Gendered dress codes - T-Shirts and bathing suits

Letter I am considering sending about my daughter's year end class trip. Input is appreciated!

Dear [school officials, principal, and teachers]

First I wanted to say that my daughter had a great time and I really appreciate the work that goes into these activities. However, there is something that she talked about that I want to bring to your attention. She told me that girls were required to wear T-shirts while participating in water activities. Boys, on the other hand, were able to participate wearing just their swimming trunks. If this is the case, it is clearly not sun protection, but because girls bodies are seen as inherently sexual and needing to be covered whereas boys bodies are allowed to exist publicly.

She was told that, as justification for this policy, they needed to "keep Victoria's secrets a secret"

As a women's studies professor, a woman, and the mother of a girl who is learning how to exist in her changing body, this really upsets me.

This teaches her that there is something wrong with her body.

This teaches her that her body is something to be ashamed of.

This teaches her that her body is innately sexual.

This teaches her that it is more important to hide her body from boys than to wear practical clothing for the activity and weather.

This teaches her that covering up is more important than her safety (my lifeguard training included the lesson that T-shirts can be hazardous in the water)

This teaches her that the rules are different for girls' bodies than for boys' bodies.

This teaches her to accept being treated differently because of her gender.

It contributes to the increased rate of eating disorders at earlier and earlier ages. It contributes to a culture where it is not only possible, but normal to sexualize and objectify the bodies of young girls. It contributes to a culture where girls are blamed for dressing provocatively or not being cautious enough if they are assaulted. 

As a 13 year old girl, she is already learning a lot of these lessons from television, books, the news, her friends, and even from older men that whistle at her while she is walking down the street (regardless of who she is with or how she is dressed). Can't school be a place where she is safe from this messaging?

The field trip was a great experience, overall, and I really hope it continues for students in future years, but I ask that you examine this policy and stop telling girls that their bodies are something to be ashamed of.

What does a school dress code that is not designed to shame girls for having bodies look like?

I was looking at local high school dress codes and came across what might be one of the most obvious examples of what dress codes designed to shame girls for having bodies and those designed to foster respectful and inclusive environments look like.

School 1

Notice that the second consideration in determining the dress code is to keep the learning environment free from distraction, and that it is based on the premise of "modesty and civility."

School 2

This dress code emphasizes respect and cultural diversity. Very few specific items are banned for not covering up enough skin, with the caveat that underwear should not be visible. At this school, girls wear spaghetti straps, crop tops, and shorts and skirts of any length they wish, and the universe has not yet exploded!

This dress code has been in place for quite some time, and graduation rates for boys has not fallen, nor have their grades dropped from witnessing girls' shoulders on a regular basis.

As many other bloggers have pointed out, when girls receive the message that their body is a distraction, and that boys' education is more important than girls' comfort in the classroom, girls are learning that their own education is just not that important.

Is roller derby feminist?

I have been playing roller derby for 2 years now.  Before joining, I had a lot of concerns about feminism within the sport that I talked about here.  Roller derby presents itself as a feminist and queer-friendly sport.  At the same time, comparisons have been made to women's WWE wrestling regarding women playing a contact sport in revealing clothing while men watch and cheer them on.  So, when I think about whether roller derby is queer and feminist, my answer is it depends, and I'm going to explain why.


By Women, For Women

My favorite thing about roller derby is that it is organized by women for women.  Men participate, they can play (Merby - men's roller derby - has become a thing), but the people who make the decisions about how the sport is played, where it is played, when it is played and by whom are almost all women.  Leagues are started and run by women.  Sometimes they are coached by men, but more often than not, the teams I have played for and against were coached by women.  The refs are typically men and take a supportive role within the leagues.  I think the most important piece to this is that there are no men making money off of women's physicality within roller derby - ok, teams may pay rent to landlords, so there is monetary exchanges happening, but men do not own teams and profit off of the work that women are doing (unlike roller derby in the 70s).


Feminist fishnets?

If you see only a few pictures of the sport, you might think that roller derby involves putting on fishnet tights, wearing weird makeup, picking out a cheeky name, and then hitting each other while wearing roller skates.  All of that can be true, but sometimes it is not.  Skater's can typically wear whatever they want while skating - some wear basketball shorts, some wear padded shorts, some wear underwear and fishnets.  I think I wear more padding than anyone else on the track!

For me, feminism does not involve fishnet tights, but it also does not involve policing the clothing of others - take any argument made by a feminist regarding the slutwalk and place it here! I also think the fact that women are wearing protective equipment including helmets and mouthguards and are playing a sport that is aggressive (and derby stance is not particularly sexy in the conventional, playboy-posing sense of the word) also creates space to argue that fishnets can be feminist.  Feminism is all about contradictions, and there are plenty of those within the sport of roller derby.


Intersectionality

Most of the roller derby players that I have met have been white, able-bodied women aged 20-40 who can afford monthly dues and the cost of skates and equipment.  While I have played with and against Indigenous women and racialized women, and I know there are women on my team who struggle to come up with the funds to continue to play, I can't talk about roller derby without mentioning who is included and who is not.  I won't pretend to entirely understand the reasons for this, but I am sure they are complex (lower income for certain groups makes it harder to afford a several hundred dollar start up costs, not seeing people who look like you playing the sport makes it seem less desirable for you, cultural implications of dressing in specific ways and engaging in behaviors that are sometimes labelled "violent", etc etc).  There have also been a few recent criticisms of team logos for having racist symbols or culturally appropriation, which will definitely have an impact on who wants to play the sport.  These are issues that still need to be acknowledged and unpacked.

Gender policies vary by league and are quite complex.  I have met more trans and genderqueer folks through roller derby than through LGBTQ activist work unrelated to derby, so there is definitely something important going on here.  Many leagues have pride-themed bouts (that is the roller derby word for a game), and skaters often join pride parades and events.

Still, there is a policy upheld by WFTDA (Women's Flat Track Derby Association) requiring trans women to be on hormones, which can exclude those who do not have access to hormones.  A team can challenge the gender of a player, and that player will have to bring evidence of their gender to their team captain, which is invasive and problematic.  Several leagues have implemented policies where any female-identified player may join the women's teams, which I thought was a great policy until being part of a discussion about the role of a young trans boy in roller derby and now I am rethinking how gender is taken up in the sport.  I am by no means the expert here, but my opinion at the moment is that roller derby is among the most queer and trans-friendly sports that I have ever heard of, but that we still have work to do in order to make sure everyone is included in ways that they are comfortable with.


Empowerment

The part of roller derby that I have experienced as most feminist is the concept of sisterhood and empowerment.  Roller derby teams seem to operate more like a family than other sports teams I have participated in.  There is so much support from other skaters through local and international roller derby networks - it can be amazing to see the ways that the community pulls together.  For instance, last year one of my teammates was killed - there are still no answers about what happened or who killed her.  When this happened, the team really pulled together to help each other and other teams offered support in many different ways.

As for empowerment, there are several organizations set up helping victims of sexual assault or domestic violence get equipment and join a roller derby team.  Anecdotally, I have skated with women who have talked about how transformational roller derby has been to how they see themselves, their feelings of self-worth and leaving abusive partners. I was worried that playing a contact sport would trigger me at times with regards to violent situations and partners that I have had in the past, but I think it has largely done the opposite.  It has made me feel stronger and less anxious and afraid.  It has pushed me mentally, physically, and socially, and given me a support network to help get through it.  We also skate together at the local Take Back the Night.  Other teams take an active role in local sexual assault and harassment awareness and prevention in their communities.

I would be lying if I said that it was always positive and empowering - there were times when interpersonal conflict made it tough to continue - I have seen people leave the sport for this reason. I have heard people refer back to the commonsense assumption that if you get 30 women together, of course there will be conflict.  But I have also seen many women move past this and support each other in really fantastic ways that must be part of what feminists were talking about when they bring up the notion of sisterhood.

Roller derby is also one of the most body-positive sports that I have ever been part of.  In my experience with the game, I have never seen anyone be put down because of their weight.  I will admit that at first I had ideas about what fat bodies were capable of when it came to athletics, but my experience playing the game has completely changed the way that I look at bodies - my own and others.  In roller derby, there seems to be a role for all body types, and it isn't as simple as smaller bodies are good at jamming and larger bodies are good at blocking.  I now realize that size is not necessarily indicative of health, stamina, strength or ability to play the game.  It has also made me much more concerned about what my body can do instead of what my body looks like.  Since joining roller derby, the numbers on the scale and my pant size have both increased and I don't care - I don't care because the distance I can run and the number of squats and push ups I can do and weight I can lift has also increased.  I feel stronger.  And even though I know that strong bodies can also be objectified, I feel like this shift from caring about my weight (but trying not to) is a very feminist thing.  I also need to point out that I am very lucky to be able-bodied in this respect - I don't think there is a version of roller derby yet for people who cannot skate.


Language

One issue that I am having trouble getting past is with respect to language.  Roller derby players are often referred to as "girls" in team names and in conversation.  We are derby girls - not derby players or women.  New skaters are referred to as Fresh Meat. I believe this refers more to some kind of tenderizing process than anything else, but it is hard for me to use the word "meat" for women and not think of blatant objectification.  Many derby names are also blatantly sexual - sometimes team names, sometimes player names.  This part can be more difficult for me to try and move past in my own head, and can be easier to accept a team name that is at least actively sexual (get'n lucky charms) than passive or naming body parts or names that sound violent or use words that I find offensive.  I totally get that it is meant to be tongue and cheek and even empowering in many cases, but I am not able to entirely see it that way.  Sometimes the names are feminist and inspiring, and it really helps me to focus on these parts of the sport.  Again, feminism is full of contradictions, and I think that roller derby has a lot of those, with moments of clear feminism, moments that are almost impossible to frame as feminist, and moments where it is both and neither at the same time.



Roller derby is made up of a variety of women, and is only as queer or feminist as the people who are playing the sport.  Some teams have amazing social justice committees and engage the community and each other in amazing ways.  Other teams play into the sexuality of their players, sometimes in cheeky ways, sometimes in overtly objectifying ways.  So, my answer is that there is nothing inherently feminist or queer about the sport itself, but that being organized by women for women and outside of the focus on profit that is seen in so many other sports, it opens a space where feminism and queerness can fit quite nicely.  Thus, the sport has more potential to be feminist and queer than so many others, and that is often how it is taken up by teams and skaters.

Also, it is incredibly fun to play, and I highly recommend seeing if your local league (if you are lucky enough to have one) will let you borrow some gear so you can come see what it is all about - you may find yourself coming back every week for more!

Taking back take back the night

Sudbury's Take Back the Night took place on Thursday evening and it was one of the least empowering feminist events I have ever attended. 

A few months ago, I was asked to speak at the event.  I started receiving committee emails at this time and noted that there were police officers on the organizing committee.  Every person on this committee was there as part of their job representing various organizations.

One email included a draft of the new "parade purpose" which was changed in order to fit with the police's new community mobilization model.   Yes, you read that correctly.  They changed the written purpose of TBTN to get a parade permit.

When I suggested that we could march without the police which could be more empowering because so many victims of violence are revictimized by police services, I was removed from the speakers list because we are not allowed to subject "guilt on another because of their profession."

A group of wonderful (and angry! ) feminists pulled together to get me back on the speakers list.  Then we attended the event.

I think I was the only speaker who even said the words "queer" "trans" or implied that things like skin colour or disabilities can impact experiences of violence (there was an indigenous speaker who had a lot to say about intergenerational violence so they at least had that covered). Half the speakers used the phrase "not all men" because they wanted to make sure the men present were comfortable.  But you know where men are already comfortable? everywhere.  That is kind of the point of the event.

When my speech was over, the next speaker was a (white male) police officer.  This officer has arrested several of the women in the room at various times including sex workers and local activists engaged in a peaceful protest.  He also has been known to displace homeless women.  And he had been invited to speak by the committee!

He actually said that since the beginning of time, humans have been violent (not true, but if it were, why would we bother trying to end violence at all). Then he differentiated between wars and hurtful violence, making it sound like violence used to be productive when it was to steal indigenous land or stop Hitler but now we are just using it to be mean.  There is good violence and bad violence.  And the nice protective police officer seems happy to decide which is which.  That was just the first of five minutes but the whole thing was pretty terrible.  And not all men are violent, in case us ladies forgot.

When a few radical feminists expressed outrage at him being on stage, they were chastised.  A group of women turned their backs on the officer when he got on stage and another group ran up to block the police officer from having to see them.  Two women went on stage at the open mic to publicly shame the women who expressed discomfort with the police officer's presence because they met him and he's a nice guy.

Other themes included that feminism isn't women> men but women=men, that men can help protect women (from other men, if they feel like it, because that is totally empowering), that not all men are violent, and one queer woman was even asked by a fellow activist not to talk about same sex violence because it takes away from the fact that men are the most common perpetrators.  It was seriously fucked up.

I've read a dozen facebook posts from women who were outraged or left feeling less safe and empowered than when they got there.  This is a huge problem.

So, now to figure out what to do about it... how do we take back take back the night?

Abuse Narratives in young adult dystopian fiction

Since graduating, I have taken to reading a lot of fiction.  I have a bit of an obsession for young adult dystopian fiction and sometimes read a bit of zombie/magic/fantasy and, on occasion, even vampire fiction.  I started to notice some disturbing trends in the literature and made a spreadsheet to confirm these tropes.

In case you aren't familiar with this language, a trope is a common pattern in a story or recognizable attribute in a character that conveys information to the audience. Tropes often perpetuate stereotypes.  For more information on tropes, see tropes vs. women

Currently, there are 71 books on my spreadsheet.  The stats person in me feels the need to say that these are in no way selected randomly; they represent what is available in mostly ebook and audiobook from the two public libraries I can access.  However, I did try to borrow from the top selling books tagged as "young adult" and "dystopian" on Goodreads as a rough guide to indicate that these are largely what youth are reading at the moment.

The most disturbing trend, and the one I am going to discuss in this post, is what seems to happen when a female author writes about a female protagonist (46 of the books in my spreadsheet).  Here is the story that played out more often than not...

1. Girl in mid to late teens gets rescued by a cute but mysterious boy early in the story (even in Hunger Games, although we don't know it until a bit later in the story)

2. Girl is conflicted between two potential dating partners.

3. One of the dating partners is abusive in some way - emotionally or physically, often both (one of the book jackets actually said "he loves her, he wants to kill her")

4. It is deemed to be "not his fault" because ... (he was brainwashed by the capital, he is fighting a transformation into a supernatural being of some sort, he is a supernatural being of some sort and it is in his nature to bite/kill, he was raised in another area where this was how things work and doesn't know any better).

5. Love interest #2 treats her like a human being (88.2% of love triangles or 68% total books)

6. Girl somehow survives everything  (often because of a girl-power awesome piece, but sometimes because one of the two love interests fixes everything for her) 

7. Girl lives happily ever after with abusive asshole, who is now a nice guy

The most disturbing part for me is with respect to #4.  In many real abusive relationships, the abuse is explained away as not the fault of the abusive partner - he is just under a lot of stress right now, he is not acting like himself, etc.

Some of the behavior in these books is scary.  In Twilight, Edward watches Bella sleep by sneaking into her room and everyone is ok with this?!?  If someone snuck into my room to watch me sleep, I would call the police, not date them.  In so many of these books, the love interest tries to kill the protagonist (even in The Hunger Games) and we are all ok with this because it is not his fault.  Sometimes, instead of being physically abusive, love interest #1 is merely hostile, rude, secretive, mean, spiteful, or otherwise an ass not worthy of her time.

I think it is also important that most of these girls kick ass.  It can seem empowering to watch Katniss survive the games twice and take down the capital, often saving Peetah in the process, or watching any other female character use her intelligence and physical strength to take down whatever demon / faerie / vampire / soldier / government / etc is in her way (reminiscent of Buffy), BUT, even though she is a strong and independent character, she is still in an abusive relationship with love interest #1.  Also, thank you Divergent for not doing any of this (not my favorite series, but notable in that the whole love triangle / abuse thing is barely there).

I get that this is fiction and it isn't telling young girls to go date vampires who are going to beat the crap out of them the night they lose their virginity, but when such a high percentage of the relationships that girls are reading about and watching on television excuses abuse, it can definitely lead to a situation where abusive behaviors seem relatively normalized much in the same way that study after study has shown that watching programming that incorporates rape myths make teens and college-aged adults more likely to believe in rape myths.  

Other issues with these books;

Number of books/series with at least one non-white character; 31% 

Number of books/series with at least one LGBT character; 23% (this is artificially high - there were a total of 3 series with LGBT characters;  Revived had a trans character, Adaptation had 3 queer characters including 

main characters, and the Sweep series had at least 5 LGBT characters, so I read 9 of the 14 books, HOWEVER none of these are actually dystopian despite being tagged as such).

Number of books where female protagonist stays single; 0

Number of books where male protagonist stays single;12%

Average number of female characters (non-protagonist) that have any real character development; 1.68 per book

Don't get me wrong - these books are not all bad.  There is also a lot of positive commentary coming from them, which is why I like them and continue to read them.  Most of them provide some kind of insight into the world; ideas of good and evil as shades of grey and not just black and white, issues with censorship, obedience, government/social control, war, better ways to organize socially and politically, what constitutes freedom and choice, is there such a thing as "human nature" and what does it look like, ethical issues with science and genetics, environmental sustainability, beauty ideals, racism, social class, poverty, Indigenous issues, religion, the importance of art, linking militarism to sexual violence against women... I could write several posts on these aspects alone!

In the next few weeks, I would like to write about tropes with other gender groupings for author/protagonist. 

Also, please continue to recommend books and series that you particularly liked!

Why the "friend zone" isn't funny

I love to read memes and visit a lot of sites that have a variety of memes.  However, I am getting sick and tired of all of these comments about the "friend zone."

I'm sure you have heard of this concept - it is when women overlook a perfectly acceptable dating partner and think of them only as a friend, even though this guy wants to be more than friends and has been extra nice to this particular woman to try and win her over.

It is also women's way of exerting power over the male species and to continue having them do our bidding (insert evil laughter)....

Here are a couple of supposedly hilarious examples;

http://www.memecenter.com/fun/112269/Friend-zoned

http://cheezburger.com/7112959744

It even suggests that women use this power intentionally to abuse and manipulate men or just treat them like shit;

http://www.memecenter.com/fun/116685/Friend-Zone-Level-99

But this is incredibly sexist.  It suggests that women owe sex to men who are nice to us.  It is also insulting to men, suggesting that the only reason a straight cisgendered male would be friends with a woman is to get her to sleep with him.

http://ahumanstory.wordpress.com/2012/08/08/the-friend-zone/

http://www.funnyjunk.com/friendzone/funny-pictures/5014434/

This "friend zone" ignores what women actually want in a relationship.  It makes women seem like spoiled brats who drag men around to do their bidding.  It makes men seem like victims because a woman they were nice to does not want to sleep with them, which implies that men are entitled to sex from any woman they would like to have sex with.  It makes it harder for women to say no without being thought of as selfish or manipulative, especially if the guy has been nice to her.  It implies that it is a bad thing to be friends with a woman (if you are a hetero cis man), which I can only assume is because men are so much more interesting than women and the only thing women are good for is sleeping with.

This friend zone can be dangerous.  It reinforces many of the same ways of thinking that supports date rape as an excusable behavior. In the next comic (from a page that explicitly refers to the rape zone), you can see the myth that women will intentionally seek to gain financially from male friends, and that men should be paid back in sexual favors for spending money on a woman.

http://www.funnyjunk.com/funny_pictures/2309111/im/

 I have seen several images linking this friend zone to sexual assault - I debated whether or not to include these images, but I really don't want to give them any more hits than they already have, but there are a group of memes about putting women in the rape zone if you have been friendzoned and a series of posts entitled the fuck a friendzone movement.  These might be meant as jokes, not actually encouraging men to assault women, but with the prevalence of rape myths and sexual assault, there is nothing funny about them.

So please stop sharing "friend zone" images unless it is to explicitly point out how sexist they really are.

What passes for journalism these days....

So, on the bright side, this article made me want to post again for the first time in over a year (or maybe that has something to do with being back in academia).  On the down side, nobody is going to read this because I haven't blogged in a year...

This article in a local newspaper is one of the worst pieces of journalism I have ever read.  It is about the city's decision to fly the rainbow flag in support of LGBTQ athletes in Russia.

Not only does the article completely fail to contextualize the reason for the rainbow flag flying at city hall, but it presents some incredibly hateful views without refuting them or even suggesting that they might be discriminatory.

A few quotes...

"Raising the rainbow flag at Tom Davies Square will confuse children, one Star poll respondent believes."




I have children.  Neither of whom have ever been confused by a rainbow flag despite multiple exposures to them.

"“It's discrimination against married couples, having something like that,” another said, while a third person agreed."

Ignorance is discrimination against everyone... I win.  Also, note the completely heterosexist assumption that all married couples are straight.

Finally, the stats presented are absolutely absurd -

Of thirty-seven people called in to the poll hotline, 35 were opposed to the flag being flown. On the website 67% said no, 30% said yes and 3% were unsure.

Note that the other 165,000 people who live in this city decided that the rainbow flag is such a non-issue that they don't feel the need to pick up the phone to complain about it!

Seriously though, here is the problem - the average person reads this, shakes their head and moves on.  But people who hold homophobic opinions read this, feel that their opinions are validated and that most people think like they do, and they continue to spread hateful opinions on the internet, in schools, in the workplace, etc etc.

Not loving the anti-choice protest that I see Every Single Morning

I pass pro"life" protesters with pictures like this one every day on my commute to work.  It's a great way to start your day off with a grrr.

 

 It is my least favorite thing about working so close to the hospital (which is the only place that has abortion services in my city, which means it is the only place to put these signs to shame the women who need to access abortion services).

I just want to say, at 26 weeks, it is not an infant, but a fetus (or, if born at this age, a neo-natal preemie that may or may not be old enough to survive).  The language and photo are problematic for many many reasons.  Less than 1% of abortions in Canada take place after 20 weeks, and when they do, it is usually because the baby has no chance of surviving and the mother doesn't want to put her body through carrying a baby that is going to die to term.

Also, a fetus in the womb is probably not smiling.  But it looks cuter in the photo if there is a small smile on the baby, I guess.

Also, I keep planning on bringing a sign that I can fold up into my backpack that just says PRO-CHOICE in big letters and then I can hold it up while I walk past them, so I can at least feel like I am doing something.  I started trying to organize a protest, but they are usually gone by 10am and most of us have to work.

no words...

Seriously, how the fuck does this even happen?

 

The minister for the status of women actually votes for a bill that will lead to the criminalization of abortion!  This is clearly who Harper chose in charge of my rights...

Also on the attack against women, I just found out that the university is no longer going to fund a coordinator for the women's centre.  Because we don't have issues like sexual assault, sexual harassment, or any other form of sexism on campus anymore.

First attempt at blogging again

I have been trying to blog all week and have found it impossible to write about topics that I would normally be all over... like this one by a friend of mine.  

Last weekend, I received some news that set of my blogging spider-sense (that's a thing, right?) to the point where nothing else really mattered, and I can't write about it due to confidentiality issues and my lack of anonymity.  So I am stuck in this space of finally having my blog back and being thrilled to be online and committed to writing at least one post a week, but being entirely unable to think around this one block in my head when I think about social justice.

Does this happen to other people?

I have been talking a lot about the census release, so maybe I will start with trying to write about that after a reporter decided to strip everything critical that I had said about the topic... Wednesday, StatCan released data on families in Canada from the 2011 census and there are headlines about changing families or new types of families.  The problem is that single parents and common-law relationships are not new... if you really think about it, it is the nuclear family that is new.  But, as a news source, it is much more responsible to assume that the idea of family that exists within eurocentric capitalist patriarchal countries is the original family.  

Families take on different forms in various cultures at different times.  Same-sex couples are not new, but they are more often openly defining themselves as same-sex couples as opposed to pretending to be just roommates, and laws allowing them to adopt children and get married have allowed them to take part in what we consider to be more traditional family forms.  And they are now being measured on the census.  Single parent families are also not new, in the early 1900s there were a lot of women with children widowed in the war who raised families as single parents. If we take the census data seriously, homeless people do not count, and there isn't a single person in Canada who deviates from the gender binary.  

We have to stop thinking about the census as a reliable source of data or of the results as representing new forms of families as though the nuclear family is the ideal that other families are supposed to strive to achieve as it sets up one type of family as inherently better than other forms.  And we have to get more critical reporters.  

Back Online!

I have not been posting lately due to technical difficulties, but I am back and expect posts to resume shortly!

You have no idea how incredibly happy I am to have figured this out!

why do I bother watching the olympics anyway...

Why is it that women cannot be as good as men at sports?  If women even come close to performing as well as men in any given sport, they must be on drugs or they are really a man.

The idea that men's bodies might not ALWAYS be innately superior to women's bodies at EVERY task deemed important by athletics organizers appears to be a threat to every man.

In both of the situations from the previous links, there is also a huge element of racism involved in the accusations... if a "pretty" North American or Western European woman had a score on par with that of men in her field, there is a better chance that it might be seen as being due to athleticism and hard work, as opposed to "doping" and "tricking" us about their "real" gender.

My new olympic cheer... "Go Patriarchy! Yay!"  Now where did I put my pompoms?

Cat calls and comics

A few weeks ago, I went to the social sciences and humanities congress at Wilfred Laurier.  As I was walking from the dorm room to campus, someone honked at me for the first time in a very long time and this particular comic came to mind.

But thank you, whoever you were, for reminding me that as a woman, my body is on display and my worth is somehow tied to how many honks I get while walking down the street. 

Robots with Aspergers

This will be my first real post in several months.  I tell myself I haven't posted because I am too busy... work, finishing my thesis, parenting.  The truth is I am very busy, but that hasn't stopped me from reading books, watching television, browsing other peoples blogs, and it isn't the only reason I haven't posted in my own blog.

 The main reason I haven't posted is because blogspot changed the settings on me a few months ago.  I logged on and all of the buttons were different.  It wasn't so different as to be impossible to navigate my way through the new look, but I really don't like when things change without notice.  It is disorienting and by the time I have sorted out where the "New Post" button is, I have forgotten what it is I want to say. ;At least facebook makes big announcements so I have time to prepare for these changes.

I use my Aspergers diagnosis to explain why I don't like certain changes and it is also why I am writing this particular post.  I have been looking at aspie characters in pop culture and am very annoyed by the limited portrayal of these characters.  Aspie characters are usually male (but then, statistically speaking, males are more likely to be diagnosed with Aspergers than women, so this kind of makes sense).  They are also almost always brilliant in some ways, usually in math and physics.  Think Sheldon from Big Bang Theory and you will have the general idea.  Now, don't get me wrong, I am quite fond of Sheldon (despite my annoyance at some of the ways his particular aspie traits are made to be funny when they actually create serious difficulties in people's lives) but we really need a more diverse portrayal of what Aspergers actually looks like.

I have looked at lists of people in pop culture who have Aspergers or aspie-like traits, which I am using to look at how these characters are depicted and there is one thing in particular that really annoys me about many of these lists.  Robots do not have aspie traits; they are robots.  There is a huge difference, and to write that Data from Star Trek or the robot played by Robin Williams in Bicentennial man has Aspergers is very insulting to those of us with that diagnosis (especially considering that I have been described as somewhat robotic at times).

 I think I know more people with Aspergers who are NOT particularly interested in math and science than people with Aspergers who are.  My "special interest" (if we are going to call it that - I have a lot of interests and am not nearly as one dimensional as most of the depictions I have looked at would have one believe) has to do with tracing out networks of social relations between people to see how their actions and decisions are influenced by broader social structures (I don't usually use the term structure, but I'm not going to get into that here, and structure is a rather easy way to describe it that can be easily understood, so I will keep it for now).  I don't expect the average sitcom to reflect these subtleties, and I haven't exhausted the list of aspie characters in books and film as of yet, but what I have seen and read thus far is quite limited.

Thesis defended!

With my thesis work done, I am hoping to find time to start posting again soon... holding a full-time job along with the thesis work and everything else just really didn't leave enough time for blogging.

My blog photo and white privilege

When we were sitting at the dinner table today, my 9 year old critiqued the image that I use for my blog... the one that reads "my Marxist feminist dialectic brings all the boys to the yard." I have this image on a Tshirt that I was wearing today. She read the shirt and examined it for a few minutes, then asked

"Why do they all have the same skin tone?"

I am embarrassed to say that this had never occurred to me. Not that I thought the image did have a racial analysis, but I didn't realize it was missing. The privilege of having white skin... as much as I try, I don't always notice how invisible whiteness is.

Harper's new anti-terrorism strategy

Harper's new anti-terrorism strategy (ie. his plan to protect corporation's profits based on Canadian oil) is very worrisome. I'm not sure if it is any different from the old strategy, insofar as all of this stuff was in place around the G20 and whatnot, but the boldness with which he is announcing these "anti-terrorist" tactics and the scope of who is considered to be a terrorist is disconcerting.

For example, the Public "Safety" Minister announced that they will not target "not only known terrorist groups, but "vulnerable individuals" who could be drawn into politically inspired violence."

My first question is with regards to this guy's title... which public and whose safety is he concerned about?

Also, they are vigilant against extremism based on causes like "animal rights, white supremacy, environmentalism and anti-capitalism"

As an anti-oppression activist, I love seeing my work thrown in with white supremacists... it seems to be a very common strategy to discredit a movement. For example, I was having a facebook argument the other day, and was told that "to carry a label like feminist, [I] may as well wear the great dragon's cloak from the KKK because its no different.... feminism is associated with anger and hate" It seems as though people think that they can immediately discredit an entire movement comparing it to hateful movements (without knowing what you are talking about, or doing it purposefully to influence people who don't know what feminism or anti-capitalism is about).

In the article, it was said that

Terrorist action occurs when an extremist ideological group plans to carry out a violent attack that reasonably can be expected to kill people or destroy property,” Michael Patton, Mr. Toews’s director of communication, said in an e-mail Friday.

I guess Gandhi was a terrorist.

And why isn't Harper under arrest for terrorism?

We don't need feminism anymore!

I was listening to CBC radio the other day and they were doing a special show on the 40th anniversary of Ms magazine. They interviewed one of the founders of the magazine, Letty Cottin Pogrebin and her daughter, a journalist named Abigail Pogrebin.

At first, I was kind of excited to be listening to a feminist story on the radio while I drove, but I ended up getting more and more irritated with it. It gave the impression that everything is fine right now, thanks to people like the founders of Ms magazine. While I appreciate how much things have improved in a variety of ways, I really get annoyed when people try to make it seem as though we no longer need feminism because men and women are equal now.

Abigail said that she doesn't feel that her life or her daughter's life are constrained by being a woman because we now have choices that weren't available when her mother co-founded the magazine. Then she went on to say that she used to work for 60 minutes, but found a new, less prestigious, job closer to home when she had children because she wasn't able to travel all the time anymore... and that she couldn't travel for work regularly because her husband had a job that required him to travel for work. She also said that he would not consider compromising his job to stay home with the kids. Now, this sounds like one of the reasons we still need feminism... women's choices are constrained in ways that men's choices often are not.

So, she quits a good job to take something closer to home in order to stay home with her children while her husband travels for work, but we don't need feminism anymore. Hurray for choices!

I hate this "I choose my choice" feminism. We do not have choices, in a lot of cases. The decision to participate in the nuclear family, to work in the waged labour force, to make sacrifices in one's career for the sake of raising children, even the decision about what kinds of clothing to wear are constrained by material circumstances, they are not made in a vacuum.

Not to be racist but....

I've said this before and I will say it again... if you have to say something along the lines of "I'm not racist but..." THEN YOU ARE ABOUT TO SAY SOMETHING RACIST. I cannot stress this enough.

If you need to preface what you say with telling people that you are not a bigot, then you should not say it and think about why it is that you had the thought in the first place.

Also, I hope these are meant to be ironic or something, and I'm just not getting the joke

Also, I did get one laugh out of this at my friend's response on facebook, which was "not to sound racist but I'm wearing a green shirt"

Framing protests in the media

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.