The Elephant in the Room

I witnessed two things on my walk this morning that got me thinking. The first happened early on when I saw an EMT leave his ambulance and head into a house. He was wearing gloves and a mask which is probably standard right now, but could also mean that someone with Covid-19 was inside. The second thing I saw occurred much later on my route. Two neighbouring groups of kids, aged from about 5 to 9 years old I would guess, were out playing on the sidewalk while the mother of one crew and the father of the other stood supervising from their front walks. I’m not exactly sure why parents feel the need to hover over their kids in this manner, especially considering how truly deserted the streets are during this crisis, but that’s just the way things are now. At one point a girl came riding towards them from the end of the street, and as she approached her mother called to her,

“Slow down now. There’s a bunch of kids ahead of you.”

I’m pretty sure she could see the five children gathered on the sidewalk directly in front of her, but again, parenting is different now. So the girl slowed down and broke before she got to them. She then turned her bike around and headed back the way she had come. As she passed her mother said,

“Awesome! Great job, Brittany!”

Full disclosure – I didn’t actually hear the girl’s name, but it was probably Brittany. Also, I’m not sure I got the spelling right out of the myriad ridiculous derivations that now exist, but it’ll have to do.

This girl was well past training wheels and clearly a competent rider, yet her mother felt her ability to not hit the group of people right in front of her and then to turn her bike around was, “Awesome!”.

So here’s the question which formed at the intersection where these two incidents met in my mind; what is going to happen as a situation which is rightfully causing dread on a global scale collides with a generation of children who are already exhibiting all the symptoms of anxiety because they’ve been both shamelessly coddled and diagnosed as having it by their parents?

About twice annually in each of the last several years of my career we would have staff meetings with the following theme: kids today are experiencing more stress than any previous generation, and how are we as educators going to meet the extraordinary needs caused by this reality? This assertion always made me crazy! Have you ever read a “Little House” book or seen a movie based on anything by Charles Dickens? Children throughout all of history have had to face hard work and uncertainty every day – deadly diseases, famine and poverty were the norm. More recently I had aunts and uncles who began working after school and on Saturdays in the local textile mill at 8 years old, performing dangerous jobs with no safety equipment. My mother told me that during her childhood in the midst of the Great Depression she saw homeless men frozen to death by the side of the road on more than one occasion. Even during my relatively idyllic childhood I had friends whose home lives were made unhappy and traumatic by addiction and/or abuse. There’s no way in hell children are more stressed now than they have ever been. What’s changed is that no one is teaching them coping mechanisms or resilience.

There is a very strange phenomenon happening at the moment wherein children are being alternately coddled and ignored by their parents. They are kept in because there are so many threats out in the big bad world, and yet no one is playing with them in the house. They all have devices to entertain them with every app imaginable, but good luck to any child who wants attention from a parent because they are as deeply addicted to screens as their kids are. Very few parents talk to their kids anymore; a fact I am sure of because I asked this very question of various classes in the library, and every time the majority of students assured me that they never converse with their mom or dad. They also never sit down and have meals together because their schedules are so full.

This is another current trend which is putting children at a disadvantage – the bulk of their free time is planned by their parents and led by adults, leaving them virtually no time for unstructured play outside with their peers. This means they are missing out on the exercise and restorative time in nature outdoor play provides, as well as situations which encourage risk taking and opportunities to develop negotiation and problem solving skills. Children who are constantly being told what to do have no time or space to master the traits which will allow them to become competent, confident and independent adults.

The lack of these abilities partly explains the current explosion in “anxiety” among children, but equally to blame are parents who diagnose their children as having it without any professional consultation. There certainly are children who suffer from anxiety disorders, but truly, out of the over three hundred students I encountered in the library every week, I could count on two hands the number who showed signs of anxiety when no one was looking. Part of the problem is that so many people mistake stress and excitement, common human feelings which happen in response to everyday stimuli, for anxiety which is born in the brain and often has no discernible external cause. Kind of like Alanis Morrisette confusing coincidence with irony, or sports commentators who think literal and figurative are interchangeable, but with more dire consequences. Stress is what propels humans to act while excitement helps us look forward to future events with happiness and anticipation. To conflate these with anxiety is to do your child a disservice. Many parents also use anxiety as a ready excuse for their child’s misbehaviour – easier to put a label on it and make it the school’s problem then to take it in hand at home.

All of this goes some way toward explaining the current so-called anxiety epidemic amongst children, but none of it truly gets to my initial concern as to how they are going to cope with the pandemic. I would imagine even the most avid screen-watcher has to get bored at some point, and now that they are housebound with their families the sheer number of hours in a day might force adults to spend extended face-to-face time with their kids. Perhaps conversations will blossom in which parents will share words of comfort, explanations, and most importantly strategies for coping with this legitimately stressful situation. Maybe a renaissance of communication and guidance between parents and their children will result from this crazy time. One can only hope.

Swingin’ Shepherd Blues

My father was a journeyman musician in Toronto for over three decades starting in the early 1950’s. This meant he made his living playing miscellaneous gigs like bar mitzvahs, weddings, dances, and jazz clubs, as well as lots of studio work and shows for the CBC. He was in his prime at a time when such a job was viable because you pretty much had to hire live musicians if you wanted music at an event. He made a sufficient amount to give his wife and five children a very comfortable life, with enough left over that my siblings and I were well taken care of in his will. Unfortunately those days are long gone and now it’s virtually impossible for gigging musicians to make a decent living.

One of my father’s contemporaries was Moe Koffman who played woodwinds while my dad played guitar. In 1957 Mr. Koffman wrote a song called “Swingin’ Shepherd Blues” which was not only picked up by pop radio, but also crossed over into the jazz world. Luminaries such as Count Basie and Ella Fitzgerald recorded it, although my brother informs me that Ella recorded pretty well everything so maybe that’s not so impressive. I’m usually met with blank looks when I mention this song but always see dawning recognition when I sing a few bars, so I’d recommend you look it up if you’re not familiar with it so you’ll know what I’m talking about as this story goes forward.

From 1954 to 1960 my dad and Mr. Koffman both played on a CBC variety program called Cross Canada Hit Parade. Every Saturday night this show would present the most popular songs on the radio from the previous week using a cast of singers, dancers and of course the band. When “Swingin’ Shepherd Blues” hit in 1958, the producers of the show thought it would be fitting to feature Mr. Koffman playing it – you know, showing off one of their own. Television was very young at the time and there was no tape involved; everything you saw at home was happening live in the studio. The director wanted to make the spot more visually appealing and came up with the idea of having a sheep stand next to Mr. Koffman while he played, what with the song being about a shepherd and all. Sounds simple enough.

So the fateful Saturday arrived and the afternoon dress rehearsal, sans the sheep, went off without a hitch. Everything was ready the night of the performance, the sheep was brought in, Mr. Koffman and the song were introduced by the show’s host, and the band began to play. The initial shot was of Mr. Koffman’s head and shoulders only, with the camera slowly panning out to reveal the band and the little sheep standing on Mr. Koffman’s right. Everything was going perfectly and the director could not have been more pleased.

Suddenly the poor sheep, no doubt terrified by the bright lights, the volume of the band and the all-around unfamiliarity of the place, began to pee. Not just a little pee, but a copious stream which hit Mr. Koffman at the knee, darkening his pant leg as it spilled downward and pooled around his foot. The people in the booth freaked out when they saw this, with the director frantically shouting,

“Zoom in! Zoom in!”

Suddenly Mr. Koffman’s head and shoulders again filled the screen, and the director could only hope that nobody at home had noticed. The band, of course, had noticed, and it was all they could do to keep from bursting out in hysterical laughter which was obviously not an option on live TV. My dad told me that when they debriefed after the show, the musicians pretty well to a man said the way they got through it straight-faced was by breathing deeply and maintaining a laser focus on their music. They knew they could not keep their composure if they let their eyes wander, even for a second, to the urine-soaked Mr. Koffman and the now trembling sheep beside him.

Meanwhile in the booth the director was starting to feel antsy. It was not good to remain on the same shot for too long – it became static and people at home got bored. He decided that this would be a good time to get the sheep off the stage because currently the audience wasn’t seeing anything below Mr. Koffman’s shoulders. Even if he couldn’t show the sopping pant leg and the puddle beneath, he would still be able to change the shot sufficiently to keep the viewers engaged. He therefore called down on his headphones to a P.A. just off stage and told him to remove the sheep.

So, the P.A. immediately ducked on stage to do what he was told, but as soon as he touched the sheep it started to bleat pathetically. The director frantically yelled over the headphones for the P.A. to back off, but the damage had been done. The unfortunate band members once again had to call on every ounce of concentration they had to keep from laughing, not only because of the baaing but also because the petrified sheep had now pooped as well and there was getting to be a very funky smell on stage.

Meanwhile poor Mr. Koffman, still with just his head and shoulders on the screen, had to continue as if nothing was happening – making eye contact with the camera and pretending to enjoy himself while this stinking, sodden catastrophe was happening just out of the shot. To his credit however, he did it. He maintained his composure and played flawlessly to the end of the song. My father told me that this was one of the funniest things that happened in the whole of his long career, but also that he and his colleagues learned new respect for Moe Koffman on that day. Surly his performance was the very embodiment of professionalism.

Ghost Rapes

I just read the introduction to Miriam Toews’ novel “Women Talking”, and I am so outraged that I need to purge some of the fury from my system. I wasn’t sure if the tale she shared was true so I looked it up and found a corroborating article in The Daily Mail which cites information from Vice.com, a news source I find to be reliable and (relatively) unbiased.

There is a remote Mennonite community in Bolivia called the Manitoba Colony, home to about 3,000 souls. In 2005 women in the colony began complaining that they were waking up feeling very groggy and disoriented with pain in their genitals. The same circumstances were reported by about one hundred women over the next four years, but nothing was done about it until 2009 when two men were accidentally caught red handed breaking into a home and confessed that they and seven others had been repeatedly drugging and raping the women (as old as 60) and girls (as young as 3) in the community.

Charges were laid by the state and the evidence against them was so plentiful and damning that the nine men, between the ages of 19 and 43, were each sentenced to twenty five years in jail, an exceptionally long term for rape. Meanwhile the vet who had supplied the anaesthetic, made from a cow tranquilizer, was sentenced to twelve years. It also came out during the trial that the men weren’t just drugging their victims, but would often sedate entire families so they could rape all of the females in the house without fear of anyone waking up.

Despite physical evidence of rape like semen and blood being found in their beds, despite waking feeling drugged with dirty fingerprints all over their bodies and rope tied around their wrists or ankles, despite young girls being taken to hospital for extreme vaginal pain and bleeding, and despite these things happening repeatedly over a four year span, the women in the colony were not believed by the men they lived with. The nine rapists, hoping to cover their guilt, suggested that the women were being beset by demons for secret sins, but what really makes me see red is how the other men in the community chose to explain what was happening.

They decided that clearly the women were lying. LYING?! This is a explanation which I hear put forth in our society as well. In fact, I’m aware of instances where this was the first thing suggested when a rape was reported. I imagine this is the only charge which, when brought to the attention of authorities, is immediately countered with the question,

“Are you sure?”

Can you imagine any other crime being met with such a response?

“Have you considered the possibility that maybe you weren’t carjacked at gunpoint?”,

or,

“Yes I see the many cuts and bruises on your face and torso, but are you positive you were assaulted?”

How fundamentally insulting and demoralizing must it be for already traumatized women that the first reaction they get after being raped, often by someone they know or worse yet love, is at best skepticism and at worst flat out disbelief? Some people might argue that there is a grey area here because of consent – perhaps the man misunderstood or the woman’s signals were not clear. I’ll tell you one person who doesn’t see any grey, who perceives what happened in stark black and white – the victim. There is no question in her mind because she either said yes or she didn’t. Period.

The Manitoba Colony men suggested that the women fabricated these stories either because they were trying to cover up adultery, as a desperate bid for attention, or as a flight of feminine fancy. In other words, women are either so immoral, lonely or deluded that they make up stories of abuse willy-nilly. Also, how little must you respect the integrity of women in general, or in this case that of your wife and/or daughter(s) in particular, to believe that they would make up a story of this nature for any reason?

If it is undeniable that a rape has happened, the next step is to implicate that the woman somehow brought it on herself. She was wearing a provocative outfit, put herself in an unsafe situation or, in this case, was experiencing retribution for undisclosed sins. It doesn’t matter the actual reason as long as it’s understood that she asked for it and/or deserved it. Anything goes as long as you never, ever, EVER lay it at the feet of the men responsible, or at least delay that outcome as long as possible. The men in the Mennonite community were so distrustful of the women and girls in question that for four years they chose to believe theories of demonic punishment over the obvious truth. No ridiculous explanation is too far fetched when it comes to keeping women in their place. Also, the men who had been drugged by the rapists felt as woozy and disoriented the following morning as their wives did, but even that wasn’t enough to make them believe the women or even investigate further.

What’s more, this is an isolated Mennonite community without any modern conveniences including cars, so no one could arrive at night without being noticed. That means that whoever was doing this had to live in the colony. Better to dispute the word of one hundred of your female cohabitants than to accuse or even suspect one of your men. When asked why they didn’t investigate earlier, the elders said they couldn’t really do anything because they have no electricity. Their faith precludes the use of lights and video cameras, so how could they catch anyone misbehaving at night? The human species has lived in communities for thousands of years, most of those well before the invention of electricity, and they kept order at night by assigning guards to keep watch. Surly something of this nature could have occurred in the Manitoba Colony if anyone in authority had given a shit.

The article ended with some men from the colony saying that it is happening again, but the rapists are being more careful now so what can be done? The elders have refused help from other Mennonite communities and psychological care for the effected women, saying they prefer to put the whole thing behind them. Yes, this episode must have been terribly traumatic for all those men who ignored what was happening and did absolutely nothing about it even when presented with irrefutable evidence. Poor guys!

I know lots of good men, all of whom I like and several I even love, but I’m sick and tired of being told that a few bad apples don’t spoil the whole barrel. When I look at incidents like the rapes that have started up again in the Manitoba Colony, or the way the women who accused Bill Cosby and their female lawyer were vilified and doubted in the press, or how delinquent our government has been in looking for all those missing Indigenous women, quite aside from the manner in which women in many countries around the world are regularly treated – monetized, dismissed, disempowered, denied an education, brutalized, and even murdered – I can’t help but feel that there are more than a few bad “apples”. Even if I’m generous and say only 25% of the XY barrel is rotten that is still a huge number, and we all know from experience that one bad piece of fruit soon spoils the rest. I would lay odds that the best man I know has taken part in, or at least been a silent witness to, conversations where women were demeaned and/or sexualized. So I’ll state again what I have been saying for so long – things will never get better for women until men recognize that they are the problem, and further, consciously take steps to rectify their behaviour and that of their peers. Rape, harassment, abuse, objectification, and social inequality are not women’s issues, they are men’s! If these truly were female problems, we would have solved them long before now.

So I go back to Miriam Toews’ book feeling better for having vented some of the pressure created by the introduction. If it turns out that the entire book is about the “ghost rapes” in Bolivia, as they were coined in the press at the time, then I will not be finishing it. When I was a young woman I felt honour-bound to complete a book once started; like it was the least I could do given the time and effort the author had put into writing it. I no longer feel such an obligation, and if the subject matter is too distressing to be immersed in for the time it takes me to finish the book, then I simply don’t – no matter how good the writing. Now I begin…

I Want a New Drug

I recently watched a heartbreaking documentary about thalidomide and the devastating birth defects if spawned in the late 1950’s and early 1960’s. Some 10,000 children worldwide were effected, half of those in West Germany where the drug was first patented and most widely used. I was appalled to learn that the man who created thalidomide was a known Nazi doctor who’s past, like that of so many men making their way in various occupations after the Second World War, was completely overlooked for the sake of expediency. The U.S. alone secretly gave safe haven to an estimated 1,600 Nazi scientists, engineers and technicians after the war, most notably Warner Von Braun, the Nazi rocket scientist who got America to the moon before the Russians.

I don’t have room to get into the whole Nazi mishegoss here, so I’ll continue with thalidomide. The number of children effected was horrifying, but would have been far greater were it not for one woman. Frances Oldham Kelsey worked for the American Food and Drug Administration. The U.S. drug manufacturer and distributor Richardson-Merrell was very keen to get thalidomide approved as it had been a huge cash cow in Germany and England. Mrs. Oldham Kelsey, feeling that their proposal contained questionable science, said no. By the end of 1960 the company had submitted six requests to have the drug sanctioned, but as they still had not done adequate testing in Mrs. Oldham Kelsey’s estimation, she said no six times. Imagine, one lowly FDA official withstood the wrath and pressure of a large and powerful company for the sake of her morals, and in the process saved countless Americans enormous suffering and their health care system massive expense. Mrs. Oldham Kelsey’s contribution was acknowledged with the Presidential Award for Distinguished Service, the highest honour an American civilian can receive.

In those countries where thalidomide was approved however, Canada among them, it was responsible for many horrible outcomes such as the deformed and missing limbs for which it is infamous, and also for many newborn deaths. A lot were stillborn, but parents and health care professionals in the documentary who were in the delivery rooms at the time heavily intimated that some deformed babies were allowed to die after birth or, and this is where they became more evasive, were actively killed. The thinking was that the children’s deformities were so profound as to preclude them from any semblance of a normal life and therefore they were better off out of it. I try not to judge these people as society was very different then, and the best these children could hope for given the times was a solitary life in a locked institution.

It turns out that drugs were only tested on lab animals in the 1950’s, with no clear protocol for human testing. Not only that but doctors truly believed that nothing the mother ingested could cross the placental barrier and therefore there was no way a drug taken to control morning sickness could possibly have any bearing on fetal development. In other words, thalidomide met all of the existing medical and legal requirements.

Now there are more stringent protocols in place before drugs are approved, including double-blind human experiments, but I would argue from personal experience that the criteria still fall short. About six years ago I started experiencing a weird, stinging pain in my shins and forearms. I went to my doctor who was baffled, so he sent me to a rheumatologist in case it was arthritis or some other autoimmune disease. When he found nothing I was send to an Ob.Gyn. in case my symptoms were related to perimenopause, and she found nothing.

A month later the burning pain had spread over my entire body, and I mean entire, from the tips of my toes up to my ears which stung so badly I wanted to rip them off! A couple other horrifying symptoms had kicked in as well because I now had intractable insomnia and crippling nausea. My doctor was perplexed but suggested that maybe they were side effects of the statin I was taking to lower my cholesterol. My pain was clearly nerve related and statins were mostly associated with muscle pain, but I was ready to try anything. I subsequently stopped taking my Crestor, and when I saw the doctor two weeks later with my symptoms as bad as ever, he said I would be noticing a difference if the drug was responsible so the search for a cause continued.

By this time I was desperate for help and booked an appointment with a doctor of Chinese medicine recommended by a colleague. There were two things this doctor did for which I will be eternally grateful. First, our initial appointment was a full ninety minutes, meaning I had time to go into all the details of my illness and was really heard. It is hard to articulate how very healing it is to have a medical professional’s full attention and concern for an extended period. Second, she gave me a book and a couple videos about cholesterol and statins. She firmly believed that all of my problems stemmed from the Crestor.

I greedily consumed everything she gave me and was convinced by the end of it that she was right. The incredible revelation for me in all of that research was that the governmental agencies responsible for approving new drugs in the States and here in Canada base their decisions on science provided by the pharmaceutical companies themselves. No independent corroboration is necessary. The statin documentaries I watched featured several European scientists who worked for unaffiliated labs, all of whom said that they could find no evidence that there is a clear link between elevated cholesterol and heart disease as the pharmaceutical companies had claimed.

Which brings me to the current and most devastating legal drug catastrophe – the opioid epidemic. Right now in the States there is an opioid overdose every nineteen minutes, and this legally prescribed drug accounts for more deaths than heroin and cocaine combined. The thing is however, this is the third opioid addiction crisis the U.S. has faced in the past one hundred years. The first came around the turn of the last century when they put heroine in children’s cough syrup, and the second came home with returning Viet Nam soldiers. This means the powers that be were well aware of the highly addictive nature of opioids, or at least could easily have found it out had they asked any addiction specialist or looked at their own recent history, yet they blithely accepted Purdue’s claim that this miracle drug was not addictive and consequently unleashed a tsunami of heartbreak and death on their citizenry.

Heart disease continues to be the number one killer in North America despite statins having been used for the past twenty five years, which begs the question of their efficacy. They certainly bring down cholesterol, but to what end? I maintain that the only reason they are still on the market is because the statin industry rakes in $29 billion a year. I personally endured two years of debilitating symptoms because of this drug and hold the government bodies charged with overseeing the licensing of new pharmaceuticals responsible. There is no way they are being sufficiently rigorous when they base their decisions on self-serving corporate science. I also feel for the many millions of others who have experienced similar or worse health problems because of this shortfall in due diligence, as well as those suffering because of the opioid epidemic. Surly the legislation regarding drug licensing needs to be augmented to include independent verification of the drug companies’ findings concerning any medicine they put forward for approval.

International Women’s Day

So we have once again arrived at International Women’s Day which always puts me in mind of a few things. The first is something that happened early in my teaching career. The day was acknowledged on our morning announcements, prompting a boy in my class to petulantly blurt out,

“When is International Men’s Day?”

To which I replied,

“Every other day of the year.”

Let’s face it, putting aside one day to acknowledge and honour 50% of the world’s population is ridiculously scant and feeble. One might even find it insulting considering how the vast majority of women in the world are treated.

Most people are familiar with Malala Yousafzai and her brave fight to ensure girls have the right to go to school. It is impossible to get a firm number on how many girls around the globe are denied an education, but of all the estimates I read posted by international organizations, eighty million was the minimum. Holy crap that is a lot of girls! Malala is right to stand up for this cause in particular; there is no way we can make any large and lasting gains in the world until we are all educated. When you sentence half your population to a lifetime of ignorance and servitude, you condemn your entire country to intractable poverty and its concomitant sorrow. Yet the men who run such societies are so obsessed with maintaining power that they willfully or otherwise ignore this obvious fact, much to the detriment of themselves and those they love. I believe that is called cutting off your nose despite your face.

The main incident from my own life which comes to mind on this day concerns a young woman I encountered in Morocco some 30 years ago. My husband Douglas had met a family in Rabat when he went to Morocco alone in 1987, and they invited us to stay with them when he and I went together in 1989. We had only been at their house a few hours before it became clear that they took us in for a reason; they wanted Abdallah, their eldest son, to come to Canada and hoped that we would act as his sponsors. So much for hospitality!

Abdallah was, quite frankly, a dud. Lazy, entitled and doltish, he was not a person I would ever consider sponsoring. The second eldest in the family, Zahra, was the exact opposite of her brother. She spoke four languages and was fluent enough that she actually got off some decent jokes in English, she was intelligent and a talented artist, and she was full of energy and ambition. Surly this was the person with the skills and drive to make it in another country.

Zahra was the acknowledged black sheep of the family. She had taken off her hijab and cut her hair some months before we arrived – an act which still garnered tense silences and dirty looks from her father. She spoke and carried herself with confidence, and seemed completely comfortable being unlike any other female in her circle. I very much admired her.

Before going further with Zahra’s story however, I would like to take a moment and talk about how the culture of women in that house appeared to me. In Morocco, and probably in most other Islamic countries, the women prepare the meals and bring them out to the men who lounge around in the living room and eat at their leisure. The women then clear the table when the men have had their fill and, retreating to the kitchen, eat whatever is left. I was allowed to sit with the men and have first dibs on the tajine since I was a guest, but frankly would rather have stayed with the women. It was clear to me despite the language barrier that the men were boorish and boastful, an observation my husband seconded when we were alone together at night. The women, on the other hand, seemed genuine, and although they were very much segregated and kept down, they found ways of expressing and sharing joy in their otherwise servile lives.

For example, my husband needed a haircut and the men in the family volunteered to take him to the barbershop and for a walk around the neighbourhood, happy for any excuse to show off to this Westerner. It was Zahra would did all of the translating in our conversations, so Douglas was less than jazzed about spending the afternoon with a bunch of men he didn’t really like and couldn’t understand, but there was no way he could politely refuse their offer. It was after the men left that things really got interesting. There was a palpable lightening of the mood as soon as they departed, and before long two of Zahra’s female cousins showed up at the door.

After many hugs and much laughter, the mother came into the room with one of those massive boomboxes so popular in the 80’s. One of the cousins was standing beside me and began pointing at my pelvis and making appreciative signals with her hands and face as if to say,

“Now there’s a set of hips you can get your teeth into!”

Zahra came over to me and wound a bright purple scarf around my pelvis, tying it off at the side so the tassels draped down my right thigh. I had no idea what was happening but decided to just go with it, picking up on the joy and excitement of women who until then had been so dutiful and dour. The mother turned on the music and the distinctive skirl of North African pipes filled the room. Then came the rhythm of the drums and the over-arching sound of one male voice, singing in that unmistakeable Arabic way, with alien trills and a tangible yearning.

Now the young women in the room, sporting scarves that seemed to have magically appeared around their pelvises, started to dance, while the mother began to clap and ululate. Zahra came up to me, put her hands on my hips, and gently rotated them in time with the music. I picked up on the motion and began dancing on my own, freeing her to join in with her sister and cousins. Before long we were all gyrating around the living room, dancing together with huge smiles on our faces, sharing in an exquisite moment of freedom and sisterhood, when all of a sudden everything ground to a halt. The music ceased, the dancing stopped, the mother silenced, Zahra pulled my scarf off so violently that I actually spun around like a top – and in walked the men.

I felt privileged to share in that exuberant experience with the women, and Douglas was rightfully jealous when I later described it to him because his afternoon had consisted of having to politely smile and nod while being dragged from one dismal shop to another. I try to keep this shining moment in mind when I think of the sad encounter I had with Zahra the very next day.

It was late afternoon and extremely stuffy in the apartment so I went up to the roof to get some relief from the heat. I walked through the door and saw Zahra on the far side with her back to me. I came up quietly beside her and she acknowledged my presence with a sideways glance. It was clear that her mind was far away and filled with sadness. She had told me when we first met that her fondest wish was to study art at the Sorbonne in Paris (one of her four languages was French). Still looking off into the distance, she quietly said,

“I’ll never go to Paris. I’m never getting out of here. I can’t even get a passport without my father’s permission. Right now I am his property, and soon he will choose me a husband and then I will become his property.”

Then she turned to me with tears in her eyes and repeated,

“I’m never getting out of here.”

Her expression was equal parts pain and resignation, and I knew there was nothing I could say or do in that moment to ease her suffering. What she said was irrefutably true, and no one knew that better than Zahra herself.

I looked into sponsoring Zahra when we got back to Canada and wrote her several times about starting the process, but all of my letters were returned unopened. I assume her father intercepted the mail. So I am thinking about Zahra today and all the hundreds of millions of women around the world who are in similar or worse situations. Along with my hopes and concerns for them, I am also aware of and grateful for living in a country where I and all the women I know can freely accept Gloria Steinem’s invitation to celebrate and acknowledge this day,

“Any way we fucking well please!”

Amen to that, sister!

Along came Mary

Movies were a big deal when I was a girl. Now movies are made and released one after another, but when I was little there were not nearly as many of them so it was a real occasion when one came out. People dressed-up to go to the cinema, there were luxurious padded seats covered in thick burgundy velvet at the theatre we went to in downtown Toronto, and an enormous pair of curtains made of the same material would majestically sweep aside to reveal the screen when the movie began. I’m not sure if they showed Coming Attractions, but I know for a fact there were no commercials. I remember well the first time I saw an ad before a movie because several people in the theatre, myself included, started to boo. Having to pay to see advertisements just seemed like the ultimate rip-off. It still does.

My mother’s only sister had married an American and lived with him and their three sons in Raynham, Massachusetts, about an hour outside of Boston. Every summer we would visit them for a few weeks, making trips to the beach and their club which had a full-size pool, a super warm wading pool with a fountain in the middle, a playground, several tennis courts and a killer snack bar which served frozen Mars bars. Then every winter they would come visit us for about a week over Christmas, stopping in Vermont on the way to do some skiing. One of the highlights of their visit, aside from what I now recognize as the embarrassing number of gifts they brought, was when we would all pile in the cars and go see whatever movie was the current big Christmas release.

One memorable year, that movie was “Mary Poppins”. This must have been a special Christmas re-release because the movie actually premiered in January of 1965, so too late for holiday viewing, and I would only have been 3 at that time and I’m absolutely sure I was older than that when I first saw it. In any case, my incredible excitement made me super antsy as we waited for the film to begin, so I began to play a game I’ll call “bouncy, bouncy”. The rules were simple – you’d sit on the top of the chair when the seat was flipped up, let your weight pull the seat down until you were sitting on the cushion, bounce a few times, get off so it flipped up again, then repeat to your heart’s content. Seems like a harmless way to pass the time, but not to my mother. She could not abide misbehaviour of any kind by her children, especially in public, and she employed a stealthy and tremendously effective method to bring us silently into line. The one small vanity my mother enjoyed was her nails which she filed to perfect points and buffed to a dazzling sheen. When she wanted you to stop doing something she considered unacceptable, she would grasp you around the upper arm, curl her hand so her razor sharp nails were pressed against the soft flesh underneath, and simply pull up. She didn’t have to say anything, she didn’t even have to look at you, but you would be up on your tippy-toes frantically whispering “I’ll stop! I’ll stop!” before you knew what had hit you. She’d then let go and life would go forward as though the whole exchange had never happened. Needless to say I didn’t get to play “bouncy, bouncy” for very long.

After what felt like an eternity the movie started, and as soon as I saw Mary Poppins float down from the sky I was in love. My adoration for her only grew as the movie continued, and by the end of it I was obsessed with all things Mary. It is a strange and particular thing to have a crush on an older woman as a little girl. You simultaneously want to be her, want to marry her, and want her to be your mother. I’m sure a Freudian would have ascribed my feelings to something dark and/or sexual lurking in my subconscious, but to me they were pure and true. She was my idol and my ideal.

My adoration for her continued for months, and rather than getting fed-up and telling me to knock it off, my Mom seemed charmed by my fixation. After all, if your kid is going to idolize a fictional character you could do far worse than Mary Poppins, like Long John Silver or the Artful Dodger, for example. Who wouldn’t want their child to follow directives like mind your parents, tidy your room and take your medicine without complaint? So when my birthday rolled around in August, my Mom gave me a Mary Poppins umbrella and matching hat box with a convenient carrying handle. Oh joy, oh bliss! Somewhere in the bowels of my basement is a picture of me proudly holding that hat box, looking pleased but also somewhat grave because of the responsibility of owning something from Mary. It felt as though she was trusting me to represent her.

The hat box contained only my most prized possessions and I treated it with the utmost care and respect, but the umbrella was another matter. It didn’t talk as Mary’s had, but I felt sure it contained the same magic as hers. So I waited until a very windy day, then went out in the backyard and stood on the edge of the picnic table with the wind at my back. I tentatively opened the umbrella and held it behind my head. When a particularly large gust of wind came along, I turned the umbrella around, ran with all my might to the opposite end of the table and launched myself into the air. And…I landed on my ass. What?! Okay, so it didn’t work the first time. Maybe I needed to hold the umbrella at a different angle…no. Maybe I needed to run faster…no. Maybe if a just stood at the edge and jumped… no, NO, NO. Again and again I tried to take flight, but every time I leapt I landed flat-out on the lawn. It is hard to describe how utterly betrayed I felt when I finally gave up and trudged into the house. My inability to fly exposed Mary for the fraud she was, and made me feel like a fool for faithfully following her example all those months. I furled up the umbrella, snapped it closed and jammed it into the stand in the front hall, vowing to never use it again.

I was very upset after this happened, feeling listless and adrift – what we would now classify as depressed. My mother noticed my black mood a few weeks later and insisted, against my many protestations and excuses, that I go play in the park. Knowing I could only defy her for so long before the old fingernail treatment, I eventually gave in and headed outside. It was a blustery day with storm clouds in the sky, so my mother insisted I bring my umbrella – the despised symbol of that charlatan which I had sworn never to touch again. I was about to balk when it occurred to me that this could be the perfect opportunity for me to be rid of the umbrella once and for all, so I picked it up and started out.

I headed down my street and no sooner had I turned the corner towards the park when the wind picked up enormously. A large fence now hid me from my mother’s view so I immediately started to unfurl the umbrella, figuring this would be a good time to “accidentally” lose it.

“I’m so sorry Mom, but the wind just whipped it out of my hands and pulled it away into the sky.”

I had just opened the umbrella in front of me, preparing to let go, when all of the sudden the wind redoubled and I was pulled down the street. I realize now that my feet must have been on the ground the whole time and it probably only lasted for a few seconds, but at that moment it felt like I was being lifted aloft by Mary’s magic, and time stood still.

After the wind died down, I stood dumbstruck in the middle of the sidewalk, understanding in a flash that everything I had felt was true. I snapped the umbrella closed, needing no further evidence, and continued to the park where I sat down on a swing to think. I was almost tearful as I felt my adoration return in waves; my devotion vindicated and justified by that one simple “flight”.

“Oh Mary, full of grace, please forgive my lapse in faith”.

Deep in my heart, I somehow knew she already had.

Modern Leviathans Pt. II: Accountability

I discussed the growing problems related to privacy engendered by so much personal information being amassed by Facebook and Amazon in the first part of this blog. I would now like to turn my attention to another area of concern related to these technology giants – accountability.

Let’s start with Facebook. With his wide eyes and soup bowl haircut, Mark Zuckerberg is one of those rare guys who perennially looks like a kid who just stepped out of an episode of Leave it to Beaver, but his innocent appearance belies the calculating businessman beneath. Zuckerberg started Facebook while he was at Harvard studying computer science and psychology. The site was called FaceMash in its original iteration, and was a way for men on campus to rate the attractiveness of female co-eds. He eventually had to take the site down and apologize to women’s groups who were rightfully appalled by a platform who’s sole purpose was to objectify and rank them.

This failure however did not deter Zuckerberg who, heartened by the popularity of the site, tweaked it to allow for users to have control over what they posted and who they befriended, and Facebook as we know it was born. Facebook has became a world-wide phenomenon over the past 15 years with about 2.5 billion users as I write – yes, that’s “billion” with a “b”. The tremendous growth of this technology is unprecedented, and the ability for mass communication it facilitates is unknown in the annals of human history.

One might think that this free-flow of information would perpetuate a coming together of the human family, and in many ways it has – successful “Go Fund Me” campaigns speak to widespread generosity, and I regularly see posts highlighting people demonstrating kindness and compassion, often towards complete strangers or others they’ve just met. Yet there is another, darker side to such unbridled communication. I previously mentioned the insidious ways Cambridge Analytica and various Russian hackers interfered in the last U.S. election, but a lesser known story is how unchecked hate speech and propaganda on Facebook led directly to the genocide and diaspora of the Rohingya people in Myanmar.

I had heard a little bit about this before watching the Frontline special, but the program made it much more clear how Facebook’s lack of due diligence allowed for this human tragedy. At one point the reporter interviewed David Madden, an Australian ex-pat who has lived in Myanmar since 2012. Madden had gone on his own dime not once, but twice to Facebook’s California headquarters to make them aware of their part in the growing violence against the Rohingya people as the hatred and vitriol which prompted the massacre was being communicated on Facebook by rabid Buddhist monks and the Myanmar military. The first time he went to California, Facebook executives expressed shock and concern and said they would monitor Myanmar postings more closely in future, taking down hate speech and incitements to violence as soon as they appeared. Two years later they had still done virtually nothing to rectify the situation which was getting exponentially worse by the day, so Madden went back to California, received the same platitudes, and by the end of that year (2017) tens of thousands of Rohingya people had been killed, their properties looted and destroyed, and the survivors’ exodus from Myanmar constituted the biggest Asian migration since the Viet Nam war.

The Facebook executives who spoke on Frontline about the Myanmar situation all gave some form of the following explanation,

“We tend to be overly optimistic here at Facebook and our mandate is to bring people closer together. That’s why it takes us so long to react to negative situations.”

So let me get this straight – you think you’re off the hook because your executives innocently bat their eyelashes and use their faith in humanity as an excuse for ignoring posts which encouraged and instigated the deaths and displacement of tens of thousands of people, despite knowing about the problem years before it exploded? All I can say to that is – you’re right. There are no tangible repercussions for the clear, devastating failures of Facebook because there are no laws regulating it. They are, after all, simply a platform for communication, so how can they reasonably be held responsible for bad situations which arise because of things people post? Remember, the flames of hatred in Rwanda which led to the Tutsi genocide were fanned by radio broadcasts, but no one thought of holding the radio industry responsible, let alone of punishing it or changing the way it is regulated.

The ways in which Amazon manages to avoid accountability are much more obvious, and therefore (one would think) easier to legislate against. For example, there is a disclaimer in their Terms of Agreement which explicitly relieves Amazon of all responsibility related to items they sell for third parties. In other words, they cannot be sued for any gross misrepresentations perpetuated by the manufacturers of products on their site (including counterfeit merchandise), nor can they be held responsible for any damages a product might cause. Frontline showed footage of toys covered in lead paint with no parental warning, hoverboards with minds of their own, and my personal favourite, a blowdryer that shoots flames. Sure it would dry your hair really fast, but…

Amazon is not legally responsible for the products it sells, nor is it being held accountable for some very shady business practices. For example, the head of a smallish publishing house (I’ll call him Mr. K because I don’t remember his name and can’t find it anywhere on line), spoke to Frontline about his professional relationship with Amazon. The company initially approached Mr. K offering to sell his books on their site for a small percentage of his returns, and he of course jumped at the opportunity. As sales started to multiply, Mr. K hired more authors and upped production, and that’s when he got a most unexpected call from his Amazon contact telling him the company now wanted 4% more of his profits. Mr. K balked at the idea, saying that just isn’t how publishing works. The very next day, the “buy” buttons attached to his books on Amazon were disabled, leaving him no choice but to accede to its demand. It seems to me that this is exactly the sort of strong arm tactic which used to be handled by large men with crooked noses and baseball bats – in other words, do it our way or else!

Then there is the way Amazon treats its employees. The company owns massive warehouses called “fulfillment centres” in which thousands of people frantically toil to ensure you get your new coffee maker the very next day as promised. There have been many reports over the years of terrible working conditions in these buildings, with Frontline adding more voices to the discussion by interviewing several former workers who verified yet again how bad the situation is. When the reporter spoke to an Amazon executive about their terrible safety record, he replied something like,

“We have very stringent safety standards in all of our fulfillment centres.”

The former employees on the program verified that this is the case, but what the executive fails to mention is that each worker must meet a daily quota, and the only way to do that is by largely ignoring the safety standards. You can protect yourself or you can keep your job – it is impossible to do both.

I honestly don’t know what the answer is when it comes to the questionable practices of technology giants like those in this article as well as Microsoft, Apple and Google. The fact is that ethics and legislation have simply not kept pace with new forms of commerce, communication, and the collection of personal data, nor with changes technology has wrought in other professions which intimately impact our daily lives like the law and medicine. The EU, and Canada to a lesser extent, has enacted some laws concerning the collection of personal information; who owns it, and how far tech companies can use and disseminate it. This is a good start, but as long as these tech giants are headquartered in the U.S. where money has such a big hand in elections and which legislation gets passed, I fear that these modern leviathans will continue to operate largely unchecked.

Modern Leviathans Pt. I: Privacy

One of my sisters-in-law and I were both teacher/librarians, and we used to go to the Ontario Library Association’s Super Conference in Toronto every year for professional development and to attend sessions on best practices. One year Senator Romeo Dallaire was the conference’s keynote speaker. The main auditorium was packed on the morning of his speech, and we all sat rapt as he described just one example of the depravity and horror he and his men repeatedly and helplessly witnessed in Rwanda. All you could hear when he finished were the quiet sobs of the women in the room. He explained that part of the reason he became a senator was to help Canada become a leader in preventing such tragedies from happening in future, to rally its citizens to demand we take on such a role, and to lobby for better treatment of our soldiers’ mental health when they come home from active duty, himself included.

Dallaire then went on to the second half of his speech and a large picture of King Kong was projected on the screen behind him with the familiar Google logo above it. He explained that his other main objective in becoming a senator was to insure that legislators were keeping an eye on technology giants like Google. He particularly wanted to talk to librarians because we have traditionally been the gatekeepers of information and therefore needed to be in the vanguard as new platforms for the amassing and distribution of information unfolded. Google was at that moment digitizing the entire Library of Congress’s collection, and he feared the concentration of that much information in one money-making enterprise could have dire implications for the future.

We have all watched as Dallaire’s concerns have manifested in our own lives. Last week I watched two special editions of Frontline, the PBS news magazine. This was a rare occurrence for me because although Frontline is extremely well done with excellent investigative reporting, it usually deals with American politics and I am simply not following that right now for the sake of my blood-pressure and my sanity. I watched these specials however, as they dealt with two technology giants in which I am very interested – Facebook and Amazon. The warning words of General Dallaire immediately came to mind as these programs unfolded. It was clear that the unchecked growth of these companies had led to large and troubling ancillary problems related to the collection and distribution of information, and the privacy of their clients.

Both Amazon and Facebook, like every other site one uses, require you to accept a Terms of Agreement form before giving you access to their services. I know the vast majority of people, myself included, simply check the box provided without ever ascertaining what we are agreeing to. If we bothered to look closer however, we would see that we are largely signing away our right to privacy in the fine print of these documents.

Yet there is more to the story than that. Facebook has been undergoing review by government agencies for allowing third parties access to individuals’ information without vetting who those agencies are or their purpose in so doing. The most famous examples of these are Cambridge Analytica (a sketchy British company which used Facebook to target undecided voters in the 2016 American election and to subtly sway them towards Donald Trump, ostensibly under the direction of Steve Bannon), and Russian hackers who were revealed to have done the same thing. There have been congressional hearings asking Facebook executives questions prompted by these revelations, such as why weren’t they aware of these nefarious actions while they were occurring, and what safeguards are they going to put in place to prevent such breaches from happening in future. One hopes that legislation related to the issue of privacy on internet platforms will arrive soon, but it is a difficult issue to tackle given the relative newness of these technologies and the ephemeral nature of digital information.

The privacy concerns with Amazon are much more tangible and immediate, coming in the form of devices people are buying from them and setting up seemingly without any consideration for how they may be putting their privacy at risk in so doing. I am referring to Alexa, Ring, and indoor security cameras.

Let’s start with Alexa, the voice activated computer ever ready to answer your questions, play the music of your choice or dim the lights. (Apple’s Siri and Google Assistant are similar products.) Alexa is voice activated and therefore needs to always be listening in order to do its job. Amazon claims that Alexa only becomes active when you say its name, and yet when the reporter on Frontline asked an Amazon executive if he ever turned Alexa off, he replied,

“Sure – whenever I want privacy.”

So what does it tell you if an employee of the company blithely admits this on camera? It suggests to me that Amazon smugly knows the average person is either ignorant (willfully or otherwise) that their privacy is a risk, or content that third parties are able to listen in on their personal conversations for the sake of having small tasks performed without ever having to leave the comfort of their chairs. Jeff Bezos, the head of Amazon, has once again correctly taken the pulse of a lazy, convenience-crazed culture and made millions of dollars in the process.

Ring is Amazon’s home security system which involves all sorts of audio and video equipment being installed on the outside of your house to keep track of nasty strangers, and while their indoor security system doesn’t have a catchy name, it is exactly like setting up Ring inside your house to keep track, I assume, of nasty teenagers. The problem with the information amassed by these technologies is that it exists in the cloud, meaning it’s available to anyone who knows how to retrieve it. There was footage on Frontline of Alexa speaking to people who were home alone, because, of course, hackers have complete access to your entire house if it is equipped with all of these Amazon products. (One teenage girl nearly jumps out of her skin when a strange voice seemingly comes out of thin air and compliments the red shirt she is wearing. Can you imagine?!) It is ironic in the extreme that people install these systems in the hopes of keeping their families and possessions safe, but are actually putting them more at risk by making them remotely visible and audible to complete strangers.

Anyone who has read or seen “The Name of the Rose” by Umberto Eco is aware that before the printing press, abbeys owned the only libraries in existence and the monks jealously guarded the books and information therein. If things continue as they are, with governments providing very little oversight and enacting virtually no laws with regards to technology giants like Facebook and Amazon, as well as Microsoft, Apple and Google, then these companies could easily turn into the modern-day equivalents of those medieval friars – deciding who has access to which information and for what price, including details you consider personal. Freedom of information and the right to privacy are the cornerstones of a vibrant democracy, and these are the very things at risk. Perhaps it’s time for people to peel their eyes away from their cell phones and take a good hard look at the writing on the wall.

Women’s World: A Primer

Most men, in my experience, really have no idea of the day-to-day insults, harassment and fear women endure at the hands of the opposite sex, quite aside from the larger and more visible problems of assault and societal and workplace inequality. In other words, even if some men understand the scale of #METOO (a debatable statement at best), I don’t think that many get the depth of it. I realize that I have lived a relatively comfortable life at a relatively good time in a relatively liberal society, but despite these advantages, I and the women around me have had to endure a surprising amount of emotional and/or physical pain inflicted by men. I therefore thought it might be instructive for me to itemize how this oppression has played out in my life.

Let’s start with a memory from my childhood I’d buried so deep that it only emerged a couple of years ago when I starting examining my past with a #METOO lens. (Imagine my surprise when this came bubbling to the surface!) My father, who was a journeyman musician, had many male colleagues and for years they had a rotating poker game. I dreaded when the game came to our house because of Mr. Vega (this is not his real name.) Mr. Vega was, I believe, a vibes player. He spoke English with a pronounced Spanish accent, always smelled of cigars, and wore glasses with thick, tinted lenses that obscured his eyes. All in all he appeared equally exotic and scary to the young, sheltered girl I was at the time.

It wasn’t just his appearance and smell that made me wary of Mr. Vega, however. He always asked for me especially to serve the sandwiches my mother made for these gatherings, and then he would insist that I remain next to him after making the delivery. My father would give me the stink-eye if I tried to sneak away, so I would be forced to just stand there as Mr. Vega fondled my rear-end whenever his hand was free to do so. My parents were clearly unaware of what he was surreptitiously doing to me under the table, and I had no vocabulary to express my discomfort and confusion. Mr. Vega exploited my innocence and betrayed my parents’ hospitality and trust – what a perverted prick!

The next example of male aggression that I encountered came when I was 10 years old. I had my first boyfriend that year and would often go to his house after school. One time I headed home from his place a little late and consequently took a short-cut through the hydro field in the hopes of making it home in time for dinner and thereby avoiding my mother’s anger. The hydro field is just what it sounds like – a large, unlit field empty but for the tall hydro poles marching across it. I’m guessing it was probably November because I remember it was cold and dark but there wasn’t yet snow on the ground.

I wasn’t very far into the field before I became aware that someone had entered it behind me which was to be expected as this was a well known short-cut used by all the kids in my school. It was way colder in the field than it had been on the street because there were no houses to act as a windbreak, and before long I picked up my pace. That’s when I noticed the person behind me had started walking faster as well, so I turned around to see who it was and alarm bells immediately went off in my head when I saw that it was a man. Grown-ups never used the hydro field in my experience, and I suddenly realized how completely vulnerable I was – alone, in the dark, and a long way from help should I need it.

That was when I started to run. They say, “Red Bull gives you wings!”, but I can’t imagine anything will ever make me more energized than I was at that moment running away from a faceless predator who was clearly giving chase and meant me harm. I was so energized in fact, and panicked if I’m being completely truthful, that I overshot the opening in the fence at the end of the field when I finally got to it. There was no way I could run back to access the gap as that was the direction from which the man was coming, so I had no choice but to climb the fence.

Now, I have never been what you would call an athletic sort of person, so climbing the fence was a big deal. Panic however made me stronger and more agile than I had ever been (gotta love that primal fight or flight adrenalin!), and I was somehow at the top of the fence before I knew it. I was just about to climb down the other side when I realized that I was caught – my coat was snared on the vertical metal wires sticking up from the chain link, and I simply could not work it free.

By this time the man was very close indeed, probably less than a dozen steps away from being able to leap up, grab one of my legs and yank me down. So in that split second, so fast that I don’t even remember making the decision, I unzipped my coat, pulled myself free and launched my whole body over the fence. I felt some soreness on my right side the following day, but at the time I simply jumped up and ran all the way home, letting myself in the side door so my mother wouldn’t notice that my coat was missing. I woke up extra early the next morning, donned one of my brother’s coats, and went back to the fence where I was hugely relieved to see my coat still hanging there. I never told any adult what had happened, knowing they would say it served me right for being so dumb as to walk by myself through a dark and deserted field. This sentiment mirrored exactly how I felt about the whole thing – stupid and completely responsible. I fear this kind of victim blaming is still rampant in our society when it comes to the ill treatment of girls and women.

The next relevant experience occurred in my 20’s when my husband and I were travelling through Italy. My bum is what my mother kindly called “generous”, meaning that it is large. Italian men are famous for appreciating derrieres like mine, and for showing their appreciation by pinching them. This may sound harmless enough, but being pinched is not only extremely startling but also quite painful. My rear-end was absolutely black and blue by the end of our second week in Italy, and so sore that it was difficult to sit down. I showed my husband the extent of the bruising and complained about how dehumanizing it felt to be pawed in this manner, and his response was to laugh and suggest I was being overly sensitive. Pinching was simply the way Italian men showed that they thought I was attractive, and I should be grateful for such attention. Thanks for your support and concern, honey.

It’s also the case that one of my best friends through elementary school had a dad who regularly hit her mother, and my very best friend through high school had a dad who regularly hit her mother. I know four women who have been raped – one at knife point by a man she had been talking to all evening who seemed nice, and three who were repeatedly assaulted by people they knew and thought they could trust. One of these chose not to tell her parents what was happening, fearing the information would upset her mother too much (how incredibly selfless is that?!), while the other two did inform their parents and were simply not believed. I myself endured 18 years of verbal and emotional abuse from a man who said he loved me, and have helped sooth the physical and psychological wounds of two women close to me who were beaten up by men who claimed to love them.

There are more recent accounts of harassment I’ve heard from the young women in my life as well. For example, my niece lives in Toronto and rides her bike to work, and she regularly posts about men making scary, unwelcome sexist comments as she rides past. Once a guy even grabbed her handlebar, but she managed to pry his hand off and get away. Then there’s the phone call I got a few summers ago from daughter. It was a brutally hot and humid day and she was wearing summer clothes in an effort not to be a complete sweat-ball after her fifteen minute walk to work, and because frankly that’s what everyone wears in such weather. She had been subjected to so many sexually aggressive comments in that short walk however, that she was crying with anger and fear when she called me from her workplace. She asked through her sobs why she should be subjected to such verbally hostile behaviour just walking down the street in the middle of the day?! Why indeed.

I do not report these incidents looking for sympathy, but rather to illustrate how pernicious and widespread the mistreatment of girls and women is. This is not a case of “poor me”, but rather of “me too”. (As an aside, given that all these incidents are true and commonplace for women living in a country where the right to equal treatment is entrenched in its national charter, one has to wonder how much worse it is for the vast majority of women in the world who live in countries where they have no guaranteed rights.) This is a clarion call to Canadian men that these problems run deep and wide even in a country as progressive and polite as ours, so perhaps it’s time to stand up and be a visible and active part of the solution.

Where’s that Confounded Line!? Part 2: The Whining Continues

While the first part of this article dealt with an imaginary line men made up to serve their own purposes, I would like to acknowledge that there are lines of behaviour towards women of which men need to be aware. For example, I think just about everyone has heard of “mansplaining” – the common occurrence of men condescendingly elucidating ideas and/or situations to women of which they are already fully aware. I think most “woke” men know that this is a line they should not cross.

I feel it is the obligation of all feminists to bring other lines to men’s attention as well, and therefore would like to put forward a new portmanteau – “manterjecting”. This is when men blithely put in their two-cents in situations where they are clearly talking out of their asses. It would be like me speaking with any authority at all were I privy to men discussing their memories of horribly embarrassing situations which arose (excuse the pun) from spontaneous adolescent erections. Anything I had to say on the subject would not only be unwanted, but also completely unfounded.

I was in a situation where a friend “manterjected” just a few weeks ago. It was at a gathering wherein the women outnumbered the men by about four to one. At one point I was standing in a circle with several other women and one man. One of the women had just returned to work from a maternity leave and so the conversation naturally swerved onto every mom’s favourite subject – labour and delivery. We were swapping stories when someone mentioned using pain killers. The man in the circle lit up when the discussion moved in this direction, and with a dismissive roll of his eyes and wave of his hand scornfully said,

“Epidurals!”

Sensing that he was being disdainful in a completely inappropriate way, I looked at him and said,

“What?”

He responded,

“You shouldn’t need an epidural. My wife had two kids and she didn’t need one!”

So gentlemen, here is a line being crossed. That this man would feel he belonged in this conversation as anything other than an observer, let alone that he should pass judgement on what was being said therein, is the epitome of thoughtless male arrogance and privilege. Maybe you can do that with other guys – speak on subjects you clearly know nothing about for the sake of not being outdone – but doing so with women on exclusively female experiences is just insulting.

Also anyone who has been in on a birth knows that the whole thing is bloody incredible. First the woman puts in hours of hard physical and emotional work (hence the term “labour”), all the while enduring pain so extreme it’s miraculous she doesn’t pass out. Then after all that, she pushes an entire human being out of her body – a process which I can attest made me feel like I was going to split clean in half and then die. So, to quibble over something as insignificant as whether a woman chose to use pain killers in the process is absolutely ridiculous and completely beside the point.

An ancillary problem with what this man said (of which I’m sure he is not the least bit aware), is the unspoken yet palpable pressure on women by other women to give birth without drugs (i.e. “naturally”) – a tacit understanding which is up there along with the idea that breastfeeding is best. Sure everyone says you should do you, and that every birth plan is valid as long as it leads to a good outcome, but anyone who has been through a delivery can attest that many women who have “natural” childbirth subtly and eternally look down on those who do not. By deriding the idea of needing an epidural, this man unwittingly piled on to the pre-existing shame of any woman in that group who had one.

I wrote all of these points down in a letter and sent it to this young man because, as I said, it really is the responsibility of women to let men know, especially well-meaning and receptive men as this one is, when they act or speak in ways that women find offensive. I asked this young man to please read over what I said with his wife in the hopes that she would back up my words and clarify my intentions. It is not my desire, nor I hope that of any woman who brings such things out in the open, to shame or belittle men for displaying hardwired sexist attitudes. What I am hoping to accomplish is to make them aware of why these words and/or behaviours are unacceptable to women, which hopefully will motivate them to change accordingly.

I applaud the sentiment of the “Time’s Up” movement, but time will only truly be up when a preponderance of men agree that it is. Women need to bring men to this way of thinking, and that can only happen when we speak clearly to them about the subconscious sexism buried deep within them by the patriarchy – so deep that they do not even recognize it when it rears its ugly head.