A Woman’s Place

I, like many others, do not like Gwyneth Paltrow. She was definitely the weakest lead in the movie “Shakespeare in Love”, and yet she won the Academy Aware for Best Actress – yet another example of how bogus those awards truly are. She’s someone who, as one of my brother’s friends used to say about bad actors, is constantly “acting her head off” – she is simply never convincing. What I dislike about Paltrow even more than her terrible acting, however, is that she peddles pseudoscience via her so-called wellness and lifestyle company Goop. Goop promotes ideas such as  “eliminate white foods”, “police your thoughts”, and “nourish the inner aspect” (whatever that means). It also touts the efficacy of detoxes, cleanses, and “natural” beauty products – all of which they conveniently sell at inflated prices.

We live in a free market society and companies are rightfully allowed to sell anything they want, provided it’s legal. The problem with Goop is that it promotes products, ideas, and practices which can actually be detrimental to one’s health. For example, they sell jade eggs which they suggest women should regularly put in their vaginas overnight to fight infertility and to increase natural lubrication. They also sell herb packets which women are encouraged to use in vaginal steam bathes to improve fertility, ease menstrual cramps, and make sex more enjoyable. Wow, those are some magic herbs! These claims seem unlikely but mostly harmless, and Paltrow herself appears to be just another in a long line of snake oil salesmen – annoying and disingenuous, but largely benign. These two aforementioned products, however, could actually prove damaging to women who use them according to several Ob/Gyn’s. Jade is a porous material and therefore could easily lead to infections if left in the vagina for extended periods. Vaginal steam baths could also cause infections with the added menace of potentially burning the vulva. Goop sells numerous other possibly harmful products at hugely inflated prices to a credulous audience, making it, and its founder, sort of despicable.

While I mostly have nothing but scorn for Goop, they did recently produce a documentary which I found very informative and helpful. Netflix co-sponsored and aired a six part documentary series called “The Goop Lab”, and while five of these programs dealt with highly suspect health practices promoted by the company, the one on female sexuality and pleasure was interesting and empowering. This is a topic which gets scant notice in school sex-ed curricula, most of which tend to focus on reproduction and safe sex to the exclusion of sexual reciprocity and female pleasure. Lots of talk about ejaculations, but virtually no discussion of how females reach orgasm. The subject of female sexuality is often either overlooked or misrepresented in the larger culture as well. Women in the real world tend to be cast in one of two ways in regards to their sexuality – they are either wanton hussies, or good and virtuous ladies. 

The Madonna-whore complex was first articulated by Sigmund Freud. It is a psychological condition present in men who cannot have sex with women they care about and respect for fear the act will sully the female partner. Simultaneously these men cannot help but despise and devalue women they find sexually attractive, and therefore are unable to love them. Freud said, “Where such men love they have no desire and where they desire they cannot love.” The theory suggests that such feelings may stem from cold or unresponsive mothers. A man brought up in such an environment will spend his adult life looking for a maternal partner to make up for the warmth his childhood lacked, but any woman who meets this psychological need will immediately be sexually unattractive as she is essentially a proxy for his own mother. Conversely, if she is desirable, the man may feel confusion and shame which can manifest in domestic abuse. Yet another Freudian theory blaming screwed-up male sexual attitudes and behaviours on women themselves. How very convenient.

Most societies in modernity and antiquity, and in all corners of the world, generally perceive women as being either good because they’re celibate or bad because they aren’t. I don’t imagine I need to go into much more detail then to point out that the portrayal of Mary Mother of God as the feminine ideal sets pretty well every woman up for failure. She is both a virgin and a mother, which of course cannot exist in nature. People do not believe eagles and lions could mate to form gryphons, yet they do disparage women, especially sexually active women, because they fall short of the Madonna, an equally mythological creature. If you are not as modest, chaste and compassionate as she then you have a lot of work to do. This perception is a useful tool for male society to both police women’s behaviour and to limit their sexual freedom.

This patriarchal construct is sometimes called the virgin-whore dichotomy, and it manifests all the time in women’s lives. If you are in a club and you politely refuse a man’s offer to buy you a drink, you are often then cast as frigid or at least as a bitch. If you spend the evening dancing with your friends rather than the men in the room then it’s likely to be suggested that you are either a lesbian or celibate. Alternately, if you accept an offer for sex then you are a ho or a slut. Women are not slotted into these boxes solely based on their sexuality. Virgin and whore designations are also applied in relation to what they wear, how they speak or act or eat, or virtually anything else they do. There is no escaping this reductionist misogyny.

The prevalence of this dichotomy leads to many women feeling ashamed of and confused by their sexual needs and desires. This is where I found the Goop documentary, called “The Pleasure is Ours”, so helpful. The program opens with four women, Paltrow included, having a conversation. Betty Dodson, a sex therapist based in New York City who helps women accept their bodies and learn how to successfully masturbate, is included in this quartet. Dodson begins by talking about female sexual anatomy, and several times Paltrow mistakenly calls the vulva “the vagina”. The vulva is what you can see on the outside and includes the labia and the clitoris, while the vagina is the birth canal. I have to admit that at 58 years of age, I consistently make the same mistake Paltrow did. That got me wondering why I’ve spent my whole life up until now not knowing the difference between the two, and I think there are a couple of pretty obvious answers to that question. 

Firstly, no one ever explicitly taught me about my genitals. A British gynaecological cancer charity called Eve Appeal asked 1,000 women to label an illustration of female genitals in 2016. 44% of them couldn’t label the vagina, while an alarming 60% were unable to identify the vulva. Clearly most women are not made familiar with their own sexual anatomy, although I’m pretty confident that 100% of men could successfully tag the penis and scrotum. Secondly, the vulva is called the vagina in common parlance. It’s as if women’s sexuality is so unimportant that there is no imperative to know, let alone correctly name, our genitals. Repeatedly misidentifying vulvas as vaginas seems like society’s way of saying, “Close enough. It’s just female anatomy”. 

I learned a lot about the vulva from this show, including that there is an internal structure of the clitoris buried beneath the clitoral hood. In the 1940’s a German doctor named Ernest Gräfenberg suggested that women might have an erogenous zone in their vaginas, and this area was dubbed the G spot in his honour. There were hints and murmurs about the G spot’s existence for more than half a century, as though it were as elusive as Bigfoot and could not be scientifically proven. At long last, an Australian urologist named Dr. Helen O’Connell did an MRI of female genitals in 2005. She found a large base to the clitoris buried in the anterior vaginal wall. This structure sort of looks like a wishbone with two bulbs hanging in the middle and is made up of female erectile tissue. It becomes hard and enlarged when stimulated, just like a penis, but houses some 8,000 nerve endings (far more than a penis). MRI’s have been around since 1978, but female orgasms were so unimportant to male doctors that they were willing to let the existence of the G Spot go unverified. It took a female doctor who actually cared about female anatomy and sexual satisfaction to finally look for and find definitive proof that there was a heretofore unexplored vaginal pleasure centre.

Females are by and large very uncomfortable looking at their own genitals. This internalized shame is largely explained by the virgin-whore dichotomy. Only sluts are familiar with what their vulvas look like and insist on sexual pleasure. Good women give the man what he wants and don’t ask for anything in return. In fact, it has long been understood that most normal women don’t even enjoy sex. Lady Hillingdon, the wife of a British Peer, famously wrote in 1912 about her husband, “When I hear his footsteps outside my door I lie down on my bed, open my legs and think of England.” This quote was shortened to “Lie back and think of England”, and gained traction as the preferred advice 20th century British mothers gave to daughters on their wedding day. This sentiment promotes the idea that sex for women is simply a nasty duty which can be better endured by imagining more pleasant things. How confusing and shame-inducing for any woman who actually enjoys intercourse. 

Betty Dodson, the main player in the Goop documentary, has spent the last 50 years helping women overcome this frigid stereotype by leading them to an acceptance of their bodies and an acknowledgement of their sexual needs. About ten women at a time come to her sessions, and she starts each one by having the participants take off their clothes and sit in a circle. At some point she asks the women to look at their own genitalia with a mirror, something most of these women (and I would guess many women my age) have never done. The vulva and vagina are not just the locus of sexual pleasure but also of the monthly pain and mess of menses and the momentous experience of childbirth. Imagine having such an important anatomical part and never seeing it! Many of these women have a great deal of difficulty looking at their vulvas, and even more of them express concern that there is something amiss when they do look. They feel their vulvas are the wrong colour or too dangly, or that their labia are too large and strangely uneven. 

Men see their own penises several times a day, and most men regularly watch pornography. Women have to make an effort to see their genitals because even when they are naked, their vulvas are hidden. The only time a woman might see another’s genitalia is in pornography, and many women in porn these days have had genital plastic surgery to decrease the size of their labia and to make the interior of their vulva more symmetrical. This procedure is called a labiaplasty. The Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery reports that labiaplasty procedures increased by 45% between 2015 and 2016, and that they regularly receive requests to have the procedure done from girls as young as 9. Many women in porn also remove all their pubic hair and bleach their vulvas so they are consistently pale pink. The result is that their genitals look like those of prepubescent girls or baby dolls. Is it any wonder that average women view their own vulvas as being abnormal or ugly when the only examples of female genitalia they see are so thoroughly altered?

All this brings me to the always unpleasant and cringeworthy topic of female genital mutilation, or FGM. The WHO defines this practice as,

“Partial or total removal of the external female genitalia or other injury to the female genital organs for non-medical reasons”.

This practice used to be called female circumcision, implying an equivalence in severity with male circumcision. In 1928 Scottish missionary Marion Scott Stevenson suggested that this was an inapt comparison. Women who endure this procedure face lifelong health problems as a result, including recurrent infections, difficulty urinating and passing menstrual flow, chronic pain, infertility, complications during childbirth, and in extreme cases, fatal bleeding. Their genitals are also left mutilated and scarred. These outcomes are not inherent to male circumcision. In the 1970’s several prominent female anthropologists and doctors wrote papers rebranding the procedure as FGM, and in 1991 the WHO finally recognized and codified this designation. 

FGM is practiced on girls of various ages depending on the traditions of a particular country or ethnic group – from days after birth to puberty and beyond. The severity of the mutilation varies as well. Sometimes they remove the clitoral hood and glands, or the inner labia, or the outer labia, or they nearly close the vulva, or all of the above. When they close the vulva, a procedure known as infibulation, a small hole is left for the passage of urine and menstrual flow. A larger opening is eventually made to allow for intercourse after a woman is married. FGM often takes place at home, with or without anaesthesia. Older women usually do the procedure, knowing that girls will be ostracized if they are not cut. Unsterile implements are likely to be used, and a Ugandan nurse is quoted in a 2007 issue of The Lancet as having seen cutters use one knife on up to 30 girls at a time. FGM has been outlawed or restricted in most of the countries in which it occurs, although these laws are poorly enforced. It is still widely practiced in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East, and in 2016 UNICEF estimated that some 200 million women living in 30 countries had undergone the procedure.

FGM is a clear manifestation of deep gender inequality, and an extreme example of a patriarchal strategy to control women’s sexuality and make them ashamed of their genitals. I would suggest that the radical alteration of female genitalia in Western pornography is a similar, if less drastic, ploy. The only difference is that women who work in the porn industry are making a choice. Many young women feel that that this choice makes all the difference. Their perspective is that women exploiting their own sexuality is actually empowering and does not play into patriarchal hands.

Cardi B is a former stripper who is now a very famous rapper. She recently released an extremely graphic video for her extremely graphic song “Wet Ass Pussy”, or simply “WAP”. I asked several friends and their Gen Z daughters to please watch this video and then give me feedback. Most of the women my age were uncomfortable with the highly sexualized images in the “WAP” video as well as with the song’s pornographic lyrics in which Cardi B repeatedly declares that men are only good for providing money and satisfying sexual urges. This sentiment appeared to me and several of my friends to be a clear lowering of the bar. Many sexually explicit songs by male rappers describe women as mere sexual objects to be used and then discarded – an offensive portrayal to say the least. I’m not sure dehumanizing men in a similar fashion is a good strategy going forward for individual women or for feminism at large. All of the young women who watched the video, however, felt that the images and sentiments portrayed were empowering. Here was a woman owning and unabashedly flaunting her sexual prowess. She wears the kind of highly provocative and scant clothing which traditionally have been signs of objectification by men, but that perception no longer holds true because she is completely in charge of the image she projects. If women choose to make money with their bodies, to make men pay for their ridiculous obsession with the female anatomy, then more power to them. 

I’m not sure exactly where I come down on this issue. It does seem very fortuitous for the patriarchy that women now perceive monetizing their bodies as empowering, but I suppose young people would argue that women like Cardi B and sex workers in general are making a choice rather than being exploited. Maybe they have a point. The objectification of female bodies is never going away, so framing it as a positive for women is probably not a bad idea. I just hope that this new perspective on public female sexuality has emerged in tandem with a private one allowing young women to feel more confident and comfortable in their personal sex lives, and in relation to their own genitals.

American History X

Nelson Mandela’s government came to power in South Africa in 1994. He and his advisors were aware that something had to be done to expose and redress the many government sanctioned wrongs that had taken place during the almost 50 years of institutionalized racial segregation known as apartheid. They decided to convene a Truth and Reconciliation Commission to try and provide their citizens and their country as a whole with a peaceful and satisfactory way forward. The commission listened to the statements of both people who had been abused under apartheid, as well as apologies and pleas for amnesty from perpetrators who had worked for the government. The hearings ran for five years, and at the end a permanent institute was established to provide a place where further testimony could be given. Canada followed a similar path to recognize and make reparations to indigenous people who had suffered in government established residential schools. Lessons about the Holocaust and the Nazi era are mandatory in German schools, and almost every student at some point visits either a concentration camp or a Holocaust museum or memorial. It is as true for countries as it is for individuals that historical mistakes must be acknowledged and, as far as possible, atoned for. How can such errors be avoided in the future if they are never recognized as having happened in the past?

There is one country that seems unable or unwilling to recognize this truth, and that’s the U.S.A. I have never heard a single American leader acknowledge the debt their nation owes to an enslaved people whose free labour accounted for half of their country’s wealth at the time of the Civil War, nor have I seen them show any remorse that the federal government abandoned newly freed slaves during reconstruction. Lyndon Johnson signed both the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act in 1964, but many states have since undermined and sidestepped these laws by enacting strategies which circumvent the prerogatives contained therein. I have certainly heard many politicians pay lip service to how terrible slavery, the Jim Crow laws and segregation were. I’ve also heard them lament that currently too many people of colour are disenfranchised by voter suppression laws and are being railroaded into prisons. They are especially effusive about these issues when trying to garner the black vote. Very few of them, however, and certainly no Republicans that I know of, have ever suggested that the federal government needs to formally apologize for the historic and ongoing systemic oppression of African Americans, nor that they should make monetary reparations to the descendants of slaves.

Such a move is not without precedent. President Ronald Reagan signed the Civil Liberties Act in 1988 to compensate more than 100,000 people of Japanese descent who were incarcerated in internment camps during World War II. The legislation offered a formal apology and paid out $20,000 to every surviving victim. There was a scant 40 years between when Japanese Americans were wronged and the federal government’s act of contrition. I mention this because African Americans were initially brought to the U.S. in about 1619. They have been oppressed and abused for 400 years, so where is their apology? Where is the official recognition of how systemically persecuted they have been since their ancestors first unwillingly landed on North America’s shore?

These are very deep and complex questions, but I would imagine the main reason for not making reparations, at least, is that it would be an incredibly expensive undertaking. There were just over 48 million African Americans in the States last year, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Let’s estimate low and say 25% of that number are adults with verifiable slave lineage. If each one of these individuals was given $20,000, as the Japanese Americans were, that is still a whopping $240 billion. It’s impossible to imagine such a figure being approved by both houses of government, particularly if Republicans are in the majority.

I suspect that part of the reason for not officially acknowledging the extent of the oppression is pride. It is always embarrassing and difficult to accept blame and to apologize. It is an extremely humbling experience, and America is a very proud country. Almost my entire extended family is American, as a girl I spent every summer holiday in the States and I have visited there countless times as an adult. I have been observing and absorbing American culture and the American ethos, both consciously and unconsciously, for my entire life. After 59 years of close study and near immersion, I feel confident in asserting that most Americans believe absolutely in the existence and attainability of the American dream, and further that they are unquestionably the greatest country in the history of the world. As Ronald Reagan said in his farewell address, they are “the shining city on the hill.”

Germany is also a very proud and arrogant country. The first two lines of their national anthem translate as, “Germany, Germany above all, above all in the world.” No equivocation there. Yet German school children are first introduced to the folly and terror of Nazism in grade three. They remember their horrible, bloody history as a nation to ensure that they do not repeat it. Which begs the question; if über patriotic Germans are willing to shoulder the abject humiliation of having fostered and supported arguably the most evil regime in the 20th century, then why can’t Americans admit their part in the subjugation of blacks? Is it possible that many white Americans and thus their legislatures and institutions are so intractably racist that they don’t see their culpability?

I would argue that this is the case. I have heard countless American talking heads claim that having elected a black president proves that racism is dead, a statement proven empirically false by all of the white police officers who continue to murder African Americans with impunity. Some people say that while racism may still exist, it is limited to the southern states, and this again is incorrect and always has been. Oppression of black Americans is as rampant in the north as it is in the south. Martin Luther King brought the civil rights movement to Chicago in 1966. His main purpose was to put an end to economically deprived black citizens having to live in filthy, crime-ridden slums. At one point he organized and participated in a peaceful walk through a white neighbourhood where he and his fellow marchers endured hateful rhetoric while being pelted with bottles and bricks. King himself was hit by a rock. After the demonstration he said,

“I have seen many demonstrations in the south but I have never seen anything so hostile and so hateful as I’ve seen here today.”

More recently, George Floyd was killed by police officers in Minnesota and Jacob Blake was shot four times in the back by a police officer in Wisconsin. Both these states are so far north that they touch the Canadian border.

There were racists in my own American family as well. My mother told me about a time when we were visiting my relatives in Fall River, Mass. She stopped in at my Aunt Mary and Uncle Chuck’s apartment to say hello when we first arrived. My Uncle Chuck, a very sweet man, was watching a boxing match between two black opponents. My mother asked who was fighting, and he replied, “I don’t know, but I’m rooting for the lighter guy.” There was also a time when we were visiting my dad’s brother and his wife in Cape Cod when my Uncle Cesar showed his bigotry. We had just finished dinner and the grownups were chatting at the table. My mother never really like Uncle Cesar. She considered him dumb and a bit boorish, but tolerated him for the sake of my dad and because she liked his wife, my Aunt Lucky. My mom had no doubt already bitten her tongue several times during the meal, but she finally blew when my uncle used a racial slur about black people. I don’t remember exactly what she said, but the gist of it was that she couldn’t help but notice that Uncle Cesar was okay with black people when they played jazz or were good with a ball, but he otherwise had nothing but scorn for them. This made him a hypocrite and a racist. I was young enough to be shocked into silence at witnessing two adults other than my parents arguing right in front of me, but I was old enough to be proud of my mom.

White America has employed two very pointed techniques to undermine claims of racism in relation to their history. The first is to simply rewrite it. The United Daughters of the Confederacy, or UDC, was formed in 1894, just three decades after the Civil War ended. Their stated goal was to “tell of the glorious fight against the greatest odds a nation ever faced, that their hallowed memory should never die.” I find this statement to be incredibly problematic – the fight was not glorious as it was only taken up to perpetuate the abomination of slavery, the south was not a nation but rather attempting to secede from one, and no one who took part in that ignominious cause deserves to be revered or even given a second thought. The UDC is responsible for the erection of most of the Confederate statues and commemorative markers which are currently being taken down all around the country. About time!

A more insidious side to the UDC is their support of an auxiliary association called Children of the Confederacy. Chapters of this organization hold meetings where children are taught lessons from a book penned by a UDC member entitled “Catechism on the History of the Confederate States of America, 1861-1865”. This book claims that slavery played no part in the Civil War, even though many primary documents issued by southern states at the time state otherwise. The real cause of the war was Abraham Lincoln’s rejection of 11 southern states’ “legal” right to leave the union. For emphasis it exclaims in all caps that the south, “…FOUGHT TO REPEL INVASION AND FOR SELF-GOVERNMENT, JUST AS THE FATHERS OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION HAD DONE.” This obfuscation recasts Southerners as misunderstood patriots carrying forward the American revolutionary spirit, when in reality they were rapacious, cruel slave owners hell-bent on continuing a system that afforded them prosperity and leisure at the expense of an entire race. The UDC coined the phrase “Lost Cause” to encapsulate their pseudo-historical claim that the Confederacy’s struggle was heroic and just. This misrepresentation lives on in the bulk of southern history text books.

The second method white America uses to minimize the existence of endemic systemic racism is to expunge or at least severely downplay past incidents of black oppression. Consider the largely unknown massacre which took place in 1921 in Greenwood, a black suburb of Tulsa, Oklahoma. Greenwood was an absolute anomaly – an all-black, self-sufficient community and business district so prosperous that it garnered the nickname “Black Wall Street”. Oklahoma was entirely segregated in the early 20th century, so African American businessmen decided to set up an area wherein people of colour could shop and live in comfort and peace. The neighbourhood bloomed in the middle of a Jim Crow state, and many of the white residents of Tulsa were livid at Greenwood’s success.

In May of 1921 a young black man accidentally bumped into or perhaps stepped on the foot of a white woman who screamed in response. The man was summarily arrested and charged with assault, an accusation the local paper immediately escalated into one of rape. Black men raping white women is the ultimate dog whistle for American racists. Every southerner knows this – Harper Lee knew it when she crafted the trial in “To Kill a Mockingbird”, and the men of Greenwood knew it too. They feared that whites would come and try to lynch the young man as he awaited trial at Tulsa’s courthouse, so they formed a phalanx around the building. There were a few minor skirmishes when the expected crowd came, but the outraged mob was eventually pushed back. Tulsa law enforcement responded to this perceived slight by deputizing a group of the white men involved, emboldening them to launch a full-out attack on Greenwood. They came armed to the teeth and overran the neighbourhood, killing black residents at will. There were also corroborated reports of privately owned planes dropping incendiary bombs on the area. In the end as many as 300 black people were dead, countless others were injured, and at least 1,000 were left homeless. The entire Greenwood community, all 35 blocks of it, was razed to the ground.

This is a clear example of black lives not mattering and of systemic racism at play, yet it has rarely appeared in any history books, least of all Oklahoma’s. I recently saw a black lawyer born and raised in Tulsa talking about this. He described hearing the Greenwood story in a history course at university and putting his hand up to protest that the professor must surely be wrong. He had lived his whole life not two blocks from Greenwood Avenue and yet had never even heard of the massacre. That kind of ignorance is only possible if people in charge actively keep such information under wraps.

Systemic racism and abuse of black Americans is alive and well to this very day. The 13th Amendment of the American Constitution banned slavery and involuntary servitude, except as punishment for a crime. The prison industrial complex has taken full advantage of this loophole, and various state and federal laws have facilitated the filling of their prisons with men of colour. There have been many ways in which legislation has facilitated the travesty of mass incarceration of black men, but I just want to touch briefly on two. First, while Nixon’s “war on drugs” was ostensibly launched to keep Americans safe, his former aide John Ehrlichman admitted in 1994 that it was actually designed to paint a virtual target on the backs of inner city African Americans. Consider that crack and cocaine are almost identical at the molecular level, and yet people who are charged with possession of just 1 gram of crack are given the same sentence as those found to be in possession of 18 grams of cocaine. Now consider that crack is almost exclusively an urban, black drug, and cocaine is largely a suburban, white drug. The racial bias seems palpable.

Second, the introduction of the three strikes law and legislated minimum sentences have effectively filled up the prisons with men of colour. The three strikes statute instituted in the early 1990’s made it mandatory for anyone who had been convicted of three felonies to serve 25 years to life as long as two of the crimes were considered serious. Some states have softened or even abandoned three strikes in the past five years, but many men incarcerated under this law are still serving ridiculously long sentences. There are recorded cases of African American men being picked up on offences as insubstantial as stealing a bike or shoplifting, and then being put away for at least 25 years because this minor charge resulted in their third conviction. Mandated minimum sentences mean that judges may no longer look at extenuating circumstances when sentencing, but rather are legally obliged to impose often disproportionately long jail terms. These two legal maneuvers taken together have done much to explain why the black imprisonment rate at the end of 2018, according to Pew Research Center, was nearly twice the rate among Hispanics and more than five times the rate among whites. Once all of these black men were locked up, companies such as Victoria’s Secret, Intel, Walmart and Boeing, to name just a few, stepped right through that loophole in the 13th Amendment and started using largely free inmate labour as a means to increase their profits. This, in effect, is 21st century slavery.

LeBron James has a show on HBO called “The Shop”. It features famous men – entertainers and athletes – having a conversation about various topics while sitting in an actual barbershop. One episode included Pharrell, Don Cheadle and Seth Rogan, amongst others. At one point the panel was talking about racism in the States, and Rogan, the only Canadian in the group, mentioned something that had happened the last time he did a live show in Canada. An announcement came over the theatre’s loudspeaker before he came on stage acknowledging that they were on indigenous land and asking the audience to take a moment to be mindful of that fact. After he said this, both Pharrell and Cheadle said “Wow, that’s amazing!” with aspirational sadness shining in their eyes – aspirational because as African Americans they long for public recognition of their race’s contributions to and sacrifices for their country, and sadness because they know they will almost certainly never get it. Rogan went on to say he doesn’t understand how America can hope to move forward without a national recognition of its long racist history, and Cheadle responded that racism, “…is our country’s birth defect.” This seemed an apt analogy considering many of the men who established the United States were slave owners. Also, their founding document stipulates that each enslaved black man should be counted as three fifths of a white when determining how many representatives a state could send to congress. Some birth defects can be corrected, some cannot, but either way nothing can be done until there is at least an acknowledgment of the problem.

Walking in My Shoes

Earlier this week a woman was attacked in the park where I regularly walk. It was a bright, sunny day, and at 9:30 a.m. there were lots of people in the area jogging, biking, or walking their dogs. None of that stopped the assailant from snatching a lone female off the trail, dragging her into the bushes, choking her into submission and trying to rape her. Luckily two women intervened and the attacker ran away, but how audacious is that? What is going through the mind of someone who brazenly grabs and abuses a woman in the bright sunshine with all kinds of people close by? What is going on in the minds of the many men who sexually assault women, and why is it so common?

We have to first look at the role of society in the formation of the male psyche to try and answer this question. The term “rape culture” was invented in the 1970s by second wave feminists. Rape culture refers to the widespread and generally ignored abuse of women which is largely due, in feminists’ eyes, to a pervasive misogyny and sexism in the culture at large. The coining of this term marked the first time rape was framed as an act of violence rather than one of sex, i.e. it is a show of dominance and not an attempt to feel sexual pleasure. There are many components to rape culture such as widespread police apathy in handling cases, stigmatization and blaming of rape victims, and that tired old chestnut that rape is inevitable because men are naturally aggressive. There are also a lot of misconceptions that support this culture, like the pervasive idea that most rapes are random when in reality an estimated 2/3’s of women who report assaults know their attacker. Recognizing this statistic would force society to acknowledge that the vast majority of rapists are not sociopaths or outliers, but rather just regular guys, many of whom claim to love the girl or woman they raped.

The widespread acceptance of misogyny and rape culture takes many forms. In 2010, Yale’s Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity, known simply as DKE, made national news. During the fraternity’s hazing ceremony that fall they paraded their shirtless pledges to the Yale Women’s Center where they proceeded to chant, “No means yes, yes means anal!”, “F**king sluts!”, and “My name is Jack, I’m a necrophiliac. I f**k dead women and fill them with my semen.” The fraternity was not closed for this, but rather was banned from associating with Yale for five years. DKE’s charter was reinstated in 2016 and almost immediately two women came forward with accusations that they had been raped by the fraternity president. He was subsequently suspended for three terms by the school’s administration for “penetration without consent”, but the attacks were never reported to law enforcement. More than a dozen other women reported to campus authorities that same year that they had witnessed or experienced nonconsensual sexual contact with DKE brothers since 2014, including kissing, groping and sexual assault. In other words, the so-called punishment of not associating with the college for five years had absolutely no effect whatsoever on the sexually abusive and misogynistic behaviour of DKE members. As an interesting aside, both Bush men who would go on to become president were members of this very fraternity.

Rape and sexual crimes are also normalized by television. “Law and Order SVU”, which deals exclusively with this issue, is in its 21st season, and stories about rape and abuse are so commonplace that they appear even in comedies. I occasionally watch the sitcom “Mom” which revolves around a group of female alcoholics who attend the same A.A. meeting. I caught an episode the other night wherein a man who had raped one of the main characters 16 years previously comes to a meeting. The victim leaves as soon as she sees her assailant, and it is later revealed that she never reported the crime. She made her living as a stripper at the time, and was drunk and stoned when the assault occurred. These things taken together made her feel that she would not be believed. The show ends with her speaking at the next meeting where her attacker is in attendance. She reveals the assault to the entire room, although she does not point out the perpetrator, and goes on to say she needs to make amends. She did not tell authorities after it happened and therefore owes an apology in case her assailant went on to abuse other women. The rapist looks more and more shifty as her speech continues, and he eventually leaves the room. So, the victim shows contrition and the criminal gets off scot free. The show’s ending felt like the writers shrugging their shoulders and saying, “That’s just the way things are. What are you gonna do?”

The massive proliferation and easy availability of pornography featuring scenes of female abuse and degradation has also contributed to rape culture. I watched a documentary last night called “Generation Wealth” which deals primarily with American society’s obsession with affluence. One of the people interviewed in the film is a woman who calls herself Kelsey. Kelsey is originally from a small town in Kansas and came to L.A. in her early twenties seeking fame and fortune. Unable to find a decent paying job anywhere else, she soon began acting in porn. Kelsey is very petite and small-breasted, and when she had her pubic hair removed, at the advice of her agent, she looked like a 12 year old girl. There is a huge market for porn featuring pre-pubescent girls, a chilling reality in and of itself, and Kelsey began to have some success. She garnered fifteen minutes of broader fame when she came forward as one of the women Charlie Sheen hired for sex and paid with cocaine. Kelsey liked the notoriety this encounter afforded her and consequently consented to be in a film she was assured would make her timelessly famous. She was placed naked on an inclined plane in the middle of a stark white room, and 58 fully dressed men, one after the other, came forward and ejaculated on her face. That’s it. No story, no pretence of affection or sensuality – just an extremely young looking woman repeatedly getting semen shot in her face.

So many questions sprang to mind as I thought about this film in retrospect. How did a man even come up with this idea in the first place? Who were all those men who were sufficiently aroused by seeing a helpless, naked woman-child that they could ejaculate on her face in a sterile room with a bunch of other people watching? How is it that not a single man there, not one member of the crew or any of the 58 men who were masturbating, thought at any point about Kelsey’s welfare and stopped the proceedings? Did they even view that helpless woman as a fellow human being? Who are the many thousands of men who have since watched this film, and do I know any of them? Kelsey did start to get more offers after the movie was released, but found she could no longer perform in pornographic films without crying. The whole thing left her profoundly depressed and, feeling worthless and that she would never recover, she attempted suicide. When last the filmmaker talked to Kelsey she had a minimum wage job at a tanning salon and was living in what looked like a unit in a storage facility.

I think it’s pretty clear that rape culture does exist and consequently almost certainly plays into the thinking of men who sexually assault women. The other two elements which must feed into this behaviour are nature and nurture – how much aggression towards females is hardwired in males, and how much is learned. I am not a biologist or psychologist so I cannot speak with any authority to the former, although I do have some observations about the latter. I recently found a very interesting exercise in empathy for men proposed by a little known American author named A.R. Moxon. Moxon asks his male readers to image a world where men being kicked in the testicles is as commonplace, and treated in the same manner, as women being raped. He writes,

“I chose nut-kicking because there isn’t a man alive that doesn’t understand what a nut-shot is, and, with very few exceptions, none who would ever want it or seek it out or go out ‘asking’ for it. Most importantly, no man confuses getting kicked in the nuts with sex. It’s very clearly violence even though it involves sex organs. The idea of growing up in a society where getting hoofed in the balls is normalized behaviour, systematically if tacitly allowed by a complicit society, and frequently confused with a pleasurable activity like sex, would rightfully be horrifying to any guy.”

The analogy is not perfect, but it is pretty good. When asked why he chose to write this Moxon said,

“Speaking on the societally macro-level, empathy has been largely a one-way street when it comes to gender roles and dynamics. In my experience, women are empathetic toward men, while men tend not to be particularly empathetic toward women. Put another way, women have to think about what men are feeling as a matter of survival. Men aren’t in a similar situation, and so, if they don’t want to, they don’t. And, by and large, we don’t want to.”

It makes sense to me that a lot of the dismissive attitude many men have toward rape, and the entitlement rapists feel in attacking women in the first place, has to do with a lack of empathy. Some of that, I’m sure, is evolutionary. Early man needed to be aggressive and dominant to get a mate, and then to protect their clan. We are currently a long way from prehistoric times, yet men continue in these uncivilized ways and then let themselves off the hook out of sheer apathy. I believe this is why victim blaming is so common in cases of sexual abuse and rape.

I think the way males are raised is partly to blame for their lack of empathy as well. Boys are told not to cry from a very early age. “Big boys don’t cry” morphs into “Suck it up” and “Be a man” as males get older. I cannot count the number of times I saw little boys on the schoolyard doing everything in their power not to cry even though they had clearly been physically injured or emotionally slighted. There is a cultural perception that crying is feminine and therefore a sign of weakness. This notion is patently ridiculous as well as insulting to females. Crying is a physiological response to external stimuli, and to assign it any meaning beyond that is just silly. It would be like contending that laughter is inherently masculine and thus an indication of strength. Acknowledging, accepting and expressing one’s own pain is how one learns to have empathy for oneself. If society tells males for their whole lives to push that feeling down, and that experiencing emotional pain in the first place makes them less masculine, then how can they be expected to feel empathy for others?

I would argue that media legitimizes and minimizes this lack of empathy. Actually, the thoughtlessness of men is often made into a joke on comedy shows. There are myriad examples of male TV characters forgetting birthdays, anniversaries and other events important to the women they purport to care for, and in the end getting off with impunity because “boys will be boys”. These slights are consistently downplayed and lampooned when they happen to wives, but not when the character’s friends, or particularly their children, are hurt in the process. Then the man will be contrite and make amends. The not so subtle lesson here is that women should expect to be treated poorly, to have their priorities and feelings dismissed, and men aren’t accountable for this ill-treatment because clearly that’s just the way they are and actually it’s kind of funny.

Men are also let off the hook in many shows when they do not pull their weight at home. Let’s say the character is responsible for taking out the garbage, and although he has acknowledged that this is his job, he consistently doesn’t do it. The woman is now put in the position wherein she has to repeatedly ask him to please just put out the trash, both because this is not a task which can be ignored indefinitely without obvious negative consequences, and because he said he would. Now the man starts to complain that she is being a nag, “Get off my back. I said I would do it!” He thus turns his lack of empathy and laziness around to effectively make the woman into the bad guy. This behaviour also puts women in a constant cost-benefit analysis about the chore in question. Is it more annoying and hurtful to look at the evidence of the man’s lack of care and cooperation for an extended period of time, or to just bite the bullet and do the job herself? This trope plays out over and over on TV and, if what my friends tell me is true, in a great many real households as well.

These ongoing, often daily skirmishes clearly illustrate just how lacking in empathy men can be. They are content to allow women to constantly pick up their slack on the home front even though many women work full-time. Women still do an average of an hour more housework a day than men according to a study I found published in The New York Times just last year. There is a subtler indication of lack of empathy here as well. Women get righteously angry when men do not share the load, but they also get hurt. It feels like a personal slight to women when despite explaining over and over how much it would mean to them to have a particular chore done, men simply never make it so. Maybe men have insufficient empathy to grasp how happy it would make their wife or mom if they just took ten minutes out of their day to clean the kitchen or set the table or whatever the task might be. It is equally possible that men actually do understand how much that small gesture would mean to a woman they love, and, as A.R. Moxon suggests, they still simply can’t be bothered to do it. How truly dismissive of women’s feelings is that? Also, men risk being derided and called “pussy whipped” if they do what their mothers, girlfriends or wives ask of them. Being empathetic and kind to a woman is perceived as weakness by many men – a perspective I think falls squarely in the category of toxic masculinity.

The attacker in my park was caught later that day, but now I, and probably most other women who enjoyed the park alone, feel insecure about walking there. Rationally I know that makes no sense, but emotionally and psychologically I simply do not feel safe there anymore. The woman who was attacked was so badly injured that she had to be airlifted to a hospital in Toronto, and last I heard is still in critical condition. I posted on Facebook when I got home from the park the day of the attack, alerting other women to what had happened. Some of my female friends responded with concern, many said that they never walk on paths alone, and one recounted that a woman had been raped in her neighbourhood just last week with the assailant still at large. Regardless of how they initially reacted to my post, every one of them at some point expressed outrage that this had happened yet again, but also a bone-numbing fatigue to which I immediately related. We are just so tired of being victimized, of being afraid, of being invalidated and unheard, and of good men not standing up for us.

I found the incident in the park very upsetting, and that’s why I chose to watch “Mom” and the documentary about wealth earlier this week. I was trying to take my mind off what had happened, but then the former show dealt with a rape and the latter featured a young women being horribly abused by the pornography industry. Rape culture is simply ubiquitous. A man I know mentioned that globally more men are raped than women, but so what? This isn’t a contest. Besides, who is doing the raping? While we’re at it, which gender makes up the vast majority of serial killers, mass shooters, terrorists, torturers and heartless despots? I am trying very hard not to become a misandrist, the clinical term for a man hater, but I have to say fellas, as a group, you are making it very difficult.

Days of Future Passed

My son recently called me on the phone and read me this quote,

“I have a foreboding of an America in my children’s or grandchildren’s time – when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the key manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what’s true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness. The dumbing down of America is most evident in the slow decay of substantive content in the enormously influential media, the 30-second sound bites (now down to 10 seconds or less), the lowest common denominator programming, credulous presentations on pseudoscience and superstitions, but especially a kind of celebration of ignorance.”

Carl Sagan, the famous astrophysicist and popular science writer and presenter, wrote this in his book “Demon Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark” in 1995. 1995! The number of predictions in this passage which have come true is just staggering. Some of them took until the age of Trump to come to fruition, while many of them have been growing since the Reagan administration in the 1980’s. It’s interesting to note that superstition was already thriving in the American halls of power during Sagan’s time because President Ronald Reagan regularly made policy and scheduling decisions based on advice his wife received from an astrologer.

The first part of the quote is demonstrably accurate. America is largely a service and information economy and many of its manufacturing jobs have been outsourced to other countries including Mexico and China. According to The Balance, a reputable financial advice and news website based in New York City, manufacturing used to be the largest component of the U.S. economy. In 1970 it made up 24.3% of America’s GDP, but by 2018 that percentage had shrunk by half. China held the fifth spot in international manufacturing in 1970, and by 2010 it had hit number one. Several economic laws and changes put in place by Reagan’s government made this decline inevitable. It was none the less insightful of Sagan, not an expert in economics by any stretch, to connect the dots from Republican financial policies enacted in the 1980’s to the current dismal state of American manufacturing.

The next part of Sagan’s dystopian prediction about awesome technological powers being in the hands of only a few people seems charmingly naive considering the ubiquitous nature of cell phones. On further thought, however, there actually are several very powerful and intrusive technologies which are employed exclusively by select groups. Online retailers and social media platforms employ algorithms to collect personal data about their users, and the U.S. military uses state-of-the-art drones and GPS tracking to target their enemies. Also, increasing numbers of governments and law enforcement agencies have huge banks of footage taken without permission by CCT cameras. They use sophisticated face recognition programs to tag and sort these images of average people just going about their lives. Organizations employing such technology argue that they only intend to use it for the greater good (eg. to catch criminals) when in fact there is no guarantee that it won’t one day be abused. Then there is the information leaked by Edward Snowden in 2013 concerning the existence of numerous global surveillance programs employed by the National Security Agency to covertly amass information about private citizens.

I don’t know if I even need to address the next bit about people not being able to “…knowledgeably question those in authority” because it is so clearly true. Many reporters either won’t or can’t or don’t know how to ask probing questions in the polarized reality of present-day American journalism. Remember the 2016 Republican debate where the moderators allowed Trump and Rubio to make leering innuendos about each other’s penis size? Or how about last week? Trump gave a disastrous interview to Axios wherein he fumbled three loose-leaf papers like an awkward 9-year-old giving a book report. Worse yet he failed to acknowledge, or clearly even understand, that the number of deaths due to Covid-19 should be the primary metric of his efficacy in handling the disease. Trump came off looking very bad in the exchange, so he immediately ran back to the safety of Fox News where he was thrown really difficult and timely questions like, “…are you going to commit more resources to exploring UFO’s and open the documents to the public?” Wow, talk about speaking truth to power!

There are so many examples of American society slipping into “…superstition and darkness” that it was hard for me to choose just two. Let’s start with Texas Governor Rick Perry’s official proclamation that April 22 to April 24, 2011 were to be Days of Prayer for Rain in the State of Texas. They were in the midst of a profound drought at the time and Perry asked that all Texans pray over that Easter weekend “…for the healing of our land” and for God to give them rain. Perry wasn’t even the first American leader to suggest that prayer was an effective response to drought. In 2007, Georgia governor Sonny Perdue led a lengthy and well-attended church service praying for rain. I would imagine these same men would call the rain dance of indigenous people superstitious, but I would argue there is virtually no difference between the two rites except for the form of supplication and the name of the deities being invoked. The desired result and chances of success in both cases are exactly the same. The prayers didn’t work, by the way, and the drought continued to worsen over the next four months. About 17% of the state was experiencing drought conditions when the Days of Prayer were instituted, and that number rose to 70% by the end of June. Texas did not experience any substantial rainfall until 168 days after Perry’s initiative.

Sometimes blind faith can lead one down a superstitious or fact-denying path, but increasingly social media and the internet have come to serve that function. NBA superstar Kyrie Irving insisted that the world was flat in 2017. The following year Irving apologized for voicing his theory publicly. He had received a lot of push-back from the parents and educators of young fans who believed him. Irving said he underestimated how important he was to his admirers and was truly sorry for any distress or confusion he may have inadvertently caused. What he never said, however, was that he didn’t actually think the earth is flat. His exact words were, “And even if you believe in that, just don’t come out and say that stuff. That’s for intimate conversations…” His mistake wasn’t that he was wrong, but rather that he shouldn’t have told people what he truly believes. The shape of the earth is an irrefutable and well-proven fact, yet here is an influential person who, from “…watching a whole bunch of Instagram videos”, firmly holds a belief which was empirically proven wrong when Magellan returned to Portugal in 1522 after circumnavigating the globe. Irving is just one contemporary person amongst many who, as Sagan writes, “…is unable to distinguish between what feels good and what’s true”. Beliefs and opinions have become conflated with facts.

The next part of Sagan’s quote implicates the media in this incremental “dumbing down” process. There is currently very little television programming that objectively contains content that I would consider “substantive”, and 10-second sound bites have proliferated with the number of platforms vying for our attention. As for “lowest common denominator programming”, I could fill up the rest of this page with the titles of shows whose sole purpose is to pander to their audiences’ most prurient interests such as the “Real Housewives” series, “The Bachelor” and “The Bachelorette”, “Survivor”, and “Big Brother”. The list goes on and on.

Sagan’s concern about the credulous consumption of “pseudoscience” has proven prophetic. Perhaps the best known and most damaging example of this phenomenon is the anti-vaccination movement. English physician Andrew Wakefield published a study in the highly-regarded British medical journal The Lancet in 1998. Wakefield’s research found that the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine was causing autism. No other lab could reproduce Wakefield’s results over the next several years so an investigation into his research and practice was begun by the British General Medicine Council, or GMC. In 2010 the GMC found Wakefield had been dishonest in his research, had acted against his patients’ best interests and had mistreated developmentally delayed children, and had “…failed in his duties as a responsible consultant.” The Lancet immediately retracted Wakefield’s findings, and he was barred from practicing medicine in the U.K. In a related legal decision, a British court held that there is “…no respectable body of opinion” to support Dr. Wakefield’s assertion that the “…MMR vaccine and autism/enterocolitis are causally linked.” In other words, the man and his research were completely discredited.

This is when Jenny McCarthy takes over the story. Ms. McCarthy is an American celebrity whose career began when she appeared in Playboy. She has since done some acting and hosting, and is currently likely most famous for reporting from the street on “Dick Clark’s Rockin’ New Year’s Eve”, and for being Mrs. Donnie Wahlberg. All in all she is clearly a person with absolutely no medical expertise. McCarthy’s son was diagnosed with autism in 2005. Experts have since agreed that the boy’s symptoms are more in keeping with something called Landau-Kleffner Syndrome, and many have suggested that he was misdiagnosed. McCarthy insists that he definitely is autistic, even though she is quoted as saying he, “…doesn’t meet the diagnostic characteristics for autism.” What? Regardless, McCarthy is sure, despite all evidence to the contrary, that her son developed autism because of the MMR vaccine. She has therefore become the face of the anti-vaxxer movement, promulgating her dangerous views on various talk shows and in her book on the subject. She has promoted many controversial and sometimes dangerous therapies to treat autism, and in 2008 was given the Pigusus Award, a tongue-in-cheek accolade for the most outstanding contribution to pseudoscience.

The dark and harmful side to McCarthy’s stance on vaccination is that many people believe her regardless of all evidence to the contrary and the public health community’s constant efforts to debunk her claims. The anti-vaxxers she has thus spawned are responsible for ever-increasing and sometimes deadly outbreaks of diseases which would otherwise have been eliminated by vaccines. A 2019 CDC report confirms 1,282 cases of measles in 31 states – the highest number reported in the U.S. since 1992. This paper also makes clear that the majority of these outbreaks happened amongst people who were not vaccinated. Last year the World Health Organization produced a document entitled “Ten Threats to Global Health in 2019”. Vaccine hesitancy is included in this list along side air pollution and climate change, antimicrobial resistance, Ebola and other high-threat pathogens, and the global influenza pandemic. The WHO reports,

“Vaccine hesitancy – the reluctance or refusal to vaccinate despite the availability of vaccines – threatens to reverse progress made in tackling vaccine-preventable diseases. Vaccination is one of the most cost-efficient ways of avoiding disease – it currently prevents 2-3 million deaths a year, and a further 1.5 million could be avoided if global coverage of vaccinations improved.”

The popularity of the pseudoscience which grounds the anti-vaxxer movement continues to grow. This does not bode well for how things will go when a Covid-19 vaccine is finally discovered and made available. People who refuse to be vaccinated will be putting others’ lives at risk, and will almost certainly be the cause – as they are now – of entirely preventable deaths.

Sagan was referring largely to popular movies and TV shows of the day when he suggested that a “celebration of ignorance” was especially culpable in the “dumbing down of America”. In 1994, the year before Sagan wrote his book, “Beavis and Butt-Head” began its eight year run on MTV to rave reviews, and both “Forrest Gump” and “Dumb and Dumber” were hugely successful, grossing $347 million and $127 million respectively in the American market alone. I honestly think there is something to be said for Sagan’s theory. “The Simpsons”, “Family Guy” and “South Park” all provide satirical social commentary, but only to their more intelligent fans. Many viewers likely take the stupid characters who abound in these shows at face value, laughing at how dumb they are without going any deeper into the subtext of the scripts. The amount of idiocy presented on the surface of these programs may well have helped to normalize stupidity in general to a largely non-discerning audience.

Almost all of the fears Sagan enumerates in the quote from “Demon Haunted World” have unfortunately appeared to come true. This passage proves how acutely attuned he was to the nature of his times, the character of the American people, and the price they would eventually pay for walking heedlessly down such a misguided and self-defeating path. Sagan again proved prescient in the final interview he gave before his death in December of 1996. He said,

“If we are not able to ask skeptical questions, to interrogate those who tell us that something is true, to be skeptical of those in authority, then we’re up for grabs for the next charlatan, political or religious, who comes ambling along.”

Enter Donald Trump.

Body Politic

Media take a very different tact when reporting on women and men, even when the gist of the story is essentially the same. The actor John Goodman has struggled with his body size since his career began almost 40 years ago. His weight has gone up and down, but he has mostly been obese. Goodman has lost over 100 lbs in the last five years or so and continues to keep it off. The singer Adele has also been heavy and had weight fluctuations over the course of her career, and like Goodman she recently became considerably thinner. The tales of these two entertainers are very similar, yet the articles I have read about them are very different in tone. Most stories concerning Goodman say he looks to be at a good weight, whereas several about Adele suggest she is getting too thin. The articles about Goodman suggest that he lost the weight for the sake of his health, and congratulate him on finally overcoming his decades-long struggle with obesity. The pieces about Adele focus almost exclusively on her appearance, saying she “flaunts” and “shows off” her new physique – as though she had a choice about which body to be seen in. They make it seem like the only reason she lost weight was to lord it over others and to garner attention.

I think this obvious bias in reporting is an example of how deeply rooted the objectification of women is in our culture. No one comments on naturally thin actors like Jay Baruchel and D.J. Qualls, whereas anorexia is often suspected in the case of perennially skinny actresses like Lara Flynn Boyle and Calista Flockhart. The men were simply born that way while the women are probably mentally ill. Women’s bodies are subject to constant public dissection and criticism. A perfect example of this occurred during the O.J. Simpson trial when chief prosecutor Marcia Clark, the only professional woman in the courtroom, changed her hairstyle. Media concerning the male jurists in the case dealt solely with their professional merits and courtroom strategies, whereas reports about Ms. Clark repeatedly commented on her personal life and appearance from the very outset of the trial. This scrutiny hit its crescendo when she got a perm. Tabloids at the time ran headlines like, “Hair-Raising Salon Disaster”, “Marcia Hair Verdict: GUILTY”, and “CURLS OF HORROR”. The amount of attention given to her hair is almost unbelievable, especially considering that the trial dealt with the brutal murder and near decapitation of two people. This incident is a testament to how obsessed our culture is with a woman’s appearance to the exclusion of any other consideration – as though her totality as a person were confined to, and a reflection of, the way she looks.

This conflation of a female’s character with her appearance can also be seen in the language used to describe women. If a woman with a round bottom wears a form-fitting dress then she is “asking for it”, and if another with large breasts shows too much cleavage then she is a “slut” or a “skank” or a “ho”. My best friend throughout high school had large breasts which she eventually chose to have reduced. She suffered a lot of low-back pain because of the weight on her chest, and found the cost of extra-support bras prohibitive. She told me that the main reason she opted for the surgery, however, was because, “I’m tired of guys talking to my tits.” The normalization of such language and behaviour means there is no reason for men to change.

Unfortunately many women use these same derogatory terms when describing one another. I believe this behaviour is born of a false myth perpetuated by the patriarchy that women can only succeed by putting one another down, when the patent reality is that we will only rise by lifting each other up. This fable keeps women at each other’s throats and sufficiently distracted that they are unable to coalesce and launch a united assault against the male oligarchy. It is essentially a very effective divide and conquer strategy and one that is used on many oppressed groups.

There are countless instances wherein women, reduced to their garb or general appearance, have been blamed for a man’s poor behaviour. “What were you wearing at the time of the alleged attack?” is often the first question defence attorneys ask victims of sexual assault when they take the stand. They don’t ask people who’ve been car-jacked how tight their pants were, or those who’ve been mugged how much skin they were showing. Women who survive sexual assault are the only victims routinely asked by authorities what they had on at the time of the incident they are reporting. This question implies that women who dress attractively or to accentuate their best features are somehow asking to be violated, which of course minimizes the culpability of the men who assault them.

I recently came across a minor Instagram celebrity named Josh Weed. Weed’s claim to fame is that at 46, after years of being a devout Mormon, husband and father, he came out of the closet. I realize this does not make him a gender expert (nor does he claim to be one), but his many years passing in a rigidly heteronormative culture before diving into a homosexual lifestyle and community give him a unique perspective. Weed writes that he never understood why heterosexual men feel free to dictate and comment on what women wear. He says,

“I think it is absolutely crazy that a man can look at a woman and say, ‘I think you should wear something else, because seeing your skin makes me feel aroused. And that arousal is strong and I haven’t learned how to appropriately manage it. So please change your clothes.’ This is BONKERS…A man’s sexuality is HIS OWN RESPONSIBILITY.”

I have had many gay friends and acquaintances over the years. I have certainly heard these men comment on the attractiveness of another man’s outfit, but never have I heard them suggest that what they are wearing is in any way unacceptable or inappropriate. This sort of judgement seems to be peculiar to heterosexual men in regards to women.

Islamic women made to wear chador are perhaps the most extreme and best-known current example of females whose apparel is completely dictated by men. Women in chador are covered from head to toe as a sign of modesty, but also to ensure they don’t arouse lustful feelings in men. Allah made all things, yet despite this women are held responsible for their tempting curves and therefore must completely obscure their shapes. Allah does not make mistakes, yet somehow every single part of a woman’s anatomy is so potentially corrupting that she must be entirely hidden from view. Every part except her eyes, of course – she needs to be able to see to serve men. Male Islamic leaders (which I think may be redundant) claim this dress code exists to ensure the safety of women. I would argue that it is actually a codified way for men to hobble and subjugate women while simultaneously abrogating responsibility for their own baser urges. Many Islamic countries, including Iran and Saudi Arabia, operate on a system of gender apartheid. Worldwide pressure forced South Africa to abandon their racist policies in 1994. It is now 2020 – where is the global outrage for these women?

I think it’s fair to say that many men feel they are entitled to comment on and command any woman’s body. It’s as though we aren’t fully realized human beings but rather flesh puppets whose worth is based solely on men’s affirmation or approbation. I believe that for a lot of men this principle applies to our thoughts and characters as well. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is the 30-year-old U.S. Representative for New York’s 14th congressional district. Known simply as AOC to her many admirers, she is the face of the young, progressive Democratic block that was elected to Congress in the American mid-term election two years ago. AOC is best known for the Green New Deal and her call for universal healthcare. Needless to say the Republican old-guard in the house – almost exclusively men – are not fans. A few weeks ago a Republican representative from Florida named Ted Yoho came up to AOC as she was going in to work and began berating her, wagging his finger in her face and calling her “crazy”, “shameful” and “disgusting”. AOC proceeded into the building to cast a vote, and when she came out Yoho called her a “f**king bitch” in front of reporters who had gathered on the Capitol steps.

It wasn’t long before word of Yoho’s comments became known to the Republican leadership. He was told to publicly address the incident and he consequently made a rather lame apology in Congress. He started by saying, “I rise to apologize for the abrupt manner of the conversation I had with my colleague from New York.” then continued, “The offensive name-calling words attributed to me by the press were never spoken to my colleague.” Yoho finished by saying, “I cannot apologize for my passion or loving my God, my family and my country.” Somewhere in the middle he also mentioned that he has a wife and two daughters and therefore knows better than to speak rudely to a woman.

AOC responded to his comments a few days later on the house floor. She first pointed out that they were not having a conversation, but rather that Mr. Yoho had come up to her unbidden and verbally assaulted her. Next she suggested that apologizing for a behaviour and then saying you only did it out of love for God and country is simply a way to abrogate responsibility while pandering to elemental feelings. She also mentioned that he never denied using offensive words – he really couldn’t because members of the press overheard him – but rather said that they were not spoken directly to her. In other words, it may be true he called her a “f**king bitch”, but that was okay because it wasn’t to her face.

The best part of AOC’s response came when she addressed Yoho’s claim that having a wife and daughters makes him sensitive to the language he uses around women. She reminded Mr. Yoho that she too is a daughter, and that his public bullying and inappropriate name-calling give tacit approval for other men to mistreat the women in his family. You are not exempt from blame when you victimize one woman just because you care about another. Rapists and domestic abusers probably all love their mothers, but so what.

The saddest part of AOC’s speech was her acknowledgement that every women, every one of us, has had to deal with this sort of treatment, “…in some form, some shape, some way at some time in our lives.” She went on to say that she was not personally offended by Mr. Yoho’s comments or behaviour because until recently she had lived and worked her whole life in New York City, so, “…this kind of language is not new.” While I’m sure most of the offensive comments she got from men in New York related to her appearance, the abuse she endured from Yoho was about her ideas and beliefs, and called into question her value, sanity, and character.

The most noteworthy thing about AOC’s manner throughout her speech was her incredible calmness. She never raised her voice, she said more than once that she didn’t take Mr. Yoho’s comments personally, and she never showed any real passion. I believe her delivery was well thought out and necessarily unemotional. Historically women who speak forcefully or, heaven forfend, get angry in public are called “hysterical” in a bid to undermine their arguments. The word implies that their outrage is not justified but rather a manifestation of hormones run amok. It’s really sad that AOC couldn’t rant and rage against the way Mr. Yoho treated her, but openly expressing righteous indignation has always been the exclusive domain of men.

AOC is not the first woman to be publicly chastised and harassed by a man, nor will she be the last. One need look no further than the sitting American president to see how free men are to openly criticize and judge a woman’s appearance, and to undermine and slander her character. If this sort of treatment is condoned in the public sphere, you can imagine how much worse it is in private. I once saw an interview with three congresswomen who all said that they regularly receive death threats via email and texts, as well as countless derogatory comments about their looks. They went on to quote some of these incredibly insulting remarks, but the one which really stuck with me is, “You are too ugly to rape.”

There are of course many other examples of how prevalent sexism still is – a massive porn industry with ever-increasing scenes of women being demeaned and raped, widespread sex trafficking, and tens of millions of girls worldwide being denied an education. I wish I could wrap this article up with a tidy solution to this deep and pervasive problem, but there simply isn’t one. Maybe a good start would be for women to start having each other’s backs, and for men to start calling out other men when they speak to or about women in disparaging ways. I’ve noticed that young men seem to be more willing to see women as equals, and this gives me hope. I know any change that happens, however, will be hard fought and won, and slow to materialize.

Trans Substantiation

Political correctness has made public discourse an absolute minefield. People who say the “wrong” thing are facing swift and sometimes devastating consequences. Right at the beginning of the “MeToo” movement, Matt Damon said, “There’s a difference between patting someone on the butt and rape,” and that while both behaviours definitely need to be eradicated “…they shouldn’t be conflated.” His timing was terrible, but that doesn’t invalidate his point. Damon’s comment was met with a tsunami of very personal attacks on social media. Professors have lost their jobs for saying slurs in the context of direct quotes, and researchers have been fired for pointing out that there is a genetic difference between males and females. We live in the time of outrage culture, with politically correct people taking enormous offence at the slightest comment or action they deem unacceptable. These self-proclaimed social justice warriors are so focussed on upholding their hyper-righteousness that they have turned into predators, with every individual who doesn’t meet their standards becoming their hapless prey.

I recently saw a perfect example of this single-minded moral superiority during a Black Lives Matter protest in L.A. following the murder of George Floyd. A black woman was filming her progress during the march when she came across two young white women spray-painting “Black Lives Matter” on the front of a Starbucks. The black woman walked up to them and asked them to please stop defacing the building as black people would undoubtedly be blamed for the damage. The two white women continued what they were doing, choosing to ignore the black woman’s escalating pleas for them to stop. Eventually they finished the final “r”, put the caps on their spray cans, and walked away. Not once did they acknowledge the black woman, let alone address her concerns. These two white women were so sure that they were on the right side of this issue that they seemingly had no qualms about completely dismissing an actual black person. Black lives may matter, but clearly black opinions don’t.

A major problem with this myopic morality is that it makes discourse of any kind impossible, and nowhere is this more true than in relation to the issues of gender and sex. Ricky Gervais hosted the Golden Globe Awards three years in a row starting in 2010, and many people found his style abrasive. When he was asked to host again in 2016 he began the evening by saying,

“I’m gonna be nice tonight – I’ve changed. Not as much as Bruce Jenner. Now Caitlyn Jenner, what a year she’s had. She became a role model for trans people everywhere, showing great bravery in breaking down barriers and destroying stereotypes. She didn’t do a lot for women drivers, but you can’t have everything; not at the same time.”

The previous year Bruce Jenner had escaped being charged in a car accident that killed another driver even though he was almost certainly at fault. Gervais acknowledges Jenner’s courage in the set-up to his joke, and the punchline has absolutely nothing to do with her gender reassignment, and still people called him transphobic. It turns out they objected to Gervais calling Jenner by her male, or “dead”, name, even though Jenner herself had no problem with it. This is how members of the outrage culture often operate – they take umbrage on behalf of others with no regard for whether those people are offended or not.

Ricky Gervais is a grown man and can easily defend himself against such ridiculous attacks, but sometimes young, naive people get caught up in the P.C. wars. Abigail Shrier is a reporter for the Wall Street Journal. A couple of years ago she started getting calls from people asking her to investigate a strange phenomenon. They were parents of teenage girls, and all of their daughters had suddenly announced that they were trans. These parents all insisted that they supported the LGBTQ community, but were baffled by what was happening because none of their daughters had ever said or done anything in the past to indicate that they felt this way. Shrier is an opinion journalist, so she asked some investigative colleagues if they would like to look into this. Every one of them declined. Issues surrounding gender and sex are an absolute quagmire right now, and none of them wanted to be drawn into that mess regardless of the timeliness or importance of the story.

Shrier was touched by the desperation of the parents who’d contacted her and decided, after exhausting every other option, to do some preliminary research on the story herself. First she looked up information about body dysphoria. Individuals who suffer from this mental ailment are made depressed, anxious and dissatisfied by their own bodies. Trans individuals have gender dysphoria and feel that their gender does not match their biological body. The negative symptoms of gender dysphoria disappear when people suffering from it have their gender reassigned. Historically this condition has presented overwhelmingly in males, and generally first surfaces when they are only 2 or 3 years old. This diagnosis can be made even in very young children because they demonstrate a particular group of symptoms; they actively reject the clothes, toys and games typical for their birth sex, they associate exclusively with friends of the opposite gender, they are often disgusted by their own genitals, and they believe that they will grow into an adult of the opposite sex because that’s who they truly are. A child is diagnosed with gender dysphoria if these behaviours and beliefs persist for more than six months. The majority of children who present with these symptoms grow up and realize that they are in fact homosexual. A small minority of them, 0.01% of the general population, truly have gender dysphoria and only feel comfortable in their bodies when they change their sexual appearance.

Finding this information led Shrier to understand how anomalous these self-identifying trans teenage girls were. Gender dysphoria is much rarer in girls than boys, it almost always presents in childhood, and for most individuals, lasts for years. These adolescent girls had all just suddenly announced that they were trans without previously presenting even the slightest indication that this might be the case. Also, the girls were appearing in clusters. Entire friend groups were coming out on social media as trans at around the same time. This led Shrier to an article published in 2018 by Dr. Lisa Littman, an OB-GYN, entitled, “Rapid-Onset Gender Dysphoria in Adolescents and Young Adults: A Study of Parental Reports”. Dr. Littman coined the phrase “rapid-onset gender dysphoria” to describe the increasing number of teenage girls suddenly diagnosing themselves as transgender – exactly the phenomenon parents were reporting to Shrier.

Littman began looking into this situation when she noticed that an unusual pattern had developed in her own community, “…whereby friends from the same friend group began announcing transgender identities on social media, one after the other, on a scale that greatly exceeded expected numbers.” She spoke to several doctors who were encountering the same situation in their practices. Littman contacted the parents of many of these girls, and they all described their daughters becoming, “…sullen, withdrawn and hostile towards their families” after announcing their transgender identities. Parents also told her that the clinicians they had consulted about the situation “…were only interested in fast-tracking gender-affirmation and transition and were resistant to even evaluating the child’s pre-existing and current mental health issues.”

The World Professional Association for Transgender Health (or WPATH) states in its 2012 Standard of Care document that people who have gender dysphoria need to consult medical professionals for diagnosis and throughout whatever treatment regimen they choose to follow. In the very next paragraph it says that hormone therapy should be provided to anyone who gives informed consent, including emancipated minors. This directive is included to ensure necessary treatments are freely available to trans people – treatments which historically have often been withheld due to medical ignorance and/or prejudice. Trans advocates seem to have latched on to the statement promoting ease of access while almost completely disregarding the one endorsing medical oversight.

Adolescence is an extremely difficult and confusing time. Most teens feel insecure about their looks and are made anxious by the looming spectre of sexual relations. Girls in particular are prone to massive insecurity in relation to their developing bodies, and an ever increasing number self-harm to help alleviate the stress, while still others develop body dysmorphia and become bulimic or anorexic in response to it. These maladaptations tend to happen in clusters, with female social groups all starting to demonstrate the same behaviour at around the same time. Researchers speculate that these girls all follow suit partially as a sign of solidarity, but also because the first one to try the behaviour reports how much better they feel as a consequence, so they all jump on board. Who doesn’t want to feel better?

Girls with eating disorders and who self-harm are rewarded internally – anorexia and bulimia both give girls a feeling of power and control over their burgeoning bodies, and cutting involves pain which in turn releases endorphins that elevate the mood. The groups of girls suddenly claiming they are transgender aren’t intrinsically rewarded for their behaviour, but rather receive massive amounts of affirmation and support from pro trans individuals and groups online. They are immediately embraced by these communities at a time when they are absolutely desperate for acceptance. These online cheerleaders encourage the girls to embrace their new trans selves, and to start transitioning as soon as possible. Unfortunately this advice can have unintended negative consequences, and all parties involved are often unaware that there are any risks at all.

Firstly, gender dysphoria is a specific diagnosis with a specific cure, and many of these girls are immediately going on testosterone and putting on breast binders without medical approval or supervision at the urging of their new social media “friends”. Secondly, a lot of online trans communities are exceptionally distrustfully of cisgender people and consequently advise these impressionable girls to pull away from their families at a time when they really need their parents’ guidance and support. Thirdly, most of these girls are 13 to 15 years old, meaning they don’t yet fully know their own minds and are also tremendously suggestible. Online pro trans communities don’t seem to take the age of these girls into consideration at all, and unquestioningly support them in a self-diagnosis which could be totally baseless and therefore detrimental to their psychological and physical well-being.

The vast majority of these girls realize after a year or two that they are not transgender, but for many irreparable damage has already been done. The binders they wear to flatten their developing breasts lead to shortness of breath, cracked ribs, and more alarmingly, deformed breast tissue. This means their breasts can end up looking abnormal, sometimes cannot secrete milk, and are more prone to develop cancer because the mammary lymph glands are unable to drain properly. Many of these girls, in the States at least, are given testosterone as soon as they self-diagnose. Testosterone leads to immediate feelings of strength and well-being, as well as redistributing fat on the body, making one appear thinner. Extended use of testosterone is quite a different story. It has been linked to severe problems for these young women, such as permanent facial and body hair, an increased risk of heart attack, and infertility.

There are some U.S. States where the age of informed consent is as low as 15, and there is no way children younger than this, emancipated or otherwise, should be allowed to make the decision to take hormones without adult consent and supervision. The blanket statement of access to hormones issued in the WPATH document makes it impossible for parents to intervene on behalf of their children despite knowing that they are heading down a very dangerous and sometimes completely incorrect path. Shrier found that many of these confused, self-identifying girls go to Planned Parenthood, give their informed consent, and walk out with testosterone that same day. When she talked to clinicians about providing hormones without any psychological or physical assessment of the patient, they all pointed to the WPATH document. Denying this treatment inevitably leads to online and sometimes in person character assassination and harassment by pro trans groups and individuals, and none of them were willing to pay that price.

Shrier has recently published a book on this topic called “Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing our Daughters.” She did countless interviews with trans men and women, most of whom were appalled that some members and supporters of their community were being so incautious with the health of children. She also spoke with clinicians who work with trans patients and surgeons who specialize in gender reassignment procedures, along with the parents of self-identifying trans teens and, most importantly, many of the girls themselves. All of these teenagers said they had been seduced by the overwhelming acceptance and support of online pro-trans communities. One of them summed it up this way, “There’s just so much positive reinforcement that there’s just no room at all for any criticism or any thought that something bad could be happening.” Several of them compared the experience to being in a cult.

I understand and respect how committed these online groups and individuals are to gaining full acceptance for trans people, but I have to draw the line when their blind adherence to the cause harms others. Adult trans advocates who communicated with these girls should have proceeded much more slowly as soon as they learned how young they were. Questions should have been asked, caution should have been advised, and parents should have been involved. I for one am grateful that Abigail Shrier has brought this heart-breaking problem to light in the hopes that some constructive steps can be taken to protect vulnerable girls in future.

I think it’s wonderful that trans men and women are finally able to publicly transition and express their true selves, and I have frankly never understood why anyone would find this problematic or distasteful. Firstly, its nobody else’s business what a person does with their own body, and secondly the way a person looks or who they love has absolutely no bearing on their intrinsic value as a fellow human being. I have heard Abigail Shrier express similar sentiments, and explicitly say that this book is in no way an indictment of trans people or their supporters. She is simply shedding light on a particular problem concerning the welfare of young girls which happens to involve some members of the trans community. Despite this she has been labelled transphobic, and is currently being regularly insulted, harassed and threatened on social media. She is unfortunately the latest in a long line of people who have unwittingly stepped into the minefield of political correctness.

The Harder they Fall

I am a unionist. I was a member of three different unions throughout my working life, spending the last 19 years of my career in the Elementary Teachers’ Federation of Ontario. I paid my dues, used my benefits, and now draw on a pension sufficient for my needs. Unions are by and large a very good thing for workers, but that doesn’t mean their members agree with everything they do. A couple of years ago ETFO decided that all schools named after Sir John A. Macdonald should be rechristened because of his mistreatment of aboriginal people. The union did not consult its members before taking this decision, nor did it bother to inform us before announcing it. Perhaps they were afraid that there would be too much pushback from high school history teachers. Certainly Macdonald treated Aboriginal Canadians badly, but this was not atypical at the time.

It is never fair to base one’s entire perception of an individual on things they have done without considering their motivations, as well as the historical, political and societal context in which they acted. Macdonald did displace several tribes in his efforts to build the Trans Canada Railway, and he did order his agents to withhold food from native populations, but he was pushed into both these decisions. He tried to be fair in the former instance by paying for indigenous lands through treaties, but other politicians disagreed with this idea. They filed suit with an Ontario court claiming that aboriginal people had never owned the land in the first place, so no money was owing. In 1880 the court ruled in their favour, stating, “…there is no Indian title in law or in equity. The claim of the Indians is simply moral and no more.” Morality clearly held no water with the court, and Macdonald was thus legally barred from paying natives for their land.

As to starving tribes into submission, he did that in response to concerns from the opposition that his government was wasting money feeding the Cree – a program he had initiated. He instructed his agents to stop handing out food in order to placate his parliamentary opponents as much as to blackmail aboriginal leaders into giving up their land. In 1880 Macdonald acknowledged that indigenous peoples had been dealt a losing hand by Europeans, stating,

“At all events, the Indians have been great sufferers by the discovery of America, and the transfer to it of a large white population.”

Macdonald proved himself well ahead of his time with this statement. He was actually quite tolerant in comparison to those around him – he had Irish and native friends, and he advocated for unity with French speakers.

Modern day detractors also want to remove all monuments to Macdonald because he imposed the Chinese head tax. Some 17,000 Chinese men were brought to Canada between 1880 and 1884 to complete the Trans Canada Railway. They were paid $1 a day, out of which they had to pay for food and lodgings consisting of make-shift tents woefully inadequate for the climate. It is estimated that at least 600 of them died in accidents during the railway’s construction. Many of them wanted to stay in Canada after the job was completed and so began sending for their families. Macdonald responded by putting a $50 head tax on every Chinese national entering the country as of 1885.

The research I did for this article readily provided evidence that Macdonald was unsure about the head tax, but imposed it anyway to appease both his fellow parliamentarians and the Canadian public at large. People on the west coast were so adamantly against Chinese immigration that there were numerous anti-Chinese riots in Vancouver even years after the tax was imposed. Macdonald railed against Chinese immigrants the day this measure was voted into law, but privately said the policy,

“…may be right or it may be wrong, it may be prejudice or it may be otherwise, but the prejudice is near universal.”

In other words, he wasn’t convinced of the tax’s merit, but he tabled it to satisfy the people. This “universal” prejudice was in the hearts of white Canadians.

The Canada in which Macdonald lived was populated almost entirely by individuals we would now call white supremacists. Blacks were banned from bars in Toronto, B.C. residents saw Asians as a threat to racial purity, and pretty much everyone was fine with the idea of the native way of life being extinguished entirely. Macdonald was merely enacting the will of the people in his dealings with aboriginal populations and Asian immigrants. Isn’t that what leaders in a representative democracy are supposed to do?

It is so easy to cast aspersions on people who lived in radically different times for not living up to modern standards, but that is a slippery slope with virtually no bottom. George Brown, a Father of Confederation, was a staunch abolitionist and promoted harmony between blacks and whites while simultaneous being vocally anti-semitic and harbouring a deep mistrust of Catholics and the Irish. When people displaced by the potato famine began landing on our shores, Brown wrote that they were as much of a curse to Canada as “…were the locusts to the land of Egypt.” Sir Wilfred Laurier rose the Chinese head tax to $500, and said it was moral for Canadians to steal property from “…savage nations” because under native rule Canada would “… forever have remained barren and unproductive.”

Leaders in the 20th century also acted in racist ways in reaction to, and as a reflection of, their times. Both P.M. MacKenzie King and President Franklin Roosevelt set up Japanese internment camps during World War 2. Roosevelt took the decision in response to the bombing of Pearl Harbour and because of concerns about Japanese loyalty to the U.S. once war was declared on Japan. King had similar concerns about national security, but also moved Japanese families away from the coast in response to violent riots targeting Japanese Canadians staged by whites in Vancouver. Being a feminist I would be remiss if I didn’t also mention that women got the vote in Canada in 1922, and were not given “personhood” status until 1929. Any man of note before these dates was almost certainly sexist if not downright misogynistic by modern standards.

There is absolutely no way any of these men could possibly satisfy the current P.C. police. The ideas we promulgate now – of equal rights for all people regardless of race, creed, religion, sex, gender or sexual orientation – were completely unthought of by previous generations. Caucasian North Americans paid lip-service to such ideals in founding documents, but in reality were horribly bigoted. The vast majority of white Christian men and women felt they were intrinsically better than members of other races and religions, and the men also believed they were innately superior to women. It is patently unfair to hold famous men to a higher standard of humanity and egalitarianism than the average person of their time.

These men did important, noteworthy, often nation-building things that merit commemoration. It makes no sense to try and erase them from history by pulling down monuments erected to their memory or rechristening buildings named in their honour. I would suggest the solution is to insist on a more rounded portrayal of them. Most statues bear plaques enumerating the accomplishments of their subjects, so why not simply add more information to these descriptions? Sure he did this wonderful thing, but he also did this terrible thing. Adding additional details would provide viewers a balanced representation of the person being commemorated, thus allowing them to draw more thoughtful conclusions about that individual’s overall merit. Also, school textbooks need to contain more thorough and truthful depictions of men like Macdonald and Brown, tempered by information about the general feelings of superiority held by the average white Canadian at the time. Textbooks need to contextualize the information they convey, explaining the broader society in which historical events occurred.

I suspect that my union’s insistence on taking Sir John A. Macdonald’s name off of Ontario schools was an example of virtue signalling. It was their way of saying, “Look how woke we are. Kudos to us!” Their decision undervalues the massive importance to our country of the man they are thus disparaging, and overlooks the pressures and realities that forced him into his most racist acts. Perhaps a better way forward for teachers’ federations would be to insist on a history curriculum that includes an exploration of the long-standing mistreatment of indigenous and non-white people in Canada at large, and to ensure that schools built in the future are dedicated to Indigenous Canadians who have made a difference. Sir John A. Macdonald was not a bad man for treating natives and Chinese immigrants poorly; he was simply an average 19th century white man who acted on political imperatives and the prevailing norms of his time. Luckily for us he founded our nation in the process.

Turkey (not) in the Straw

The first place Douglas and I visited in Turkey after Istanbul was the ancient city of Ephesus. Ephesus had a population of some 225,000 people in its heyday. The largest temple ever built to the Greek goddess Artemis – currently one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient world – is located just outside the city walls, and not surprisingly most of the cities inhabitants numbered themselves among her followers. The city was originally situated in Greece and served as a major port for various countries and empires from its founding in about 600 BC until it was destroyed by the Goths in 262 AD. The Roman emperor Constantine put money into the restoration of Ephesus a century later, paying for a new public bath and rebuilding the Church of St. Mary. This effectively claimed the city as an early Christian stronghold. The Emperor Justinian added to Ephesus’s importance to the Orthodox church in the 6th century by building the magnificent Basilica of St. John over the supposed site of the apostle’s tomb. The city’s port silted over during the course of the next several hundred years and Ephesus was just a small, unimportant town by the early middle ages. It languished in obscurity until 1863 when J.T. Wood, an archeologist from the British Museum, began excavations there. Wood unearthed many fantastic, immaculately preserved ruins over the next 10 years including several temples, the odeum (a small performance space), and an enormous 25,000 seat amphitheatre.

The first thing you see when you enter Ephesus is the two-story façade of the Library of Celsus. It looks rather like the entrance to Petra in Jordan – the site used as the entrance to the location of the Holy Grail in “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade”. The only difference is that whereas Petra’s columns and arches are carved into stone, those of the Library of Celsus are freestanding. Ephesus is home to temples honouring both Greek and Roman gods, broad stone avenues lined with huge columns, and pristine terraced houses. The amphitheatre is utterly enormous and, like many other ruins in the city, is mostly intact. What I really loved about our day in Ephesus was that we were allowed absolute free range. The ruins I’d visited in Greece and Italy, Pompeii in particular, had large areas cordoned off. Ephesus, on the other hand, was wide open. It was wonderful to be able to wander down any street and into any building, giving one a feeling for the size and history of the place as well as instilling a tangible sense of how grand and ornate it must have been in its day.

From Ephesus we headed to Pamukkale – pronounced PAM-mu-KAL-ay and meaning “cotton castle” in Turkish. One look at this amazing World Heritage Site and you know exactly why it was so named. Pamukkale is traversed by numerous calcium rich mineral springs, and their waters leave a pure white residue all over the landscape. The entire area is so white that at first glance it looks like Antarctica or as though it had been smeared with a thick layer of vanilla icing, like a gingerbread house decorated by an overly enthusiastic child. The brilliant white terraced hills of Pamukkale are dotted with deep turquoise pools, each filled with perfectly heated, velvety water. Douglas and I went there early in the morning so we pretty much had the place to ourselves. There was a stray dog hanging about, and as we lowered ourselves into one of the hillside pools the dog came and sat beside us. We relaxed in the hot, welcoming water, petting our new friend and silently sharing the extraordinary vista before us. I fear my words cannot do justice to how breathtaking and almost surreal Pamukkale is, but if you look up some images online then you’ll get a sense of what I’m talking about.

Right next to Pamukkale is Hierapolis, a Hellenistic city built sometime around 300 BC that eventually became a spa town for Roman elites in the 2nd and 3rd centuries AD. Here we found a necropolis (ancient cemetery) with almost 2 km of sarcophagi lined up end-to-end, and a very well preserved amphitheatre. There was no charge to enter the city and we were allowed to ramble about at our leisure, just like at Ephesus. The coolest feature of Hierapolis, and the one fellow travellers told us we absolutely couldn’t miss, is the Antique Pool. The Greeks originally built Hierapolis, digging numerous pools to take advantage of its therapeutic waters and gracing it with a large Temple of Apollo. There was a major earthquake in the city in 17 BC which toppled several of the temple’s columns, along with their tops and bottoms (capitals and plinths), into the Antique Pool. They remain there to this day. Imagine luxuriating in perfectly heated, crystal-blue water while floating around and resting on ancient ruins, and you’ll get a sense of what swimming in the Antique Pool is like. I looked up Hierapolis for this article and there is now a charge to enter the city and yet another one to swim in the Antique Pool. Also, there were masses of people in the water in every picture I found. The only other person Douglas and I saw when we visited was a lackadaisical guard who gave us a wave and a smile as he slowly shuffled past on his rounds. I’m so grateful we got to have that experience without having to deal with hordes of other tourists.

We took a ferry across the Bosphorus into the Asian part of Turkey shortly after our visit to Hierapolis. Our first stop there was the city of Bursa. The food in Turkey is consistently good but rather limited. I like a skewered lamb kebab as much as the next guy, but it can get a bit monotonous. Bursa is known for a different kind of kebab – thinly cut grilled lamb piled on warm pita topped with hot tomato sauce and then slathered with melted sheep butter and yogurt. Very rich and very satisfying. We booked into a hotel famed for its excellent Bursa kebabs, and then went off to the local bath to clean up before our meal. This bath was unusual because it offered rooms for couples, and we were both excited to share this novel experience.

The Turkish bath, or hammam, came to prominence during the Ottoman’s reign and has been world famous since the late 19th century when it became a craze in Victorian England and subsequently spread to the whole of the British Empire. A bath starts in an extremely hot room which opens up all of your pores – kind of like a sauna but with dry heat. Next you have the option of either hitting an even hotter room or going directly to the bathing room where you soap up and rinse away all of the dirt and toxins leeched out in your sweat. Men then have a massage, although that option is not available to women. Douglas later told me the massage consisted of his muscles being pummelled by the masseur’s fists, followed by his limbs being stretched and pulled into positions they didn’t normally take. I was no longer annoyed at being denied the experience after hearing this description. Douglas and I shared a small, cool dressing room at the beginning and end of the process, but otherwise were segregated for the actual bathing. We didn’t know we could hang out in our room to fully cool off before putting on our clothes, and consequently left the building with our core temperatures through the roof.

I felt nauseous and dizzy with body heat when we returned to the hotel, and was still quite ill an hour later when we sat down to eat our famous kebabs. There was a lovely breeze on the restaurant patio that evening, and the waiter brought us a large container of iced lemon water right after we were seated. I slugged down two full glasses as soon as the pitcher hit the table, and almost immediately my stomach began to settle and my head to clear. The combination of hydrating and sitting in the gentle wind soon began to revive my spirits as well, and by the time our meals came I was feeling better than I had in some time – purified, revitalized, and supremely grateful for the delicious food before me.

From Bursa we headed east to Konya, best known as the resting place of the Persian poet Rumi and as the home of the Whirling Dervishes. Rumi lived in Konya for the last dozen or so years of his life, and his mystical Islamic poetry is still revered by Muslims worldwide as well as being available in several different English translations. The Whirling Dervishes are members of a small sub-sect of Sunni Islam called the Mevlevi Order. They live cloistered lives dedicated to the pursuit of beauty and love as expressed through the arts, ultimately in celebration of Allah. The ceremony in which the Mevlevi whirl is called the Ritual of Sema, and is described thusly in a site called “All About Turkey”,

“The fundamental condition of our existence is to revolve. There is no object, no being which does not revolve. The shared similarity between all created things is the revolution of the electrons, protons and neutrons within the atoms that constitute their basic structure. From the smallest cell to the planets and the farthest stars, everything takes part in this revolving. Thus, the Semazens, the ones who whirl, participate consciously in the shared revolution of all existence.”

The discovery of atoms was several hundred years away when the Dervishes first appeared in the 13th century. This is a rather slick, albeit very cool modern take on a rite which at its heart is a joyous celebration of the creator and his creation. The whirling was originally accompanied only by the spoken word, but Rumi added music to the proceedings. His artistic influence turned Mevlevi meeting places into academies of art, music and dance during the Ottoman Empire.

Douglas and I saw a Ritual of Sema while we were in Konya. The Dervishes wear white flowing skirts and short vests open in the front, with broad swathes of black fabric wound about their waists and red fezes on their heads. The band is comprised of several pipers and drummers and, if memory serves, two male chanters. The words and music are slow and hypnotic in the beginning, and the Dervishes start out turning at the same leisurely pace. As the ceremony continues, however, the velocity of the dancers picks up in tandem with the tempo and volume of the music. By the end, the Dervishes are simply white blurs. They rotate so fast that centrifugal force causes their flowing skirts to levitate up and out until they are floating parallel to the ground. The whole experience is extremely dramatic and incredibly moving. It’s absolutely amazing how long these men can whirl. I had guessed before they began that they probably stay upright by using a technique called spotting – a method dancers and skaters use to keep from losing their balance when they twirl. Spotting consists of concentrating on a particular spot in the distance before beginning a turn, and then bringing your eyes back to that very spot every time you rotate all the way around. This tricks the mind into thinking that you are not spinning at all. It became clear as soon as they began that such a strategy was not in play with the Dervishes because they all had their eyes closed. Perhaps the rhythmic chanting, music and motion sends them into a trance-like state wherein corporeal concerns like dizziness and nausea no longer apply. As for me, I can’t even stand on one foot with my eyes closed without almost immediately toppling over!

We left Turkey about a week later from the capital city of Ankara. We had a whole afternoon to kill before taking an overnight train to Novi Sad, a city in what was then Yugoslavia, so we decided to take one last bath. Douglas and I could not go together as the male and female sections of the bathhouse were totally separate, so we decided to meet up at a cafe across from the train station when we were finished. This was the third time I’d been to a Turkish bath, so I felt I was something of an expert. I took off my clothes, put on a towel from the waist down, and proceeded to the hot room to start the process. I had been steeping in the first room for some time when a woman came in. Like me she had a towel wrapped around her lower half, but unlike me she had the most enormous, pendulous breasts I had ever seen. So large, in fact, that it was really hard not to stare. She motioned for me to follow her and so, eyes averted, I did.

The woman led me into a cavernous, extremely hot room with a huge marble platform in the middle, spigots all around the walls, and water on every surface. I sat down on the marble slab at her urging, and she proceeded to fill up a bucket and grab a face cloth. She them began scrubbing my back with the cloth, periodically holding it up to my face to show me how soiled it was becoming while opening her eyes wide and making incredulous clucking noises like, “Wow – just look at how filthy you were!” It was a little embarrassing, but mostly I remember thinking, “How the hell did my back get so dirty!?” The woman indicated that I should lie down after she’d finished scouring an alarming amount of black guck from my back, and I mutely complied. Once down she yanked my arms up over my head, straddled my body, and commenced giving the same cleansing treatment to my hands, arms and underarms. Now her massive mammaries were dangling directly in my face, smashing into my nose and cheeks as she scrubbed my armpits and threatening to smother me as she reached forward to clean my outstretched arms. I knew I was extremely clean after that bath, but somehow I still felt dirty.

I got to the cafe before Douglas and ordered a coffee to sip while I waited. Before long a man came and asked in broken English if he could sit with me, and I of course said yes. It’s always nice to speak to local people when you are travelling. The young man ordered a coffee of his own and it was clear from the halting way he spoke to the waiter that he wasn’t a Turk. We established that I was from Canada and planning on leaving Turkey that very night after almost a full month in the country. He then told me that he was in fact Iranian and that he had done a tour of duty in the Iran-Iraq war which was raging at the time. The war had been going on for so long that veterans like himself were being called to repeat their service, and he had escaped the country under cover of night to avoid going back to the front. He explained that he had a wife and two young children and, finally getting to the point of the story, asked if there was any way I could sponsor him to come to Canada. He hoped to get established there and then send for his family.

I was unsure how to answer when I noticed Douglas across the street. I told the man that my husband was coming, and he was so alarmed by the news that he jumped up from his chair and sent it flying. He cried out, “He will be killing me for this! He will kill me for talking at you!”, and I assured him that no such thing would happen. Clearly that was a definite possibility if an unknown man spoke to a married woman in Iran, but that wasn’t how things worked with us Canadians. Sure enough when Douglas reached our table I simply introduced the two men, they shook hands, and then we all had some coffee together. The notion of being sponsored seemed to evaporate as soon as it became clear that I was married.

We left Turkey on that sad note, but the plight of one man couldn’t sully what had otherwise been a fantastic trip to what is indeed a beautiful, diverse, and historically significant country. Turkey was wide open and welcoming when I travelled there in the 80’s, and I will always be grateful for the many wonderful memories I hold of the unique experiences and glorious sights I encountered there.

Istanbul (not Constantinople)

Turkey is a geographically diverse and historically significant country. It is home to Troy, the setting for Homer’s timeless epic “The Iliad”, and the city of Ephesus, whose Christian population received a letter from St. Paul which later became “Ephesians” – the tenth book of the New Testament. Turkey straddles Asia and Europe with the Bosphorus, a narrow strait running through Istanbul, demarcating the official boundary between the two continents. The Bosphorus was extremely important in ancient times as it is the only maritime route between the Black Sea and the Mediterranean and Aegean Seas, giving the empire or country that controlled it a huge trade advantage.

The small European part of modern Turkey west of the Bosphorus was known to the ancient Greeks and Romans as Thrace. Thrace was part of the Roman Empire until its demise in AD 476, making way for the ascendance of the Byzantine Empire in Eastern Europe. Constantine, the first Roman emperor to adopt Christianity, had left Rome after his conversion in AD 330 and made Byzantium, the capital of the Byzantine Empire, his new home. He decided to rename the city after himself (I guess he missed all the sermons about humility), and Constantinople was born.

The Byzantine Empire held sway until the 14th Century when a new movement spread westward from Anatolia – the ancient name for the Asian part of Turkey. The Ottomans rose up from the dusty planes and created an empire which would span from the eastern border of Austria to the Persian Gulf, taking in a large swath of North Africa along the way. For 600 years the Ottoman sultans ruled over this huge area until the First World War finally took their empire down. The title of Ottoman Sultan was eliminated in 1922 and the new Republic of Turkey was formed the following year. Turkish leaders wanted to leave every vestige of their imperial past behind and consequently decided to rename Constantinople, their largest city, Istanbul – a new name for a new country.

Istanbul is a sprawling cosmopolitan city with some seventeen million inhabitants. My husband Douglas and I visited there in 1985. We had initially planned on only spending a couple of days in the city before heading east into the interior of the country, but it was so packed with historically significant buildings and sites that we ended up staying a full week. The first place we decided to visit in Istanbul was Topkapi Palace, the opulent home of the Ottoman sultans.

We had been on the road for several months before arriving in Turkey, and getting around had been relatively easy because they either spoke English or a Romance language in all of the countries we’d visited. Turkish, on the other hand, was completely foreign in both its written and spoken forms. The Turks had customs which were totally unfamiliar as well. We went to the Istanbul bus station on the day we determined to visit Topkapi, and were pretty sure that we had joined the correct line for the bus that serviced the palace. When it was finally my turn to board, I asked the driver if this was indeed the Topkapi bus. He responded by lifting his eyebrows and tilting his head up and back in a gesture which I’d always known to mean, “Yes. Come ahead.” I consequently climbed the first step and the bus driver responded by straightening his arm and thrusting the palm of his hand towards my face, exactly like a police officer directing traffic to stop. Confused, I again said, “Topkapi?”, he again jerked his brows and head back, and I began to take the second step when his flattened hand again appeared to halt my progress. I looked back at Douglas in utter confusion when a man further back in the line told us in halting English that a head raised in reply to a question in Turkey meant “No.” Seemed counter-intuitive to me, but there it was. The man then pointed us towards the correct bus and we thanked him for his help.

The facade of Topkapi Palace is comprised of a large door recessed in a massive stone arch, topped with crenelations (zig-zag stonework designed to allow archers defending the castle a clear shot at the enemy), and framed by two tall towers crowned with shingled spires. The sultans clearly took their cue for the exterior of the building from medieval European castles rather than from traditional Muslim ones – it looks more like a small version of the Disney castle than an eastern sultan’s palace. Inside, however, the design is thoroughly Islamic, with arched ceilings, scrolled panels and stunning tile-work throughout. The sultan’s wives and concubines were housed in the seraglio (harem), a sequestered part of the palace overseen by eunuchs – castrated servants whose sole purpose was to care for the sultan’s women. Topkapi also has a glorious courtyard in the centre, overflowing with fragrant flowers and ornate fountains, all surrounded by beautifully apportioned colonnades (exterior hallways featuring a series of paired columns marching down either side).

As impressive as the building itself is, the artifacts it contains are even more breathtaking. There are solid gold tea services, candle sticks, pitchers, bowls, and trays. Actually, picture just about any household item in solid gold and you’ll start to get an idea of the breadth of the gold collection. Then there is the weaponry – innumerable daggers and swords all housed in lavishly decorated sheaths. As beautiful as all these items are, they pale in comparison to the Sultan’s Jewels. This part of the collection is comprised of every type of jewelry ever made covered in various combinations of every precious stone known to man. There are also small chests overflowing with gems of every description as well as individual rubies and emeralds and sapphires so enormous as to strain credulity. This collection put me in mind of the treasure Daffy Duck loses his mind over in the old Looney Tunes cartoon “Ali Baba Bunny” – vast, varied, and of absolutely unimaginable value. It’s gobsmacking that all of this was owned by the sultans, and that each of them in turn probably felt it was the least they were due.

Istanbul is home to Hagia Sophia. Originally built as a Christian Cathedral in the 6th Century by the Byzantine emperor Justinian, Hagia Sophia was converted to a mosque in 1453 by the Ottomans. It eventually became a museum in 1934 in an effort by the newly minted Republic of Turkey to placate Orthodox Christians and Muslims alike, both of whom rightfully view it as a holy place. I recently read that there is a much disputed plan afoot, instigated by Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan, to overturn the 1934 decision and reestablish Hagia Sophia as a mosque. The 300 million Orthodox Christians worldwide, whose leadership resides in Istanbul, will feel snubbed if this happens because it was originally erected as a Christian place of worship. As for the secular world, they largely object to the idea because the deconsecration of Hagia Sophia has helped to keep the peace between two otherwise antagonistic factions for the past 86 years. Also, it has been named a World Heritage Site by the U.N. and they prefer that places so designated have no specific religious affiliation.*

Hagia Sophia was not only a museum when Douglas and I visited, but also a venue for the arts. It so happened that The Academy of St. Martin in the Fields, under the direction of Sir Neville Marriner, was holding a series of afternoon concerts in Hagia Sophia the very week we were in town. Naturally we bought tickets. We were overjoyed at the prospect of seeing a world-class orchestra in such an historic building, and doubly pleased because we managed to snag tickets for a performance of Vivaldi’s “The Four Seasons” – one of my all-time favourite classical compositions.

The sky was dark grey that Wednesday afternoon, but nothing could dampen our high spirits as we took our seats under Hagia Sophia’s multi-domed vaulted ceiling. We settled in and began gazing around the building, marvelling at the glorious architecture and the ancient Christian iconography on the walls. The orchestra was already in place and a hush fell over the audience as the oboe played the tuning note. Then Sir Neville came out to thunderous applause. He motioned the musicians to rise, they all gave a brief bow, and the concert began as soon as they had retaken their seats. The acoustics were bright and perfect, and the orchestra was masterful and emotive. Sharing a live performance often prompts me to experience a sense of kinship with everyone in attendance, artists and audience alike. This feeling of connectivity began mounting in me as the Vivaldi concerti continued, along with one of extreme personal well-being. At one particularly breathtaking moment, the lead violinist was holding an exquisitely pure high note when a single shaft of brilliant sunlight burst through the clouds. It came flooding in one of Hagia Sophia’s upper windows, piercing the gloom of the building’s interior and illuminating in its path a single white dove which had suddenly taken flight from the ceiling rafters. I count that moment among one of the handful of times in my entire life when I have felt truly, transcendently euphoric.

The day after this sublime experience in Hagia Sophia, Douglas and I went to a local dive recommended in our “Daily Planet” guidebook. We always used books in the “Daily Planet” series when we travelled, finding them far superior to their competitors. This particular place only served two things – lamb and bread. We were sceptical that such a meagre menu could prove sufficient, but our trusty guidebook had never led us astray so we assumed the best. At first glance the restaurant seemed to be comprised of a tiny storefront containing two empty tables, but in reality that was just the façade. No sooner had we entered this small space than a Turkish man nodded at us and waved us forward. We followed him to the rear corner of the room and turning to our left saw a circular stone staircase recessed into the wall. He led us up the stairs and on to a spacious rooftop patio. Picnic tables covered in rustic clothes were scattered about, and the man indicated we should sit at a table where several people were already enthusiastically mowing down on their lunches.

No sooner had we sat than two waiters appeared – one with a couple of plastic cups and a pitcher of cool water, and the other with a large platter containing huge hunks of roasted lamb and a generous stack of warm, freshly baked pita. The food and drink was unceremoniously plunked down in front of us and the waiters hustled off, presumably to make their next delivery. No silverware, no napkins, just meat, bread and water. I think Douglas and I must have looked a little perplexed by the whole thing because one of the men opposite us caught our attention and with a smile began ripping pieces of lamb and bread from his platter and shoving them into his mouth. The men around him picked up on his intention, and they all began cramming huge wads of food into their mouths, nodding and silently giving us permission to do the same. We began tentatively tearing apart our food, but the lamb was so succulently delicious and the bread so perfectly warm and yeasty that soon we were gobbling up our meal as unabashedly as our ravenous table mates. Our faces, hands and arms up to the elbows were covered in lamb grease and our bellies were full to bursting when we finally finished our feeding frenzy. The meat and bread had been utterly delicious, the water cold and refreshing, but what made this meal so exceptional was the visceral thrill of feeling our food with our hands and unreservedly satisfying our hunger. Very Neanderthal, and very gratifying.

Douglas and I left Istanbul the day after this meal, looking forward to the adventures that lay ahead in the Asian part of Turkey. I will explore our time there in my next blog.

* My research this morning revealed that just yesterday (July 10, 2020) a Turkish court ruled that the 1934 decision to turn Hagia Sophia into a museum was illegal, and Erdogan has already held a press conference declaring that it will be re-opened as a mosque on July 24. One just has to hope that people are sufficiently distracted by the pandemic that no bloodshed will result as a consequence – at least in the short term.

It’s a Man’s World

No thinking person could deny that we live in a patriarchy. Men have been in charge of the world for pretty much all of recorded history, with a few fleeting exceptions where women held slightly more sway in a couple of countries for a short period of time and yes, all of those equivocations are necessary! A peer of the British realm named Lord Acton famously said in 1887,

“Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men.”

Individual men have been demonstrably corrupted by absolute power, and I would argue that so has their entire gender. Wars and oppression on both national and international stages largely result from men either pursuing what they want, or in reaction to having their desires thwarted. Abuse and violence occur on the personal level mostly for the same reasons. This sense of entitlement lives deep in the male psyche, and goes a long way towards explaining the patriarchal yolk we all live under. Men in power almost never have to deal with dissenting opinions or differing viewpoints. The system they have set up and and continue to perpetuate ensures that theirs are the only voices heard in rooms where major decisions are made. This has skewed virtually every profession and institution in society towards male priorities, leaving women almost completely out of the equation.

Take the auto industry, for example. Crash test dummies are modelled on a 5’9″ medium build white man. There are no dummies which approximate a woman’s body. When they want to run safety tests to determine crash outcomes for females, the mannikins they use are child sized, and they almost exclusively put them in the passenger seat. This smaller dummy is 4’11’ and 108 lbs, while the average North American woman is 5’3″ and 170 lbs. The lack of representation at the testing level has inevitably led to some horrible, although not surprising, statistics. Seat belts are not designed to protect the female anatomy and consequently women are 47% more likely than men to suffer injuries in accidents, particularly to their chests, spines and lower extremities. Women also sustain up to 73% more bodily harm in frontal crashes, and overall are 17% more likely to die in collisions. It would be such a simple fix to make dummies the size and weight of the average woman, and to sometimes crash the car with the female mannikin in the driver’s seat, but car manufacturers have yet to do either of these things.

The current crunch for PPE has brought to light another industry that makes its products based exclusively on male anatomy. Masks, gloves, goggles and gowns are designed to fit the average male build. Women make up 76% of frontline medical workers fighting the pandemic, but the protective medical equipment they are given simply doesn’t fit them and no one seems to care. I recently saw a female doctor on TV who explained that to be effective against the transmission of Covid-19, or any other airborne virus, masks and eye protection need to be completely snug to the face. In practice she has found that when her goggles are sealed around her eyes the mask doesn’t fit properly, and when the mask is tight the goggles won’t sit flush to her cheeks.

Every female medical worker with whom she’s spoken is encountering the same problem, meaning all of them are at an increased risk for contracting the disease. She consequently wrote the PPE manufacturer which supplies her hospital, laying out the difficulty and asking if they could possibly make the masks adjustable so women would be better protected. In reply the company sent her a single sheet of paper bearing illustrations of bearded men and instructions on how to safely wear masks over the various types of facial hair depicted. They didn’t even mention the problem women were having with their products let alone suggest any kind of solution. Traditionally manufacturers have offered a “pink it or shrink it” solution in response to complaints lodged by female customers about supposedly “unisex” products which are clearly designed for male bodies. In other words, they produce exactly the same item but in “feminine” colours, or they simply make it smaller without any thought for female anatomy (i.e. breasts and larger hips and buttocks) or facial bone structure.

Then there are CPR dolls, the most famous of which is called Resusci Annie. The face of this doll is undoubtedly female, but it is flat-chested – probably because people are relatively comfortable kissing women’s lips and touching men’s chests, but not vice versa. CPR trainees are never shown how to deal with breasts when learning and practicing this often lifesaving technique. The result is that women who need CPR in a public place are 27% less likely to receive it than men in similar situations, leading to many preventable deaths. A group of female paramedics recently designed the “breast vest” – a sleeveless upper-body wrap with foam breasts in the front and a velcro closure in the back. It is easy to put on and take off the CPR doll, and provides people the opportunity to practice on bodies with and without boobs. It took women to recognize the need for such a device, let alone design and manufacture it.

The medical establishment as a whole has been terribly remiss in considering female patients. I have written in the past about my extremely adverse reaction to Crestor, and through my research discovered that I was prescribed the same dosage as is recommended for a man 50 lbs heavier than me. This despite the medically proven (but largely ignored) facts that compared to men, women generally process drugs more slowly, experience more and worse side effects, and store them longer in the kidneys and liver. It doesn’t help that almost no testing of new pharmaceuticals is done on women because doctors fear, “…hormone cycles would skew test results.” In other words, women are left out of the studies because they could muddy the results. Add to this that the cells labs grow in petri dishes are always male as are virtually all of their test animals, and you have a drug development process in which females are completely overlooked from start to finish.

Obviously men and women are very different anatomically, but it has only been in the last five years or so that anyone has talked about how these differences manifest in various health problems, particularly those related to the heart. Somehow breast cancer has been painted as the most deadly female illness in existence, with huge, well-publicized events held yearly to raise money for research. Meanwhile cardiovascular disease has gone largely unnoticed, stealthily making its way through the female population and quietly killing seven to ten times more women annually than breast cancer. These numbers and other issues related to heart disease in women are just now coming to prominence, partly because more women are becoming cardiologists and raising the alarm. Also, the Canadian Heart and Stroke Foundation published a widely read study in 2018 which, for the first time ever, focussed exclusively on heart health in women. The major finding of this report is summed up in its opening statement,

“Women in Canada are unnecessarily suffering and dying from heart disease because of inequities and biases that have resulted in a system that is ill-equipped to diagnose, treat and support them.”

“Inequities and biases” refers to women being completely omitted from studies related to heart disease prevention and treatment even though they are equally as likely as men to contract it. It’s also the case that women become 15% more likely to develop heart problems after pregnancy or breast cancer treatment. As I’ve already mentioned, women have also been excluded from the testing of medications to treat heart disease. Women under 55 are seven times more likely to be misdiagnosed than men with the same condition, meaning they are often not given the lifesaving advice and medications they need.

Also, most health care professionals still don’t seem to know that heart attacks present differently in women than in men. This means paramedics often don’t practice the same lifesaving interventions on female patients as their male counterparts, and that early heart attack symptoms are missed in about 78% of women who seek professional medical care. There are scads of personal testimonials on the internet written by women who were sent home from the hospital or their doctor’s office while they were literally having a heart attack.

It makes sense that women are left out of decisions and regulations and laws and studies because we are not present in the bodies that create them or carry them out. Men overlook us not necessarily out of malice, but rather out of habit. I am heartened by the fact that more women than men are graduating from university in pretty well every developed country in the world. In time this should lead to a larger number of females occupying positions of authority in every profession whose judgments and actions impact society – from politics to banking, business to the law, and health to education. Men are never going to consider us unless we are in the room when important decisions are made. Here’s to all the female graduates who will one day (fingers crossed!) be in the room.