National Post and Feminism

Tuesday's National Post contained an article entitled "Women's Studies is still with us" in which their editorial board (made up of 3 women and 8 men) comments on women's studies courses- and by the sounds of it, none of them have ever actually taken a women's studies course. And by comments on, I mean they completely bash these programs, blaming them for all kinds of problems.

They write "The radical feminism behind these courses has done untold damage to families, our court systems, labour laws, constitutional freedoms and even the ordinary relations between men and women." I wish I could say I was surprised that arguments such as these continue to exist... I don't think this point is worth the energy of trying to argue, it has gone on since the 1960s (and, in some cases, since the mid 1800s) and has been argued by many women much more articulate and knowledgable than myself.

They also write that "Women's Studies courses have taught that all women--or nearlyall-- are victims and nearly all men are victimizers." Now, I've taken many women's studies courses, and I have never gotten the impression that I was a victim. They discuss rape culture as problematic, but none of my profs have tried to say that all men are victimizers (however, I can see how some writers, such as Dworkin and MacKinnon, could be interpreted as such). Women's studies courses have empowered me to see how power relations come into play, which I believe will help me navigate my way through a patriarchal system. They have not led me to believe that I am a victim, but have taught me that the victim/abuser dichotomy is much too simple to explain what is actually hapenning. We are all oppressed and we are all oppressors in various capacities, but that does not come up in the article.

It also explains how, in the current judicial system, men are being victimized by women studies. "Divorcing men find they lose their homes and access to their children, and must pay much of their income to their former spouses (then pay tax on the income they no longer have) largely because Women's Studies activists convinced politicians that family law was too forgiving of men." Yet, studies show time and again that men benefit financially from divorce, whereas women's income drops substantially, and courts will not take access to children from a parent except under the most extreme circumstances.

I could go on like this with every sentence in the article. The article makes employment equity sound like a reverse hiring scheme to trick men out of their jobs. It makes non-essentialist gender difference arguments sound ludicrous. The article also makes it seem as though all feminists equate PIV intercourse to an act of violence. It scares me that people who have never taken a women's studies class are going to read this article and believe that all of this is true; it must be true- it is in the newspaper and written by an entire panel of people.

The article ends with a terrifying conspiracy theory; that although women's studies programs appear to be disappearing, in reality the same ideas are just being shifted to other disciplines. Now it isn't just women's studies majors that we have to fear... it is all liberal arts students. Society is doomed!

Is asking for 'reliable' workers discriminatory?

In England, an employer was placing a wanted ad asking for reliable and hard-working employees, but was told that she could not do so because it discriminated against non-reliable applicants.

On one hand, isn't being hard-working and reliable kind of important to find and maintain employment?

On the other, I may not be as reliable as a worker without dependents... should I be penalized for having children without a grandma or neighbor available to babysit when kids are too sick to go to school?

I'm wondering what other people think. And I would be very interested to hear a coherent argument as to why it might be discriminatory to ask for reliable and hard working employees.

Pelvic exams without consent?

According to the Globe and Mail, pelvic exams are being performed by med students at teaching hospitals on women undergoing surgery without their consent. I am in shock that this could possibly be true.

The article asks "Do you consider this okay, or an outrageous violation of your rights?"

I wonder how anyone could consider this ok... as much as I try, I cannot wrap my head around that side of this debate. What is the difference between med students performing exams on women without their knowledge and a rapist taking advantage of a woman who was under the influence of drugs or alcohol?

The article also says that "The patients – unlike medical educators – seem to be quite clear on the concept of informed consent. You don't probe, poke or otherwise invade the orifices of a patient without their permission, regardless of how educational it might be. Period."

Interestingly, it seems as though in Canada (but not in the United States or Britain) the consent forms that patients need to sign somehow cover this type of procedure- possibly not in so many words. One commenter pointed out that without signing this consent form, the patient would not be operated on at all, thereby bullying women into signing without telling them what it is they are agreeing to.

One blogger used twitter to ask her followers if they had surgery in Canada and if they were aware of whether or not they had been given a pelvic exam and comments have come back show that this is not just a matter of implicit consent. The women who are responding are not ok with this procedure. They are shocked and sick to their stomach, they feel violated, and they are referring to this as assault, not a simple medical practice.

I really hope information comes out showing that this was just some kind of sensationalized story and really not a common practice, but, even if it is done in only one hospital, it needs to stop. Consent should not be implicit. This is evident in the new direction feminist analysis of consent has taken from 'no means no' to 'yes means yes.' The lack of objection is not the same as consent, especially when the person is unconscious. This applies not just to pelvic exams, but to any medical procedures that have not been fully explained to the patient unless it is medically necessary.

California school district bans dictionary

A California school district banned the Webster's Collegiate dictionary from fourth and fifth grade classrooms because it defines the words "oral sex." A committee of parents and teachers then decided to bring the dictionaries back, but to let parents decide whether their child is to be able to access this dictionary.

I can't get over how far these parental consent issues at school have gone. I don't think it should be up to parents to decide whether their children are allowed to look at a dictionary. I also do not think it should be up to parents to decide whether or not their children should have access to comprehensive and accurate sex education- I think children have the right to this information. There is little that annoys me more than denying people information that they want/need for no reason other than an authority figure doesn't think it is appropriate... why not just present facts and various arguments surrounding them, and teach children to think for themselves?

Nevermind this debate over whether or not it is acceptable for ten year olds to have access to this information, I wonder how many students have actually gone to the dictionary to look up the term "oral sex". I would guess very few of them... although, as punishment for talking in class, I occasionally had to write out dictionary definitions. It would have been slightly uncomfortable (or amusing) had I randomly selected that page... but no more so than with a multitude of other words. It doesn't mean they should be banned from classrooms.

I guess we now need to ban the internet as well. I would much rather my children get information from the dictionary than google... at least I know the stuff in the dictionary has been filtered through various editors to ensure it's accuracy.

Trust Women

As some of you may know, January 22, 2010 is the fifth annual Blog for Choice Day. The date was chosen because it is the anniversary of the Supreme Court's Roe v. Wade decision. Every year, there is a specific question that is intended for us to think about. This year, that question was developed in honor of Dr. George Tiller, a physician who performed abortions that was killed because of his work. Dr. Tiller often wore a button that read "Trust Women." The question this year is: What does Trust Women mean to you?

The first thing that comes to mind when I hear the phrase "Trust Women" in the context of abortion and birth control rights, is that it is by and large not women that get to make the social policy and legislative decisions about their own bodies. One of the most telling examples of this is this photo, which shows Bush signing legislation outlawing "Partial-birth abortions" surrounded by male lawmakers in 2003. Apparently, it is still men we trust to make decisions for us.




I believe we need to Trust Women by allowing women to govern their own bodies, both at the level of individual decisions, and with social policies.

For many women, having an abortion is often a shameful thing. That started to change for a while with the "I had an abortion" T-shirt, but there is still a lot of stigma surrounding women's decision to have an abortion. Trust women also means that we need to trust women's decision to have an abortion as the right decision for her and her uterus, as well as anything that might happen to be inside of it.

We also need to trust that women have thought out their decision to have an abortion. It is not a choice that is taken lightly by most people. Legislation require that women view an ultrasound or undertake a waiting period to think it over is not only redundant, it is also dangerous. The lack of access to doctors that provide abortion services, and the high rate of poverty for women in general, when combined with this waiting period, will ensure that abortions even less accessible to many women... but I guess that is the point. Here is a satirical look at where this might be going next (I apologize, but it starts with a 10 second commercial):


New Law Requires Women To Name Baby, Paint Nursery Before Getting Abortion

I am very worried about where abortion laws are headed in the near future. I think that we need to be aware of what is going on in order to make sure that Roe v. Wade is not overturned. The Stupak amendment in the US is the first step in this erosion, where no federal funds are used to cover abortions which means that American women without private health care will have even less access to abortion.

With Canadian social policies often following our neighbors to the south, I wonder how long it will be before abortion becomes a hot topic here too. Currently, the procedure is funded by Medicare, which means that women who reside in large cities often find them quite accessible. Women from rural areas often find it expensive to travel for abortions. For example, PEI does not have an abortion clinic, and neighboring provinces often refuse to perform abortions on out-of-province patients. Canada does have it's share of anti-feminist and pro-life groups, but I think the main issue in Canada is with regards to access to abortion services.

I also think that if we become too complacent, abortion is a right that could be taken away, especially with the apparent popularity of more conservative political parties. Maybe trust women should also mean that I have to trust that women will not be complacent if/when the attack on abortions that is being experienced in the USA ever begins to transpire in Canada.

Cute... but sad

Found here

Study about how men benefit from marriage misses the mark

A study conducted by the Pew Research Center was discussed on USA Today to show how men are beginning to benefit from marriage because women make more money than they used to. This article mentioned factors such as women's wages rising 44% over a time frame when men's rose only 6%, and women's higher rate of education as factors for why men benefit from marriage now (as though they didn't before). This research was cited on a local radio station today.

This article fails to mention that women still only make 71 cents on a man's dollar in Canada, much better than 50 years ago, but down from 72 cents in the mid-1990s.

Another slight oversight is the many ways in which men have benefited (currently and historically) from the unpaid work that women do in the home. According to many studies, women still do two thirds of the work in the home, even when both she and her husband work outside the home. Historically, men were only able to work because women took care of the children and the housework, thereby producing and reproducing workers.

The article's first line is "If you think women still reap more economic benefit than men do from marriage, you may be living in the past." This assumes that I think women benefit more from marriage than men, which I do not- and remarriage rates support this theory. It would be difficult to question women's dependence on men for economic survival, especially at times when women were not expected to work outside the home, but I think the amount that men have gained from having an unpaid worker in the house needs to be stated. This research also doesn't explain why single mothers and widowed women are by far the poorest groups in the country. If marriage were as important economically to men as it is to women, would they not have equal rates of poverty when not married?

The question shouldn't be "who has the most education" or "who makes the most money" or even "who spends the most" all of which are mentioned in the article. Here are some suggested questions that I believe could better be used to study equality within marriage:

Why is it that even with higher rates of post-secondary education, women make less money than men? And I don't mean falling back on human capital theory or biological determinist arguments.

How is it that we continue to allow unpaid childrearing and domestic labour to remain invisible? And what impact does this have on women's wages?

Are these figures specific to certain groups? For example, do these trends hold across various ethnic groups and social classes within the population? And how do non-heterosexual couples factor in to this type of study?

Are arguments such as these being used to tell women to sit down and shut up because we've never had it so good?

And why have I never heard it argued that historically (or in other countries) men have it much worse than men in contemporary western society, so they should be grateful for what they have?