So ,he was offended by the cat comment... which, in retrospect, was kind of rude, but I thought it made a certain point. In his next response, he argues that communism requires giving absolute power to a small group who are supposed to act in the best interest of the people, and then says

Dismantle the power of the few and you have yourself a properly functioning democracy. Which is way better than communism for sure.

ummm... that's what the communism I imagine would look like... a "properly functioning democracy," not hoping a few people will act in everyone's best interest. So I said

Its not communism if a small group has power. Communism only exists if wealth and power are held by everyone. As soon as the heirarchies between powerful and powerless (or less powerful) begin to develop, you have something else entirely being called communism.

Still not accepting the difference between communism and what has been passed off as communism on specific occasions, he used Russia as The Historical Example of why communism is inherently wrong using Nietzche's will-to-power to back up his point.

These "historical" arguments using one specific example of communism not working to show why communism will never work might be the thing that annoys me most about arguments on whether or not it is feasible. And I responded by saying

You are looking at history selectively. Some communist states did not turn totalitarian- some were overtaken by capitalism through war others fell apart for other reasons (our "civalization" being forced on to them for example), some near-communist societies do exist (zapatistas). I will accept that honest attempts at communism haven't worked out, and that some attempts were not actually attempting communism, but I don't think that (or nietzche) proves definitively that communism is impossible.

I could keep going and show the rest of the arguments here, which continued to bring up Nietzche, but I don't think it is relevant to my post (or in the interest of keeping people reading my blog when the posts are too long).

I think the main point of this post is that several of these arguments play out all the time and I am tired of them because they don't make sense.

1. Stalinist Russia was not a communist state. It's demise does not prove communism to be impossible.

2. Different ideas are not only possible, but encouraged, in a communist state. Communism does not require everyone to do the same thing, think the same thing, have the same needs, or go back to a technology free society where nobody gets anything that we might consider a luxury (another common assumption).

3. Communism does not give power to a few people to make decisions for everyone. Communism would require full democratic participation.

I could really dissect the debate and come up with dozens of misconceptions that tend to play out on a regular basis, but, I am going to stop with these three for now. Feel free to add your own in the comments section if there is a common argument that you find particularly annoying.

I think these misconceptions are part of why so many people who I might consider to be communists do not embrace the term "communism." And, if we don't start using the word more often, how are we going to change these misconceptions?

Edited to add: A friend pointed out that this is somewhat simplistic, and I thought I should acknowledge that they are correct... I could turn this into three (or more) separate posts and make it far more nuanced and whatnot, and I might someday do that, but for now, this piece that does oversimplify some things will have to do!

Skirts in women's boxing

2011-11-03T15:00:00.003-04:00

I am opposed to the olympics for many reasons, and rarely write about sports (with this exception) but I just saw a BBC article that pissed me off... apparently, in order to distinguish female boxers from males at the olympics, the regulatory body is considering making them wear skirts! At this time, skirts are optional in most places.

Poland has already made it compulsory for female boxers to wear skirts, saying that it is more "elegant". Because it is essential that women be elegant all the time.

Here is a picture of one of the skirts, although there are also longer, less frilly ones available.

Is it really such a big deal if television viewers cannot tell men and women apart at first glance? And do women really look more "elegant" punching each other while wearing skirts? Can we also enforce pink gloves, headgear that allows us to see their perfectly made up faces (which they should not be able to punch because we wouldn't want anyone's lipstick to smear) and of course, stilettos! Have to get as many straight male viewers as possible!

To me, this is another example of male-as-normal and female-as-other. We can do the same stuff... no complaining, because look, we are in the olympics now, just like men. But, really, those governing bodies have to find a way to make what women do less serious than men, and objectify us whenever possible in that process.

Liberal feminist princess storybook not quite good enough

2011-11-01T08:33:00.004-04:00

I bought my daughter a book from the Women's bookstore in Toronto called "Don't Kiss the Frog; Princess Stories with Attitude" figuring that it would be a feminist book about princesses (if one should ever exist). Overall, it is pretty good... the princess does not always end up with the prince, and takes a rather active role in most of the stories.

I feel like I'm being extremely picky here, all things considered, but one part of story entitled "The Princess and the P.E" really bothered me.

A frog, using a whistle, helped a princess who was worried about her athletic skills learn how to jump really high and run really fast (this appeared to all happen in the span of a few minutes, because we don't need to work hard to improve our athletic skills or anything, we just need someone to blow a whistle at just the right moment). Anyway, afterwards, he said

"I'll be your best friend... just kiss me"

and the story goes

So Wendy bent down and kissed the frog. She didn't really want to, but after all, he had been very kind to her -- and he didn't really have more warts on his face than princess Viola.

At which point the frog turned into a prince, offered to be her handsome prince, but he was wearing gym clothes and was all muddy, so when he went to hug her, she ran away.

I can't stand that this book had her kiss the frog when she didn't want to because he had been so nice to her. I am trying to read it in a more progressive way, like she realized that she shouldn't have kissed him and that's why she ran away or something or that this will teach girls not to kiss the boy if they don't want to, I don't know.

Still, boy is nice to girl, asks for a kiss, girl feels obligated to oblige even though she states that she doesn't want to. Not the message I want my child reading.

Also, would she have ran from the hug if he had been a handsome prince, instead of a smelly prince covered in mud and wearing gym clothes? Does that even matter?

Either way, it all reads so date-rape-y to me. As I was reading it, I was so disgusted by it that we paused twice to talk about enthusiastic consent and what the effects of having this storyline in a supposedly empowering book could be. I'm concerned that reading this uncritically will make it seem normal to my children... and I think that the media does a good enough job getting that message across.

Overall, the book is a very liberal feminist piece of work. The princesses do not need a prince to rescue them, because girls can defeat the dragon and win jousting competitions, and only sometimes end up falling in love with the prince. But, this happens just because they try hard enough - it seems like pure luck or something (or a frog blew a whistle).

Even the back cover of the book is very "modern liberated woman"

For the princesses in this book, the old rules no longer apply. They might still wear tiaras, but they do things their own way!

Take the role formerly had by the prince (wining sports trophies, saving people from dragons, etc), throw in a bit of you-are-still-not-as-good-as-men, (the previously described frog-kissing scene) and make sure to maintain the need to differentiate yourself from others by wearing your tiara, a symbol of femininity and class, and convince girls that everything is ok!

The message seems to be that girls can be independent and still attract a prince. And that as long as you continue to be strong and independent, you will have a happy ending... and maybe this is too much to ask for from a children's book, but at least some of the Disney-type princess stories seem to have evidence of structural barriers (Mulan, for example, cannot join the army because she is a girl). This book seems to send the message that everything is ok just the way things are. And if you don't get a happily ever after, maybe you just aren't independent enough.

Still, this is far better than most princess stories the kids have read, and this rather harsh critique feels like I'm being overly picky in a lot of ways, but these attitudes camouflaged as feminism scare me far more than overt sexism, as my 9 year old can describe the sexism or class issues in Disney, but the reviews for this book seem to suggest that pretty much everyone is reading it as empowering towards girls. I'm just not sure this liberal brand of empowerment is what we should be striving for.

Further reflections on the occupy movement

2011-10-25T08:02:00.000-04:00

I have spent the better part of two days at Occupy Sudbury, and two days before that at Occupy Toronto… that hardly makes me an expert, but I have heard some reoccurring questions that I want to address here.

What is it I think this movement can do?

First and foremost, in my opinion, is that it opens up space for dialogue. I often talk about politics in my everyday interactions with people, but I often read that talking about controversial things like politics is not polite in certain situations. I have friends that never talk about politics, which saddens me… politics are so much fun to talk about!

In my last post about the occupy movement, I talked about Weber, and in this one, I will discuss another theorist that I almost never use in my own academic work; Habermas! Hopefully I don't simplify this so much that I am not doing his work justice, but basically, what he said was that within the public sphere, which is a public space not controlled by the state, people could engage in conversation and exchange views and knowledge and that this undistorted communication could lead to liberation. However, through the mass media and mass consumption (as well is bureaucracy and excessive rationality among other things) we lose our ability to think critically about the state.

The space that has been created by the occupy movement, and how it has been used for political discussions, has reminded me of my third year sociological theory prof's lecture on Habermas. There are a lot of problems with his work - for instance, whereas Habermas thinks that opening up this space for communication could allow people to speak freely about politics, I would argue that we really need to put more emphasis on the social and economic hierarchies that shape how we view the world and how we can talk about it… speech, in a racialized, patriarchal, capitalist society will likely never be free from distorting influences such as social power, and this is something I keep bringing back into our conversations at the occupy sites (such as in my critique that most of the leaders-who-are-not seem to be young, charismatic, white men). Anyway, it just amuses me when every day experiences bring to mind lectures or readings that I haven't really thought of in years.

So, back to the question of what I want this movement to do. What I hope it is currently starting to do is expose some of the social relations involved in aspects of our economic and political system that have been reified to the point where they seem like naturally existing structures without any alternatives. We created capitalism. It is not a thing that has always existed... it hasn't even been around very long. We made it. We can end it or we can change it.

In order to want to do so, we have to expose so many of the ideas that we have come to think are true, but are really just ideologies that serve to uphold capitalism. Ideas like poverty being caused by individual flaws, we need to get rid of the language associated with "helping the poor" and "handouts" (which were used last weekend by some very progressive people in the group).

These imply that certain people deserve everything they have gotten within capitalism, but should help others who are less fortunate. This is problematic because it upholds the capitalist system.

The other question I hear a lot of is with regards to solutions… let's just say that the education part works, then what?

Here is where I come into problems... I simply don't know what the answer would be. But I think that is a good thing because I don't think that any one person has that answer. Nick Dyer-Witheford writes about using people's creative capacities to come up with something better - a new way of organizing. I like this idea, we can learn from previous movements - what has worked and what hasn't - and build from there.

I do think it has to be everyone working together. The workers movement was quieted by dividing us up into trade unions without the capacity to organize together and support all workers. It is difficult to frame this movement in a way that all people are being included, that reparations are being made to certain groups, that decisions are being made while considering the specific needs of groups, the ways that the current political, economic and social relations are affecting the ways that we are able to participate in this movement.

As a sidenote, also relating to Nick Dyer-Witheford's work, I love how we are using tools of capitalism against itself within this organizing. Using facebook, twitter, youtube, blogs, etc. to get the messages out to so many people.

It is very early in the organizing process. There are so many possibilities. And I believe that the problems within the movement are easier to talk about now, while it is still new, as opposed to later, when things become more entrenched and the social relations become hidden in routine processes.

Still, at the same time I am having trouble working in a movement with so many people with such diverse opinions. I enjoy the dialogue, and I am usually good at respecting the fact that people have different beliefs and ideas and that everyone's are just as valid as my own… but sometimes I hear things that make me cringe at just how problematic I think they are (granted, I'm sure there are people there who do the same when I speak)... I should add, are not reflective of the movement as a whole, just a few opinions that keep popping up either here or in Toronto, or both.

1. The national anthem.

I was not there when they sang this in Toronto, but I was shocked when I heard about it. Indigenous communities were torn apart by European settlers and that these communities are still struggling in a variety of ways. The national anthem is a colonial song - it celebrates a colonial nation. There were indigenous peoples present objecting to it, but it was sung anyway.

Then, in the local occupy movement, it was played in a youtube video right before an indigenous drumming circle, which fostered more than a few discussions yesterday afternoon at the occupy site about whether this is a sign of "solidarity and friendship" or whether it is colonial and disrespectful. Neither side won, but the people advocating for fostering friendship and solidarity agreed to check with elders in the community.

And, on top of colonial implications, nationalism does nothing to help support what should be viewed as a global movement.

2. "The police are our friends."

The police are not our friends. Individual officers do make up the 99% in that they do not have huge sums of money that influence decision making on a legislative level, but, as a group, they do have a considerable amount of power. Yes, they smile and act friendly towards us, and I am not necessarily opposed to us doing the same, but remember, when they get their orders to arrest us, the power they have will become very evident. This also has other implications, where certain groups are more likely to have problems with the police than others (such as indigenous people).

Still, the local police have told us that they support us, and we don't exactly have large numbers of people at the occupy site at the moment, so I wouldn't advocate for anything that is is too anti-police. But don't think of them as friends or allies.

3. The word "violence" is thrown around.

"No using violence... like yelling at police officers or breaking things". Now, I agree that the protest is probably best off being peaceful, especially because we are trying to build public support, but I object to using the word "violence" when referring to damaging property or speaking loudly. For police actions to be considered violent, there has to be bodily harm inflicted... why do we not have the same standard. I'm not saying that we should damage property... I think that doing so would likely halt the movement through mass arrests and outrage against the 'violent' and 'threatening' protesters. I just think we should reframe how we are conceiving of violence and use different language when we are talking about these issues. Property damage is not violence (unless someone is likely to get hurt).

4. Lastly was the phrase "the most important thing is..." at facilitation/organizing meetings. To me, the most important thing for a facilitating meeting is to work out the logistics to create a space that will foster discussion and allow occupiers to have necessary amenities (bathrooms, food, shelter, warmth, etc.). If you are coming to the facilitation meetings to talk about how the most important thing is promoting electoral reform or climate change or whatever else you think it is, then I believe we are going about this the wrong way. What makes the occupy movement so amazing is that it can bring in so many people with diverse experiences. Your specific soap box argument is not the point of a facilitation meeting (and yes, I understand that using my soap box - this blog - as a means to convey this statement can be seen as ironic, or even somewhat hypocritical, but my point stands).

And now I will set aside some of this cynicism, make a few more kick ass signs (thus far, I have carried a sign with a Marx quote "What the bourgeoisie produces, above all, is its own grave-diggers" and one I have carried before in Toronto "there's no war like class war"- which I would love to nuance, but a sign does not allow for that). I will be back at the occupy site this afternoon for the rush hour road-side demonstration I can't wait until we have enough people to have a march like in Toronto.

Gender in Disney films

2011-10-20T10:18:00.003-04:00

This topic has been covered a lot, by a lot of people, but I came across two good pieces this week that I wanted to post. First was this image (found here);

This image emphasizes the importance of women being pretty and reliance on men within Disney films, in some of the characters that little girls idolize most.

This film (found here) shows masculinity in disney films.

My favorite piece from it was this quote.

It's much more a question in creating a certain environment of images that we grow up in and become used to and after a while those images will begin to shape what we know and what we understand about the world... it's a slow accumulative affect and it's much more subtle.

I don't blame Disney for sexism by any means, but I think this quote is very true. These images become seen as normal and gendered practices that exist throughout the media become entrenched in our thinking as naturally gendered behaviours based on real biological differences, when in fact, many (if not all) of these differences are social constructs.

What concerns me most is when I watch television programming that is currently geared towards young children... the gender stereotyping on the Disney channel, which airs sitcom-like television programs for kids is way more blatant than in any of these movies, in my opinion.

No always means no.

2011-10-20T08:56:00.003-04:00

I saw this image on graphjam a few minutes ago. In my opinion, it should never have been posted.

When she says no, she does not mean yes, EVER. When she says no, she means no, and that is the end of it. The entire circle should be green, not just that little green part at the top that looks like it occupies about 10%. The "something something something feelings" is irrelevant... it is just no.

I'm not even going to get into the implications of this kind of thinking.

Quick vent about kids and consumerism

2011-10-19T08:34:00.002-04:00

My 8 year old daughter asked if she could purchase a book from the book fair, and I told her I would go with her after school to get it, but I have to get cash first. She was concerned it would be gone and asked if she could bring her own money. When I told her she didn't have enough money for it, she asked if she could bring her money to buy something else - like she might have enough money for a pen or some other gadget or trinket being sold.

I let her take it because it is her money and she saved it herself, but this bothers me. We are so into the idea of buying something that we will bring money to a store (or bookfair) without a concept of what we need or wish to purchase, just for the point of finding something that we might happen to want. In our house, this item will usually end up buried in a corner within 2 days and never seen again.

I think Hannah Montana and The Suite Life are beating me when it comes to consumer education.

Occupy Toronto; Why I could not participate in a movement to restore democracy

2011-10-18T12:20:00.005-04:00

I am currently working on a more theoretical piece about the occupy everything movement, including issues around the ideas of whether this is a reform or revolutionary movement, that I hope to post in a day or two, but this one is about a few specific issues that I encountered while trying to participate in Toronto this past weekend.

This weekend, I had the opportunity to attend occupy Toronto. A group of students at the university I attend managed to get funding for a school bus and 18 of us set out to participate in this movement. I have been following Occupy Wall St for a while, and was thrilled to be participating in what I hoped would become a revolutionary movement. I had these romanticized notions of what it would look like and who would be involved. I do not have such notions anymore, and I will try and describe some of the reasons why, but I do still have hope that the occupy everything movement can work through these problems.

When we arrived in Toronto, we were among the first to set up the tent and we were full of anticipation about what exactly was happening and how it would work. The first problem I encountered was called the people's mic. Basically, how it works, is when someone wants to get a message out to the group, they yell "mic check" repeatedly, and the people around them echo the words in fragmented sentences to get the message to the entire group. This was incredibly difficult for me... the first time it happened, the chorus of voices coming from all sides (to announce a general assembly taking place in a few hours) was so loud and overwhelming that I actually found myself cowering... I was literally crouched on the ground in a ball with my hands over my ears and I was shaking.

I tried to find out more about the people's mic. Apparently, it is being used in New York because voice amplification is illegal. It is not necessary in Canada because there are no laws restricting the use of megaphones; at least not in Toronto (I'm not sure if other municipalities have such bylaws). It is also used because it does not require any power; amps require generators and megaphones have batteries. Still, I spent the next 18 hours trying to find someone who was part of an accessibility committee that may or may not have existed at the time, and in that process encountered 4 other people with the exact same issue as myself (3 of whom packed up their tent and left on the first day) as well as dozens of people who had trouble hearing and understanding what was being said.

I have no knowledge of what happened at Saturday's meetings because I was unable to participate... actually, I have very little recollection of the meeting at all, other than having met one of my favourite writers, Nick Dyer-Witheford, and my absolute favourite blogger, although the stress from the noise around me was such that I can't even remember what he looked like, nevermind what was said.

When I eventually did encounter someone who was part of the accessibility committee, they brought the issue to the beginning of the next General Assembly. A few people argued vehemently for abandoning the people's mic in order to make the meeting accessible to everyone, providing that everyone present could hear what was happening through the megaphone. Others argued that we continue to use the people's mic until we get to the part on the agenda (I don't know who came up with the agenda or how) where we discuss motions. This seemed contrary to they had just finished making about how any form of discrimination including racism, sexism, heterosexism and ABLEISM would not be tolerated. In the end, they decided that the people's mic would be used from now on and if anyone was not able to participate, they could self-identify and watch on a live feed from a tent on the other side of the park.

This felt like a form of segregation to me. I will not be returning to that park until/unless I can participate in the meetings... if people could not hear the megaphone, that would be understandable, but I cannot comprehend their reason for keeping it (partly because I couldn't participate in the discussion on whether or not to use it, as the discussion was done with the people's mic) other than it being some kind of tradition-based thing brought from New York. If someone has a good argument for keeping it, please let me know. Also, how was this decision made as a "consensus" when those it was affecting most were unable to participate in the discussion?

As for the issue of consensus more generally, I believe they really were trying. Still, it seemed as though those who were facilitating the assemblies were almost entirely white men. I do not blame this on the movement, but on the current climate where certain people are given more authority. Now, I'm not one to site Weber very often, but notions of his idea of charismatic authority kept coming to mind when these leaders-who-are-not-leaders spoke. It also brought to mind a quote from Marx's A Critique of the Gotha Program;

What we are dealing with here is a communist society [not really- at least not yet], not as it has developed on its own foundations, but, on the contrary, just as it emerges from capitalist society, which is thus in every respect, economically, morally, and intellectually, still stamped with the birth marks of the old society from whose womb it emerges (1981).

I am not sure what the answer is to avoid the leaders-who-are-not problem, or to encourage people from marginalized positions into these facilitating roles. I know that the group encourages minorities to get involved as much as possible, but when the meeting was attended by a sea of young white university students, it might be hard to find people to fill those spaces. So, the question becomes, how do we reach out to them and include them, and how do we move past the notions of privilege and authority that are so entrenched in our minds that these movements often participate in them while actively trying to reject them?

Also, while I was walking around outside of the park in the evening, I noticed homeless people sleeping on the sidewalk near the park. I think we need to figure out why they weren't in the park itself, because this should be their movement. How do we get the people who are most in need to participate?

While on the topic of consensus, there were a lot of issues figuring out exactly what consensus meant. An example was with regards to Sunday's march. The action committee decided to propose that we march at 3:00. Someone proposed that we march on the sidewalk and obey traffic signals. Other people, myself included, were opposed to this idea; we are marching on public streets - OUR streets - we should not do so following their laws. Some debate ensued. It was suggested that we postpone the walk until this discussion had been figured out. Someone else suggested, in the name of consensus, that those who want to march did so, and those who did not want to march stayed behind. This is not consensus. I had to leave at this point because of the people's mic issues, but the discussion went on for several hours and a march did take place, I am assuming based on a decision that I am assuming was made on a consensus basis (by those who were able to participate). It is a minor issue, but these are the types of things that, if handled in an appropriate manner, would probably work themselves out over time as the group got accustomed to the idea of consensus organizing. Still, if we don't have full participation, than even a unanimous decision isn't really a consensus.

So, the question I continue to ask myself is whether this movement represents my own beliefs as an activist and as someone who engages in Marxist/anarchist social theorizing... and the answer I keep coming to is not quite... but it could be. I am supportive of it, and will continue trying to be involved in any way I can.

We are the 99 percent

2011-10-11T20:13:00.003-04:00

I was talking to my 8 year old about Occupy Wall St. and the supporting occupations that have popped up around the world. Then, we looked at the website for We Are the 99%. She decided to make her own sign and she asked me to put it on my blog.

In case you can't see it, the top says "Riche" (french for rich) and has a picture of two nicely dressed people throwing money up in the air. The bottom half says "poor" and has what she described as "ninety-nine sad faces." She said that she is doing this because it isn't fair that the rich people have so much money when there are so many poor people.

Also, you can barely see her face (which I told her was a requirement for posting this, as I don't want her face online) she is trying to make a sad face in the picture, but kept laughing when she saw the camera.

My dentist is Katy Perry

2011-10-06T10:04:00.003-04:00

I might not be posting for a few days, as I am not trusting my ability to write coherently on pain meds, and I just had major dental surgery. However, I feel it is imperative that I tell all of my loyal readers (yes, both of you) about the experience of waking up from anaesthetic!

Apparently, the first thing I did after waking up was look at my partner and say "my dentist is Katy Perry"

She responded by asking whether the dentist was playing Katy Perry music, and I shook my head and went back to sleep.

Just thought you should know that even when I am unconscious, I am thinking about pop culture! And I really really really don't like Katy Perry, and not just because I can now blame her for my swollen face, sore mouth, and inability to eat solid foods.

The ludicrously far-fetched task of pulling oneself up by one's bootstraps!

2011-09-30T15:24:00.002-04:00

I was sitting in a student workspace with a group of undergrads the other day talking about politics. The conversation got around to power and the notion of empowerment, in that the poor should be able to empower themselves to get out of their situation... although I don't think anyone was defending that position. Anyway, someone mentioned the phrase "to pull oneself up by one's bootstraps". We had all heard the phrase before, but none of us were aware of where it came from.

It is often used by politically conservative people to discuss the notion of helping oneself overcome a difficult situation... like, someone may be poor, but if they were to just try harder, work harder, and be persistent, they can get themselves out of the situation without needing any help from other people, charities, or government support.

First, we google imaged "bootstraps" to see what they were. This is what I found;

So, originally, bootstraps were meant to help you pull on your boots (there are also things called bootstraps that are more decorative straps around the ankle).

One of the people in the group started actually acting out a scene of trying to pull themselves up off of the ground from these bootstraps. Needless to say, it didn't work and we came to the conclusion that doing this would almost always result in the person falling on their ass.

I suggested we look at the etymology of the phrase. According to Wiktionary (I know, truly reliable source...), it originally implied that something somebody was attempting or has claimed was "ludicrously far-fetched or impossible."

So, I now agree with the premise that, for many people who live in poverty, getting out of it would be as simple as pulling oneself up by their bootstraps, as in, the claim that you just have to work hard enough and it will pay off (see Oprah or Sam Walton for examples) is ludicrously far-fetched.

Also, I haven't really looked any further into how the change happened (as in, no explanation showed up on the first few pages of a few google searches), but this is what I would like to think happened. I would like to think that some cool activist made up a satirical speech (A Modest Proposal style speech) and it used the phrase in the same capacity that it is used now as a way of talking to the poor... and the rich folks didn't get it... they still aren't in on the joke.

Apparently, acknowledging that gay and trans people exist "confuses" children!

2011-09-30T14:35:00.004-04:00

This image ran as a full page ad in the National Post.

I am almost amused by some of their arguments... the right hand column has a few items that appear to be taken directly from the curriculum... here are the examples of "bad" things for kids to learn;

Discuss ways to challenge these notions so that people have more choice in who they are and what they want to do
Read some traditional folk tales and fairy tales with the class. Have students write/illustrate their own “gender-bending” versions

The class discusses the significance of Toronto’s annual Pride Week celebrations

Search imagines of Pride Week… make posters for the [school board] float and/or school bus that are in the Pride Parade. Additionally, students could have their own Pride Parade at their school

My only question is where do I sign my kids up for this kind of education, and can we have it in all grades and all schools? At first I thought it was a joke, like, using good arguments to make the opposite point of what it appeared to be making, but their website suggests these are their actual arguments.

Edited to add:

I just came across this response ad here... I can't figure out how to embed the picture, but check out the link!

Sometimes I love facebook

2011-09-28T21:31:00.005-04:00

So, I "shared" this picture on facebook...

And ended up having this conversation with my sister in the comments section...

Sociology's invisibility cloak!

2011-09-28T07:37:00.001-04:00

found here

Granted, I didn't feel invisible all the time back when I was homeless... I felt incredibly conspicuous at times... never felt invisible while trying to sleep at night without a bed or shelter or friend's couch, for example. But, yeah, I still agree with this comic because it seemed as though to most people, I did not exist. I'm not sure there is any other time that people avoided eye contact with me so consistently. And, on a policy level, most governments don't seem to be focused on the issue anymore.

Android app answers the age old question, "is your son gay?"

2011-09-26T11:30:00.005-04:00

Ever wonder if your son is gay? Lucky for you, there is now an app for that!

It is only available in french, so here are the questions originally from this site, translated from google translate (I apologize if any of them aren't translated perfectly, my french is rusty!).

He likes to dress well, does it pay close attention to her outfits and brands?
He loves football?
Before birth, did you want a girl?
Has he been beaten or been involved in a brawl?
He reads the sports pages?
Does he have a best friend?
He loves team sports?
Is he discreet?
Is a fan of singers divas (Dalida, Mylène Farmer ...)?
Remain there long in the bathroom?
Does he have a piercing in the tongue, the arch, nose or ear?
Does it take him a long time to style his hair?
You ask yourself questions about the sexual orientation of your son?
Are you divorced?
He likes musicals?
Has he introduced you to a girlfriend?
The father is very authoritarian to his son?
In family relations, indicating there be a certain absence of the father?
In his childhood, he was rather shy and quiet?
Does he get along with his father?

Can't they be more original than using all of the parent-blaming stereotypes... like, if he's gay, it must be the absent father or the authoritarian father, or the mother who wanted a girl...

And of course, the gender inversion stereotypes... because all gay men (and no straight guys) take a long time to do their hair, are concerned about clothing, like musicals, and are obsessed with "diva" singers!

I have a novel concept... if you are wondering if your son is gay, think about whether it actually matters! Or ask him! Or make sure you provide a safe space so he can tell you when he's good and ready to!

Now, let's wait for the "Is your daughter a lesbian" list to come out... I wonder what that one will look like? Does she wear flannel and/or plaid button front shirts? Does she own at least one pair of doc martens? Does she make out with women for reasons other than to entertain hetero men?

Fuck these lists... being queer is not about clothing or hair, it is about attraction and sexuality. Enough with the stereotypes already.

Why is it still considered ok to discriminate against trans people?

2011-09-25T14:07:00.004-04:00

I posted a link of facebook that is worthy of a blog post in and of itself, and got a lot of comments on the link that I wanted to discuss here. First, the link is found here.

In London, Ontario, an employee at the downtown farmer's market were fired because she is trans. According to the story, "Market officials were concerned transgendered individuals compromised their family friendly atmosphere." My first thought is that the trans people are not guilty of this, it is the transphobic people making the market a hostile environment that is compromising the "family friendly atmosphere". (BTW, the correct language is trans or transgender, not transgendered- adding -ed implies a verb as opposed to a noun... I am not femaled).

Why is it still ok to discriminate against trans people? If the people running the market tried to fire someone for being female or racialized or gay, there would be public outrage (note, this kind of discrimination does still happen, but no boss would come out and say that they fired that person because they were racialized... it is hidden because it is not considered acceptable).

And yet, facebook comments show me that this type of discrimination is supposed to be ok! Here are a few highlights from my wall...

Well, obviously there were enough complaints to warrant the dismissal...there's discrimination everywhere you go..if you're old they won't hire you, if you don't have the education they won't hire you..so if you are transgendered what do you expect...

"enough complaints to warrant the dismissal." Let's think about that. Let's say that a racialized person gets a job at the market, and a there are complaints from customers saying that they only want to work with white people... would that warrant a dismissal? And the "what do you expect" blames trans people for trying to find work...

Wait... Why can't the employee just wear men's clothing while at work and wear whatever else at home?

ummm... because they aren't men and shouldn't have to dress as though they are?

and my least favorite;

Personally I boycotted Dancing with the Stars this season because of Chaz bono..It used to be a show that both (child) and I would watch, but just b/c they put him on the show and made this whole big controversy out of it....out of all the stars they choose him? He's not even a star..he's only known because of Cher, I don't remember "Chastity" having any talents that would "qualify" you as a star...Anyhow, just my 2 cents.

Not everyone was insulting or rude... there were a few positive comments, including this one from my brother (who has been mentioned many times on this blog)

Ontario Human Rights Code. Section 1. transgender fits in to sex, as it is sex identification. lots of rulings on this already. though, not sure where education or social assistance status would fit in (but if it doesn't, I agree it should be in).

"Every person has a right to equal treatment with respect to services, goods and facilities, without discrimination because of race, ancestry, place of origin, colour, ethnic origin, citizenship, creed, sex, sexual orientation, age, marital status, family status or disability."

and this one from Mr. Awesome (responding to a commenter, who was discriminated against by a housing co-op for being on social assistance).

Being discriminated against happens naturally, but it's also wrong. You deserve a better chance at getting a job if you're on assistance, yet employers usually discriminate against poor individuals. If anything, it means we need to make resources more accessible for everyone.

The same logic applies to transgender folks. Nothing about them makes them less productive than a non-trans gender person. To discriminate against them is wrong, just as it's wrong to discriminate against the poor.

Anyway, I have a few points to make, and then I would like to open this up to ask readers for advice on how to respond to these comments.

I have been going back and forth in my mind about whether to delete all of the negative comments. I have trans friends who will likely read these posts on my facebook wall, and I feel as though they get so much hatred from the outside world that I would like my wall to be a safe space. Still, I would like to be able to respond to some of this and hopefully change a few peoples' minds about what it means to be trans (not that I am remotely qualified to do this...)

I really cannot understand the thought process of people who agree that it is ok to have fired the woman mentioned above. All I can think of is that she did not do anything wrong... she merely showed up to work in clothing that I could have worn without any incident, and was (is still being) discriminated against. This all makes me so sad and upset that I just want to go hide in my room without the internet and not come out until transphobia disappears, which is clearly the most logical and useful response...

Bisexuality comics

2011-09-20T15:00:00.005-04:00

I have been writing a paper on biphobia today, and when this came up on my facebook newsfeed I was rather pleased.

As someone who might be called bisexual by others (not really a word I use myself for a variety of reasons that I have written about before and probably will do again), I have experienced a lot of these first hand.

Bisexual people can be promiscuous and they can be faithful or abstinent... just like anyone else. It just means that you are attracted to people of more than one gender. Not that you are attracted to everybody all the time.

It is also not a phase - sometimes people identify as bisexual for a while, and often it is a permanent state where people are attracted to more than one gender for their entire lives. One doesn't necessarily stop being bisexual when they are in a hetero-looking relationship - actually, that is sometimes when people are most in need of being part of the LGBTQ community, otherwise it can feel like one is denying a huge part of who they are.

I also really appreciate that the last row addresses some of the exclusion and biphobia that takes place from within the queer community.

Fat phobia in children's programming

2011-09-16T08:37:00.003-04:00

My daughter loves watching Suite Life with Zack and Cody. It is a show about twin boys who go to school on a cruise ship. There are a lot of things about the show that annoy me to the point where I am ready to ban the show in our house.

What I like about the show is that the girls on it are not that concerned about boys. One of them is funny, smart, and concerned about things like schoolwork and her family back home on the farm. Another female character is only concerned about looks and her father's money, and her character London Tipton is based on real-life Paris Hilton... annoying in a lot of ways, but at least she doesn't change herself to get boys to like her (unlike Hannah Montana, for example).

The boys, however, are constantly objectifying their female peers. Todays episode got my attention because it was a somewhat humorous parody of Star Trek. The ending, however, left much to be desired.

One of the twin boys woke up on a beach and was overjoyed that he had finally made it to "bikini island." "Bring on the babes!" was one of his objectifying exclamations. However, the girl that appeared was not what he would describe as a "babe." It was an overweight older woman in a shiny gold bikini. At this point he screamed and tried to jump back into space to get away from her (the scene is on youtube here, 9 minutes in)

I don't know where to begin analyzing the message that this is telling children. It seems that my daughter cannot get a break from being told that her value as a human being is attached to how she looks.

Don't tell me to smile

2011-09-15T12:27:00.004-04:00

For as long as I can remember, people have been telling me to smile on a regular basis. Strangers walk up to me in the street and tell me that I look sad and should smile. Usually it is men telling me to smile, but not always (a really drunk woman stopped me and my partner at Pride right before the dyke march to tell me how sad I looked when I actually felt excited about the march). Casual acquaintances have often told me that I looked upset or have made comments about how good I look when I'm smiling, which I see as an attempt to make me smile more often (because, being female, of course I always want to look my best).

The thing is, I am rarely sad or upset. That is just my normal facial expression. I wonder if people would say the same thing if I were male - is it that being female, I am supposed to be pleasant? Although I think gender is a factor, I'm sure it happens to men as well, although probably not as often as comments from strangers.

And I am not talking about people who seem to be genuinely concerned and ask if I am ok - that doesn't bother me at all. I am talking about the guy that comes up to me in public and tells me to smile or the co-worker who tells me that I need to smile more often or the stranger who comes up to me on the street and asks why I am sad. The thing is, if I actually am sad for whatever reason, telling me to smile is not going to make me happy. It just makes me self-conscious about whether I look upset and annoyed that people feel they can comment on my appearance.

I have been reflecting on this today, and I'm really not sure why. It has been a few weeks since someone has told me to smile (possibly because I have barely left the house). But I made a connection today that I think should have been clear a long time ago. Maybe it is linked to having aspergers (I have a tentative diagnosis at this point). I have read that it is quite common for people with AS to look upset when they are contemplative, and I do tend to get lost in my own thoughts a lot. Smiling, even when I am happy, sometimes feels forced or strange. Sometimes I feel kind of like a robot (which is probably why I feel like I can relate to characters like Data or Seven of Nine from Star Trek or Sheldon from Big Bang Theory). When I am in a new environment and not in control of some of my self-calming behaviors (like rocking), even my partner can have trouble telling if I am coping, and that is understandable because I guess I can be hard to read... but she has never told me to smile or to cheer up.

If you are genuinely concerned about whether or not I am ok, or if I am crying or doing something that really suggests that I am actually distressed in some way, by all means, ask me if I am alright (like the person who, very respectfully, asked if he could get me some water or something when I was clearly freaking out about the noise and the number of people in the room at the biphobia survey launch party last weekend- thank you!). But if you do not know me or I am just staring off into space or something, it is probably best to leave me be... and DO NOT tell me to smile.

victim blaming on a feminist blog; re. celebrity nude photos

2011-09-14T11:52:00.002-04:00

I just saw this post come up on my facebook newsfeed from a feminist blog that I used to read on occasion that engaged in victim blaming.

Apparently, there were a bunch of celebrities who have had nude pictures stolen fairly recently, and Scarlett Johansen was one of the victims of this theft. The post, after explaining what had transpired came up with a really good point, and then a really poor one, in my opinion.

But in any case, we really need to take a look at this fucked up situation: Hackers are targeting women, making their personal business public. But also: These women are taking naked pictures of themselves in an era when no personal information is safe. WTF.

It is a huge problem that this targets women, and it says something about sexism and objectification when it is pictures of the bodies of women that are being taken and put on display as though they were public property.

However, I don't think the second sentence is appropriate for a feminist blog. Lots of people have taken nude photos of themselves, and doing so is not justification for what has happened here.

Is it just me, or is telling women that taking these pictures puts them at risk similar to saying that dressing a certain way puts you at risk of assault... granted, there is the key difference that if no such pictures exist, they cannot be stolen, but women have a right not to have their computers hacked into and their personal photos taken and made public. And if this does happen, it is not in any way their fault for having those pictures in the first place.

Why I have not been blogging lately...

2011-09-02T11:22:00.003-04:00

I have not been writing much at all lately in any capacity. I have gone through a phase where I have felt too jaded to write... too pissed off with leftist allies and a little bit in shock over realizing that those divisions that I have read about are true - the divisions between leftist activists whose approaches are so different that they are unable to find a way to work together.

I am going through a huge transition right now, as far as my own politics are concerned. I still have the same political beliefs as I have been writing about for the past two years, but whereas I used to take on every way that I could think of to try and put those beliefs to action and work towards some kind of meaningful change, I have become withdrawn. I don't want to be a stereotypical academic leftist that does nothing to contribute to change, but I need to negotiate how much of myself I can give before losing myself entirely... here's why.

I have been engaged in union work for a few years now in various capacities. Our local just had a CA ratification vote, and I was entirely against the proposed agreement. I feel as though tactics that were used to pass the agreement were very questionable, such as requests for a general membership meeting before the vote being denied and the vote itself being held only a few weeks before the membership returned from various activities making it impossible to reach many of them. The vote itself did not contravene the law or union constitution in any way, but in my opinion, the process was unethical. And the more I spoke out about it, the more I felt as though I were being pushed away, quieted, left out of further decision making processes... which only made things worse. So now I have to decide whether I want to continue to be involved in this type of work.

I have been putting off the decision this month. I have been on sick leave for medical issues that are not necessarily related to the past month's events but were likely exasperated by them. I have spent the month watching television, reading novels, napping... trying to take care of myself and get my health back together. I am still not allowed to drive or ride a bike, which makes it difficult to get anything done.

But now I am getting to a point where I am ready to start facing the question of how I wish to proceed with my activism in the immediate future. Sometimes I have felt as though I am one of the only people in a room being critical of certain things (such as by not fully endorsing the NDP at union conventions) and that feeling of fighting alone is exhausting. I do have allies, there are other activists in my area with similar beliefs, but mostly, any activities seem to fall back to NDP cheerleading or liberal rhetoric, such as notions of 'choice' or 'trust'. I don't have the energy to call these publicly every time they occur anymore, but I feel that these ideas do need to be challenged and built upon to create something bigger.

I was hoping to find this community when I move for my PhD, but it looks like I might be putting that off for a year. I could be here for as much as 2 more years, so I need to work some of these things out. I need to find ways to use my energy to do things that will be meaningful and won't feel like I am trying to fight a losing battle or compromising my own beliefs.

Yet another facebook meme

2011-08-05T09:16:00.004-04:00

I just wanted to quickly post this because it annoyed me. The facebook status that I have seen posted twice today states that...

Women are all born angels. And when someone breaks our wings, we simply continue to fly . . . on a broomstick. Be warned -- we are flexible like that.
Keep this post going girls :-)

This is remeniscent of the Madonna/whore dichotomy (which is usually more explicitly tied to women's sexuality, but not necessarily so)... this idea of "good" woman and "bad" woman. In this case, women are all either angels or witches... there is no in between.

We are all born angels, which to me, seems to signify this idea of innocence that is ruined by people hurting us... I'm assuming by people, the meme is referring to men. This idea of childhood purity or innocence in the notion that we are born "angels" really concerns me. It seems to assume that women's "natural state" is to be kind, gentle, caring, nurturing... traits that are not assumed of men through notions of masculinity (think "boys will be boys").

This means that women who conform to the Madonna role, the nurturing/motherly role, the role of girl you would like to bring home to meet your parents... that woman is representative of what women should be. The "bad girl" character that I'm sure we are all familiar with seeing throughout the mass media is damaged. Someone must have hurt her for her to deviate from her natural good girl role... It is all bullshit.

I'm pretty sure the message is meant to be more empowering to women in some way - that it is supposed to tell women not to be docile or to let people take advantage of you, that it is ok to be a 'witch' when somebody 'breaks your wings'. In that respect, there is an aspect to it that I do think is clever... I just think that it is draws far too much from these binary notions that can really hurt women, in the long run.

So much for "neutrality" within the media...

2011-07-14T11:29:00.003-04:00

There was a terrible article posted in the Sudbury Star about a rally yesterday, linked here. The biggest issue I have with it is that they only interviewed the people who were part of the pro-"life" demonstration and didn't interview a single pro-choice activist.

I will write more about the rally itself later, but for now, this article. A group called Show the 'Truth' (I can't write it without putting truth in quotes or something because what they show is far from the truth) sent a bus full of people here to display graphic pictures on the side of a busy road about what they think abortion looks like. We got a small group of pro-choice activists to protest their event. Here are some quotes from the article...

At first, Connell said she thought the pro-choice demonstrators were aggressive, but said they eventually stood quietly.

This quote is entirely misinformed and should never have been published. At first, there was me and one other person there (a third had gone to get coffee). Two of us were holding a pro-choice banner when a busload of anti-choice activists pulled up with their signs and set up around us. We felt somewhat threatened by their presence as they kept closing in on us and squishing us into one particular street corner.

By the time there were about five of us there, they sent a few people to engage us in a debate in which they told us that we were supporting genocide and that by being pro-abortion we were also (obviously) pro-holocaust and we must support apartheid in South Africa as well. They had video cameras in our faces and would not stop recording us, even when we asked them to. We asked them to move away from us and we entirely stopped talking to them, and they just stood in front of us, blocking our sign and saying that they had every right to be there too.

One of the event organizers called the police afterwards, and we were told that if we wanted to protest a rally, we should do so far away from them or not complain about them getting in our personal space or filming us... but we were there first, so that makes no sense.

I'm sorry, but how does a bus load of people feel intimidated by 2 young women?

"There was a girl who got quite worked up," Connell said.

I'm not sure if they are referring to me here when I told them off after they said I supported nazi Germany, or if they are referring to my friend A, who started yelling at a man who was trying to engage one of our protesters in a physical fight, but I can assure you, they were as "worked up" as we were.

Also, can someone explain this one to me please... on the megaphone, they said (and I am paraphrasing... If you knew my glass of water was poisoned, and you let me drink it, would you not be an accomplice to my murder? Well, supporting abortion is like letting someone drink that water......

My first Toronto Pride

2011-07-06T08:25:00.003-04:00

Last weekend, I went to Toronto pride for the first time. It was such an incredible experience... I would like to just mention a few things about it, then relate it to an experience I had yesterday where an acquaintance repeatedly told a homophobic joke even after I pointed out that it was inappropriate.

There was one particular moment at pride that I think I will remember forever. I was watching the parade with my partner and a friend. Towards the beginning of the parade, there were a few groups that made me think about how much things have changed over the past decade. For example, school teachers were marching. Now, I do not recall there being any teachers who were 'out' and able to march in parades at any of the 4 high schools I attended, but I do recall a lot of teachers being made fun of for having non-gender typical traits and called many derogatory names. This was in the late 1990s.

Soon afterwards, there was a group of students representing Catholic high school students' attempts to establish GSAs at their schools, which made me think about how far we have left to go. When these students walked by, one of whom I recognized from a newspaper article, I got quite overwhelmed and actually cried. It made me think about how different my life might have been if I had access to this type of a group when I was a teenager.

I almost cried again when I saw the product placements, but in an entirely different way. There were pink razors being handed out to women from a portable bathtub looking thing that was being pushed by a few people (which reminds me, I was surprised by the fact that I didn't see another pair of unshaven legs on someone I would have identified as female). There were also the TD boys, men in little green underwear that represent the main corporate sponsor. I was intrigued by the lack of half naked females selling things... it seems within the queer community, men take over the role of objectified body. Even outside of advertising, the women whose bodies were not covered with clothing rarely conformed to hegemonic standards of beauty.

There was another aspect of pride that bothered me. By Sunday afternoon, Church Street was littered with garbage. I wish I had taken pictures of the amount of trash on the street. It didn't help that vendors and groups were pushing their leaflets and pamphlets, which were later tossed aside, or that there were relatively few employees emptying trash cans (all people of color that I saw). It just reminded me of kids trashing a house at the end of the night... still, the people were pleasant and the atmosphere was good.

Yesterday, after returning home from Pride, there was an incident that made me wish I were back in that atmosphere again (not the litter, but the more open and accepting environment that I experienced, especially on the Friday, which was referred to as Trans Pride Day). I play on the graduate student baseball team... we are in the lowest division and have never won a game, but it is usually still fun. The other team had a player on third base, and one of my teammates made a comment/joke insinuating that the player enjoyed spending a lot of time on his knees.

The player who this had been said to and the other people on my bench started laughing until I pointed out that it was a somewhat homophobic thing to say (implying that a man performing oral sex on another man is a bad or humorous thing). At this point, the group had stopped laughing and kind of looking around awkwardly, except for the guy who made the joke who repeated it more loudly. A friend of mine on the team walked over to me and started asking me about Pride weekend, I am assuming so that the other people would get the hint and stop speaking that way, which seemed to work for the time being.

When the inning was over and the rest of the players on my team came back to the bench he repeated the joke again, to which I responded something along of the lines of "Nice, tell the homophobic joke in front of the lesbian couple". I am not entirely happy with that wording because it implies that it would be ok to tell the joke if there were no identifiable queer people around, but I just responded without taking too much time to think about it. He shot me a dirty look, but nobody laughed at him this time, I am assuming because they were afraid of offending me.

I also think that it is weird that in some instances, such as this one, I feel compelled to say something about what I consider to be hateful speech. Yet, when people are directing it towards me (see here), I freeze and cannot say anything. Like, on a streetcar returning from Pride events in Toronto, a man was poking me and referred to me to my partner as her 'boyfriend' (even though I am not particularly masculine). Again, I froze... luckily, she knows me well enough to understand when I cannot respond and told him to leave me alone.

Credentialism infographic

2011-06-30T08:12:00.002-04:00

It would be funny if it weren't so true.

see more Monday Through Friday

Still, education doesn't necessarily find you a job, as the recent and upcoming graduates in my MA program would tell you. But then, we didn't major in mailroom sciences...

Heterosexism on Facebook

2011-06-28T16:46:00.003-04:00

This morning, I updated my status to ask if anyone needed a ride from my hometown to Toronto for Pride this weekend. An aquantance responded by saying

Seriously? Why would you want to go parade around advertising sex... Heterosexuals don't have a parade... wonder why?!?

At first I was quite mad and thought about just deleting the comment and "unfriending" her. But then I decided to comment back, because it is a sentiment that I have heard so many times. My response is limited to what I could type on my phone, which only allows a certain number of characters, but here it is...

Heterosexuals don't get looks while holding hands. They don't have to make sure they won't be arrested before planning a vacation. They don't have to come out to their families and friends. Have you ever been told that you could be 'cured' if you met the right man? I have. [see here] Do you worry that your daughter will be teased because you are straight? Heterosexuality doesn't have a parade, per se, but it has everything else.

Then, I got the best comment that I have received in a long time... maybe ever. A friend of mine told me that she was too angry to respond to the comment, but that she was proud of what I said and that it made her "even more proud to be out!"

I wish I could say that I was surprised that this line of thinking persisted, but I'm not. We live in a culture where we are striving for tolerance, an aim that I critique in this post. It reminds me of the idea that heterosexuality is invisible... you don't realize that so many things around you are "straight" unless you aren't. When a hetero couple holds hands, nobody notices - it isn't considered sexuality unless it is very explicit, but it is different from non-heteros who are only allowed to express any type of affection behind closed doors, otherwise they are seen as rubbing their sexuality in other people's faces.

I have deleted the people that I wrote about in the past (such as this person) because I want my wall to be a safe space... I need to start coming up with guidelines about who I keep on my facebook for the sake of my own sanity.

Trailer for every Oscar-winning movie ever

2011-06-23T13:16:00.004-04:00

I am not a big fan of movies, as I really don't have the attention span to sit through most films (although 3 hour lectures by a decent prof are no problem at all for me somehow)... but I still found this parody to be quite funny.

I think the only plotline piece that wasn't sufficiently articulated was that when the female title character was introduced, there should have been some comment about how she had no storyline of her own, but existed merely to further the character development and plot surrounding the male lead.

Stop Harper

2011-06-07T14:48:00.003-04:00

I wanted to write this post a few days ago, but I was at a conference, so here it is now...

There has been a lot of talk about the page who held up a Stop Harper sign during the throne speech at the senate (if you haven't heard of it, the story is here). One of the most common questions being asked is whether it was appropriate. I don't understand why this is a question.

According to the terms of her employment, of course it was not "appropriate" but then, who came up with those terms and the very position in the first place? How do I, appropriately, tell Canadians that this isn't right in a way that they will hear, much like Harper has the ability to tell Canadians about why his way is appropriate. Who decides what actions are considered appropriate and which are not?

A woman who has a political opinion expressed it in a non-violent way, and in a way that got a lot of people to take notice. Isn't that kind of the point of activism?

Those who say it is not appropriate seem to think that it is against the "rules" in the senate. But who decides the rules in the senate? Do activists have any say in it? Or is it the same government who we are protesting against that decides who can speak, when they can speak, and under what conditions? (I honestly do not know this, as I am not informed on political procedure, especially in the senate, but I am guessing that there is no way for her to have gotten this point out to a wide audience through senate by following these "rules").

I think this is also proof that it is not our process, but that of our elected government (majority with something like 24% of registered voters approval???). Wait, this is the senate, and they aren't even elected. So whose government is it, exactly? Arguably, we could have elected differently, but then I can write entire books on why that didn't happen and is not likely to in the near future... I don't want to try and summarize the thoughts on here as it would be either too simplistic to make sense or too long for most people to read.

The point I have is what else was she supposed to do? What else are we supposed to do to have our voices heard? She could get a blog (like me) and have 100 people a day read her thoughts on the matter, but she has millions of people talking. She could write to a newspaper that a few thousand people might read and get slammed by a bunch of conservatives who seem to write newspaper comments more than anyone else, usually anonymously and in ways that are so far to the right that I have largely stopped reading newspaper comment sections.

One commenter in this article wrote that her actions were inappropriate because there is a time and place to air your grievances. She expressed a political opinion in senate. I don't think this should upset anyone (except maybe Harper).

The part that concerns me most is the talk about security concerns. One of Harper's former staff members wrote something on twitter about "this time just cardboard but could have been anything". I expect this will be used as an excuse to increase security to make sure nobody else has an anti-Harper sign that could threaten national security. I mean, why would anyone want dissenting opinions in politics... and I'm pretty sure that senate page jobs will be more difficult to get for people who disagree with the status quo...

I also find it comical that employees of the senate are supposed to serve in a non-partisan manner and are supposed to be objective. Has social science research not sufficiently shown that objectivity is a myth? I can't think of a single thing that I do on any given day that is objective or unbiased.

Teaching Assistants do not 'work'

2011-05-31T13:42:00.004-04:00

Apparently, graduate teaching assistantships are not jobs. They are not "positions". They are developmental opportunities that have been created to benefit the learning experiences of graduate students in the university. So, I guess instead of trying to get a collective agreement, we should be bowing down and kissing their feet for giving us the opportunity to develop skills.

I'm trying to think about just what the implications would be of not being considered an employee... I'm pretty sure they aren't good... Any thoughts?

On another note, I really don't like being too busy to get into detailed posting... I can't wait until things slow down next week!

Facebook anti-bullying message

2011-05-20T12:58:00.005-04:00

I've seen this facebook status come up a few times now;

A 15 year old girl holds her 1 year old son; people call her a slut. But no one knows she was raped at 13. People call a girl fat; no one knows she has a serious disease that causes her to be overweight. People call an old man ugly; no one knows he had a serious injury to his face while serving our country in Vietnam. Re-post this if your against bullying and stereotyping!!!! I bet none of you will post this!!!

So, this meme is meant to be supportive and have the best of intentions, but it seems off to me. It is as if it is saying that it is not ok to be a slut or to be fat or ugly, but not to make fun of people for it unless you know for sure that it isn't their fault.

When I first saw this post, I responded by saying that I was a teen mom from a consensual act... does that mean it is acceptable to call me a slut?

I get that the point of this status is that the stereotypes that you first jump to in order to explain why people look or act a certain way may not actually capture their lived experience, and I think that is an important point... for example, if one happens to come across someone who is overweight, the first assumptions are usually that the person eats too much unhealthy food and does not exercise. If this status can make a few people think about other possibilities before passing judgement, then that is great. But what it doesn't do is challenge the way we think about what is desirable and what is not.

What if there were no judgements allocated to being deemed promiscuous, unattractive or overweight by a specific set of standards? Instead of trying to justify why some people might exist in a way that we deem undesirable, what if we could come up with a post that would express an anti-bullying statement that was about actual acceptance?

Roller Derby: To play or not to play...

2011-05-18T16:14:00.000-04:00

(photo found here)

On Saturday I went to the local roller derby team's first game. I really wasn't sure what to expect. On television, half the time the women look powerful and strong, the other half of the time they look highly sexualized and objectified. I have been looking for a sport to participate in for a while now, and since I used to be a competitive figure skater, roller derby seemed like an appropriate chance to draw on those skills and do a sport that could also be powerful. That being said, I will not allow myself to be objectified by spectators.

At first, I wasn't sure what to think about it. It is a contact sport and the first thing that comes to mind is that when men play contact sports, they wear a lot of padding (think of hockey and American football, for example), whereas women in roller derby have only a helmet, mouth guard and knee and elbow pads to protect them. I wonder if the level of protective equipment would be different if it were a "male" sport. Yes, men do play roller derby, and when they do they wear the same safety equipment (with t-shirts and longer, baggy shorts), but I wonder if that has to do with not wanting to seem weaker than the women... although I could be looking way too much into this aspect of the sport.

Either way, what this suggests to me is that patriarchy is involved in some very real ways. Women are being put on display while they are kicking ass. On one hand, this bothers me because I really want to make sure I don't play into that, on the other hand, opportunities for me to have fun, stay fit, and meet other women are somewhat constrained by the time and work involved in grad school and parenting.

Although dressed in relatively revealing clothing, the Rideau Valley Girls looked powerful, not sensual (as a sidenote, using the word girls for these women also annoys me). The team members looked fit and strong and usually wore really cool tights with shorts on top. The tights were a multitude of colours and patterns and just didn't fit into the box of what I would consider sexualized clothing. They also had several women with tattoos, piercings, and non-traditional types of make up that didn't play into dominant standards of attractiveness.

Approximately half of the women on the local team seemed to wear heteronormative and much more sexualized clothing - some were wearing things like micro-mini skirts, fishnet tights with shorts so short as to make the bottom half of their bum visible, and frilly panties with garter straps hanging down. Now, I am all for enjoying being a sexual being, and I have worn mini skirts on occasion (usually dancing at the local gay bar and always with leggings), but I am somewhat annoyed that about half of the clothing warn by these women played so nicely into hegemonic norms of attractiveness. It also didn't help that the women on this team appeared much smaller, younger, and less strong than the Ottawa team. Still, the atmosphere and the way that the women acted and moved was strong and fun, not playful or sensual.

I can't help but think that if roller derby was considered a 'real' sport, there would be more men playing it. The fact that it has become a women's sport (with 'cute' costumes) tells me that it might be more about the sex than the sport. And yet, there were so many children and women at the bout (and lots of queer people) and the comments that people were yelling were about the sport and not about sex or sexualization. Despite the uniforms, in many ways, sex seemed to be downplayed and when it was there, it was mostly made fun of. I'm sure this is not the case at all roller derby games, and is definitely not the case in some of the television depictions I have seen, but it is the impression that I got from being at this one particular game.

I am going to go to the next "fresh meat" section and try roller derby out for myself (and yes, I do get the implications of calling women meat, even if it is a joke, but I am looking past that for the moment). I would like to see if I feel objectified when I am on that side of it. But I refuse to skate in anything that remotely resembles a schoolgirl uniform, nor will I look "pretty" in the glamour shots that are on the website, but then, many of the other women also seem to refuse to conform to that standard. I will definitely be posting more about roller derby as I experience it.

Now I just need a kick ass name...

International Day Against Homophobia and Transphobia

2011-05-17T09:08:00.002-04:00

May 17th is International Day against Homophobia and Transphobia. There has been a facebook meme going around, apparently not very extensively because it has yet to show up on google, but I've seen it on 3 friends' walls saying

Today is International Day Against Homophobia. Donate your status for an hour to promote tolerance.

(note that transphobia is missing on this status, which says a lot)

So, what does tolerance mean? According to WordWeb (my usual choice of dictionary/thesaurus), the second definition is "a disposition to allow freedom of choice and behavior" which is good, but the first definition is "The power or capacity of an organism to tolerate unfavourable environmental conditions." Because of this part of the definition, it concerns me that people are still using this language.

I don't want to be tolerated. That sounds to me like being accepted despite my sexuality. Still, I am hoping that this doesn't sound overly critical, or like a personal attack on those that posted that status update. I think that, for the most part, people who talk about tolerance have the best of intentions, I am just trying to point out some of the impacts that the words we use could have on how we think about specific issues. I updated my facebook status to;

Today is international day against homophobia and transphobia! I've read several posts about tolerance, and I would like to say that it is a start, but I don't think the goal should be to merely tolerate queer people, but to fully embrace and accept diverse sexualities and end dichotomous thinking about gender and sexuality.

I'm not going to belabour this part any further, as I think it is rather self-explanatory. I will, however, mention a few more things about language.

I am torn on using the words homophobia and transphobia. On one hand, I think that the words are useful because they are easily understood. On the other, using 'phobia' still leaves the impression that the problem is a few hateful acts by bad people. Most people that I encounter on a daily basis are not homophobic, and homophobic acts are important to point out when they occur, but if that is all we look at, then things look much better than they actually are for non-heterosexual people. Because of this, I personally prefer the term heterosexism when looking at the ways in which the lives of queer people are affected by a culture where monogomous heterosexual relationships are considered to be the norm.

Until the late 1970s, the term homophobia was used to describe "irrational, persistent fear and dread of homosexuals." Using the word irrational implies that there are rational reasons to fear or dread homosexual people... I wonder what these reasons could be. That definition has since expanded to include more subtle attitudes and behaviours such as contempt or aversion. This allows us to see things other than violence or angry epithets as homophobic, but it misses a lot of what is going on. The term heterosexism looks at how society is organized around the premise of heterosexuality as the natural sexuality. It looks at privilege more than hatred. And, it allows us to look at ways in which heteronormativity is built into ruling relations.

On that same note, monosexism implies that people are attracted exclusively to either men or women, which leads to many stereotypes about people who identify as bisexual, pansexual, fluid, queer, two-spirited, or any other label or lack thereof that implies that one might be attracted to more than just one specific sex/gender, including assumptions that there are only two genders. There are many stereotypes about bisexual people; that they are sex-crazed, they cannot maintain monogamous relationships, that they are just going through a 'phase', that they are really gay but haven't fully come out yet. I have included this because I am really working to bring awareness to this issue, as a lot of people have never so much as heard the terms 'biphobia' or 'monosexism'.

I did not include transphobia in the above paragraphs on language because I think it could be wrong for me to say that most people are not transphobic... I think that many people are. Transphobic jokes are told on the radio and that is considered entirely appropriate even when I pointed it out to the station and wrote letters to Rogers Media about it. Television programs, even ones I usually like (Big Bang Theory, for instance) sometimes make use of transphobic humor, which makes me think about not watching them anymore. I think that we need to problematize the duality of gender, as it is typically conceived of right now throughout much of the west, I still think that the negative connotations to the word phobia gives it a lot of power that might be useful if we want to come to a place where making fun of trans people is considered to be inappropriate, just as blatantly racist and homophobic jokes are largely (although not yet entirely) considered to be unacceptable throughout mainstream media.

Short rant about social work

2011-05-04T15:01:00.004-04:00

Do social work programs have a class on how to treat each person who walks through the door as though they are doing you a huge favour that you somehow are not deserving of? I didn't see it in the curriculum, but maybe I missed that day.

I came to expect it while at the welfare office unfortunately, but was not expecting that same attitude while trying to find out how to get my son tested for autism. The fact that I cannot come up with $2000 for private testing does not make me a bad parent. Nor does it make my son any less deserving of help than his middle-class peers.

I do know some amazing and caring social workers, so I am not meaning to insult anyone in the profession. The institutional processes that are in place within many of these programs create an atmosphere that makes the power dynamic between the social worker and the client readily visible to those of us who are attempting to access services.

Facebook comment....

2011-05-03T09:48:00.002-04:00

New favorite ignorant facebook comment on my wall...

What does your profession contribute to society? That's rhetorical, the answer is nothing.

So, what is my profession exactly? TEACHING, which obviously contributes nothing. Neither does sociology, which is the discipline I wish to teach.

No, sociology just "tell[s] people what they can and cannot accept"

To which I responded;

I cannot accept homophobia, heterosexism, racism, sexism, or anti-poverty discrimination. I cannot tolerate policies that will hurt women, indiginous people, or other marginalized groups. I cannot accept policies that take from families to give tax breaks to giant corporations. And I cannot accept 39% of the vote allowing one person full control over parliament. Most people voted AGAINST Harper... not for him. That should not be a majority... this is not a democracy, which is another thing that I cannot accept.

Post-election thoughts...

2011-05-03T07:10:00.005-04:00

WTF Canada? I have a lot of trouble understanding how some people think more generally, and this election result I just don't get at all! I can't wrap my head around the idea that anyone would vote for Harper, nevermind that he would be handed a majority government.

Seriously, the election was held because he was found to be in contempt of parliament, and this is the first time that has happened in ANY commonwealth country. They were hiding information about how much their policies would cost... and not just small bits of information but upwards of 630 million dollars worth of information on the crime bills. They underestimated the cost of the fighter jets... yes, the ones that are expected to cost each Canadian citizen (I hate that word) $1000. They even misinformed parliament to get the money for the G8/G20 in a process that has been found to be illegal.

And yet, we voted him back in...

This man, who has gone on record saying that our health care needs to end, who opposes gay marriage and abortion rights, who has cut funding for women by 43%, who has been found having lied to us on too many occasions to count, who shuts down parliament to run away from his problems, who fires people who disagree with him and kicks students out of his rallies because he doesn't like their facebook pages, who eliminated the long form census because he doesn't want us to know what is actually going on in our country if the knowledge won't serve his agenda... I could go on... This man is running the country! And we are letting him do just that.

So, if you are a "normal" person and break the law, you get put into one of his super prisons that we are wasting so much money on, even though crime rates are going down, but if you are powerful and break the law, you are given a country to run.

This might be me speaking out of anger and frustration, but I am seriously thinking that not voting is the way to go (see the "vote with your feet" section here). And I don't mean apathy, I mean refusing to accept an illegitimate system... how does 40% of the vote get almost 60% of the seats and full decision-making power? I also like the idea of refusing to choose my master... we should find a way to govern ourselves... not to let some privileged straight white man do that for us.

Naomi Klein had a great tweet last night- "Hair-raising shock doctrine coming our way folks. Better to have NDP in opposition than Libs but real power will be in the streets."

Edited to add:

I had an interesting conversation with my 8-year old today that got me thinking. We were talking about the election and the concept of a budget came up. I used our household budget as an example of what a budget is and then talked about the fighter jets as an example of Harper's lies about how much it was going to cost. She was quite upset about the fighter jets and said something along the lines of;

Why do we need stuff to go to war? Why can't we all just like each other and share our money and food with them?

Which got me thinking, why do we need to socialize children out of this way of thinking? Why do we dismiss it as "naive" or merely a reflection of "childhood innocence" (yet another term that I really don't like)? It seems to me that if children often think like this and need to be taught that they should instead value goals associated with rugged individualism, then something resembling a true democratic and socialist way of organizing might be even more attainable than I had imagined.

Inclusiveness sign at an elementary school

2011-05-02T20:33:00.006-04:00

I was at a fun fair at my kids' school, and I saw this on the wall in a classroom.

In case it is hard to read, the caption at the bottom reads "Includes Everybody"

Upon further investigation, I realized that it was in every classroom, usually posted in an obvious place, like right next to the main doorway. In at least one classroom it was hidden near a corner at the top of a chalkboard, but that did not seem to be the norm.

The cell phone picture is so blurry that I can't make out a few of the symbols and don't remember what they were, but notice the one on the top left, which represents Pride. This never would have been allowed when I was in grade school. I like how this goes against the notion that children must be protected from knowledge that non-heterosexuality exists... what I would like even more is if all relationships were just seen as normal this type of sign wasn't necessary, but I'll take what I can get.

I'm not sure how well the school itself follows these ideas, or how well they actually teach inclusiveness, but I am told that the new VP is very concerned about such things, which I find fantastic.

My visit to Karl Marx's Gravesite

2011-04-28T10:21:00.000-04:00

Ok, so I really have not been posting much, but that will hopefully change now that the school year is over... this summer I am only bargaining for a collective agreement, working a summer job, doing an independent study course, and conducting interviews for my thesis (trust me, that means things are slowing down!!!). Oh, and there are two major conferences and I still have two children in there too somewhere.... Anyway, this is a post that I started in March, and I'm finally getting around to posting now!

In February, I went to a conference as an executive for my GTA union. One of the events was a Raise the Rates rally with John Clarke (an activist from Toronto who helped found the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty) and I was on the speakers panel. That's right... I met, and spoke with John Clarke! I felt like a 12 year old girl meeting Justin Beiber. I mean, I use John Clarke's theorizing and political activism as part of the conclusion to my thesis, for how we can change social policy for the better! I love how he combines theorizing with doing. I wanted to post a variation of the last part of my speech, because I find it quite relevant right now (possibly slightly moreso when that part was written, 2 months ago, than right now, but I will post it anyway!!!).

Part of the reason for not posting much over the past few months is that I took a trip to the UK... before this, the furthest I can remember traveling is Ottawa (about 6 hours away), so this was quite the experience for me. When we were in London, we took the tube to Highgate cemetery and visited Karl Marx's gravesite.

I sat on a bench in that quiet old cemetery on a typically cool and damp London winter day, and looked up at this giant granite head while trying to plan what I was going to say (I was quite nervous... did I mention that John Clarke would be there???).

I was inspired by the two quotes on his tombstone.

Workers of all lands unite!

And what my philosophy professor refers to as the Password to Marx's work

Philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways, the point is to change it

What struck me at that moment was the global political climate. I was aware of what has been happening in Egypt and Lybia before leaving Canada, but it only takes up a few seconds of a 90 second news update. In the UK, international news stories are discussed at length in the news... which was a refreshing surprise to me. But it meant that I had been submersed in dialogue about the political action taking place globally when I went for coffee or ate breakfast at the hotel restaurant.

That week in Egypt, political organizing caused the president of 30 years to step down! In Lybia, that very morning, two fighter jets had taken refuge in Malta, refusing to obey orders to bomb protesters. That morning was also the first I had heard about organizing in Wisconsin, they announced that 40,000 protesters, mostly students and unionized workers, had taken over parliament. That one shocked me most... this was happening so close to home! My favorite moment at the conference was when one of my colleagues from Carleton University stood up in the middle of a debate of some sort, went to the mic, and told us that the police had joined the protesters. This news was met with applause and cheers from the crowd.

Back on my campus, a group of students formed an activist group to protest cuts to French programs called MERDE (which, literally translated, means shit), and I believe stands for Movement Etudiant Revendique nos Droits d'Education (student movement demanding our educational rights). A few weeks before this, they taped up the elevators, forcing university administrators and the board of governers to walk up 11 flights of stairs to get to their meeting in protest of widespread cuts (along with increased bonuses for admin and higher tuition rates for everyone).

I think I am always going to remember looking up at that gravesite and contemplating world politics. I don't remember ever seeing this type of widespread political unrest (granted, I am quite young). But thinking about it at that location, I got goosebumps. The juxtaposition of the quite, serene, ivy covered tombstones with along with my desire to hop on a plane and go to Wisconsin, where I'm sure the atmosphere was much less serene, reactivated my ability to foresee changes occuring. Maybe people are not as apathetic as I believed previously. Maybe this is possible, and my work, along with the work of other activists (have I mentioned John Clarke?!?!?) will have some serious results in the very near future.

Workers across the lands need to unite to change the world, and we need to do it NOW. We have to reinstate benefit levels to pre-Harris rates (for those of you not from Ontario, in the last 15 years, welfare recipients have seen about a 55% decrease in their pay). We need to restore special dietary allowances which are currently being taken away from a lot of people, and are the only thing that is keeping a lot of people housed and fed. We need to fight to improve education; education is a right and should be free, students should not have to take out loans to pay for their everyday costs of living, including feeding their children, while in school. I can list dozens of progressive causes that activists are fighting for, all of which I believe should be uniting to change things.

Not only do we have these movements globally to look at to foster solidarity, but we have an election coming up in Canada... and it appears as though young people might actually be voting! Recent polls (which I don't entirely trust) show that our most left-wing mainstream political party, the NDP, has the highest level of support that they have ever had... not enough to win, but enough to make a formidable opposition. Although my personal belief is that change should happen separate from the government in order to have any real lasting effect, I am still making sure to vote on Monday, and I ask that anyone who is reading this and eligible to vote in Canada consider it. Either vote or don't vote, but do so actively... if your voice will not be heard at the polls, find other ways to make it heard so that those who are awarded the power to develop and implement policies through our "democratic" political system know that we are not simply apathetic. Workers' groups and unions seem to be really trying to support the NDP, who I don't think that they will change much even if they did win, but the idea of a Conservative majority government scares me.

Transphobia on the radio

2011-04-12T09:10:00.005-04:00

Dear Q92 Sudbury Radio Station,

I was listening to your morning show and was appalled by the overt discrimination in this morning's joke. I like to laugh at a good joke as much as the next person, but the level of sexism in many of your jokes is alarming. Today's joke, however, took it to a whole new level.

The punchline of the joke was that the woman, who had just kissed a man (that I would say was sexually harassing her), was actually born in a man's body. It was supposed to be funny because the man in the joke had just been kissed by a person many would deem male without knowing it. This joke is based on transphobia and homophobia. Instead of making life easier for transgendered people, this joke serves to uphold the dominant beliefs that they are unnatural. It spreads fear and hatred. It should never have made it on the air.

Jokes that are racist (at least overtly so) are not allowed to be told on your radio show, which is great. But why don't other groups, such as women and queer people, get the same level of respect.

I urge you to check the jokes more carefully before they are told on the air. I also think that it is important to issue an apology for the joke that was told this morning. Until then, I will not be tuning in to your station (or any other Rogers television and radio stations).

News; turning the election into a pop culture issue

2011-03-03T19:30:00.002-05:00

Canada AM this morning ran a quick story this morning about the budget. They said that there was a possibility of a spring election if the Conservatives don't get enough support on this budget from the other parties. The consequences of this: Harper might be too busy with his campaign to go to the royal wedding, of course! The Horror!

I was in the UK last week and there was an upcoming election in Ireland. Election issues were being discussed at length... important ones... none of this but-how-will-an-election-affect-his-ability-to-go-to-a-fucking-WEDDING!

Blogging Break

2011-02-15T09:41:00.000-05:00

I will be blogging very little, if at all, for about 2 weeks. I will be back posting in March!

Should You Shave Your Legs?

2011-02-11T17:11:00.003-05:00

Love this!

Twice Shy: Should You Shave Your Legs?

Political polls at a virtual town hall meeting

2011-02-09T19:37:00.004-05:00

I just got a phone call from the Minister of Finance Dwight Duncan and the local Member of Parliament, Rick Bartelucci, on a virtual town hall meeting. Unfortunately, I had to go put the kids to bed before I had a chance to ask my question, but I will write about it here instead.

They asked 2 polls, and, as a student in a program called "Applied Social Research" I have no choice but to comment on these questions. They were horrible.

What is your biggest concern about the economy?
1. Jobs
2. Taxes
3. Deficit
Press 4 if your situation is worse than it was a year ago

No "other" or "none of the above".

So, if your situation is worse than it was a year ago, you cannot choose a main concern? Or if you have a concern (from this list), then you can't say your condition is worse than a year ago?

Not exactly an exclusive or exhaustive list.

What about those of us who have concerns that are not on this list. A few things come to mind... $2-4 billion in corporate tax cuts, cuts to social programs, the wage freeze for non-unionized employees that attempted to undermine union rights to bargain for a collective agreement.

What about education? That was going to be my question. Do they have any plans to make education more accessible?

I was going to start by saying something along the lines of "As a social researcher, I think that it is important to have a more exclusive and exhaustive list. How do you expect to get accurate information about what we think when you are severely limiting our response options? Is this the type of information on which you base your political platforms?"

Then I wanted to answer their poll by telling them that what matters most to me is education- tuition is going up and course options are dropping... my program has NO electives because they do not have the money to pay for it. Student loans are at unprecedented levels... I will have to pay $600 per month for 10 years when i graduate. Will they freeze (and by freeze, I mean eliminate, but I'm being realistic here) tuition and/or come up with other ways to make education more accessible?

Unfortunately, I didn't get that opportunity. Not that I expected it to make a difference for his platform, but they reported an absurd amount of people on the call, and I wanted to get the message out. Maybe I'll turn this post into a letter to the editor so that it might be read by a few more people than my blog allows.

The second poll question was better written, but I think there was a reason for that.

What do you think was our [provincial Liberals] top accomplishment?
1. Strengthening education (did they do this? I missed that memo)
2. Improving health care by getting doctors for people (what about the tens of thousands in my hometown who don't have doctors?)
3. Getting people working (again, when did this happen)
4. Cutting tax for 90% of Ontario tax payers (at what cost?)
5. Building clean, reliable energy system (some progress here, but still not enough)

They did give us more options, but this question was not to ask our opinion, but to tell us what it is that they did. To make us think that they have really accomplished something over the past few years. To advertise their supposed accomplishments.

What a joke.

The F-word: My 8 year old daughter's thoughts on "Fat"

2011-02-08T19:54:00.008-05:00

I have been rather happy with my weight for some time now. I have struggled most of my pre-teen and teen years; not with my weight, but with my body image. I don't post numbers- not weight, dress size, comparison's to others (when not necessary for a point)- because I don't want to trigger other people and because I don't think it is necessary to talk about in most conversations, but suffice to say, no one would be likely to think that I had any reason to lose weight. No one, that is, except for my 8 year old daughter.

This week, she told me that if she were as big as I am, she would go on herbal magic. When I tell this story to people who know me, they seem to find it funny... possibly because I am so small that the comment seems ridiculous, but I don't find it funny at all.

We talked quite a bit about it afterward. I even showed her "photoshop disasters" (I use quotes because I could argue that merely using photoshop is disastrous) in order to explain how images that she sees in the media are not real. The bodies that she sees every day on tv and print ads, the ones that she is supposed to aspire to look like, are heavily edited.

But still, she thinks that all girls need to be as skinny as they can.

Now, normally in my posts I try to use polite language, to let my message get the point across, but not this time. This time, I am really pissed off.

Fuck you teletoon for showing my daughter weight loss commercials that tell her that fat people are miserable until they get skinny.
Fuck you media more generally for showing her so few variations of the female body; for presenting her with a very specific acceptable female body type.
And fuck you patriarchal capitalist social relations for teaching my 8 year old that her worth as a human being is forever linked to the numbers on the scale or the size of her dress.

Hearing her say things things hurts in a way that I can't even begin to describe. It doesn't hurt my feelings that she calls me fat... I'm rather thick skinned. It gives me a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach to think about what this is doing to her, what she is learning, how easily she internalizes these messages about what girls are and what they are supposed to be.

But what can I do about it? Talking to her probably helps, but it doesn't seem to be working. No matter how loudly I tell her that it doesn't matter, there are thousands of voices telling her that it does. They are louder; she doesn't believe me when so much goes against what I say. She is starting to believe that she is not good enough, but then, how can she be? How can anyone be good enough when the images aren't real?

I need some advice about other things I can do to try and get this message across... any good books or videos appropriate for an 8 year old girl?

Boys draw, girls doodle: More needlessly gendered children's products

2011-02-08T19:14:00.005-05:00

These two books just showed up in a book order form that was sent home from school

The picture is horrible, but they are two doodle books, one for boys and another for girls.

They boys book's description says

Draw a cool tree house, a flying machine, and much more! Let your imagination run wild with these illustration starters.

The girls book description says

Doodle a dolphin, picture a penguin, design a fancy costume, and more! Fun, simple, and best of all, no drawing skills required!

So, boys can draw, girls doodle (less skill required). Boys get to use their imagination, starting with illustrations and then deciding where to go from there.

The part that annoys me most is that the girls book requires no skill. I am assuming that the skill required for both books is quite similar, but the approach to selling the concept of drawing is quite different by gender.

Maybe boys feel more of a sense of mastery than girls that permits them to be less intimidated by learning something new, like drawing, even if they do not necessarily have previous drawing skills? I'm not sure exactly, but the girls book is definitely deskilled in comparison to the boys book (just like women's work in the home is deskilled in comparison to paid work).

"Tip Drill" and the patriarchal bargain

2011-02-01T21:26:00.007-05:00

This is one of the most nerve-racking posts that I have ever put up here for two reasons... first, it has my singing voice, and second, it shows my face. I am not a singer (I play piano, guitar and clarinet... and I like to sing, but my voice is rather mediocre).

Anyway, Nelly has a song called Tip Drill that was released in 2003. It is one of the most misogynist videos I have ever seen. It is so bad that I refuse to put it on my blog, but I will include a link in case anyone is interested in seeing the original song (here).

This video is my version of the song, which has sociological analysis in the form of pictures and subtitles. Enjoy!

Here are the lyrics;
I said it must be ya ass cause it aint yo face i need a tip drill i need a tip drill
I said it must be ya ass cause it aint yo face i need a tip drill i need a tip drill
Said if you see a tip drill point her out where she at point her out where she at point her out there she go
Said if you see a tip drill point her out where she at point her out where she at point her out there she go

We throwin money in the air like we don't give a fuck lookin for a tip drill i need a tip drill
Now mama girl you gotta friend that don't mind joinin in ima tip drill i need a tip drill
Now baby girl bring it ova let me spit my pimp juice i need a tip drill i need a tip drill
I said it ain't no fun unless we all get some I need a tip drill we need a tip drill
I said now come on girl you know what we came here for cause you a tip drill we need a tip drill
You lookin good in them shorts but they look better on the floo' cause you's a tip drill cause you's a tip drill
See now i wanna let you ride but the rubber might slide you's a tip drill girl you a tip drill
Toot that ass up mama put that dip in ya back and let me tip drill just let me tip drill

I said it must be ya ass cause it aint yo face i need a tip drill i need a tip drill
Said if you see a tip drill point her out where she at point her out where she at point her out there she go
We be like undelay undelay mama ei ei uhh ohhh a what's poppin tonite
I said undelay undelay mama ei ei uhh ohh get that head right i be there every night

(Verse 3)(Girl talking)
I said it must be ya money cause it aint yo face you a tip drill boy you a tip drill
My apple bottom lookin right i know you wanna bite you's a tip drill i heard you was a tip drill
I got you payin my bills and buyin automobiles you a tip drill boy you a tip drill
I know you a trick gon' spin that shit you ole' tip drill you funky ass tip drill

(Chorus)
I said it must be ya ass cause it aint yo face i need a tip drill i need a tip drill
I said it must be ya ass cause it aint yo face i nedde a tip drill i need a tip drill
Said if you see a tip drill point her out where she at point her out where she at point her out there she go
Said if you see a tip drill point her out where she at point her out where she at point her out there she go

What your opposition to gay marriage means

2011-01-26T07:51:00.003-05:00

This is an infogaphic on what your opposition to gay marriage means that I found funny in parts (found here). Thanks Justin.

Blog for Choice 2011

2011-01-22T18:06:00.003-05:00

Has it already been a year since my last Blog for Choice post? Blog for Choice day was created to get people talking about choice and abortion rights, and January 21 (yes, I'm a day late) marks the anniversary of the Roe v. Wade decision. This year's question is:

Given the anti-choice gains in the states and Congress, are you concerned about choice in 2011?

This question is even more USA-centered than usual, which frustrates me a little bit because bloggers from all over the world blog for choice. However, I am not going to let that stop me this year.

Last spring, I wrote about Senator Nancy Ruth telling Canadian women to "Shut the fuck up" about abortion or it will become an election issue. That hasn't changed. Funding to women's groups is being cut drastically at an alarming rate, and little is being done about it. These funding cuts, along with the end of the mandatory long for census, is going to change the way research on women is conducted in Canada. This terrifies me. It is an attack on women, and one of the first things to go might be access to abortions.

At the municipal elections that took place a few months ago, some very conservative mayors were elected, such as Rob Ford in Toronto (if you haven't heard of him, just google his name... I am baffled that he could win an election after some of the comments that he has made). The new mayor in my city has made it very obvious that she works for the corporations, and people were largely accepting of that. If this plays out in the provincial and federal elections to come, who knows what could happen.

This summer, there was a group of anti-abortion protestors that sat outside the hospital, which is the only location that I am aware of that provides abortions in Northeastern Ontario (meaning a lot of people cannot access abortions, even though they are free and legal). This doctor has said that he refuses to work anywhere outside of the hospital for safety reasons. Anyway, driving past these protestors made me really angry... it gave me this sick feeling in the pit of my stomach when I thought about how it might make women who have had abortions or are considering having an abortion feel when they saw this... how it might influence their choices... and how it might make other people feel justified in thier judgements of women who have had abortions. They were there for about a month, from morning to night, with their signs about how God chooses life or some such statement and pictures of fetuses. And I heard random people talking about how they were glad these people were there getting this important message across.

Am I concerned about choice in 2011? Absolutely. If we are not careful, this is exactly when we are going to lose access to safe, legal, and free abortions in Canada.

Lesbian visibility; short hair and men's clothing

2011-01-20T11:12:00.000-05:00

I saw this picture from postsecret on sociological images

it reads "because I'm a LESBIAN I feel obligated to cut my hair short and wear men's clothing... I'm actually really girly"

When I first came out, someone told me that I couldn't be a lesbian because I had long hair. This 'someone' was a lesbian... a 'real' lesbian... who had never dated men, had short hair, wore men's clothing, and had plenty of other lesbian friends. I, on the other hand, had hair that was long and curly and that I stubbornly refused to cut (not because I liked the long hair, but because I didn't want to conform to any stereotypes). I also wore tight clothing that was considered stylish by most, spent lots of time doing my makeup... basically looking 'hetero' by conforming to what the magazines had told me to do since I was a teenager.

This made it very hard to get a date. I think there were two reasons for this. First is visibility... when dressed 'girly' other lesbians couldn't identify me as a potential dating partner. The other reason is related to biphobia, as having children and an ex-husband meant that I wasn't really "one of them" which made finding a dating partner difficult even when the people around me knew I was gay.

Once I started to dress more masculine, things got easier. I cut my hair (more because my long hair was completely fried and damaged from hair dye than for reasons related to conforming). Once I cut my hair, I also found myself wearing jeans and T-shirts everyday. I found lesbians start to pay attention to me. And I started to get more credibility as a queer person.

Even now, when I am going out to bars as a single person, I will dress more masculine than if I am going to the bar with a date so I am not mistaken for a straight girl at the gay bar.

My clothing style is not particularly masculine... I am a HUGE fan of big sweaters and leggings, but I still have short hair and never wear makeup. The grad student association has a semi-formal coming up, and I have had several people specifically request photos of me in a dress and heels because they have never seen me dress feminine before. I have also been informed that I am supposed to shave my legs for the occasion... but I digress

I think the point I am trying to make is that although there is a practical reason for lesbians (or women who date other women, whatever label they use/don't use to identify themselves) to dress in masculine clothing and have short hair, it makes me sad to see that someone is changing who they feel they are in order to conform to a specific standard. How is this any more liberating than having to wear heels and makeup in order to attract men?

Satirical campaign by OPSEU takes on corporate tax cuts

2011-01-20T10:31:00.005-05:00

OPSEU's new political campaign tells Canadians how much corporate tax cuts are actually costing us.

Granted, it isn't as simple as every family giving up $500, but hopefully it sends a message about how substantial these cuts are. Ontario already has a very low corporate tax rate, to cut it further just seems wrong on so many levels. And I'm glad that OPSEU is still mentioning the wage freeze, because despite the fact that salaries for non-union public workers are still frozen and unionized employers are still trying to use it as a bargaining tactic, I haven't heard much about it politically or in the news in the past few months.

I'm not sure I really like the campaign, but it is good to see unions doing something to try and get a political message across. I hope it works because I really fear the likelihood of a Conservative government after this next election.

Queering It Gets Better

2011-01-18T10:55:00.000-05:00

I love this depiction of the "It Gets Better" movement.

Found here

The picture, with comments like "made with white privilege" and "0% class awareness" shows an important critique of the movement. It refers to this niche that middle to upper class white gay men have found where they can fit in and happily consume products. And capitalism benefits immensely from their spending power.

Like the last post that I wrote that was critical of the "It Gets Better" movement, I feel like I need to explicitly say that I am glad it is happening. I like the attention that it brought and is currently bringing to queer issues, and I think it is important to tell young people that it generally does get better. I just think that we need to push it further to try harder to make things better now. I worry that by saying that it will get better, we are at the same time justifying the abuse that teens face as "kids being kids."

I don't think that it would have made me accept my own sexuality any sooner had a few relatively wealthy urban white men told me that it would get better. What happens to those of us who cannot inherit this white male privilege? What about trans youth? People of color? Queer people with disabilities? Poor or working class queer people? What happened to the queer movement that did not fit into dominant and consumerist norms?

We are replacing one normative culture with another, very similar, prescribed set of rules and calling it transformational in some way. I think we need to queer the It Gets Better movement.

Annoying conversation...

2011-01-13T15:08:00.001-05:00

Two people we overheard talking while walking past the office today:

"He's a male nurse"

Does the qualifier 'male' really need to be used when you say 'he'?

Update on homophobic office rant

2011-01-09T13:23:00.004-05:00

This is an update to a previous post, which can be seen here, in which I was subject to a homophobic rant at my office.

When I woke up on the morning after this incident, I thought I was fine. I got the kids ready for school, ran a few errands, and went into the office. As I got closer to the university, I realized that things were not as 'fine' as I had previously thought, but I still wasn't prepared for the knot of anxiety that I felt in the pit of my stomach as I approached the office door. I was also not prepared for the sound of my keys bouncing off each other as I tried to open the door with a trembling hand, afraid that he would be on the other side. He wasn't.

Still, as I got ready to begin work, just as I do every morning, I realized that something was different and I am not sure that it will ever be quite the same again. My office is a place where I had always felt safe. I had found a little niche where I could exist as I am without having to hide or conform, without having to pretend to be something I am not without having to worry about being judged or discriminated against. The place I could let my guard down and not have to worry about the anxieties that I often feel while dealing with people in the "real" world outside of this bubble.

And I am confused because he never touched me, he never made me feel as if I was in any kind of physical danger, never so much as raised his voice. Maybe that is why it didn't hit me until I really started thinking about the words that he used. If he had yelled or made me feel physically threatened, then I would have really seen the words for what they were from the beginning. But his tone was almost pleasant, conversational... in the context of words that were so full of not-quite-hidden hatred, or at very least ignorance, it made the entire situation seem even more surreal.

And the part that frustrates me most is that I can't get over being mad at myself. I am angry that I didn't tell him off or at least really explicitly tell him that it was inappropriate and that I wanted him to shut his mouth right then and there. I wasn't entirely quiet... at first, I tried to argue with him, but then just tried to ignore him in the hopes that he would stop talking, but he didn't, so I left the room. Either way, rationally I know that I am not to blame and that putting any blame on myself for his words is unhealthy and part of the victim blaming trend that I have written about so often (although I don't like that term... and I am definitely not thinking about myself as a victim in the context of this incident).

When I talk about it, people seem surprised that I didn't fight back. I am known for being argumentative when I want to be and for not backing down from an argument or debate, so it makes sense that those who know me are shocked that I didn't say or do anything. Still, acting shocked that I didn't say or do anything makes me feel as though I was wrong, and that isn't helping me right now.

Another friend just told me that although he doesn't condone that behavior, it is probably because the person was attracted to me. Then said something about how guys are jerks and it can be hard for them to behave properly around attractive women. So, basically what I got from that conversation was that it is my fault because I fit into a specific box of what could be defined as attractive by some people's standards (despite the fact that I don't wear makeup and rarely wear "figure flattering" clothing). Is the solution, then, to make even less effort with my appearance or should I excuse him for just being male?

And to make matters worse, I just received a non-apology letter, saying things like I'm sorry if you were offended by our openly intellectual conversation... you should have told me to stop... sorry if you thought i was rude or offensive. NOT sorry for being rude and offensive, but just apologizing if I interpreted it that way, because he is clearly open-minded about sexual orientation (he said as much in his letter), and I am the one with the problem for not seeing that. That letter should never have been allowed to be sent as an apology.

So, now I am sitting at home, not wanting to be alone, but not wanting to go on campus either. I am dreading tomorrow because it is the one morning that I know he will be there and I am pretty sure that he is angry with me for not seeing our 'conversation' as intellectual/academic. And the way that this is being handled is making me as angry, or possibly moreso, than the original rant... and I thought things were being handled so well up until late last night.

Cure for lesbianism discovered by my colleague

2011-01-06T11:44:00.006-05:00

I had an interesting conversation today with someone... and by interesting, I mean horribly homophobic, sexist and offensive. I wasn't going to mention anything about context in order to not identify this person, but the context is quite important. I was in my office at the university, which is one of my favorite places... somewhere that I am surrounded by graduate students working on a degree in sociology in a program that has an emphasis on social justice. If there is anywhere that I feel safe, it is my office. Not so much today.

The word girlfriend was mentioned in conversation, and he said "what do you mean girlfriend?" So I said I was gay (something I assumed everyone here knew, but apparently not), and he went off on this huge tangent.... starting with "I'm not against that BUT" and, as I've mentioned in numerous previous posts, if you have to say "but" in that context, you are better off not speaking at all.

As he was speaking, after getting over the shock of what I was hearing, I began furiously writing down what he was saying as he was saying it so I could quote as much of it as possible here for the benefit of readers.

I feel I need to mention that he doesn't think he is homophobic because he is ok with people being gay, he just thinks that they are wrong in that they are not actually gay, they just haven't yet realized that they are straight. Here are a few quotes, the ones without quotation marks are paraphrased;

"If she is with a good man who is doing his job as a man, women will prefer the man"

He didn't say exactly what it meant to do your job as a man, but I can guarantee you that dating a man who was doing whatever that job happens to be would not be enough to make me attracted to him for long. But it is good to see that the gender binary is alive and well in sociology.

There are two types of lesbians, one who will always play the man, which I don't understand, but for the one who plays the woman, there is nothing that a woman can give her that a man cannot

I wonder which "type" of lesbian I am... probably the latter. I did wear a skirt on New Years Eve, but I have also been described as moderately androgynous. Is that more or less wrong than "playing the man"? Few things annoy me more than the assumption that all relationships need to follow some kind of dichotomous gender construct.

If you cannot stay attracted to men, it is the fault of the men that you have dated. You have built up stereotypes in your head on the image of the men, which limits your view of how men can satisfy your needs

Ah, I see. I am gay because I was raped. Or maybe I'm gay because my daughter's father was abusive. Or because my ex-husband was sexist. Or because my dad left when I was 3. Or all of the above. Good to know. Am I 'cured' yet?

This line of thinking scares me, as I believe it makes lesbians particularly vulnerable to sexual violence from men in certain ways.

"The link between men and women is a frontier, and it is really hard to penetrate that frontier"

ummmm... what?

If a gay person starts dating the right person of the opposite sex, they will no longer be gay. It depends on their experience of dating.

This one particularly offends me because it is exactly what I had convinced myself. This misconception is the reason I got married to a man. It is the reason that I dated men exclusively for 6 years. It is the reason that I hated myself for not being able to conform to heteronormativity.

"I know it cannot be better" (gay as opposed to heterosexual relationships)

Yes, for many of us, not only can it be better, but it is better.

"but i'm not against that..."

No, not at all. You are CLEARLY ok with non-hetero lifestyles. You just think that we are all tricking ourselves.

After politely, but vehemently disagreeing with him (multiple times), I had to leave the office and rant to a queer studies prof in the department. I wasn't sure if I should tell him off, or just try to let it go... I'm still not entirely sure. On one hand, I have to see this person all of the time, we share a tiny little office. On the other hand, holy homophobia batman.

The wage gap between top paid CEOs and average workers in Canada

2011-01-03T09:10:00.005-05:00

This article, which critical of the wages received by the highest paid CEOs in Canada, is reminiscent of a lecture by my intro to sociology prof that was part of what got me interested in the discipline to begin with.

The article states that

By about mid-afternoon Monday, the 100 best-paid chief executive officers in Canada will have already earned the equivalent of an average full-time salary in this country.

The gap between the executive suite and minimum-wage workers is even larger. The average CEO had earned a full year’s worth of minimum-wage work by about 3:15 p.m. on New Year’s Day.

In the lecture for my first year class, a brilliant professor (who occasionally reads this blog and has yet to distribute the final grades for our last class) began by asking the class of about 100 first year students how many of us expected to be earning more than $100,000 in 10 years. A large portion of the class, probably more than half, raised their hands. Keep in mind, many of them were sociology students, and the liberal arts are not exactly known for high salaries. He proceeded to show tables of statistics about the actual income of average workers with a bachelors degree in the social sciences, and I think the average income 10 years after graduation was something like $30,000, not even close to the 6 figures that most of them assumed they would be earning.

In this lecture, he also presented us with information on income inequality in Canada, and the most telling statistic for me was this same one. Sometime on the morning of January 2nd, Canada's top 100 CEOs have earned more than I am likely to earn with my degree in an entire year.

This was among the first steps in the process of me going from being a relatively leftist, but pro-capitalist, social work student to becoming a Marxist sociology student... which, I have to say this prof strongly discouraged for financial reasons. I was sitting in his office telling him that I felt as though I couldn't continue on with social work after having taken his class, but he said that because I was recently divorced and had 2 children, he was of the opinion that social work would lead to employment, whereas a BA in sociology would not. Another prof that stopped by his office while I was there said that a sociology degree would get me a job at the mall. They weren't the best recruiters, but when I decided that I could spend the additional 2 years working on a Masters Degree, they were both more than supportive of me switching programs.

Still, I guess this professor has earned the nickname Dr. Doom (which, despite his suspicions, I did not come up with, as much as I would like to take credit for it). However, I think a nickname like that would come with some pretty cool backgound music that follows every time he walks into a room holding a stack of graded papers (he is also known for being one of the toughest markers in the department).

Kids comments on gender and beauty

2010-12-30T10:18:00.000-05:00

We were watching an old episode of So You Think You Can Dance on television, which is a show that I'm not sure whether or not I like my kids watching... I love dance, but here is the issue...

After 3 performances where women took off at least one layer of clothing, my son (5 years old) said "the girls can never keep their clothes on"

My daughter's (8 years old) response was "That's because they want to look good."

I changed channels immediately... we are going to have a discussion about gender and hegemonic beauty standards this morning, and I am going to find some dancing shows that are a bit more appropriate for them. Still, I feel as though I can talk to them about this stuff forever, but regardless of what I say to them, the media still gets through at least as strongly as I do.

dating while hairy, fourth edition...

2010-12-30T10:00:00.000-05:00

This post was written about 3 weeks ago, and has been waiting for me to get around to uploading the picture from my camera. I will have to do an updated leg hair post in the very near future, as there have been some new developments since this was written.

This will be, by far, the most disturbing post yet for many people... I am actually going to include a picture of my legs... now with 6 months of hair growth!!!

I have had two recent experiences where these legs have led to problems... and the weirdest part is that the people had not even seen them! I was discussing gender performance with a very feminine lesbian that I met online. I'm not sure exactly how the discussion on shaving happened, but I remember it being something about her complaining about not liking to shave, but doing it anyway. She asked me if I ever planned to shave again, and I told her that I wasn't sure... I haven't thought much about it, but I wasn't entirely opposed to the idea. She had to go a few minutes later and hasn't come back online since (which I think means that she blocked me... I'm not offended or anything, we had only spoken a few times, but I think it's a bit funny).

When I did shave my legs often, they would often get little red bumps all over them, the skin would get rough and dry, and within a couple days they would have prickly stubble beginning to grow again. They didn't feel nice to touch without the help of shaving gel and several types of moisturizers. Now that I'm not shaving, the hair and skin are both incredibly soft and I find them way nicer to touch, and they feel better.

I knew that having hairy legs would not be a popular choice for many people, and I was expecting people to be a little uncomfortable with my decision not to shave (for now) at times, but I am surprised by how completely shocked some people have been.

As you can see from the picture, the hair isn't particularly coarse and isn't all that noticeable from a few feet away. Still, when a woman in my grad program saw the hair last week, she jumped back, hands flailing, and almost shrieked "what the hell is that?" She always has perfectly applied makeup and not a hair out of place, so I would imagine that body hair would be a complete no-no for her. I couldn't help laughing at the severity of her reaction, but still, it led me to question whether this was possibly more transgressive than I had originally thought.

Why I love my office!

2010-12-24T15:11:00.001-05:00

Ok, the office itself isn't great... really tiny and usually too dirty to put your schoolbag on the floor, but the people are amazing.

A few days ago, I came in to find this sign on the door and I couldn't resist taking a picture to post it here... unfortunately, my cell phone camera leaves something to be desired.

If you cannot see the photo, it has a photo of Karl Marx in a Santa hat and says:

Happy Sociological Xmas (where X= your preferred deity or socially constructed rationale for gift giving)

He sees you when you profit! He knows when you exploit!
Candy for the masses. But for the capitalists, COAL.

Keeping with the holiday spirit, I wanted to use this opportunity to do an entirely non-critical post about how much I like the people I share the office with (ok, maybe I should write 'most of' somewhere in that sentence, but that is not the point).

Three women in particular I want to mention
J, with your never failing inappropriate sense of humor to help lower stress levels when there are impending due dates or stacks of papers to grade (or get distracted from by facebook posts that my mom did not approve of!).
M, with lots of advice about the program and life more generally, one of the wisest young people that I know... and jeggings!
And A, who I rarely get to see because I think she is nocturnal or something, but I feel like I have more in common with in certain ways than anyone I've met in the past few years...

I should also mention E, whose reaction to my leg hair amuses me to no end!

I have found that those of us who risk the germs from whichever random bug happens to be going around that week, discomfort from dust allergies, and wild temperature variations to get work done in that sometimes very crowded environment have grown quite close over the past few months, and I look forward to working with everyone again next semester!

And now I should be getting back to that stack of exams to grade...

Raising tuition fees... Again.

2010-12-23T08:44:00.003-05:00

It has been brought to my attention that the university that I attend just raised tuition fees at a meeting last Friday (of course, organized during exams/christmas holidays so that we could not mobilize in any real form at the meeting). I was not there, but I heard that tuition would go up by 5% for returning students, 8% for new students and 16.2% for international students!

Here is the part that really gets me... I was just informed that they approved bonuses for some admin during that same meeting!

I'm glad that the money being taken from my family is going to make a few people that much richer.

Sexual Assault Crisis Centre closing

2010-12-14T17:16:00.006-05:00

I just read that the city's only Sexual Assault Crisis Centre is now closed. Just a few months ago, the Women's Centre closed, and now this. I can't believe that the government can get away with this kind of attack on women's programs.

I have never personally accessed this service, likely because I didn't identify my own experiences as rape until years had passed, but I can only imagine how important these services must be to women in our community. I have accessed one of the programs that was suggested as an alternative and it took 3 weeks after registering to get an appointment, and another 3 months to access services, so hopefully that will not be the case for women who have been assaulted.

I'm going to find out if anyone is organizing a letter writing campaign or protests, because I don't think we should sit back and just let this happen or all of these services will be gone and it will be too late to do anything about it.

Dear radio commercial,

2010-12-07T09:11:00.003-05:00

Can you please refrain from making any more jokes about women and their shoes? Yes, we get it... women on TV (and presumably, some women in real life) enjoy wearing cute shoes. But is it really necessary for the company selling snowmobiles to tell us to imagine how many pairs of shoes the $2800 in savings will buy us? Or for the shoe store ad that followed to tell us that high heels are a sign of class? Someone should have told that to Karl Marx... here he was doing a complex analysis of capitalism, when he really should have been looking at women's feet this whole time...

Rest assured that if I am going to spent thousands of dollars on any item, if I will be measuring the savings based on a sale price, it will be in dollars, not shoes... and this is coming from someone who owns about 20 pairs of shoes (which I think is a lot).

I am trying to imagine a similar commercial directed towards men... what would the savings be measured in... beer? I like beer more than I like shoes...

Least favorite christmas commercial. Ever.

2010-12-06T11:08:00.002-05:00

Here is my new least favorite christmas commercial. A group of women lying passively on fluffy mattresses in lingerie, singing carols while making sexy face the entire time. I don't think I can sing in sexy face, but then, I don't usually sing only in Ahs and Ohs with a few Las thrown in for good measure.

They seem to think it is clever because music notes and bra sizes both come in letters. However, as a musician I feel the need to point out that I am pretty sure lady number 2 should be wearing a size B flat (no pun intended).

But what I would like to know is whether La Senza actually carries sizes E-G... I know they don't carry my size (at least, not in their adult store).

Another reason I don't like the local newspaper

2010-12-03T15:17:00.003-05:00

This is a quote from a letter that was published in the local newspaper in which the writer was objecting to using the term "holiday" instead of "christmas"

"Immigrants don't change my way of life, they change theirs to ours --or go back to where they came from."

I almost think this isn't worth commenting on because it seems so ridiculous... when i see a comment like this online I usually ignore it, but this was published in our local newspaper, which I believe gives it the illusion of seeming more valid than if it were just a comment online.

Does the writer not realize that unless they are aboriginal, they too are immigrants to Canada? And I'm pretty sure that Santa Clause didn't visit indigenous children before Europeans settled on the land that we now know as Canada.

Canada is supposed to be multicultural, which should mean that nobody has to change their beliefs or practices in order to fit in, but what actually happens is that the dominant culture becomes the norm, and all other practices become otherized. They are seen as something that is not normal, and not as good as "real" Canadian (euro-centric) cultures and traditions.

There was a recent news story about the citizenship test being more difficult than ever before, which conforms entirely to this notion that if immigrants do not know "our" culture, they should not be in "our" country. I would like to quiz your average Canadian citizen about indigenous cultures just to see what happens... I probably wouldn't pass that test.

Experiment on stopping violence against women

2010-12-03T12:24:00.004-05:00

This is an experiment that was conducted about the reporting of domestic abuse. It was conducted in South Africa, but I would suggest that the results in many countries would be more similar than we would like to think.

I had to watch it with the volume off because the sound of the assault was a bit too realistic for my liking.

In the video, neighbors come to the door right away to complain about the noise when someone is playing the drums. But nobody comes or calls the police when they believe that a woman is being abused.

I think every one of us should think about what we would do in such a situation, and if we ever find ourselves in a situation where we see or hear someone who might be in need of help, we should do something about it. Even if you aren't entirely sure whether they want help, I think that the consequences of not calling are far too real.

Children and body image

2010-11-25T08:32:00.006-05:00

This morning, my 5 year old son was upset that my 8 year old daughter was not playing by the right rules in a game (did you know that there are right rules and wrong rules?) so he called her names. He called her fat.

We typically don't use that word in our house. My daughter is very small for her age, and she already spends a lot of time looking at herself in the mirror (usually dancing, sometimes in her underwear, trying to copy the moves that she thinks female rock stars are supposed to do- I am not sure if her babysitter is amused or disturbed by this). She occasionally talks about her fear of gaining weight, which I try to address mostly in two ways; first, by talking about health, and not body size, as the standard that is best to be internalized, and second, by talking to her about the objectification of women's bodies and unrealistic standards of beauty that she sees in the media (in a way that I believe is age appropriate).

Anyway, the point is that a 5 year old child, who still hasn't figured out that Santa doesn't exist and has trouble differentiating between cartoons and real life, has somehow figured out that the worst thing you can call a female is fat.

Airport security

2010-11-22T07:30:00.003-05:00

This is an infographic on the evolution of airport security... I've only been on a plane once in the last decade, but I was scared that I would end up having to face some kind of security. I would rather take a bus than go through a scanner or face "pat down." I spent a few hours researching all of the rules about what I can carry on the plane and what I could not, and even printed and packed a list so I wouldn't get in trouble coming back... and all of this was for a 1 hour flight in which I never left Ontario.

But, my concern with this was made clear to me while I was listening to the radio in the car last week. There was a local radio show that was talking about the "pat downs" and their call-in question was with regards to which celebrity the callers would like to give an airport security pat down to. As much as airport security officials claim that it is not sexual to touch people's bodies in the name of safety, it is certainly invasive and the experiences of women who have been through it suggest that many of them felt violated.

Via: Criminal Justice Degree

Another advice from a Disney Princess video

2010-11-19T11:11:00.002-05:00

Love it...

Active men and passive women in Lego

2010-11-07T08:10:00.004-05:00

I will probably be called out for being overly picky here, but I am somewhat annoyed that the characters that I would gender as typically masculine on this lego box (which my daughter got for her birthday) are busy doing things... there is a business man, a delivery man, and a policeman, whereas the one I would gender as a woman is just sitting on a bench with no apparent job or title.

This side of the box shows the same thing... the men are busy doing things... walking to work, delivering heavy packages, protecting road signs while holding various fancy noise making devices (?), and the woman sits down on the bench and listens to music.

Because men do things while women just are. Maybe it just gets to me right now because the last couple months of thesis work has centered largely around the invisibility of unpaid domestic labour.

I'm going to go switch the people's stuff around right now and destroy the box... the woman is about to get the briefcase and I will make a tiny vacuum or something for the now business-less guy.

Edited to add: I also just noticed that the woman is the only one smiling... not sure if it is because she's not busy doing stuff like the men so she is allowed to enjoy her free time, or because, as a woman, she is supposed to be pleasant. Either way, delivery people enjoying their coffee don't need to scowl.

SPARKsummit video on the sexualization of girls in the media

2010-11-07T07:23:00.007-05:00

This video, on the sexualization of girls and women in the media, is from the SPARK summit, SPARK stands for Sexualization Protest: Action, Resist, Knowledge.

I would suggest that it is more about objectification and the culture of beauty than it is about sexualization or sexuality. I think that they need to make sure to differentiate between sexuality and sexual objectification. Maybe it has something to do with being made for young teenage girls, but I find that the video comes across as being opposed to all forms of female sexuality in the media, as opposed to being opposed to the objectification of women and girls. I see this as being closely linked to slut-shaming.

That being said, I do like the message that they are trying to get across, and I agree that it is important get young girls to actively decide to watch on TV, but I just think this particular video is somewhat blurred with anti-sex messages.

Private Practice: an example of how sexual assault is depicted on television

2010-11-05T18:57:00.004-04:00

Last night on Private Practice, one of the main characters, a doctor named Charlotte, was sexually assaulted at work. People making the show were in close contact with rape victims and an anti-sexual assault organization. Still, I had a few problems with this episode. I am not going to embed a video of sexual assault on my blog (for reasons that will be discussed further in this post), but if you feel the need to see what I am referring to, there is a video here.

The biggest problem is the "type" of rape that was shown. The perpetrator was a patient at the hospital who appeared to have a mental illness of some sort (people with mental health problems are more likely to be the victim than the rapist). It was an extremely violent case of stranger rape. The woman involved had no prior relationship with her rapist, she was not drinking, not walking alone outside at night, nor was she dressed provocatively or doing anything else that a "good" rape victim doesn't do. So, this episode really didn't push any boundaries to help people conceive of rape differently. I thought it could have been much more useful to depict a type of rape that isn't often seen as such, rather than playing into stereotypes of what constitutes "real" rape.

So many shows on primetime tv (think CSI and Law & Order), can show various forms of sexual assault in ways that can help people become more aware of sexual assault, but they generally depict scenes in a way that make rape look a lot like sex. The act of rape is typically more about power than sex, but that can be difficult to depict on television. Private Practice did show parts of the rape, which sexualizes it to a degree. I prefer when the scenes show enough to imply what is happening, without graphic images when "No matter how well-motivated, a rape scene is a sex scene, and TV shows are fantasies."

The part that bothered me most was her hiding the rape. At every commercial break, I expressed my frustration with her silence to the person I was watching the show with. She told people she was mugged, only told one person what actually happened, and refused a rape kit. I understand how horrible the criminal justice system can be, but it is not a he-said-she-said trial, so I personally cannot understand why she wouldn't report it other than a fear that other people will look at her differently. And this is an area that I hope they focus on differently in upcoming episodes.

Charlotte said "he took my wallet. He didn't take anything else" to the one person she told about the rape. I personally tend to agree with this statement... but not in the way that she meant it. He didn't take anything, he raped her. I don't like thinking about rape as taking something from someone. My opinion is that conceiving of it as something being taken from you is linked to patriarchal notions of purity and innocence and considers rape victims damaged in some way, which I completely do not agree with. I don't mean to erase some people's experiences with this last paragraph, as some people do experience it as something having been taken from them... this just doesn't make sense to me, personally.

One thing I did like is probably best articulated by entertainment journalist Emily Nussbaum

In what was clearly Rhimes’s mission statement, Charlotte contrasted her rape with rapes in "made-for-TV movies." In these gauzy victim narratives, she says mockingly, the woman rocks in the shower crying, and when the rape happens, her eyes go blank so she can go somewhere else. “It’s nothing like that,” she says bitterly. “It's dirty and sweaty and he licks your face and he wipes himself off in your hair and when you try to scream he punches you so hard you see God.”

I'm not sure that narrative is any more true for all victims than the made-for-TV movie shower crying scene, but it is good to see this depicted in a different way.

I don't even know where to begin...

2010-11-03T23:20:00.003-04:00

I just don't know what to say about this... do we really think that we are so far past racism that this is appropriate on any level?

On the left, there is a white man dressed as a member of the KKK holding a rope that is tied as a noose around the neck of another white man dressed in blackface.

The most horrifying part is that these two men won the costume contest at the Royal Canadian Legion in Cambellford, Ontario, a small predominantly white town not far from Toronto.

They meant it as a joke... they found it funny. I don't think that we can (or should) get to a point where murder, slavery, and racism are funny.

On CTV News tonight, the son of one of these men said "no, he's not racist or anything. Obviously not" and then said something about how it is ok because people dress like serial killers every day. How can I argue with that logic?

Last year, when a group of white students dressed as the cast of Cool Runnings at the University of Toronto, there was a forum where students and faculty were invited to discuss the issue of blackface and whether it is appropriate... keep in mind that these students were trying to portray people that they admired in a movie they enjoyed, not showing a violent scene as a joke. One thing that came out of this forum was an article that presented various sides to the issue, and stated that

one look at the deeply rooted and violent history of racism and blackface iconography is all that it takes to understand that a white person painting themselves to depict a black person shouldn't

I tend to agree with this statement. Blackface is never ok. And blackface that depicts this level of hatred can never be funny. At very least, it appears as though there will be a thorough investigation.

Students and Class Consciousness: A story from the picketline

2010-10-22T11:45:00.008-04:00

There is currently a strike taking place at the university I attend. The workers are part of the medical school on campus, which means that many students take the position that the strike doesn't concern them at all, other than to inconvenience them by making them wait in a short lineup and accept a piece of paper before arriving on campus despite the obvious connections between the medical school and the university more generally.

I am currently a teaching assistant for an intro to sociology course. The professor decided to hold class on the picketline yesterday rather than forcing students to cross in order to write their previously scheduled midterm exam. About two thirds of the class showed up on a very cold day to take part in this class (and witness the year's first snowfall at the same time). There was a really interesting series of events that took place during the class.

Part of my job was to take attendance, and a lineup of students were waiting to sign in. Two young guys were joking around, and one said something like "Imagine if a striker got hit by a car" and they both started laughing. I responded by telling him that several strikers have been hit by vehicles, one even went to the hospital. Keep in mind that because strikers must be off university property, the person who is going up to cars to hand out information and talk to drivers is in the middle of an intersection. The two students stopped laughing, but I'm not sure if they really thought much of it.

The professor asked how many of them would be interested in walking the picketline with the workers, and less than 10 of the 60 students present raised their hands, the rest agreed to watch from the side after the mini-lecture and conduct participant observation.

About 10 minutes later, a driver refused to stop for the picketers walking across the road at the entrace to campus. As the car inched forward slowly, one young male worker stood his ground and refused to get out of the way of the vehicle. The car drove slowly into his legs and continued to drive forward, pushing the striker backwards. He turned around, presumably so that the car was on the back of his legs so they would bend instead of break, the car continued to drive forwards, pushing the striker another 2 feet forward and he was almost seated on the hood of the car from being pushed. Meanwhile, a dozen strikers on the line were yelling at the driver to stop, and another striker ran accross the street to get the police officer who was nearby. When the police officer came, he pulled the driver over and made him wait for about 10 minutes while he talked to him (and hopefully wrote a ticket).

The students watched this transpire, some looked horrified by the event, others amused, but I think it affected most of the people who saw it in some way. After the lecture, most of them spent some time walking the picketline with the strikers and very few stood on the sidelines to watch. Seeing one piece of the abuse that these striking workers face every day seemed to bring about a form of class consciousness (or at very least solidarity) that was not there previously.

Now, if only I could find a way to take this experience and bring it on campus to show other students that we need to support these workers.

Heterosexism, Homophobia and "It Gets Better"

2010-10-15T20:21:00.002-04:00

I have been watching the news (and various TV programs, as well as reading blogs and news articles) covering the recent deaths of several gay teens and young men. Like so many others, I am saddened and outraged that the suicide rate is so high for this group. I also would like to mention that it is not any higher than usual this month, there has just been media coverage stemming from the circumstances surrounding Tyler Clementi's death. I would also be curious to investigate whether this is also the case with other queer groups... I know the suicide rate is astronomical for transgendered people, but I haven't seen any reports of lesbian suicides over the past month and am not as aware of what these statistics might look like.

Many celebrities, in an attempt to prevent more suicides, have began a campaign entitled the "It gets better" project. I am happy that they are trying to help, and I am glad that so much attention is being brought to the issue, but I have some problems with the concept of it gets better. I feel like I need to add a disclaimer of some sort, because I don't want this to come across as being overly cynical... I think this campaign is important to continue, despite what I am about to write. I think that it is a good start to opening up debate on bullying, especially in relation to people who identify as LGBTQ (I never know how many more letters to add here). And I think that it could conceivably help to save some lives. That being said, I think that it is quite limited and limiting, and should be opened up into a broader campaign to make things better now, instead of getting people to hope that it will get better for them someday.

To me, it is almost like they are condoning the bullying (which is far from their intention). They are saying that it won't last forever, but it can come across as "yes, kids will be cruel, but when they are all grown up, you will be able to find a niche within society where you can fit in most of the time." Note that it is not saying that broader society becomes more accepting, only that these celebrities have found a place where they fit without the bullying.

Another teen committed suicide right after a city council meeting, when after having been told that it would get better, he realized that some things never change when he heard adults giving homophobic arguments opposing LGBT awareness month.

My uncle has told me (and anyone else who will listen) that non-hetero lifestyles are wrong because his God said that a man should be with a woman. Yet, his god is fine with him emotionally abusing his wife, and his god is fine with him being financially abusive to his family, and his god is fine with him screaming at my sister (who, due to a mental illness and past trauma cannot handle loud noises or angry people). I am all for people believing in whatever they want to believe, but I don't want a god who is ok with being cruel to people, but not ok with allowing two consenting adults to have a relationship because they have the wrong genitals for each other. (after reading this part back, I want to note that I am not saying that he is representative of religious people or any religion specifically, merely an example of how things, in my life, have not always gotten better).

As I was walking to the bus stop this morning with my 5 and 8 year old children, I am pretty sure a neighbor yelled a homophobic slur at me. It wasn't loud enough to be clear, and I am a bit on edge due to a really upsetting bullying incident that I faced at the co-op earlier this week, but even if I try to give her the benefit of the doubt, I can't think of what else she might have said. And when I told my best friend about this, his response was that I should be more careful who I tell that I am queer. I understand that he means well, he is concerned about me and trying to protect me, but why should I have to live closeted or in fear? I have not had girlfriends over to my house or done anything for people to label me as gay (not that it would matter if I did), but I have told a few people in private conversation when it came up because I don't feel like it is something that I should need to hide. My sexuality is such a huge topic of discussion for community gossip that people who I don't even recognize know that I am The Gay person in the co-op.

Do people get better? I am not so sure... It is not something that I have to face everyday, so maybe it does get better... but does it ever end?

Overall, the people in my life are generally more accepting than they were highschool, not because it gets better, but because I spend most of my time at university. I study in the social sciences and work in an academic union, where people are generally open to all kinds of things that are not accepted throughout some areas of broader society.

I was reading one of my favorite blogs, which said that instead of "it gets better" maybe we should change slogans to "make it better." I would suggest reading the post, especially if you are interested in this from the point of view of someone who Taught While Gay (brilliant... I only hope my kids get a teacher like this).

Why should we ask children to tolerate the bullying at all, even if it does get better? How do we accept that any child anywhere is being bullied for sexual orientation, nevermind when it is this widespread. What is the most insulting word that you can call a teenage boy? I'm guessing most would say it is a gay slur or feminine term (you probably know which ones I am talking about, I'm not going to repeat them here, that is not what my blog is about).

So, how do we fix this, if not by telling children that it gets better and hoping that someday it actually will? It seems so simple... end institutional forms of heterosexism. Sarah Silverman made an excellent point when she said

Dear America, when you tell gay Americans that they can't serve their country openly or marry the person that they love, you're telling that to kids too. So don't be fucking shocked and wonder where all these bullies are coming from that are torturing young kids and driving them to kill themselves because they're different. They learned it from watching you.

What we learn from instutionalized heterosexism is that to be queer is to be different. And if we are different, than we can be treated differently. And because the assumption that we are somehow different is taken as common sense, then it becomes ok to say that it will get better eventually, instead of making it better for everyone NOW.

Bad photoshopping on the cover of Maxim

2010-10-15T12:36:00.003-04:00

Check out the cover of Maxim. Does it look normal too you? Look closely at Avril Levigne's right arm. But as long as her waist is unnaturally skinny, I guess it is ok. Gotta love photoshop!

I haven't actually seen the cover, but saw the story here

Why the justice system doesn't work, as a comic

2010-10-11T17:29:00.002-04:00

The comic doesn't exactly provide any answers, but the critique is good.

facebook memes... for breast cancer?

2010-10-09T22:39:00.004-04:00

I like it on the livingroom floor

I like it on the kitchen counter

I like it on the table

What am I talking about? Well, breast cancer awareness of course! Posting the location of your purse on facebook raises awareness about breast cancer. And of course, sexuality must be implied to get attention... for the cause, right?

At least the bra colour meme from last year was somehow linked to breasts... this one is a ridiculous.

My purse status was "I like to open it and actually give money (and time) to support a specific cause rather than re-posting inane memes that use sexual innuendo to get attention while pretending that purses are somehow linked to breast cancer... BTW, cancer is not sexy, even when it has to do with parts of the female anatomy"

I could tell you that the cell phone case that I usually carry instead of a purse is on the coffee table. Or the schoolbag I carry when I need more room is on the floor. Or the purses that I rarely use are in a cabinet. But how does that help raise awareness for breast cancer?

And why is it that breast cancer is the "sexy" way to support women's issues? It isn't bad enough that any product in existence, colored pink like toys designed for little girls, is meant to support breast cancer, but now we have to show off how sexy breasts are at the same time. Advertisements tell men that they should care about breast cancer because they like breasts... not because women are dying and not supporting the leading cause of death in women (cardiovascular disease- hearts are not sexy)... simply because men like breasts.

What, other than breast cancer do these ads have in common?

Using a cartoon sex symbol as a spokesperson...

I know I like to box in uncomfortable lingerie...

Nudity is common in these ads

And T-shirts like this one don't even pretend to be about a woman... just boobs.

In my opinion, they are as much about sexualizing and objectifying women as they are about trying to get money for researching breast cancer.

Don't do this research to save women's (and some men's) lives because you value women as people, or because they have a right to expect researchers in related fields to look for a cure. Support this research because you like breasts, and breasts happen to be attached to women.

Mother blaming and conceptions of normal child behavior

2010-10-06T07:58:00.005-04:00

I really haven't had much time for posting lately, which means I have missed some really important events (like the Ontario court decision to strike down laws that are harmful to sex workers). In this post, I will be discussing one of the many reasons why I haven't had time to post (other than grad school, union work, teaching, and all of the other work involved with being
a single mother with two children).

My son has always been a bit different in comparison to other kids his age, but I just thought that was his personality. I thought he was just shy when he wouldn't come out of a closet at a new daycare for a couple hours, or when he went more than 2 weeks without speaking to daycare workers and still won't make eye contact with them. I thought he was just a mama's boy when, at the age of 5, he still wants me to carry him a lot and will cry if he doesn't sit beside me in a restaurant. And I thought he was just really interested in art and building when he spent hours working on puzzles, coloring, or playing with lego without breaking concentration. I never really saw it as a sign that something might be wrong. Actually, I find him to be very intelligent, artistic, affectionate (with me, anyway), and even funny (like when he tells his only joke over and over again- knock knock, who's there, why'd the chicken cross the road- laughter).

But, after a few problems at school, I went to a referral agency to be connected to free services in the area that might help with parenting strategies, and after a few lengthy tests, they want me to have him assessed for Aspergers.

Now, I don't know much about Aspergers other than reading a few websites and watching a season of the TV show Parenthood, where one of the children has it and I've heard the writers and actor are quite realistic with this portrayal. I don't know what a diagnosis would mean about things like the possibility of discrimination within the school system. As a sociology major, I don't like labels and I am uneasy about the idea of giving a label to my child (yes, I know many sociologists are all about labels and categories, but that is not how I do sociology). But as a parent who has been raising him alone for years without understanding why I can't get him to listen to simple rules, this seems to offer an explanation and new strategies to deal with his behavior.

But I have been having some trouble figuring out how I feel about it. My first instinct is relief. Relief that it is not my fault that he is acting up. Relief that my family and his teachers and behavioral therapists will no longer look at me as though I am not a capable parent, that I am too strict or too lenient, that I am just not good enough. Relief that I will not be told that I need to drop out of school to control my kid (yes, that was suggested by a behavioral therapist). Relief that I am not to blame when he acts up. Then I feel guilt. Guilty that part of me hopes that this is what is going on with him, because it is not something that is likely to go away the way shyness could. That being said, the limited knowledge that I have suggests that Aspergers would have a better prognosis than the previous suggestion that he might have Oppositional Defiant Disorder along with Obsessive Compulsive tendencies. Have I mentioned that I really despise labels?

So, what I am now trying to figure out is how can I move beyond always feeling guilty about parenting. His father doesn't feel guilty about only seeing him for 1-2 hours a week. His father doesn't feel like his lack of parenting has contributed to the problems he's been having at school and daycare. His father thinks it is because I am not a good enough parent. This is a sentiment that, although changing, I still hear echoed throughout pop culture and from teachers and family members. I feel the same way about mother blaming as I do about labels. And yet, I still always blame myself.

I guess the big question that I am facing right now is whether it is in his best interest to try and get a diagnosis. I am hesitant because I have trouble conceptualizing what Aspergers really is. I mean, it isn't something that simply shows up on an x-ray or some other physical test, but a name that covers a group of behaviors that differ from how "normal" children are "supposed to" behave. I understand that categories and classifications can be useful, but I am still trying to locate information on the benefits of not getting an official diagnosis as well.

And, to bring in a bit of a class analysis, I would like to point out that if I had a few thousand dollars to throw around, I could get the diagnosis rather quickly. I could also get all kinds of help without a diagnosis, if I wanted to pay for it. However, as a student who is surviving on a scholarship meant to support a single person and not a family, he might need an official diagnosis before I could access many of the support programs available.

Another post on enthusiastic consent

2010-09-26T09:13:00.002-04:00

Last week I wrote about the concept of enthusiastic consent as it relates to sexual acts between adults. This same basic idea can be used not only for sexual acts, but for many different aspects of everyday life, including children playing with each other and standards relating to everyday touch and physical contact.

When I was a child, one thing that I remember vividly is distant relatives and friends of my mothers hugging me without my consent, and being powerless to stop them because saying so would be rude. I remember the prickly stubble on the face of a man who kissed me on the cheek when I was 5 or 6 years old and really not liking it. These people were almost strangers to me, and you don't go up to a stranger in the mall and give them a hug because that would be inappropriate, but when you are a child and the adult knows your parents then it is considered fine because children are property of their parents. It is well accepted under normal circumstances that a boss should not be able to touch an employee (such as to give them a hug) because of the power relations involved, but when the recipient of that touch is a child it is fine as long as it is not sexual.

I think we need to move beyond this 'good touch, bad touch' dichotomy (with bad meaning sexual and everything else being acceptable) to teach our children to be empowered about their rights to their body. How can we tell a little girl that she is not supposed to make a fuss when grandma gives an unwanted hug and kiss, but she must yell, scream, and fight a decade later when her date tries to touch her or it is her fault if he doesn't stop when she wants him to? I have long been confused by these mixed messages. Although I do not see these two situations as identical, they are very similar in certain ways when you think about it in that they both involve a non-consensual touch. This does not only apply to children, every person should have the right to decide who touches them at any time and who does not, I just find it most obvious with children.

When people infringe on our space and touch us without our consent, it hurts... it makes us feel bad, regardless of whether it is a person that we like and might want to be touched by at other times and in other circumstances. The problem is, and I have faced this myself recently, informing them that you do not want to be touched hurts their feelings (even though it shouldn't). So, we are left with the choice of dealing with it or risking hurting another persons feelings. Being a parent or even a spouse does not give you entitlement to touch another person's body. Sometimes they might want to be touched, tickled, hugged, or kissed and sometimes they might not. And they have to be able to express that without worrying about hurting someone's feelings. The right to not be touched seems so simple to me that I am often surprised that it needs to be articulated, but it really does because it is so commonly infringed on and it is not considered to be a big deal.

It also translates into many different areas of people's lives... For example, children and play. Instead of waiting for a child to tell the other kids to stop wrestling or stop playing in a specific way, I try to teach my children to stop when it appears as though one person is no longer having fun (sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't, but it is worth working on). This is hard for them to do because they can get really caught up in a game, and as children, I believe they have less capacity to be aware of others' feelings than adults do (although I am not sure of this). I am hoping that this teaches them to learn how to be in tune with the people that they interact with. This skill is likely impossible to fully master, but think of the possibilities that will come later if it is learned in childhood as a principle guiding play.

There are times when children do not have a say over who touches them. For example, if a child is hurting themselves or another person, it might be necessary to move them whether they want to be touched or not. But it is important to start from the premise of enthusiastic consent and then come up with a few specific exceptions from there.

Some people like being touched casually... they sit and stand close to others, they make physical contact in ordinary conversation and they are quick to hug friends when they see them. I, however, am not like that, and neither are a lot of people that I know. Today, for example, the person serving me at Tim Hortons touched my hand when he took my money and it made me extremely uncomfortable. I don't like when family members insist on hugs... never have been comfortable with that. That's not to say that I never like to be touched... I just like to feel that I have a sense of control over the circumstances upon which it happens and I beleive that I am fully entitled to that control, as are my children and every person that I come in contact with.

Constructions of gendered differences in perceptions of colour

2010-09-25T08:39:00.000-04:00

My brother sent me a link from a joke website that plays into a few stereotypes about men that I thought would be interesting to look at a bit closer. Here is the image

It is a poster from a paint store that reads "Notice Husbands choosing colours must have a written note from their wives"

I am assuming that readers have all seen the commercials or TV shows where men are depicted as not knowing how to coordinate colors, whether it be paint, home decor, or dressing themselves (especially when it comes to picking out ties to match their shirt). It is a way that men and women are constructed as different from each other. It also makes women look as though they are actually the boss in the home, as men cannot make a purchase without a written note from their wives, like a child needing permission to go on a class trip or something. See, we don't need feminism because women can decide what color goes on the wall. And if women are naturally better at seeing colors, then there must also be things that men are better at, like everything more important than picking out paint.

That link reminded me of these two charts showing gender differences in color. The first is a joke depicting what some people think about how men and women view colors.

Next is a more realistic look at how men and women actually view colors, according to one study conducted at xkcd (the article itself at is interesting too). They found that "men and women tended on average to call colors the same names."

There are still some differences between people who identified as male and those who identified as female in the study, but not nearly as many as the many jokes suggest. There was even at least one color that men said and women didn't, being salmon.

I should also point out that I would not have come up with aqua, hot pink, or probably even magenta... and I would have called one of the purples blue. I guess I shouldn't be picking paint colors or dressing myself.

Student paper's sex position of the week depicts sexual assault

2010-09-20T12:50:00.004-04:00

Building from the previous post on enthusiastic consent, I came across a disturbing comic strip printed in a student newspaper at Purdue University. There is a great critique on Jezebel.

I was not sure if I was going to link a picture because I find it very offensive, but I think in this case a description alone will not suffice, so here is the comic strip in question.

The text describes Man 1 having consensual sex with a woman while man 2 hides. Then, without her knowledge, man 2 takes his place while man 1 gets her attention from a window, at which point she is surprised. Because she did not consent to the second partner, this becomes a rather obvious case of rape. And it is not funny.

One commenter on Jezebel added a fourth panel to the comic that I think sums it up nicely

The fortunate part, if one could call it such, is that the editor has issued a genuine apology (as opposed to an "I'm sorry if you were offended" type apology that is so often the case with offensive college newspaper columns). Here are some quotes from the apology;

First things first: We made a mistake in printing Friday’s sex position of the week, and I, the editorial board, and The Exponent are extremely sorry...

On Friday and over the weekend, we received a flood of e-mails and phone calls telling us that this sort of graphic is unacceptable. And as soon as we received the first one and looked at it again – really looked at it – we agreed. If someone engages in any sexual act with anyone without his or her explicit consent, it’s rape...

The first step, however, is to admit our mistake and apologize. That’s what I’m doing here. We erred and we’re sorry – not because of your response, but because we were wrong and would’ve been wrong even if nobody had said so.

Contrast this to The John Hopkins Newsletter's statement about "fat chicks" at a lingerie party, where he writes "Though we apologize for the harm the article did, we will not apologize for the intent of the article."

I have seen numerous examples of college papers running completely inappropriate material, whether it be an opinion piece, a (failed) attempt at satire, or a comic strip like the one described above. Every time, I wonder how it makes it through editing, and I am not familiar enough with how newspapers are run to comment on that. What I can comment on is that only in a culture where sexual assault(under certain circumstances) is trivialized can this type of material make it into print.

I hope that The Exponent uses this as a learning opportunity and uses its influence to fight rape culture at Purdue rather than being a part of it.

Enthusiastic Consent and how "yes means yes" can replace "no means no"

2010-09-17T22:45:00.004-04:00

I have seen a lot of news stories on consent in the past few week, and in light of the Take Back the Night march that took place here Thursday, I thought I should post about this issue now. And I should start with a trigger warning for discussion around consent and sexual assault.

The most recent news story about consent was with regards to a really terrible incident that happened in British Columbia last week. It is all over the news here, but for readers who haven't heard, a 16 year old girl was drugged and then raped by several boys and men at a party, and pictures of the incident have been spreading online, beginning on facebook. That isn't even the part that has me most outraged. The part that really makes me angry is the very public response to the photos online and even on the news. She is being called names like "whore" and "slut." Some are saying that she asked for it, or that she is exaggerating- it wasn't really rape. Some commenters have even made jokes about it, including "Cmon, whose not down for a gang bang." Someone went so far as to suggest that she is making up the rape accusation because she regrets having slept with all of these people. I can't even begin to imagine what this girl is going through right now (ok, maybe I can begin to imagine), but I am shocked at this response. Having a glass of champagne that happens to be laced with a drug of some sort does not mean that you are consenting to having sex. It also does not mean that you are asking for it. And just because women are often cautioned not to accept drinks from men does not mean that she should have known better. This is NOT her fault.

But I have some ideas about why it is happening. I can think of two reasons, one being the relative anonymity provided by the internet... I'm sure most of these commenters do not know her and do not expect to be identified, and many are just expanding on previous comments. But the more important reason- the reason we can do something about- is the fact that we live in a culture where violence against women is accepted and even celebrated.

Just look at this T-shirt (posted on socimages)

See, non-consensual sex is fine! As long as she doesn't actually have the ability to say no, right?

Here is another example, this time from the show Big Brother. The contestant who ended up coming in second place told a story about a game he likes to play. This game involves a man having his friends come into the room when he is having sex with a woman and forcibly restraining her for 8 seconds so everyone in the room can see her. When Enzo (the contestant who came in third place) asked if that was rape, Lane laughed it off. Even Britney, the only woman remaining in the competition at the time, after saying that she would kill herself if it happened to her, got involved in the description of the game and was joking around about it. As far as I am concerned, if he has done this, he should be in prison.

And there was another incident over the summer that keeps coming back to me as absolutely inexcusable. A young woman was dancing at a Girls Gone Wild party. The cameraman asked her to expose her breasts, and she refused. Another woman came up behind her and pulled down the first woman's shirt with the cameras rolling so that her breasts were captured on tape. When she found out that the incident made it onto one of the movies she decided to sue. Despite the fact that they have her on camera refusing to show her breasts, a jury decided that merely being at the party was a form of consent, and that she did not have the right to keep her shirt on in front of the cameras! Good girls don't go to these parties, and if you do, then I guess you are "asking for it."

There are so many other examples that it is absolutely ridiculous, but I'm not going to describe any more of them here because I believe I have made my point.

I have written at length about sexual harassment as well as the regulation of female bodies in previous posts, and I think this topic just adds to that discussion because it is all based on the same basic premise that women's bodies exist for men... and we need to make it clear that this is not acceptable. I think that the best way to help change this is with the notion of enthusiastic consent. Enthusiastic consent goes far beyond "No means No" and is often described as "Yes Means Yes." Having sex with someone who is not fully capable of consenting is rape. Having sex with someone who you reasonably believe would rather not be having sex at that moment is not following the standard of enthusiastic consent and should therefore be seen as rape as well.

The main difference between these two standards of consent is with regards to responsibility. In the first standard (no means no), the victim is responsible for making it clear that they are not consenting. If they do not yell, kick, fight, and scream, it can be hard to get a conviction. And it is often the case that victims of rape do not realize that what happened to them was in fact rape because they feel they did not make it clear enough that they did not want to participate or that they did something to mislead their rapist into thinking that they might have been "asking for it." If we switch to the standard of enthusiastically consenting, it then becomes the responsibility of both partners to ensure that the other is affirmatively expressing desire to engage in each act that takes place. This can get tricky from a legal perspective, but there is a great post here specifically pertaining to how this can work as a legal standard.

I'm not sure that it will stop every rape from occuring, but I do believe that enthusiastic consent would make victim blaming a thing of the past. I think that if it were adopted as the dominant standard of consent, the previously mentioned examples of rape culture would be different (if they even happened at all). The T-shirt would not be funny, the "8-second game" would end in an arrest and Girls Gone Wild would have lost the lawsuit. And if pictures existed of a girl being raped, they would be turned over to police, not posted on facebook and joked about.

It would also make sex seem less dangerous in many ways. The focus could be on pleasure and communication instead of sexuality being something that is feared and commodified at the same time. Maybe this is still too ideal of a way of thinking... maybe we are too far from that point to make the change right away, but if we start talking to our kids about enthusiastic or affirmative consent (which I plan to write about very soon), then we can hope that it is not that far off for the next generation... but I'm not sure they will get there if they are constantly being exposed to the various other aspects of rape culture.

Tyra bullies contestants in an anti-bullying episode of ANTM

2010-09-17T12:06:00.007-04:00

Today, I am going to do a post on reality television, more specifically, this week's episode of America's Next Top Model (which, unfortunately, means admitting that I do watch the show on occasion, lets just pretend it is for research purposes).

This weeks' episode really bothered me. The aspiring models did a photo shoot where they had words written on their bodies, one was a 'bully word' which was supposed to represent names that they were called by others. The other word was supposed to be an empowering word, reframing the bully word into something more positive and powerful. I like the idea of drawing attention to real world problems like bullying, however, I didn't like how it played out. Some of the women were obviously not comfortable with their 'bully word' and others did not seem very genuine (I guess not everyone has experienced bullying). Some of them even had fun with it, laughing at their bully name as though it were all a big joke, whereas others broke down crying at the thought of painting a word that has been used to hurt them so many times on their body.

One woman used the word Queer as her 'bully word' and Free as her 'power word'... it was a beautiful picture, but I wish she had used queer for both in order to further reclaim it, but that is probably hoping for too much on a show like this.

Then, in judging (where the judging panel rips apart the models' photos, poses, and overall appearance), they reverted to name calling. Here are a list of the words and phrases used in the 2 minute judging panel that appeared on television to describe these women

dreckitude (This is a new word, which appears to be a combination of Dreck and Attitude. If I am not mistaken, the word Dreck is a German word, something like 'dirty' in English, used as a sexist and classist form of moral regulation)
Gauche (can mean socially awkward, or lacking social class)
Don't like her muscle (she had awesome biceps)
her body does nothing for me (sounds very sexualized)
Terrible picture of her
she is trying to model
hoochie, too overly ripe, almost stale (this woman had large breasts, but was not dressed or posed any more provocatively than many of the other women)

And these comments end with a panel member saying "This has been a wonderful wonderful first, cause it's really social consciousness. I think we helped so many of those young ladies."

Please don't help me Tyra. I'd rather be left out of all of this supposedly therapeutic coming-to-terms-with-bullying than have you and your elite friends tear my body apart like that (yes, I understand that this is a big part of what modelling is about right now, because only perfect female bodies sell clothing, but don't pretend that you are helping these women and fighting bullying when you are picking apart their bodies).

The episode got me thinking about my own experiences of bullying, and I realized that I could not come up with a bully word if I were asked to. I was tormented at school from grades 4-10, especially in grade 7 and 8. Acne combined with good grades and poor social skills led to bullying that made school a frightning experience for me. I would stay up all night worrying about how to try and avoid it the next day or how to convince my mother to let me stay home. Still, I could not take these experiences and sum it up in a single word or a short sentence, it was so much more complicated than that.

And I don't mean this to sound like an afterthought, but I think it needs to be mentioned that there was also a model who appeared as though she might have an eating disorder. She was quite skinny with protruding bones and she discussed being on a strict low calorie diet. Tyra told her to eat some bread and butter before eliminating her from the competition. I'm really hoping that there was more follow up for this contestant than just telling her to eat, because I'm pretty sure that is not how to help someone who may (or may not) have an eating disorder. I would suggest that it is a form of bullying to go up to a skinny person and just tell them to eat; if she is anorexic, it is so much more complicated than just going to the kitchen and buttering a slice of bread.

The gendering of toys at a second hand store

2010-09-15T09:16:00.012-04:00

I was trying to pass the time while waiting for my daughter to finish drama class on a rainy day, so I took my son to a used clothing store to let him look at the toys. This has always been a treat for my kids... to go to a consignment shop or a used clothing store and when we were done looking at the things that I wanted to look at, they would play with the toys. One of my favorite things about it was that all of the toys were mixed together, so there was no division based on age or gender of the children who are supposed to play with the toys, like in other toy stores. Much to my disappointment, this is no longer the case.

The section labeled "Girls Toys" contains stuffed animals, toys that are pink or purple in color, dolls and for some reason, board games (although that could partly be because there is room for game shelf here).

These toys include a purple My Little Ponies playhouse, a pink Littlest Petshop playhouse, a Littlest Petshop ice cream parlor, purple secret diary with a key card, jewelry and craft sets, a Bratz toy of some sort, Barbies, Dolls, High School Musical Cheerleading pompoms, skipping ropes, a cooking set and plastic dishes, and many other things that I cannot see or cannot identify (as well as what appears to be an electric drum and black boys dress shoes that I think waere left behind by a shopper, as they don't seem to fit in with the rest of the items). All toys that I have consistently seen gendered as female in advertising. The next picture shows the board games and stuffed animals.

The section labeled "Boys Toys," on the other hand, is a bit different. Although it does contain toys that I would suggest are typically gendered as being for male children (Tonka Truck, monster truck, transformers action figure and various other cars and trucks just to name a few), it also contains many toys that I don't think are typically gendered (Rubix cube, chess set, M&Ms Candy toy, math and reading flashcards, outdoor activities/sports toys, waterguns, keyboards, etc). Not seen in this picture, but still in the boys section, were 3 average lego sets (the kind that was marketed for all children before they came out with pink lego sets for girls).

This is just another example of male as standard or normal, along with the devaluation of all things female. All children are allowed to shop in the boys section. Boys, however, will not find anything suitable in the girls section (thankfully, my son would dispute that.. he loves Littlest Petshop and jewelry crafts). I think this store needs to seriously reconsider this new setup. I just want these toy stores to put everything back together on one big shelf and just let kids be kids.

Explaining privilege to children

2010-09-11T20:11:00.003-04:00

Today, I realized that I have to try harder to explain the concept of privilege to my 5 and 7 year old children and I'm not entirely sure how to go about doing this. My 7 year old just came up to me with her shirt up, rubbing her stomach, crying, and said "I'm starving."

I don't like when people who are actually just hungry say that they are starving, but I understand that I need to be somewhat forgiving when children speak. Usually, I just correct her and say "no, you are hungry" and get her a snack. Today, something set me off. Maybe it is because she just ate a rather large dinner followed by dessert only an hour before this comment. She also had a larger than usual breakfast and lunch, followed by a trip to the store with her father for a snack. Is it possible that she was having a growth spurt or something and was legitimately hungry? Yes. But more likely, she was just bored and wanted to eat.

The drama really bothers me. Crying and rubbing her stomach as though she hadn't eaten all day. She is often quite dramatic, such as when she gets hurt or when something exciting happens, but this was beyond excessive.

I told her that she is not starving. I told her that there are children all over the world who have not eaten ANYTHING today, or who have eaten very little, many of whom are not putting up the same fuss as she is. I reminded her that there are children who die because they do not have enough food. I told her that she needs to understand how privileged she is to get 3 meals and 2-4 snacks a day. Every day. I told her that she does not know what it means to be hungry... truly hungry. I am vaguely aware of what it means; I have gone days without eating because I did not have the means to get food, and weeks without eating anything more than a bowl of soup with bread a day from the soup kitchen, but I do not understand what it means to be starving.

I would like to find a book, movie, or even a youtube video that is age appropriate for her. The problem is that most of these films are deeply disturbing for a variety of reasons, often just because they can be incredibly ethnocentric. I want her to understand her privilege.

I read some Marx (and I liked it)

2010-09-07T15:04:00.003-04:00

This video was sent to me today and I had to post it...

It is a bit simplistic at times, but then I think that is to be expected when trying to fit a complex theory into song lyrics.

Transcript

I thought I just wanted to pass;
Good grades were all I cared for.
My college made me take the class
More stuff for me to ignore!
But then I found out that
His theories weren't so bad:
Labor and class combat,
What a very clever man!

CHORUS
I read some Marx, and I liked it;
The friend of the proletariat.
I read some Marx, just to try it;
Hope Adam Smith don't mind it!
It felt so wrong,
It felt so right;
Men of the working class, unite!
I read some Marx, and I liked it;
I liked it!

There is a spectre hanging o'er
The face of Europe!
'Tis communism, and it's more
Than just a social hiccup.
A time will come soon when
The masses rise as one
To carve out their place in
The brand new poetry to come!

CHORUS

Marx is the man, he's working for you;
The bourgeoisie, they just ain't your crew.
Alienation of labor is bad,
Commodification is not a good fad.
The capitalists are greedy you see;
A shorter workday, now that's what we need!
I'm reading some Marx, and I'm liking it;
Rise up now, proletariat!

CHORUS