uh uh oh, uuh uh oh uhn uhn

Last week, I was invited to appear on The Agenda with Steve Paikin to discuss "the end of marriage(?)" and "shifting gender power(?) with changing institutional trends(?)"... I have not been more excited since the opening weekend of Spice World. His show is one of the only broadcasts I watch regularly, and this theme runs my life.


We, the panel, were meant to react to Kate Bolick's latest, "All the Single Ladies," from the November issue of the Atlantic. I read the article until I had nearly memorized it, and scribbled all over two hardcopy editions. I have not been that ready since camping in the line of aforementioned film opening.


Also to appear on the panel was Danielle Crittenden, social conservative and anti-feminist journalist from Toronto, now based in Washington. She writes on how feminism is not only unnecessary but evil. Evil. Jeez, I thought I had my work cut out for me. For a taste of just what we're dealing with in Crittenden discourse, check out her vid on "How can I meet the right guy?" According to the book that brought her fame in 2000, feminism has produced confusion (fine), uncertainty (great!) and unhappiness (oh, come on...).


Sadly, as I was planning my jet down to Toronto, the producers cancelled my appearance (with a cryptic message). I have not been this disappointed since May 2nd! So to channel my sadness, I record my reactions to the article below.


I take much issue with the Beyoncé Knowles brand, but damn, her songs are catchy, and she's unquestionably talented. I feel similarly about Kate Bolick. Bolick's All the Single Ladies taps into the pulse of a cohort of women who are now overeducated, single, and unable to live the full awesomeness of the present because they fear the future. I have a number of critiques of how Bolick frames this general trend, but she nails the existence of the new dating desert for a slew of (predominantly white, upper-middle class) women (in Canada and the US). On countless "date-nights," I have sat across from women friends at the Manx and watched as they've nearly thrown their towels into their pints of organic ale while pondering this state of our dating world.


I refuse to participate in categorizing men into "deadbeat" or "player" the way Bolick does (although, according to my dad, I did this with confident poignancy when I came home from Grade 8 one afternoon). There are, of course, millions of men in this world (also, billions of fish in the sea, I'm told), and resetting the battle of the sexes this way is unnecessary. And it's just mean. And depressing...


But the new "dating gap" for those desiring heterosexual monogamy is real. Sociologists observe that when women outnumber men (see college campuses), women demonstrate increased promiscuity and, correspondingly, men are less willing to commit. Overall, net monogamy is low. On the contrary, when there are more available men, women hold more dating capital and net monogamy rises. This gives us an insight into preferred mating patterns that admittedly makes me cringe a little.


Save the complication of essentialist categories (of all of gender, sex and dating/mating style), to me, this makes sense, and imagining alternatives can't include resenting the behaviour of an entire gender (read: men). We're talking simple laws of supply and demand. 


Right?


And now for context. What makes this culturally fascinating is that women have not held this much human capital in the US/Canada since the dawn of the nuclear family (post-modernization, and especially since its intensification post-wwii). So why their social/dating capital so low? And why the assumption that educated women are searching for equally educated men? After all, this is not what men have done historically.


I attribute these trends to the cultural expectation of women's unpaid domestic labour and, at least in part, to the related straying from the Disney daydream to which we've been oriented. Willingness to perform unpaid labour makes women more attractive commodities to men. Sociologists Armstrong & Armstrong hit this home with their book title, Everybody Needs a Wife (which their publisher insisted they change to The Double Ghetto). Straying from cultural norms makes people uneasy, even if their personal and political convictions are intact. For example, family sociologists observe that even among women and men with self-affirmed feminist attitudes, both members of couples report dissatisfaction when women make more money, and these relationships are extremely volatile. Women feel they're under-benefitting and men feel emasculated. The relationship often ends in divorce. Enter the stabilizing phenomenon/stereotype of the attractive young woman with the rich man - these relationships are surprisingly(?) stable.


Well, frack. The idea that higher education makes a woman less desirable to (some) men is daunting. But what does it mean that we're afraid of this? The ability to connect egg with sperm during the fertility window is about as difficult as finding a late-night poutine in a Montreal/Ottawa clubbing district (read: easy). Achieving egg+sperm nuclear family with sperm that's cute, kind and educated (in feminist theory - this seems to determine equity in my relationships), on the other hand, feels like a crapshoot. This is the reality of the dating gap.


So, assuming we're looking for heterosexual nuclear families, we'd better get cut throat? Women of many political convictions have been writing books about what to do about this "mess" for the last several decades. Lower your standards and settle for Mr. Good Enough, says Lori Gottlieb in Marry Him. Have a kick-ass "single" life ("I can't mate in captivity"), says Gloria Steinem. Become a doormat, says Mrs. Crittenden-From.


Bolick offers plenty of alternatives to the nuclear family, including communal living, queer kinship structures and singlehood. I find this part of her article refreshing, as she reminds us that the nuclear family is our invention, and can thus be deconstructed. Where she falls horribly short, though, is in her unchallenged assumption that we participate in an either/or choice when the fertility window comes to a close. We are assumed heterosexual near-mothers, even though she admits at the outset that she does not define womanhood by motherhood. Apparently it's one thing to feel this way and another to be convincing and consistent about it. I empathize. We don't have a ton of language to describe womanhood outside of motherhood and domesticity. I can't think of any. Further, while acknowledging certain class elements of the phenom, Bolick closes without problematizing the notion of choice and who gets to make it - offering us the opportunity to ask questions. What are we so afraid of anyway?

Luxurious Hiatus, and Coming of Age with Avril Lavigne

After the heart-explosion-induced fatigue of last week, I took a 7-day hiatus from my computer. I read books and magazines, listened to the CBC, put ink on paper, ran along the river, visited the art gallery and made things out of pumpkins. Autumn luxury. New kinds of explosions!


Save email backlog, the week was exceedingly fruitful (and not just because of the pumpkin). Brainspace was open to consider themes for my comprehensive exams, and I became intrigued by the idea of a person's transformation into feminist thinking. Many feminist scholars (especially educators) write journalistically about a blurry time when they were becoming aware of themselves in an unjust world order. It's described as birthing or paradigm shifting, awakening, etc. The concepts of "process" and "becoming" and "embodiment" (of such processes) are big in feminist theory, and I can appreciate why. I can't recall how I thought before I had language to critique sexism.


Returning to my writing as a child, it seems I've always felt something about gender (journalling about not wanting to sign my name as the author of assignments as early as age 8 because I didn't want the teacher to know it was written by a girl). But I don't remember what it felt like to be me before I had words to articulate feminism. Do any of you? As Dorothy Smith remarks on her solidification of feminist identity, "I don't know who I was before I was Dorothy Smith."


The transformation is the fascinating thing about Women's/Gender and Feminist Studies as a (non)discipline. The goal to transform is overt, causing closet positivists to cluck their tongues at such biased theorizing. I'm so far gone into the vitality of feminism that I take the opposite stance - what better climate for theorizing than one where people wear their biases on their sleeves? It's forthcoming and rigorous in the deepest sense of the words. 


In keeping with my obsession with event-ness, I'm interested in pulling apart transitional moments that write feminism onto our brains/hearts. My perusal of psychology texts leads me to believe that these events are usually traumatic and usually related to the body. Like most women, I remember every single comment anyone has ever made about my body and every way my body has been touched, and I return only to the painful ones. My two jarring feminist turning points have to do with my bum. I return to them now to highlight how pivotal moments haunt us.


When I was 16, Avril Lavigne, Pink, Gwen Stefani and "dirrty" Xtina ruled the dance floor. At a college party, one of my then-boyfriend's older brother's friends commented on my baggy jeans: "What a waste those jeans are. You might actually have a nice ass under there." I was horrified and subsequently thought, why would I waste it? Why would I waste the opportunity to provide visual pleasure to a man? I don't think I wore a pair of jeans I could breathe in for 5 years after that. I literally thought to myself, there's a reason Britney is more popular than my fave rockstars combined.


When I was 18, a boyfriend commented on my running gear: "I usually like your fashion, but those pants don't do anything for your backside." The next time I wore those pants (on a run), I was dating someone else. I told him what my ex had said about the pants, expecting him to scoff in disbelief. Instead he said, "Well, I kind of agree. They make your bum look weird."


And these guys are nice humans.


I draw on these scars to reflect on how haunting is feminist transformation. Yesterday I pulled the pants out - hardly worn Nike dryfit cropped running tights, a gift from my grandmother for running in the rain - for morning training. I felt so uncomfortable in them, I stuck to the back of the pack so nobody could look at me. I took them off as soon as I got home, not able to stand the feel of them on my body alone in my apartment. I'm an object, even in my own eyes.


As I was tidying up, I thought I should just get rid of the pants like I did the Avril Lavigne jeans, but I'm keeping the haunted things. I pull sadness and anger out of them when I wonder about transformation and putting ghosts to good use.


Last Saturday, I had the pleasure of having afternoon tea with an elderly woman who has just been diagnosed with cancer. Ontario-born, world-traveller, never married, and drawn to the West Coast, this woman reminds me of my ultimate idol, Joni Mitchell. She wears fleece and thick wool socks. I felt myself relax around her as we talked about bohemian afternoons, relationships, orientations to ocean, the mossy dampness of Vancouver Island, marijuana, puppies, and what it means to face elderly life as a single person. She inquired about my current life stage. Our conversation went like this:


Me: "So in this phase of reading books, I feel like I'm being shaped and reshaped."
Suzie: "My stage of life is similar."
Me: "You mean... you feel like you're in transition?"
Suzie: "I'm always in transition."
Me: "Hmm... wow..."
Suzie: "All my life, in transition. Amanda, that's all there is."


Incredible. She leaned forward and stared right at me when she tossed up, "That's all there is," so matter-of-factly. We talked about our fears of self-betrayal, of living in contradiction, of feeling socially unaccepted at times, of constant pupation. Fantastic. This woman and the pants are my opportunity to think things through. And get ready, friends, because I'm about to ask you about yours :)

there's battle lines being drawn

We are in wild times. I spent this day listening, reading, writing and occupying and I nearly lost my mind. I cried in public, snapped at a stranger, ate half a jar of peanut butter and considered taking up smoking. I think I'm about done for the week.


To set the stage and hopefully make a point about Occupy Wall Street, my crazed mood is a conflation of the following variables. I woke up to Michele Bachmann's voice blaring out of my alarm clock. She was slamming Obama for putting the United States "in Libya" and now "in Africa." Holy geography blunder. She went on to demand that the United States hold countries like Iraq and Libya accountable for paying back what has been donated to them in foreign aid. Whaaa?


Following the morning news, I listened to a panel of the "1%" discuss the Occupy movement on the Current. Tremonti, try as she may, couldn't tame two of the men from spewing harmful neoliberal crap about how banks get a bad rap and activists had "better be careful" because "redistribution of wealth is bad for the economy." This threatening language went utterly unchecked. Terry Campbell, President of the Canadian Bankers Association, called the occupy protests a "random," "amusing," "naively misdirected" "waste of time." Campbell defended Jimmy Pattison for building his empire "from scratch" because he "made choices" and therefore shouldn't be "punished" for being rich. 


I expected a better takedown from Canadian media. The show ended with no critical stance, having only quoted one poorly constructed sentence from one protester. It made occupiers look like bored children, "straight out of Sherwood forest." I was disgusted.


After some work, I went to read at Ottawa's Tent City. I happened to be approached by a very misogynist occupier who is not representative of the 99%. He explicitly harassed me and several other women passersby. I tried not to become emotionally invested in his comments, but when he called out "you're just a woman with a small brain," I walked away in tears. What to do about this? Does an inclusive movement exile people?


I am trying to do some writing endorsing the Occupy movement and reflecting on what I perceive to be its major challenges (like true social engagement, as so far in Ottawa, it's a white man's class war, and the group needs to become more representative to be legitimated as the 99%). I'll save that for another day. What I argue here is that the aforementioned issues - reflective of colonialism, racism, classism, ableism and sexism - are collectively what "we" are fighting against, whoever "we" may be. Yeah, there's something happening here.

riff raff on events - a subjunctive mood

RACEDAY. I'm bundled on my balcony watching the sunrise as I hydrate. It's a good life. As I try to keep calm and read race strategies, I'm thinking on how I psych myself out. I don't want to think about it too much, though, lest it stop working!

This week I had the pleasure of giving a talk at U of Toronto on Events. It was a remarkably interdisciplinary panel with projects from Women's Studies (a discipline of non-disciplinarity), Geography and Forestry. I thought "events" a timely topic as Occupy movements sweep major cities across the world this weekend, especially as two of us discussed the media's role in shaping our reception of events as such. As the chair made reference to in his introductory comments, it's funny to have an event on events. Look how funny we are.

I was stimulated by both panelists, particularly by David Roberts' talk on what he terms "made-for TV planning," the "politics of urban knowledge creation." For his dissertation, he went to South Africa during the world cup (COOL. Why didn't I pick a topic that involves beaches?) to write on urban life versus television coverage of the event. I was biased toward his theorizing, which added to how super impressed I was. For most of us, the myth of neutrality of journalism has long been debunked. I think of journalism as possibly the most overtly political discursive construction available. But after a few days, on this raceday morn, David's talk has me thinking beyond the media construction of the events that are imagined for us (via boosterism, selected images, etc.) to the events we create for ourselves. Events on events. What's the difference?

On the event of the talk, for example, I prepared by making some notes on what I wanted to say, and then reading it in my head as I bounced about town with coffee in tow. I didn't do much that day except live in my imagination. The hour prior to the talk, I sat down with a large water and timed my head-reading. Then I had an apple. Then I talked. Headrush. After I had a beer. Done.

But then people in my life asked me how it went. Well, to communicate this and to make some sense of it for myself, I created a snapshot of what happened - some talking points - and relayed them as honestly as possible. "It went well. I was more nervous than I thought I'd be, but the words still came out. And rich discussion followed, so I felt satisfied. It probably went okay." But truthfully I don't remember how I felt about it. I barely remember what I said.

I remember feeling relaxed in the room prior to the event of speaking. The space wasn't very big and attendees could fit around a large boardroom table. In my imagination, I had pictured something like this, and had thus envisioned myself delivering the talk from seated position. But I was the last speaker of three and the others stood, so I when I got to the podium to arrange my powerpoint, I made a game-day decision to stand. Psych! As I rolled through my introductory statements, I felt myself becoming increasingly nervous. I was put off by this, which made it worse. I think I may have stopped breathing mid-sentence at some point. I may have almost died.

I'm recording this to consider the ways in which we distance ourselves from meaningful engagement with our human experiences. This is an old idea in memory work, but I ask, what is lost? Might there be something important to install about my nervousness in the room? About the pressure to stand? Politics of the people around me? Whatever? As I argue for consideration of sociopolitical context surrounding global events so that we might install richer historical narratives, I wonder what can be done to reflect on positionality in the mini-events of everyday life.

On this note, I go to a running event. I will panic when you ask me how it went.

magnificent anonymity: small comment on urban life

I'm in Toronto, blogging on the subway. This is awesome.

This week I’m staying with my now-ex-roommate and surrogate sibling, Ian, at the condo he and his girlfriend moved to just a few weeks ago. It’s up on Finch, which, to my surprise, still feels like a city. Save wider intersections and a noticeable proliferation of car culture, the sidewalks are still full of people, the subway goes here, and Korean food is open late. Toronto is big.

Contrary to the cold, hard, individualist reputation of big cities (usually promulgated by people who haven’t lived in them), I now find Toronto familiar and friendly. In fact, urban life here feels even homier to me than does small-place life. Avoiding becoming a combatant in the sustained urban versus rural conflict (or the Vancouver versus Toronto one!), I think there’s something about the anonymity and energy of folks in big cities that sparks rich interactions rarely found in smaller (maybe medium-sized?) places.

Tuesday I was sitting at the Green Beanery, bustling in the student hub of the Annex, when an older woman with a globe and mail tucked under her arm stopped by the table of two young women where one woman was trying to breast feed a seemingly perturbed baby. “Tickle the jaw,” she said, “sometimes it helps.” The women giggled over the fussing infant. I loved this. Advice from one mother to another, passed along orally in the local (fair trade, organic) café. Frack, public space is so important (even though cafes are technically privately owned, this is as close as we get on this city block).

Yesterday I was on the phone with a friend when a guy next to me overheard me saying I’m feeling munchy. While I was still on the phone, he reached over and offered me some dried cranberries. I don’t even like cranberries, but this gesture made me so happy!

Now on my way to the RCM atrium to spend a rainy day reading/gawking at the boots and piercings of music students. It’s my fave place in the world to hang out and pretend to be someone else (and visualize what my life may have been had a made a few different turns). I wish I had my flute case to set on the table so someone might talk to me about Verdi. Wishing everyone great chance encounters. Share an umbrella with a stranger!

thanks(?)giving

Thanksgiving stumps me every year. First I think about the history of the holiday and what and how we are currently celebrating. Then I drown in bliss as I consider how to pen the many things that bring me love and gratitude.


Then I blog about hypocrisy.


I have never seriously resisted the celebration of Thanksgiving. I have never expressed my conflictual feelings about Thanksgiving, not even to my family. I have never responded to a well-wisher with, "Do you know the origin of this holiday?" As such, I have remained far from one of my main political aims: to question and resist colonial practices in everyday life.


In a recent Ms. Magazine post, Natalie Wilson, an avid feminist blogger with a Ph.D. in women's studies, writes "No Thanks to Thanksgiving - Part 2," following up on Robert Jensen's original 2005 post. In the "Part 1" version, Jensen opens boldy: "One indication of moral progress in the United States would be the replacement of Thanksgiving Day and its self-indulgent family feasting with a National Day of Atonement accompanied by a self-reflective collective fasting." 


Zing. That ought to get the grannies with turkeys up in arms.


"Moral progress" aside, I think Jensen and Wilson are totally on. They both point out the hugely problematic myths of benevolent empire that circulate through this weekend. My internal contradictions are highlighted, however, by my pang of defensiveness while reading their enlightening posts, even though I agreed with and felt refreshed by the joint argument entirely.


Truthfully, I love Thanksgiving. It's my favourite holiday. You don't give gifts, Jesus isn't risen or born, an angel didn't not kill us, and it's not the birthday of a dead monarch. Unfortunately (note sarcastic triteness), it is the anniversary of the start of the genocide of indigenous people and the celebration of an ever-destructive empire... via gluttony. Somehow we are okay with this?


Beyond the moralizing ideologies about the family and state that so proliferate this feast day, Thanksgiving is a veritable host of ethical frack-ups, not the least of which is our slaughtering of turkeys by the million (for not-so-fun [but not too viscerally jarring] turkey facts, check the Society for the Advancement of Animal Wellbeing). A severe injustice, as discussed in Wilsons' post, is the Thanksgiving LIE presented to children in school curriculum. I remember gleefully tracing my hands onto orange and brown paper, cutting the drawings out and gluing them as "feathers" onto a turkey-coloured paper plate thinking "Oh, the savages in the forest got to eat the well-cooked turkey with the boatmen and priests and everyone was so happy."


...


This Thanksgiving, I spent a truly rewarding evening with an Indian-Canadian family in Montreal. Over turkey and wine, we thought on gratitude. Tears came to my eyes on several occasions. I thought - if only there were more focused dinner gatherings like this, the world would be a better place. It didn't need to be meat and alcohol, and we didn't need to overeat, but we needed to be sitting around a table in a warm home with the sole purpose of celebrating food and gratitude, for it and our company. It can't be about colonialism, but we need spaces like this.


Today I am thankful for the kindness in my life. My parents, cousins, landlord, grocery bagger, bank teller, stranger on craigslist, you name it. Kind to me. I'm privileged. I'm thankful. When I paused to think about it last night, I literally felt my life slow down to a healthier pace.


I look forward to next year when I may move with more confidence toward Jensen's socially just Thanksgiving - helping tell the truth (even when I don't want it to be true as I risk losing the pleasures of this weekend) - "even when it is not welcome." I also hope to take more time for daily reflection on gratitude.

i'd like to be a supermom, please.

While reading an old Tom Brokaw transcript for my comprehensive exam research, the following commonplace utterance jumped off the page.

“My children are young, they’ll never be this age again, and I really don’t want to miss out on that.”

The children will never be any age again. That’s the thing about time.

Yes, it’s cynical and presumptuous of me to assume that watching babies grow is not all that fascinating. Here I stand admitting that my ambivalence may reverse entirely if I pop one out and look into its pudgy little face. At that time, I will likely be arguing for childcare, parental leave, reintegration-to-workforce programs and fully funded transitional post-docs, extension of the tenure clock, and forgiveness of parental gaps from governmental funding bodies like SSHRC.

But what especially bothers me is the context in which this phrase, “I don’t want to miss out,” always floats to the surface. It’s the cited justification when a mother decides to leave the labour force or cut down to part time paid employment. While it may be true for some, how much of this unwillingness on the part of mothers to sacrifice motherhood for the “fast track” (or any track at all) stems from a true longing to be at home with babies, and what part, if any, can be attributed to various social pressures? Further, which moms get to make this choice anyway? Could a black mother on welfare utter this pleasantry and be legitimated? Or would she be seen as craving afternoons of painting her nails in front of soap operas? And does this mother “decide,” or does she default to letting the fast track alone while making peace with herself and others through reliance upon this phrase?

In the Brokaw segment, “Mom at Work,” Tom interviewed a lawyer at Goldman Sachs. She “does not feel the pull” between work and family because she is now working three days a week – a “new version of having it all.” Indeed, she states, “The beauty of my way is that I have everything.” How nice for you, rich white lady. As if “superwoman” were a drive-thru menu item (I will take one of those, supersize it please). Oh right, you’ve never been to a fast-food restaurant because you have a nanny who cooks your meals.

My point is not to gang up on this, or any mother, though. I do not want to be mistaken for attributing blame. What I mean to say is that this heralding of supermom is intensely problematic as it pits welfare mother and supermom against each other, instilling the fear of apocalypse in all of us lest we get out of sync with neoliberal expectations of woman-citizen.

So I’ll put down the sarcasm. As Susan Douglas and Meredith Michaels detail in “The Mommy Myth,” the 90s marked an intensified “mommy track” discourse: working outside the home is not all its cracked up to be, feminists, so you’d best retreat to the domestic bliss of home before it’s too late. A brand of so-called postfeminism or difference feminism manufactured the more nurturing, more sensitive, less competitive, natural mother woman, and shoved it onto magazine covers for purchase. It turns out we're not "equal" so let us women do what we do best - nurture (read: clean and feed).

It seems to me that even when the supermom syndrome is criticized in mainstream media (and it’s only criticized in the context of hetero-nuclear family, of course) and we get a glimpse at nearly progressive feminist discourse, moms are guided back to the home. Because guess what? He’ll leave you. Would you rather have a stable nuclear family or a gritty 9-5 and a life of loneliness, financial stress and social apology? In Canada and the US, the idea of an overhaul of family policy is still met with heavy skepticism and resistance. This inevitability-of-business model, and even the praise of efficient business practices for the vitality of a competitive GDP, occurs even among my close male friends who seem like otherwise reasonable humans. I’m not sure what it will take for this historical problem to be seen for the gross injustice that it is.

pontification, democracy and the masculinized space of formal politics

As we enter the final days before the Ontario election, the gendered nature of formal representation explodes my frontal lobe, and not in the good new Feist album(!) way. It feels like a tired complaint at this point, but one I cannot ignore.

Last week I attended the final Ottawa Centre leaders debate at St. Paul's University. Ottawa Centre is the dense middle neighbourhood of downtown, loosely hugged by the Ottawa River and Rideau canal. It's reasonably diverse for Ottawa (though very white and Catholic/Protestant) with a mix of students, professors, artists, professionals, singles, families and a thriving queer community. It's a tight district this year. Typically NDP, but historically Liberal, the two front runners will be hoping their door knocking translates to turnout on October 6th.

10 humans sat on the debate panel, one of whom was a woman. She was running as an independent and was not able to comment on many of the issues raised in questions by the public. Sadly, I'm sure she was read as an ignorant and even apolitical woman. I think she deserves to be praised for running and advancing her platform (linking undergraduate students [in arts] to careers that reflect their skills and interests), but I wish she had bothered to familiarize herself with broader issues so people could not simply write her off.

The leaders debate was one of the most excellent I've seen. It was truly all-candidates and everyone showed up. The four front-runners knew the issues well and avoided cheap shots (for the most part). Not everyone was equally skilled, but that is the exciting and aggravating nature of debate. Questions from the audience and twitter were relevant and challenging, ending with, "When push comes to shove, do you align yourself more with the values of your party or your constituents?" BAM. Elicited decent responses too.

As expected, there were the usual pontificating peripheral candidates. This makes me cringe as I simultaneously value the all-candidates space and desire detailed responses from front-runners. This issue collides with the issue of recruitment for formal politics in general - the people who know the issues intimately are not running (they're busy learning and writing about the issues intimately) and the people who are running should be commended for their bravery and willingness. Remembering this, it's still frustrating to hear a speaker relish in talk time when their comments are unfounded.

Of course this argument would apply to anyone monopolizing time in the public sphere, but it is particularly enraging to me that the sphere is dominated by men. 

Last week, I attended a lecture by a well-known US media theorist from Urbana-Champaign. She analyzed the discourse of historical Trojan condoms advertising, particularly pointing to the marketers' use of pirate imagery in the interwar period to defend the brand's legitimacy in pharmacies when no-name condom brands were selling for lower costs underground.

There were two men in the room and about 20 women. Both men were the only ones to interrupt during her talk, and they were two of four humans to ask questions at the end. One simply launched into questions (that were mostly comments) as soon as the floor was opened. This will not come as a surprise to anyone, and I can already predict a myriad of justifications for both the men's and women's behaviours in these and other settings. Regardless, the dynamic is unacceptable. I had things to say, but lost motivation in the corrupted space. I darted glares at one of the men. Sure it was immature, but I've run out of patience for finding ways to be productive in such settings. Next time, I may scream, "BE MORE SELF-AWARE."

One of my major frustrations in life is the masculine nature of formal Canadian politics. I've resorted to finding hope in voting on Thursday for Kevin O'Donnell, a geeky white man who likes public transit. Hopefully with more Kevin O'Donnell's in the house, there will arrive more women.

the night(?) and danger(?)

Freelancer updates on Palestine, Occupy Wall Street and the Ontario Election have distracted me from putting typeface to screen lately. There’s a united voice out there that seems to be getting louder. Feeling the pulse and getting excited for the first time since May 2 and Jack Layton’s passing.

Last week, I attended Ottawa's Take Back The Night (La rue, la nuit, les femmes sans peur) with some of my feminist posse. For those unfamiliar, TBTN is a march for safe streets that (allegedly, but not according to wikipedia) began in Philadelphia in 1975 after a young woman microbiologist was murdered on her walk home. In 1976, an International Tribunal on Crimes Against Women culminated in a march in Brussels.

The event has carried the typical “women’s only(?)” controversy over the years, and each year, organizers field dialogue on whether or not to welcome men. Traditionally, the marches are women-only, but the discussion varies on how to include men. The purpose of the walk varies contextually as well, as some marches include domestic violence under the broad VAW umbrella, while others are more directly tackling rape and safe streets, and even the right for women to walk alone in public.

Admittedly, I find the collision of slogans in Canadian walks a little emotionally confusing. “Hey, hey mister, get your hands off of my sister,” is absolutely ridiculous to me (no wonder men are scared of us), as is the tried and true, “However we dress, wherever we go, yes means yes and no means no,” and even the more-to-the-point, “2-4-6-8, no more date rape.” We are not cheerleaders. And it's not like we can easily shout, "Hey, hey mister, you may touch me where and when I say, and not feel at liberty to access my body as though it were an object. But mix it up a bit: sometimes just catch me off guard and kiss me, and sometimes ask politely if you may kiss me, and sometimes take control when I falsely protest as I am socialized to be gatekeeper and I really don't want to be, and other times when I protest, it is certainly not false, and you'd better listen, and you'd better not get me to that point of anger in the first place..."

Why not march in silence with candles as and for the women who are sexually assaulted and murdered daily in our streets and around the world?

I marched in relative silence with my friends, reflected on what we were doing as women and feminists, and soaked in the stares and honks of onlookers. Activists against segregation in the march are met with considerable backlash on this night. I usually favour inclusivity, but I do appreciate how at the Ottawa event, men are asked to walk behind women or line the streets in solidarity and are not generally seen among the ranks of marching women. This of course brings up the intensely problematic reification of gender binaries, which I generally resist. But for such an event as Take Back The Night, where the purpose is to highlight the particularly gendered nature of volatile bodies and street (sexual) violence, I think the symbolism is important. I think those who identify as men should be involved. At the back.

At one point in the march, there was a throng of young boys walking behind me, screaming (shrieking!) at the top of their lungs. Would it not have been so painfully ironic given our cries for non-violence, I would have stiff-armed them. They really did pollute the space.

As I conclude, I realize I set out to critique how the event was organized (who gave speeches, what did they say, etc.). Maybe it’s not the organization I have a problem with, but the way we conceptualize “safe” streets and “rape” and “power” that distances us from what I believe would be meaningful and provocative forms of protest. Paralysis by sloganitus at its finest.