Tag: feminism

The GOP from one Canadian’s perspective

Yesterday, I came across the following quote, attributed to GOP candidate, Rick Santorum.

“It has been my experience that when dealing with females, you need to treat them as though they have a mental disorder… especially those that are constantly seeking equality in the workplace, the military, and in the home. Women need to know their place and need to know when it is okay for them to speak. They were put on this earth for two reasons, and two reasons alone: taking care of their husband, and giving birth to his children… that is all. Any woman who tells you otherwise is obviously touting the liberal agenda of equality, and they need to be told the truth of their purpose. It is a disorder that can be fixed, but not until they go through several years of therapy to understand that they need to be subservient.” 

I have since been informed that the quote is fictitious. To which I responded “Can you blame me for not putting it past him?” After all, this is a man who gave us such bon mots as,

“One of the things I will talk about, that no president has talked about before, is I think the dangers of contraception in this country…. Many of the Christian faith have said, well, that’s okay, contraception is okay. It’s not okay. It’s a license to do things in a sexual realm that is counter to how things are supposed to be.”

and

“In far too many families with young children, both parents are working, when, if they really took an honest look at the budget, they might find they don’t both need to. … What happened in America so that mothers and fathers who leave their children in the care of someone else — or worse yet, home alone after school between three and six in the afternoon — find themselves more affirmed by society? Here, we can thank the influence of radical feminism.”

He doesn’t exactly come off as woman friendly. Sadly, he’s not the only one. The entire Grand Old Party is seemingly waging a war on the American Woman, or more specifically, feminists. It seems that Republicans want their women to be docile and subservient, do as they’re told types who don’t challenge what rich, white, old men tell them is the way things should be. To which I say maybe you should move to Stepford… but, oh no, Stepford doesn’t exist, and neither does the female ideal you pine for.

Newt Gingrich had this to say about women on the front lines of war,

“If combat means living in a ditch, females have biological problems staying in a ditch for thirty days because they get infections and they don’t have upper body strength. I mean, some do, but they’re relatively rare. On the other hand, men are basically little piglets, you drop them in the ditch, they roll around in it, doesn’t matter, you know. These things are very real. On the other hand, if combat means being on an Aegis-class cruiser managing the computer controls for twelve ships and their rockets, a female may be again dramatically better than a male who gets very, very frustrated sitting in a chair all the time because males are biologically driven to go out and hunt giraffes.”

Then there’s this tidbit when speaking to a friend about why he was divorcing his first wife,

“She’s not young enough or pretty enough to be the wife of a President. And besides, she has cancer.”

Mitt Romney fired off these beauties regarding reproductive rights,

“As president, I will end federal funding for abortion advocates like Planned Parenthood.”

“I am pro-life and believe that abortion should be limited to only instances of rape, incest, or to save the life of the mother. I support the reversal of Roe v. Wade, because it is bad law and bad medicine. Roe was a misguided ruling that was a result of a small group of activist federal judges legislating from the bench.”

Is it any wonder that I was so easily duped into thinking that the first quote was a real quote and not a parody?

**All caricatures were brilliantly done by Donkey Hotey  http://donkeyhotey.wordpress.com/

This makes me angry and sad

This is Rihanna. Isn’t she cute?

In the wake of Chris Brown’s performance and award win at the Grammy’s last night (which I will reserve comment on), there emerged a very disturbing trend on Twitter. Quite a few young women and girls have decided that it would be fun or cool or sexy to get beaten by Chris Brown. The following are some examples of tweets from young women who clearly need a dose of self esteem, STAT.

To all these young ladies, I’d like to remind you what that looks like.
Doesn’t look so cute anymore does she?

The Love Delusion

I grew up in the Disney era when little girls were taught that, if we were good little girls, someday, our prince would come and rescue us. All the movies of my childhood preached the idea that girls needed a handsome prince to give them a happily ever after. My grandmother used to tell me, “It’s just as easy to fall in love with a rich man as a poor man” over and over again. All this preaching didn’t sink in, however. I was a rebel and the feminist movement was the female voice that was speaking directly to me. I had a long string of relationships with men who were not only, not rich by any means, but not ambitious either. I was the bread winner and the caretaker until I realized I wasn’t getting anything out of the situation, lost all respect for my partner and eventually moved on. I have become the man I want to marry and I never wanted children, so marriage has now become a moot point for me. I firmly believe that marriage is for people who are planning on raising children. But lately I’ve been thinking about the message that society has been sending women about love and marriage.

As I mentioned, the Disney movies of our youth told us to wait for that handsome prince to rescue us. From what? From getting a job, standing on our own two feet and realizing that we are strong enough to take care of ourselves?

I guess there’s a shortage of princes and rich men now because it seems lately the romantic movies are preaching to successful women that we should go for the sweet poor guy rather than the rich guy who’s married to his career. Movies like Sweet Home Alabama, Letters to Juliet, and Leap Year illustrate this message. Of course the message is wrapped in the delusion that it’s only the sweet poor guy who could ever REALLY love you. Don’t rich men have feelings too? Apparently, if we are successful women, we can’t have a successful man because that would throw the earth off it’s axis or something. The movies of today are also telling men that they are spending way too much time working, money is not what’s important and they should be home with their families more. Movies like Liar, Liar and Click illustrate this point.

My question is, if no one is working, who is earning the living that’s needed to raise a family? Kids are expensive. So then we get back to the women should marry rich message again, but that’s bad. If you do that then you’re a gold digger, which is the societal equivalent of being a whore, which is also bad. After all marriage is supposed to be about love, pure love, true love. Scientists have found that this thing we call love is simply a chemical reaction in the brain caused by hormones and neurotransmitters… romantic huh? Maybe my grandmother had it right all along… it is just as easy to fall in love with a rich man as a poor man, when you look at love in terms of hormones and neurotransmitters.

Let’s go back to the gold digger label for a moment. It used to be that women sought out a good provider to mate with so that their children would be well taken care of. These women weren’t called gold diggers, they were called smart. Now that so many women are a success in their own right, they are looked down upon for seeking out a good provider. In my opinion, gold diggers are getting a bad rap. In the movie Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, Marilyn Monroe has a great little speech where she defends herself against the accusation of being a gold digger. “Don’t you know, that a man being rich is like a girl being pretty? You wouldn’t marry a girl just because she’s pretty, but, my goodness, doesn’t it help? And if you had a daughter, wouldn’t you rather she didn’t marry a poor man? You’d want her to have the most wonderful things in the world and to be very happy. Well, why is it wrong for me to want those things?”

So, which is it? Do we marry for love, marry for money, make our own money and marry for love, marry for money then force our hard working husband to spend less time working or just say to hell with it all and try to find happiness no matter what it looks like?

My favourite feminists

Last night I finally watched the HBO documentary, Gloria, In Her Own Words for the first time. It was informative, funny, touching and inspiring and it set me to thinking about feminism and who were some of the women who helped shape my view of it.

I know we owe a great debt to, what is now termed the first wave of feminism. Women like Abigail Adams, Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Mary Astell, Catharine Beecher, Fredrika Bremer and Simone de Beauvoir. However, just like in my last post about atheists, I wanted to keep my choices contained to women who are still alive and contributing to the conversation.

GLORIA STEINEM

“If you say, I’m for equal pay, that’s a reform. But if you say. I’m a feminist, that’s a transformation of society.”

A woman who’s name is synonymous with the word feminist. Ms. Steinem is the co-founder of MS. Magazine as well as a key player in feminism’s second wave, starting in the 1960’s. As a journalist and activist, Ms. Steinem  has helped to change the way North American women are treated in society. She continues to fight for women’s rights worldwide to this day. In her words, it all starts with an outrageous act.

ANGELA DAVIS

“To understand how any society functions you must understand the relationship between the men and the women.”

While she may be primarily known for her work in the civil rights movement, make no mistake about it, Angela Davis was, is and always will be a feminist. She was the first woman to run for Vice president of the United States, in 1980 and again in 1984 (on the communist party USA ticket). Ms. Davis is the former director of the feminist studies department at the University Of California, Santa Cruz. Her tireless efforts for the cause of human rights in all forms shows no signs of slowing down. Here she is talking with another pioneer of the civil rights movement, Yuri Kochiyama.

GERMAINE GREER

“All societies on the verge of death are masculine. A society can survive with only one man; no society will survive a shortage of women.”

Australian author of the Female Eunich, Germaine Greer is widely regarded as one of the most significant voices of feminism’s second wave. She is a self described anarchist and wonderfully opinionated feminist as you will see in the two clips below. I’ve included a clip from 1971 and one from 2010 where she is being interviewed by two different men in order to illustrate just how much male hostility still lingers. Both interviewers employ various tactics in order to belittle her and her ideas.

CAMILLE PAGLIA 

“If you live in rock and roll, as I do, you see the reality of sex, of male lust and women being aroused by male lust. It attracts women. It doesn’t repel them.”

Her brand of feminism started as a backlash to what she was seeing as a puritanical viewpoint. Ms. Paglia is a self professed sex positive feminist. A feminist who believes that women need not blame men, but take responsibility for their own lot in life and depend on themselves to better it. As an author,teacher and social critic, Ms. Paglia’s feminist view was a kick in the proverbial pants to what feminism was becoming at the time. Always controversial, Camille Paglia never fails to tell it like it is.

These are some of the women who’s ideas about what it means it be a feminist helped me come to my own understanding of the word and the movement. It’s because of these women that I realize just how important it is to keep feminism moving forward into generations to come. With that in mind, I encourage young women to get involved in Women’s Rights, because that’s what feminism is, making sure women worldwide have the same rights as men.

If you are looking for a role model that you can relate to, may I suggest this next young woman.

REBECCA WALKER

“One may be nice on the outside but on the inside isnt pretty”

The daughter of Alice Walker (author of The Color Purple), Rebecca Walker is an author and a pioneer in feminism’s Third Wave and has been named by Time magazine as one of the 50 future leaders of America.

I’d like to leave you with a video produced by an organization called The Feminist Majority that I found inspiring. If you want to get involved in the fight for Women’s Rights, their website is a good place to start. http://www.feminist.org/

Funny or Insulting, the Stephen Hawking interview

This week, perhaps the most brilliant mind of our time, Professor Stephen Hawking gave a short interview to New Scientist magazine. See the interview here  In it he talks about String Theory (or M Theory), the LHC (Large Hadron Collider), quantum gravity and his thoughts on black holes. The last question of the interview was “What do you think most about during the day?” Professor Hawking’s response was, “Women. They are a complete mystery.”

Every online news outlet picked up this story and gave it headlines like, Women are a mystery to British physicist Hawking and What mystifies Dr. Hawking? Women. Now I understand that news outlets have to create the most interesting headline in order to get the most jaded of us to read the story, so I really don’t blame them for taking the answer to that last question and turning it into a headline. That being said, his response reads to me as a cute, funny reply. Likely meant as a joke. Dare I say HOPEFULLY meant as a joke.

If it wasn’t a joke, the implication here is, the smartest of men is still stymied by women, so what hope does the rest of the male population have in figuring them out. Even if it was a joke, the same implication is there. Women are a mystery so impossible that no man will ever solve them… so why bother trying?

This implication is insulting because it diminishes women as a gender. It’s akin to saying, “Don’t worry your pretty little head”  or “Shhh, men are speaking.”

Let me give you a small bit of wisdom, men. I’d ask if you were listening, but we know that not listening is the problem. If you really want to figure out and solve women, all you have to do is LISTEN TO US. Let me go one further, listen and really HEAR what we are saying. I know that this seems like a lot of effort when you could just build cities, fast cars with cool technology, explore the earth, explore space and spend your time thinking up new and clever pick up lines to impress us. Women are always saying they want a man who is a good listener, yet all men hear when we speak is their own voice, saying ‘I hope she shuts up soon so I can get some food/sex/sleep’. How many fights do you have with your partner where she says, “YOU NEVER LISTEN”? You expect women to listen so closely to you that we can read your minds and cater to your every whim and you can’t afford us the same respect? Understanding that women are PEOPLE same as you, and not a Rubik’s cube to be solved will go a long way in achieving a peaceful end to the battle of the sexes.

So until men get the message, I guess women will remain the world’s most unsolvable puzzle, wrapped in an enigma, wrapped in the arrogance of men.

Marriage is for Men

 

It seems there’s been a rash of celebrity engagements this past couple of weeks. Michael Jordan, LeBron James, Drew Barrymore, Justin Timberlake and Jessica Biel, Mario Lopez, John Legend and even Aretha Franklin all announced engagements. Even Sinead O’Conner is staying married, after announcing a split. With all of this attention put on marriage, I thought I’d take a look at who really benefits in a traditional marriage.

The institution of marriage predates reliable recorded history. It was the norm for all marriage to be arranged, sometimes at birth. The parents would pick a spouse based on purely economic factors. Families joining to become financially and socially stronger. Whether the groom’s family paid a bride price, or dower, or the bride’s family paid a dowry, the melding of families was very much for power and economic reasons and had nothing to do with love. It was a purely secular union put in place to help each family move up in society. Brides wed out of obligation and duty and were expected to be virtuous and faithful to their husbands, who, in turn were expected to provide financially for their wife and children. However, sexual monogamy was never expected for the husband. It was assumed that his sexual needs would be met both inside and outside the marriage bed. Great deal for him, but what about her?

These women went directly from their father’s home to their husband’s home and were expected to be obedient in both surroundings. They never enjoyed the luxury of personal freedom and exploration. Even in North America, women weren’t able of choose to be single without fear of societal backlash until the sexual revolution of the 1960’s. Women were expected to subjugate their personalities in favour of the path their husband chose… even when marrying for love. It was 2006 when the Church of England officially took the word OBEY out of the marriage vows. Yes, women were expected to OBEY their husbands. That one four letter word gave men all the justification they needed to abuse their wives for centuries.

In the 1960’s women in western civilizations seemed to have had enough. There was an uprising of women who were demanding their human rights. The right to choose what to do with their own life. It sure took us long enough, but once we started tasting freedom, it became more and more widespread. The church was still doing everything in its power to keep us barefoot and pregnant, from not allowing birth control use and abortion to shoving the institution of marriage down our throats at every opportunity.

There was a perceived danger in women choosing to be single. The erosion of the family unit. Traditionally, parents would take care of their family, then later in life, the family of their children would take care of the parents. If a woman chose to be single, how could she possibly afford to take care of her parents in their declining years? Would she even want to? If she is choosing freedom, what does obligation even mean to her? These were some of the questions at the root of society’s fear of the Women’s Movement.

Indeed marriage rates did decline and divorce rates went way up.  Men went from “Honey, I’m home. What’s for dinner?” to wondering when the delivery guy was coming. Something else of importance  happened during this time. In 1965, in the United States, medicare and medicaid became available. This took away the need for children to take care of their elder parents. This changed the economic family dynamic.

Unfortunately,  there was a backlash to the feminist movement. It seemed to create a generation of men with severe Peter Pan syndrome. These adult men, not only want their wife to be a partner, but also a mother. It seems that these liberated feminist mothers didn’t think to teach their sons how to be liberated, strong men. This, along with the media (magazines, movies etc.) telling women that they are not complete without a man, created a surge in marriages. .. marriages that didn’t last. After all, what liberated woman wants to be mean mommy to her husband? And let’s face it no man (unless it’s his fetish) wants to have sex with mean mommy.

Women who choose to be single, have reproductive freedom like never before. Now medical science has made it possible for women to have babies without benefit of marriage, or even a relationship. It’s easy to understand why there are so many heterosexual men out there who seem to genuinely hate women. They fear they are being rendered obsolete, and that is a legitimate fear. Successful women are choosing to be single mothers.

As Gloria Steinem once said, “Some of us are becoming the men we wanted to marry.”

Yes traditional marriage was great for men. They had a subservient wife who took care of hearth and home, their every need and want, with no expectation of sexual fidelity. The pendulum travelling inexorably to the other side now. Even in the non western world we are seeing another women’s revolution. Here in the west, there are women who choose marriage just to have a companion, knowing full well that it can be as permanent as they want it to be.

This attitude has spawned another type of man. I have seen it in generations Y and Z. This young man is looking to be kept. They are male gold diggers, looking for an older, successful woman to marry.

I suppose marriage hasn’t changed that much after all. After a brief flirtation with love, it’s still all about money and power.

 

 

Us vs. Them

Lately the world has been reminding more and more of the Dr. Seuss book about the plain bellied Sneetches and the star bellied Sneetches. This book should become required reading for children and adults alike worldwide. It’s a simple story about how we focus too much on our differences and forget how alike we actually are.

Everywhere I look there’s a fight going on. Liberals vs. Conservatives. Women vs. Men. Straights vs. Gays (and the whole LBGT community). Whites vs. Blacks (and Hispanics, Asians, Indigenous Peoples etc.) Theists vs. Atheists. Rich vs. Poor. The list goes on and on to the point where there is fighting between sub-groups of each group.

When are we going to collectively wake up and realize that we all share this planet and these petty arguments only serve to distract us from moving forward in life. I identify myself as a feminist, an atheist and a Canadian, but first and foremost I am a human being, a life form on this planet. I respect all other life forms who share space on earth with me. Yes, I like to state my opinions, and invariably those opinions will be opposing to those of others, even to the point where they may offend others. My intention is merely to bring my viewpoint into the collective fray of opinion that we have created as a global online community.

While I identify myself as a Canadian, I am hardly patriotic. I see no sense in patriotism. Something as random as where you were born shouldn’t give you a sense of pride. You didn’t build the place. I can understand a feeling of nostalgia for your home town/country, but patriotism is just another way to separate ourselves from others and to incite anger. At its worst, patriotism is used to brainwash young men and women into dying for their country. In reality these soldiers are not dying for their country, or even for the beliefs of their country (a mass of land can have no beliefs… the people in any given country will have a widely varied belief system). They fight in wars created by smaller groups of men who can’t get past the whole might makes right theory of winning an argument. (I am aware that I am simplifying here.) Patriotism is simply my Dad is better than your Dad.

Religion is very much the same thing. My God is better than your God. Wars are fought, blood is shed and for what? In the end, there is no end. I mentioned that I identify as an atheist. You won’t see me on a religious battleground. Atheists don’t believe in God, yours or anyone else’s. This, for some reason gets religious folks all riled up, to the point where they wish us harm. I wonder if they are angry at atheists because we found a way out of church on Sunday and burning in hell for acting like humans act every day. In the eyes of theists, atheists have no shame, so what stops them from committing heinous acts of atrocity? Interesting viewpoint. I could ask the same of religious people. It seems your God is simply there as an excuse for the atrocities you commit. Atheists may not have some invisible Santa Clause watching over us and making a naughty and nice list, but we do have a conscience, same as you, that tells us when we are crossing our own moral line. Without going any further into argument territory, honestly, I don’t care what you believe in or don’t believe in. Religion is just another way we have of separating ourselves from others and inciting anger.

A while ago I wrote a blog entitled ‘What Do Women Want’ about feminism and what it really boils down to. In it, I state, “Women want the same freedoms, rights and privileges that are afforded to men, no more, no less.” It’s unfortunate that we still don’t have this. It’s unfortunate that we have to fight for this, but, unlike patriotism and religion, it’s a cause worth fighting for. However, like patriotism and religion, the fight for women’s rights stems from the idea that there exists a group of people who are superior to another group of people. This simply isn’t the case. Just as no one country is the BEST country on earth and no one religion is the one TRUE religion, no one sex is the GREATER sex. As Shakespeare said, “If you prick us do we not bleed? If you tickle us do we not laugh? If you poison us do we not die? And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge?”

Whether we have stars on our bellies or plain bellies, we are all Sneetches.

Unless, of course the conspiracy theorists are right, and this is happening…

What do women want?

As a feminist, it really puts the wind up my skirt when I hear another woman say, “I’m not a feminist, but…”. If you believe in equal pay for equal work, the right to choose what to do with your own body, the right to vote, the right to education, the right to have a career and/or children and the right to own property, then you are a feminist. If you are against rape as a weapon of war, marital rape, sexual enslavement, genital mutilation (female circumcision), sexual discrimination and being treated as less than human, then you are a feminist.

Women want the same freedoms, rights and privileges that are afforded to men, no more, no less. I don’t see why that is so hard for some women to understand.

We have accomplished so much in a relatively short period of time, but change takes time and we still have battles yet to win. In North America alone, we are still struggling. As a matter of fact, just last week, after 28 years in the Canadian courts, Canada Post has finally lost a pay equity case. Yes, the Post Office fought for 28 years, taking this case all the way to the supreme court, spending far more than they would have spent if they had just abided by the first ruling against them. http://www.psac-afpc.com/news/2011/issues/20111117-e.shtml. It was just 1982 when the Canadian Equality Law went into effect.

In the United States, Nebraska was the first state to criminalize marital rape in 1976. It took until 1993, yes 1993 for the other 49 states to follow suit. In Canada, Bill C-127 came into effect on Jan. 4, 1983, making marital rape a criminal offence.

I hope that these examples will make women think twice the next time they want to say, “I’m not a feminist, but…”. The more you distance yourself from the fight, the less likely it is that we will continue to win these kinds of battles. It’s only by standing united that we will continue to advance.

It’s a crime (part two)

Why is prostitution illegal? It really is a victim-less crime. Oh, sure a case could be made that the wives of the male customers are the victims, but, without prostitutes, these men would find somebody else to cheat with. Actually by keeping prostitution illegal, the real victims become the prostitutes, themselves.

If you look at the countries that have legal prostitution, the women who ply this trade have less instances of violence, have less STDs and have less social stigma attached to what they do, which, in turn, gives them a better quality of life.

In countries where prostitution is illegal, sex trafficking is a real problem, STDs run rampant, prostitutes are not protected by the law, so there are more instances of violence perpetrated upon them. These women live in fear of being jailed, beaten or worse on a daily basis.

If your daughter chose to be a prostitute, which of these two lives would you prefer she lived?

There will always be a demand for sex, so there will always be a supply. Keeping prostitution illegal only serves to vilify women who choose to profit from their own sexuality, (and we all know how scary a woman’s sexuality is, just look at how many women are still getting female circumcisions forced upon them on a daily basis worldwide).

We have come a long way, baby, but the road ahead is just as long, if not longer.

What about the Children?

Will the stupidity never end? This week a “News Story” broke about a retired porn star, Sasha Grey reading to grade school children. Read what happened here http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/11/11/sasha-grey-porn-star-read_n_1088017.html

In this blog I will make the argument that the folks on ALL sides of this event are showing their stupidity. Let me begin with the aforementioned Ms. Grey. It should be noted that I am not anti porn in any way. I consider myself a sex positive feminist, from the old school of feminism that believes a woman should embrace her sexuality, not be vilified for it. I do not judge Ms. Grey for her former profession, only for her behavior in this instance. As a former porn star she should know that society will not want her in direct contact with children unless they are her own. While I applaud her wanting to volunteer for a worthy cause, she picked the wrong one. If, however, she had gone into that classroom, read the story and left without feeling the need to be validated through tweeting about her good deed, chances are, we and the children’s parents never would have heard about this situation. But, then Ms. Grey would not have had the publicity she so sorely desires. I am so sick of women playing the victim, especially when it’s obvious that they cast themselves in the role. Oh, look at the poor former porn star, she’s not allowed to do anything good without being reminded of all the bad she’s done. It was stupid of her to tweet about reading to elementary school children under her performing name to all of her porn fans (and TMZ). What I really want to know is who took the pictures of her in the classroom? Can you say Publicist?

Then there’s the school who claimed, when pressed, that Ms. Grey was never there. Could it be because she was there under her non-porn name and they just didn’t put two and two together (not EVERYONE watches porn after all)? Could it be because they wanted to avoid the inevitable shit-storm from the parents? Or maybe they thought that if they denied it, no one could ever possibly prove otherwise. Enter Twitter and TMZ. Denial was possibly the most stupid route to take in this drama. Who do they think they are, politicians?

Now to the outraged parents. The collective complaint here seems to be that their innocent little angels were subjected to the horror that is being in the same room with a lady who read to them. Let’s face facts, in the moment, all these kids were aware of was that some lady was reading to them. It’s the parents who have made this an issue that they now have to explain to their kids, by voicing their outrage. And we all know how parents hate having to talk to their kids about sex. How do you explain pornography to a 6-year-old? This is a question the parents should have asked themselves before reacting emotionally. If they had just left well enough alone, then these little children would not have had to know the meaning of the word pornography and why the pretty lady with the long brown hair was a bad person. These parents in their stupidity are just breeding more hate and playing right into the hands of Ms. Grey and her quest for fame (or, in this case, infamy) through victimization.