The Senate

I'm not going to argue that Stephen Harper didn't have the legal right to appoint his eighteen senators. He pretty clearly does have that right.

But what he doesn't have is a moral right to make the appointments. He's still prime minister only because he suddenly prorogued parliament in order to avoid a no-confidence vote (only a few weeks after an election result that he claimed would bring about a kinder, gentler, more cooperative government -- we all saw how well that worked out, didn't we?). He doesn't have the confidence of the house, and, since he holds power only as long as he has the house's confidence, his continued use of that power is morally suspect at best (no, Canadian voters, you did not vote for Stephen Harper directly. You only get to vote for an MP. That's parliamentary democracy for you.).

This is also the guy who has long argued that senate positions should be elected and "accountable". It's nice to see that he stands by his principles when push comes to shove -- as soon as it starts to look like he might lose power, he packs the Senate.

Now, again, he's well within his legal rights to pack the Senate. And he's not the first prime minister to do so when anticipating a loss of power (though that would usually mean an electoral defeat). But it's just morally skeevy for him to do so. And you'll notice he's doing it a few days before Christmas, hoping no one will notice. Or at least that we'll forget in January, when we're too busy paying our credit card bills to remember what our Right Honourable Prime Minister was up to over the holidays.

And while I'm at it, can I just point out that out of eighteen people, he was only able to come up with five women? What percentage of the population are we again?

A moment of silence

On December 6, 1989, 14 women were killed at the École Polytechnique in Montréal. They were killed for being women; the gunman singled out women, and claimed he "hated feminists".

It's been almost twenty years. Are women still being killed for being women?

Take a moment to remember these 14 women. Then take a moment to do something to stop this from happening again, to any woman.

Geneviè Bergeron
Hélène Colgan
Nathalie Croteau
Barbara Daigneault
Anne-Marie Edward
Maud Haviernick
Maryse Laganière
Maryse Leclair
Anne-Marie Lemay
Sonia Pelletier
Michèle Richard
Annie St-Arneault
Annie Turcotte
Barbara Klucznik-Widajewicz

Interesting Times

When rumours of a possible coalition government started circulating, I didn't think it would ever actually happen. This is Canada, after all, and although we like to talk big, we don't generally take such dramatic steps.

But it's becoming increasingly clear to me that Harper has misread the whole situation, and has pushed the opposition into a corner so that they have no choice but to fight back.

As soon as the Conservatives decided to eliminate funding for politicial parties, the opposition was going to have to do something. The move would have completely crippled them, particularly as there was no corresponding move to increase the individual donation limit so that they could actually do some meaningful fundraising from their supporters. (Just in case anyone out there is worried about "subsidising" political parties, let me remind you that the $1.95 per vote was to make up for the fact that parties could no longer take more than $5000 from each supporter. Harper's already lowered that limit to $1000 from each supporter. I'm sure you can see how that makes it hard to fundraise.)

But the economic update contained a lot of other objectionable elements. No hint of any kind of stimulus package, for example, which is what the opposition parties have chosen to hang their hats on. Now, I'm no economist, but it seems to me that, in a financial crisis like this one, being seen to be doing something is pretty important. If the global markets see that Canada isn't responding (and doing nasty things to the public service* doesn't actually count as responding), they're hardly going to have increased confidence in Canada. A stimulus package works because it shows that we're doing something, so investors gain confidence simply because we're doing something.

Now Harper's withdrawn the whole issue of the funding to political parties. They're going to get to keep their $1.95 a vote. But even though he may have backed down on this one, the opposition can't very well say "oh, okay then. You can continue to govern."

And here's why: if they back down now, it becomes obvious that they were just doing it because of their own self-interest. They'll look selfish. So they can't back down, even if that is the straw that broke the camel's back and set them off in the first place.

If Harper really wants them to back down, he's going to have to come up with some kind of economic package. And if he does that, he's letting them dictate the agenda, and this minority parliament will be very different from the last one.

Harper's really created a situation where it's impossible for the opposition to back down.

It's going to be a very interesting week here in Ottawa.

It's worth remembering that "may you live in interesting times" is a curse, not a blessing.

* And I think I need to comment that taking away public servants' right to strike is pretty nasty. And mean-spirited. And unecessary.

Place your bets

Since the candidates are starting to declare themselves, it's time to make some predictions about the Liberal leadership race.

The Liberals were very proud to have the largest percentage of women of any of the parties among their candidates in this last election.

How many women do you think will run for the leadership? How many will actually be on the ballot when the convention rolls around? How many will make it past the first ballot?

And, while we're at it, how many non-white people will run? How many will actually be on the ballot?

Any guesses?

Why I shouldn't read the National Post

I'm trying to decide what's most wrong with this National Post column.

Is it the complete failure to understand the Canadian political system? The Tories may have "increased their majority" last week, but they did so with only 38% of the popular vote, which kind of undermines the argument here.

Or is it the utterly unexamined assumption that Canadian Conservatives, Nicholas Sarkozy, and the American Republicans all occupy a similar place on the political spectrum? (For the record, Canada's "right wing" is nowhere near as far right as the American Republican party, no matter how much we like to call Harper "Bush lite".)

Or might it be the rather peculiar claim that people (not pundits, mind you -- people asked in opinion polls) base their opinions on foreign politicians entirely on those politicians' foreign policy?

We snark; you decide.

On heroism and feminism

I'm not completely sure what Dave Brown's point is in this recent column. I'm not sure he knows, either, except that the world's gone to hell in a handbasket and it's somehow all those awful feminists' fault. His profile proudly describes him as a 'contrarian,' which, at least in this case, can be defined as "curmudgeon who thinks the world really was exactly like Leave it to Beaver".

At the top of their list of things a man must do was the protection issue. It used to be an obligation of the strong to protect the weak.

This is the basic argument of the article. In "the good old days", men were strong and women were weak, and men were praised and rewarded and given "backpats" for protecting those weak and helpless women from other men.

Now, Mr. Brown is astonished to learn, the authorities encourage people to, er, call the authorities when they see something untoward happen. And to intervene only if they have the appropriate training to do so safely.

I'm having a hard time understanding why this is a bad idea. Does Mr. Brown really think that the world would be a better place if we all -- or rather, all men -- tried to be untrained vigilantes? How many more people would be hurt or killed than if we just let the experts handle the situation?

Now, what Israel Grant Carver did was a very courageous thing: he tried to help another person. I'm sure this is an entirely inadequate "backpat," but I wish more people -- both men and women -- had the courage to intervene when they see someone being attacked...even if their intervention is nothing more than a call to 911. I'd much rather see an assaulter put in prison or otherwise removed from his victim than beaten up -- so that he has one more reason to take out his anger on the victim.

In Mr. Brown's view, this attitude is just a pernicious outgrowth of feminism. "The fishes have come home to roost," he crows -- women, apparently, should just expect to be beaten up now that we're no longer encouraging white knights to rescue us. Or something. The women in the Carver case went on to marry her attacker, so clearly she didn't deserve to be the beneficiary of manly heroism.

And then it turns out that this isn't really about Israel Grant Carver and his lack of recognition at all:

Without fear of being branded cowards, they don't have to face bullies, hijackers or nutbars on buses.

That's what this was really all about. The Greyhound bus incident. Those wimpy, embarrassing men who kept the attacker inside the bus and prevented him from harming anyone else rather than launching heroic charges to try to save a man who was already dead.

Strategic voting, vote swapping, and who elected that guy anyway?

Strategic voting is a factor in any election, and it's certainly been part of the Canadian election discourse for as long as I can remember. But it seems to much more front and centre this election than ever before. Partly, I suspect, that's due to our having had a couple of minority governments in a row -- with an election that feels perilously close, people are much more worried about ensuring the success of their preferred party or preventing a hated party from getting a majority than they are when the outcome seems inevitable. Partly, too, I suspect it's a spillover from the proportional representation debate. It's become clear that we're not getting prop rep anytime soon, so people are more concerned than ever about how to maximize their vote.

Is strategic voting a good idea? As with almost anything else electoral, the answer depends on a slew of factors: how strongly you feel about your preferred party, especially as compared with the party you'd vote strategically for; the race in your particular riding; how strongly you are opposed to another party; how you feel about the local candidates.

There are certainly arguments against voting strategically. Not least, there's the fact that each vote is worth a few dollars in funding for your electoral party of choice. So if you're a small-party supporter considering making a strategic vote, you might want to consider making a small donation to your preferred small party to try and offset the financial damage associated with losing your vote. But it's not just financial damage; small parties that don't get enough votes don't ever become big enough parties to have an influence on the country as a whole. And if you give your vote to a larger party that doesn't quite represent your views, then you're certainly not encouraging the large parties to change or to take into consideration the issues that matter to you.

But let's not forget that voting is not only about expressing your true essential beliefs -- it's also about choosing your representatives, the people who will govern the country. And you should be realistic about what effect your vote will actually have. Will it help elect a reasonably good MP belonging to a reasonably good party that isn't 100% in synch with you, or will it be just one more vote against the guy who gets in because no one opponent was able to muster enough votes? Unfortunately, there's no way to know the outcome before you go and vote, so we all have to make our decisions based on incomplete information.

What's clear to me, though, is that there's something not quite right about our electoral system that's prompting these ongoing discussions about how to best vote. I don't know if prop rep is _the_ solution, but it seems that some variation on that theme should be at least part of the solution. We shouldn't be stuck chosing between voting our conscience/throwing our vote away and holding our nose/voting for the least bad alternative.

A few scattered thoughts about last night's debate

• The format actually worked suprisingly well -- no one was allowed to dominate the conversation, but there was still the opportunity for a few back-and-forth moments between the leaders. About as much as you could expect with five of them sitting around the table. (The table itself gave the whole thing quite an informal feel, which is -- different.)
• Anyone who says Stéphane Dion isn't charismatic or a good speaker has obviously never hear him in his native language. He's downright eloquent when he gets going
• Stephen Harper's clearly been practicing that "softer tone" he was using. He sounded like he was trying to hypnotize all of us. Except when he sounded like he was falling asleep. I suppose it's meant to defuse his "scary, aggressive" image, but it didn't sound natural to me.
  
• Elizabeth May did a surprisingly good job -- I know everyone's saying it, but it's true. Her French is actually quite good, although she has a strong accent and somewhat limited vocabulary. Not only was she keeping up in French, she was able to be wonderfully aggressive -- the only one who was really aggressive for most of the debate (the only one with nothing to lose, I suppose).
  
• For sheer entertainment value, there's nothing like "turn to the person to your left, and say something nice about them, while looking in their eyes". It was fun to watch them all scramble to come up with something nice that wouldn't undermine their positions at all. Elizabeth May was, without a doubt, the meanest, telling Harper that, well, he's a good father. I did find it interesting how few of them actually managed to maintain eye contact for very long (they all kept going back to the cameras, I think).

Tonight's English debate should be interesting. It's a shame it got cross-programmed against the US V.P. debates -- but those will be on YouTube, especially if anything amusing happens or there's a proper knockout blow.

On sexism and Elizabeth May

First, let me say that I'm glad Elizabeth May will be in the debates. Not because I'm a Green Party supporter (I actually wish people were less convinced that they're a left-leaning party), but because it's fair. There is a Green MP -- if that's not the threshold for debate participation, they're just bending the rules specifically to exclude May.

That said, I don't quite get why we're all saying it was sexist to exclude her in the first place, or that her inclusion is a victory over sexism.

Usually, I'm ready to see the sexist overtones of all kinds of things, but in this case... I just don't see it. Maybe I'm being naïve, but I don't think it was an "old boys club" trying to keep May out; I think it was crass political calculation (the same thing that got her in, in the end). I honestly think those calculations would have been the same if the Green Party's leader were a man.

Now, the fact the Elizabeth May is the only woman in the debates, that she's the only female party leader -- that's another story.

Why haven't we had more women in senior political positions, more women leaders of political parties, more women Premiers, Opposition Leaders, Prime Ministers? That's the result of systemic cultural sexism, and that's something we can and should decry and work against.

We need more women in politics. Not because they'd make politics less "macho" and more collaborative (I'm sure female politicians are just yearning to be political hall monitors)... but because women are 51% of the population, and ought to have somewhere around 51% of the representation.

But that's another rant.

Rebecca Allen has an excellent post up about why pop culture matters, and why it's important to analyze it.

(and I've been surfing pretty indiscriminately this morning, so I don't remember where I grabbed the link from -- so no hat tip. Sorry.)

Comfort Foods

Men lose weight more easily than women

Well, yes. We knew that, didn't we? We knew it anecdotally, at least. There can't be many women in North America who've watched their male friends decide to lose weight and suddenly drop impressive numbers of pounds. Whether that's even remotely healthy is a separate question, of course.

What I find interesting in this article, though, is the little paragraph about comfort foods:

Gender differences in preferred comfort foods may also play a role in weight loss success. Research shows that men find comfort in foods associated with meals prepared by their mothers such as meat and potatoes. Women, however, crave foods that don't involve preparation such as breads, prepackaged sweets and chocolate – foods that are quite accessible and easy to overeat.

I'd love to know more about the "research" they're referring to here (the whole article suffers from an appalling inability to cite sources, but that's another post). Intuitively, though, it makes sense: men tend to crave food that involves extensive preparation ("like Mom used to make"), and women crave food that... doesn't. Which makes sense, because who craves something when they're going to be the ones putting in all the effort to make it? I wonder if men who do all the cooking are as likely to crave meatloaf as those whose wives cook for them?

Consent

Here's the supposed "nightmare scenario:" a woman suddenly "changes her mind" and all of a sudden the poor innocent man finds himself charged with rape.

And yet, we're told this is a classic "he said/she said," and far from having is life ruined, this man has been acquitted.

I don't want to get into the specifics of this case, but it does strike me as the perfect examplar of one of the fundamental arguments between feminists and society as a whole: if we say that sex with an intoxicated woman is rape, will men start getting criminal records left and right for picking up women in bars?

Please note, before I go on with my rambling, that I'm not saying this particular man is guilty or that the judge was mistaken -- all I know about the case comes from the news reports, and I didn't get to hear any of the testimony. I'm not qualified to offer an opinion, and I'm not a lawyer, either. I just want to talk a little about the situation as described.

The basic problem here is that it's still perceived as okay to have sex with someone who's intoxicated, and severely so. So intoxicated, apparently, that she had to go and lie down. This isn't a case where she'd had a drink or two but was still alert. He had to know that she was pretty drunk, whether she was talking to him or not. Whatever he understood to be happening, why would he think it was okay to make a move in the first place? Why would he even want to?

And I don't mean okay in a legal sense -- I mean why is it culturally okay? This is what needs to change. There's nothing inherently wrong with partying and getting shit-faced, and there's nothing inherently wrong with casual sex and hooking up -- but there has to be a line where too much of the former means the latter has to wait for another day. Who even wants to have sex with someone who was throwing up a few hours earlier? Is consciousness really too much to expect in a sexual partner?

I don't know if this is something that can be legislated -- I'm inclined to think not. Surely, though, we need to shift the cultural attitude. We need to teach our kids and each other that not only is drunk sex not okay, it's not as much fun as sex with a fully conscious, actively and enthusiastically participating partner. Who doesn't taste like vomit (ick).

What's "real", anyway?

I'm somewhat amused at this little kerfluffle over photo retouching in Dove's famous "real beauty" campaign, which, after all, is used to sell smoothing lotions among other things.

Photo retouching is part of our everyday life in a way it hasn't been in years past. Yes, everything you see on a billboard or in a magazine has been heavily retouched -- but so have lots of family photos. Removing red-eye, fixing colour balance -- that kind of thing is easier than it's ever been, thanks to Photoshop and the like. We're getting to a point where there's no such thing as an un-retouched picture.

My outrage is probably lessened, too, because I never thought the Dove campaign was a messianic emanation come to save us from unrealistic body image issues. It is -- it has always been -- an ad campaign, first and foremost. It's a good one, because it gets people talking, and it's certainly nice to see a wider range of female bodies than we're used to -- but it's still just an ad campaign. I mean, for all the claims that it's expanding the definition of beauty, there have never been Dove models who weren't conventionally attractive (even if slightly larger, or older, or of different skin colours than we usually see).

And I think on some level, I always assumed that there was a little bit of retouching going on. It didn't change my feelings about the campaign (which were, and continue to be, mildly positive).

So, do I believe this denial that "oh no, actually, there was no retouching going on"? Not really. But I don't think it matters. We're still asked to judge the picture that's out there, and whether it succeeds or fails as a picture, as an ad. How it got there is a little beside the point.

Why thank you for liberating me from my repression

I'm late to the party on this one, which has already exploded all over the fannish 'net, but I can't let it go by without adding my own (albeit fairly redundant) $0.02.

The Open Source Boob Project, they called it.

Ostensibly, it was an experiment in sexual liberation.

The problem with sexual liberation is that, oddly enough, it so often seems to become men's liberation to objectify women. Theoretically, we're all supposed to be free to express our sexual desires without shame, without feeling dirty. But all too often it starts to feel like an excuse for men to tell women who don't want to take off their shirts or have their breasts groped or have sex with person x y or z that they're "repressed" and that their inhibitions are unreasonable. Women are the objects for the sexually liberated subjects (men) to admire and to use. And that's just unacceptable.

Look, I'm just as much in favour of a utopian orgy world as the next person. But I happen to live in this world. And in this world, we're not all starting from the same place when it comes to control of our bodies. Women live in an entirely justifiable state of fear that they're going to be attacked simply because they have women's bodies. And when we're not worrying about rape, we're worrying about how to make our bodies fit the desireable ideal. We struggle to be attractive without "asking for it". Every decision we make about our appearance and our bodies is made in this context.

If this all sounds rather fraught, well, it is. So you can see why someone asking to grope a woman's breasts isn't just a harmless question. Whether it's respectfully asked or not, whether it's all in good clean fun or not, it's going to make some women uncomfortable. Because they live in the real world where questions about a woman's body's availability are not, by default, good clean fun.

If you're with a group of friends, and you all want to feel each other up, have at it. But for crying out loud, don't do it in public, don't involve strangers, and don't make it a "project" to be expanded to the world at large. Because the world at large already has plenty of unpleasant ideas about what to do with women's bodies and their breasts.

There's been a lot written about this, much of substantially more eloquent than my own semi-incoherent sputtering:

• A link roundup at journalfen
• Kate Nepevu's very eloquent response
• Tamora Pierce's also very eloquent response
• Your cousin Vito proposes some actual action: the Open Source Women Back Each Other Up Program
• Karen Healy at Girl Wonder weighs in

How to be a feminist boyfriend

M. LeBlanc at Bitch, Ph.D. has some great advice.

Hostile Environment

It's an ongoing struggle to get more young women to enter traditionally male fields. Engineering is certainly one of those fields that is heavily male-dominated. Sometimes people argue that it's just that women aren't as interested in these areas of study. But when stories like this hit the news, I find it more remarkable that any women are brave enough to puruse an engineering degree in the first place.

It's kind of a textbook example of a hostile environment. The engineering students' society's newspaper, the Oral Otis, published a mock sex-advice column* which included some pretty nasty language. (Full disclosure: I haven't actually read the column in question, and it seems to have been pulled from their web site.) People complain. The vice-president of social affairs for the Engineering Students Society, Rob Arntfield, admits that it's sexual harrassment, but says that's okay, because sometimes people say engineers can't get dates.

No, seriously. That's what he said. To the media:

"For myself, personally, I think some of the content in the paper is meant to be humorous," he said. He added that engineers "have taken a lot of flak for being engineers," and are often the subject of jokes about engineers rarely touching women or getting laid.

"I believe that when we take this sort of thing in stride and that sexual harassment, if we dish out a little bit of our own, who's to say who's more right?"

That little quote was on the news yesterday morning.

I have to give some (mild) props to the paper's editor, Zacharie Brunet, who did give a radio interview this morning accepting responsibility and acknowledging that the column was inappropriate. His excuse was that he was really busy so he only edited the article enough to take out the really bad bits (so what was left in was presumably only moderately bad). But at least he took some responsiblity. And indicated that steps were being taken to prevent it from happening again.

The VP-Social hasn't corrected himself, as far as I know. It would appear his position is still that sexual harrassment is okay, and that it's just like getting teased for datelesness.

When young men think sexual harrassment is perfectly okay as long as you claim you were trying to be funny, is it any wonder that women would rather study something else?

This is what we're up against.

It's also why we need to encourage women to get into these fields. Not just because women should be able to do whatever they want (although, obviously, they should), but because we need a critical mass of women to prevent the boys'-club mentality that allows this kind of behaviour to flourish.


* incidentally, why do student newspapers insist on publishing these? They're pretty much never funny or clever; and yet they're forever getting written and published.

International Women's Day

Today is International Women's Day. Here are some suggestions for how to celebrate:

• support a female politician. Equal Voice can help you find out who they are.
• write a letter to support women around the world. Amnesty Canada has a list of current actions relating to human rights abuses against women.
• support a local charity that helps women in need, whether by giving them money, or giving them your time.
• write a letter to Stephen Harper and your MP, telling them exactly what you think of the Unborn Victims of Crime Act (aka the Sneak an Abortion Ban in Through the Back Door act, aka the Women's Deaths are Only Important if they're Breeding Act)

What else will you be doing for International Women's Day?

Election Speculation

Okay, I know that as long as Stephen Harper seems to be saying "come on, bring us down, let's have an election now", Stéphane Dion is going to be reluctant to do anything to bring the government down.

Still.

It's making him look bad. They're both playing political games, trying to make the election happen when it will most benefit their party, but it's Dion who looks like he's basing everything on the polls. We all know that Harper's trying to force the Liberals to bring him down when he wants to be brought down, but he's also getting to implement his agenda, so he at least looks like he has principles. The Liberals, with their constant abstentions and Dion's weak explanation of what he would need to support the budget ("acceptable or at least not too harmful for the Canadian economy"), look like they're playing the worst kind of politics.

Maybe it's unrealistically idealist of me (probably), but I can't help but wish the Liberals (and, you know, everyone elected to public office) would just make a stand on the issues, and elections be damned.

Because I gotta say, the political games are not making anybody look like a future Prime Minister.

Some people deserve to die

"And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgement. For even the very wise cannot see all ends."

(Thanks, Prof. Tolkein)

I hardly know where to start in my response to Lynne Cohen's article in the Citizen today, aptly titled "Some people deserve to die". I have rarely read an article I disagree with so thoroughly. So let me work my way through some of the highlights (or lowlights, if you prefer)

For 13 years, I have been a true crime buff, reading some 35 books a year -- most of them American -- on a variety of terrifying factual situations, from serial murder and child rape to greedy black widow killers and gang slayings. As a lawyer and journalist, I am fascinated by detective work and how the culprits end up paying for their misdeeds. There is nothing more satisfying after a gruesome murder and fair trial than to see the killer get the death penalty.

Let's start with this. Ms. Cohen is basing her argument in no small part on her desire for narrative closure in her true-crime novels. I would submit that ending a real live human life requires a little more justification than that it's narratively "satisfying".

Liberal Leader Stéphane Dion has come out so strongly in support of clemency for Smith, you'd think he was the guy's wife.

That's a nice little jibe, isn't it? Dion (and, by extension, anyone who thinks we shouldn't be endorsing the killing of Canadian citizens) is effeminate; real manly men (thump chest here) are in favour of killing people at every opportunity.

The only worthwhile argument against capital punishment is that irreversible mistakes can happen. This only means we have to be ultra careful applying it.

Uh-huh. Because that worked really well in the case of, say, Stephen Truscott -- didn't it?

To date, and to my knowledge, there has never been a proven case of mistaken death by execution in the U.S.

Forgive me if I'm skeptical.

Remember Clifford Olson? Remember what he did to those 11 children? Why go into the details when the ending is soul destroying?

It's possible that Ms. Cohen's view is skewed because she spends too much time reading true-crime novels, but cases like Olson's are very much the exception, not the rule. Someone like Olson or Pickton gets lots of media attention simply because their crimes are so unusual. We can't make policy based on these very exceptional cases.

Do you appreciate that Willy Pickton is only going to get the harshest sentence available in Canada? That would be 25 years in prison before he has the chance for parole. OK, there is a good chance he will be found to be a "dangerous offender" and have to spend the rest of life in prison. Is that justice?

Um, yes. It is. He's never going to be free again. He's never going to have the opportunity to hurt anyone else. What more do you want? What does capital punishment accomplish that life in prison and a dangerous offender designation doesn't? Other than Ms. Cohen's satisfaction, of course.

it makes us weak, offering a safe haven to murderers.

I'm not sure what Ms. Cohen is implying here. That murderers move to Canada to commit their crimes because they think they'll get off easier? That more Canadians commit murders than Americans? That's patently untrue. The deterrent effect of the death penalty has been repeatedly debunked, and Canada is one of the safest countries in the world, with a murder rate considerably lower than the United States whose penalties Ms. Cohen so admires. It seems to me we ought to be more concerned with results than with a perception of "weakness" on the part of a rather bloodthirsty columnist.

I've no doubt that Ms. Cohen would dismiss everything I'm saying here as the ramblings of a soft-hearted opponent of capital punishment who just doesn't understand the real world. The words "hug-a-thug" would probably be worked in there somehow. And by her standards, I supposed I am all of those things. I don't think we should be killing people to demonstrate the sanctity of human life. I don't think revenge is the proper purpose of the justice system. I don't think it's effective, and I don't think it's justified. If that makes me a wimp, so be it.

I couldn't have done it without her

In this article about the new movie Honeydipper, director John Sayles is quoted talking about one of the characters' motivations:

It's not the club Tyrone is afraid of losing, because his wife makes more money mopping floors. It's the fear of losing the idea that he's his own boss, he's not asking to shine your shoes and he's somebody in the community.

(Let me preface the following rant by saying that my problem here isn't really with Honeydipper or with Sayles -- I haven't seen the movie, or even heard all that much about it, and I don't have anything specific to hold against Sayles. But there's something in that quote that I see far too often in our culture, so it's set me off.)

Did you see what was completely skimmed over there?

his wife makes more money mopping floors

So here's the thing. This character can only be "somebody in the community," can only do something that makes him feel complete as a human being because his wife is doing menial labout to put food on the table. Tyrone, like so many men in culture both popular and highbrow, gets to go on a quest for self-actualization because there's a woman in the background worrying about base material reality.

What's really frustrating is that the work of the woman in question (whether wife, mother, or girlfriend-who-might-as-well-be-mother) is usually not appreciated. In fact, it's often used as an example of what a drag the woman is.

Think of High Fidelity, for example. The central conflict of the movie version is that our hero's lawyer girlfriend has become an adult, earning a living, making much more money that our record-store-owning hero. She's essentially accused of selling out. And even though the resolution is supposedly about our hero learning to grow up ... what does he do? He starts a creative endeavour and gets to DJ again. This is growing up? Is he going to be able to do that kind of thing for long if lawyer-girlfriend doesn't keep lending him money?

Practicality, concern for the future, realism -- these are all terrible things that cramp the style of men seeking their true, authentic selves. Just once, I'd like to see a man find his authentic self, and then turn around and say to the woman who's been keeping the bills paid, "okay, now I'm going to work at a soul-deadening job for a while so you can figure out who you really are".

Anyone know of any such examples?

Choice

Today is the 20th anniversary of the Morgentaler decision -- the Supreme Court Case that legalized abortion across Canada.

We Canadian pro-choicers are proud that abortion is and continues to be legal in this country, and that there's no really credible political movement to ban it. But it isn't enough.

The availability of abortion continues to be a problem. If you're a woman living anywhere other than Canada's major cities, you're not going to be able to find someone in your hometown who will perform abortions. It doesn't matter if abortion is legal if you can't get one when you need one.

I don't think I need to review all the pro-choice arguments here. It's been done, better, by other bloggers. Let me just say that a woman's right to control her own body is fundamental. And that includes (or should include) women living further north than 150km from the U.S. border.

Canadians for Choice has lots of information about the real state of abortion services in this country. Check them out.

Hide your primary colours! The girls are coming!

I'm sure I've ranted about this before, but you'll have to indulge me. There is nothing that sets me off quite so much as the proliferation of pinkification.

Pinkification is when toy companies take something that was perfectly good and gender-neutral, and create a pink version "just for girls".

We've seen it with Lego (you'll note this is the "girls" category. There is no "boys" category -- the other categories are things like "action figures" and "robotics"). We've seen it with games, like Monopoly and Jenga.

And now, Fisher-Price is making pink versions of... well, see for yourself.

What's most appalling is not that toy companies are making these pink atrocities. It's that parents must be buying them, enthusiastically. It's that a young girl's room can be (and probably is) entirely gender-specific and pink from the moment she's born. Which means these girls never get the chance to think of playing with or doing anything that's not specifically coded "girl". So rather than imagining themselves as real-estate moguls when they play Monopoly, they can only imagine themselves in a "boutique" "shopping" environment.

And now they can only imagine themselves stacking pink things. Before they're two.

What's next? A "lady professor"?

CBC Ottawa's headline writer is apparently astonished by the idea that women can, you know, run things. Like universities.

Carleton U names woman as president

Because the story isn't that Carleton has a new president... it's that she's a girl!

New Year's Resolutions

It's that time of year again. New Year's Resolution time. And what's the most common resolution in North America? I don't have any scientific evidence to back me up, but I'd lay money on "losing weight" being resolution #1.

You can't open a newspaper or magazine these days without coming across a story about how to lose weight "sustainably", or a profile of someone embarking on a resolution to lose a dramatic number of pounds in order to "feel better" about herself (it's usually a woman, of course), and "be healthier".

This isn't to say that the media isn't obsessed with weight loss the rest of the time -- they certainly are. But there's an intensification of the obsession at this time of the year, as well as (I'm guessing again, entirely non-scientifically) an increased likelihood on the part of "ordinary people" to act on the obsession. You can't step into a gym in the first few weeks of a new year without tripping over enthusiastic new resolutionists (much to the annoyance of the regulars, I'm sure).

What there isn't in the media is any follow-up coverage: we don't see stories about the people who, after losing huge amounts of weight, gain it all back (and more), damaging their health in a neverending yo-yo cycle. We don't hear about the people who suffer horrifying side effects as the result of weight-loss surgeries and diet pills. We don't hear about the people who live shorter, less happy lives than they would have if they'd just been satisfied with their natural weight.

Nor do we hear about the people who resolve NOT to lose weight. But that's my challenge for this year, both for myself and for you. Eat well, because it's better for you, and it's more enjoyable. Exercise, for the joy of moving your body and reach a goal (completing a race, hiking a trail, lifting a certain weight, whatever), but not to lose weight. Don't look at a scale. Don't obsess. Feel good about yourself and what you can do. Resolve not to feel guilty for eating a cookie. Celebrate being alive.

That's my resolution for '08.

Oh yeah -- and I resolve to blog more regularly. No, really. I mean it.