For a good time, follow/subscribe/like...
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1. Elan Morgan's Five Star posts. Seriously. THE BEST weekly curation of posts on the internet.
2. The Gender Avenger newsletter.
3. The #FeministPrincessBride hashtag on Twitter.
4. Farrah Braniff on Instagram for her Monday Inspiration posts
5. My favourite Tumblr blog EVER!
~~~~~
n~
Feminist Fare Friday: The Day 7 of NaBloPoMo Edition.
It is Friday, I have read some really, really good shit on the web this week.
And you know how I like to share...
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In response to the now viral Hollaback catcalling video, Elon James White, the CEO of This Week in Blackness responded in the best way... By creating the #DudesGreetingDudes Twitter hashtag. And even with some of the absolute hilarity of some of the tweets, there was a strong point to be made about the very nature of catcalling and street harassment...
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And speaking of that catcalling video... The eye gymnastics that Amanda Seales had to perform in her CNN interview with her fellow "mansplaining" guest was seriously Olympic status worthy! She recalls that particularly trying routine for us at XOJane this week...
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Also this week, excerpts from Lena Dunham's new memoir have thrown everyone for another really, REALLY, uncomfortable loop. I have an upcoming post that will address some of the issues arising from this in more depth, but for now, I want you all to read what Elan Morgan had to say about it. Because it is powerful and made me really take a step back and think. AS WE ALL SHOULD in these situations.
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There is a conversation that needs to be happening more in the parenting world and it is one that goes far beyond normalizing breastfeeding and breastfeeding in public. It is one about mothering and race. Because as this past week has shown, a white woman breastfeeding in her cap and gown is "adorable", while a few months ago, a black women breastfeeding in her cap and gown is "ratchett and ghetto". Yup, we really are such an enlightened bunch. LE GRAND SIGH... come on people, we can do so much better than this!
~~~~~
And finally, this video.
Because, OH MY GO....
[youtube]http://youtu.be/hR3ctoLrOHk[/youtube]
Happy Friday Everyone!
n~
~~~~~~~~~~
I believe you... But it is still not enough.
A few months ago I was at the Mom 2.0 Summit in Atlanta, Georgia. It was wonderful and I am going back again next year, because... MY TRIBE is there! On the first day of the conference, one of the speakers at the Keynote Expert Sessions was a man called Josh Levs. I'd never heard of him (Canadian blogger-fish out of water and all that), but Josh is kind of a big deal CNN reporter, a father of three and had just filed a complaint against his employer, Time Warner, for denying him 10 weeks of paid parental leave (what new mothers and adopted parents get from Time Warner, but not dads.) Josh was an engaging and passionate speaker and I appreciated that he was addressing the issue of shared parental responsibilities, but what I didn't understand was why this man was getting so much air time (literally) about an issue that women have been talking about and fighting for for years, not to mention one that places the US at the very bottom of the charts in terms of paid parental leave in the developed world.
It felt like, once again, an issue that affects primarily women is not really that big of a deal until it becomes detrimental to a man or a man starts talking about it.
This has been the case time and time again and it is something that I am so very, very tired of.
Case in point. Carla Ciccone wrote a post over a year ago about her VERY BAD DATE with a Canadian radio show host, which, I think we can all admit at this point, was with Jian Ghomeshi. The vitriol and internet hate-storm that was heaped on her after she wrote that post was appalling and I don't even want to revisit any of it (the comments on her post have picked up again given recent developments and are just as awful this time around). And now, after months of investigating and interviewing, Kevin Donovan and Jesse Brown - yes, two men - broke the story via the Toronto Star about Ghomeshi's disturbing and abusive behaviour and more than 10 people have now come forward with similar allegations of violence and abuse at the hands of Jian Ghomeshi. And NOW, it's a problem. Now that it's not just one woman who had at least that little bit of courage to write about her VERY BAD DATE, even though, if you cared to ask around, EVERYBODY KNEW ABOUT HIM! Now it's a big deal and must be dealt with.
Or, look at the new United Nations #HEforSHE campaign. God love her, Emma Watson is a shining beacon for young women everywhere, and I applaud her for stepping up to the plate and literally donning her baby feminist White Coat, but the whole premise of the campaign is that women's voices are simply not enough. That we need the HEs to speak up for the SHEs. That it is not enough for women to be seen and heard and treated as human beings in and of themselves. That we are only valued and validated in this world by virtue of our relationships to and with men as their mothers, daughters, sisters, and wives. Now, don't get me wrong, I too want men to speak up for feminism and for gender equality in our world, but not because they have a mom or a sister or a daughter, and not because they feel the need to be a hero and save the world's collective damsels in distress. I want them to do it because we are all in this place together, because one person's life is not more or less valuable than any other simple because we are not the same gender or colour or sexual orientation. I want them to do it because it is the right thing to do.
The internet is full of meme's and videos of men speaking for women. We've got Feminist Ryan Gosling Hey Girl-ing all over the place, we've got speech after speech from Joss Whedon about why he writes strong female characters and then one where he thinks we should get rid of the word Feminism. Harry Styles tweets a picture of himself supporting #heforshe and it gets retweeted over 282,000 times. Aziz Ansari sits across from David Letterman and tells us he is a feminist and we share that shit all over the place and praise all our wonderful male allies for saying all the exact same things women have been saying for eons!
On the other hand. A woman speaks up and makes a video about her experience with catcalling and street harassment and you know what happens? Sure the thing goes viral and has some serious issues that have been dissected elsewhere, but she also gets death and rape threats. Or how about this one. A woman is not the perfect girlfriend and what does her pissed off ex-boyfriend do when things end badly? He writes a 5000 word manifesto outlining why she is a terrible person, tries to ruin her publicly and professionally and rallies the collective troops of #nogirlsallowed land into a thing called Gamergate. If the situation was reversed, she would just be the crazy, vindictive, bitch of an ex-girlfriend who was out for revenge for being jilted and no one would have taken her the teensiest bit seriously. But we have this WHOLE THING now, because one dude got his heart and ego crushed BY A GIRL. Really. Boil it all down and that is what it is.
I've read multiple essays and posts this past week about why women don't speak up more, why they don't report the violence and abuse and assaults that have happened to them. Denise Balkissoon wrote just today in the Globe and Mail that no, we have not reached some kind of "watershed" moment in the face of violence against women. She goes on to say,
I’m not swayed by the newly enlightened, standing with outstretched, protective arms, advising victims of violence that there’s no longer a need to be ashamed or afraid of coming forward. Let me tell you what too many have heard, and will continue to hear, perhaps forever.
I don’t believe you.
I don’t believe you.
I don’t believe you.
And I don't disagree with her at all. I would also add that not only are women overwhelmingly hearing "I don't believe you." over and over again, even in cases with ridiculous amounts of evidence (see: death of raped and bullied Canadian girl who can not be named because of court mandated publication ban), in this world we live in, it's also a case of ....
We don't really care, because YOU DON'T REALLY MATTER. Your voice is not the one we listen to.
You are not a famous media/radio celebrity and will not have your 20+ year career ripped out from under you.
You are not an elite athlete who brings in millions to sports club owners and helps win championships.
You are not a Hollywood Icon whose brilliance can not be tarnished in our minds, because... BRILLIANT!
You are not a beloved TV character we all grew up with and thought of as our collective DAD.
You are not one of BillBoards most successful R&B/Hip Hop artists of the past 25 years.
You are not some promising young man whose life will now be ruined because you got drunk, he raped you, you reported him and now he has to go to jail.
And this is what kills me every time something like this happens. The voices of the women affected are not heard or are silenced. It's as if women's voices are some kind of background noise that people just want to turn down until a man in a nice suit tells you what to think or who to believe.
Until such a time exists when a woman can say, this is what happened to me and the automatic response from the general public isn't, "well, you should have known better" or "what do you have to gain from this?", we aren't making any progress in the plight of violence against and oppression of women. Until we can take a woman's word for it - whatever IT may be, and not have to wait for that word to be validated by a man, we are never going to get any further ahead in making this world a level playing field for all who live on it.
I gotta tell you...
I dream of that time. Every single day and every damn night.
And I have to believe it will come.
I have to.
n~
~~~~~
This is Day 5 of #nablopomo. I am writing a blog post a day for the month of November. So are a lot of other people. You can find them here.
If you build her....
Where are all the feminists?
~~~~~
What was it that Kevin Costner heard whispered to him in that baseball movie? Oh, right. "If you build it, they will come."*
Well, apparently, according to Heather Mallick at the Toronto Star; Canada needs to get on with building itself a better, more prominent/famous** feminist. Because apparently, there are none, NONE, in this vast country of ours.
Now granted, earlier this week Heather sat in a sold out crowd, watching PROMINENT British humourist and feminist, Cailtin Moran, do her schtick and promote her new book, How to Build a Girl, hot on the heels of the best-selling success of her 2011 book, How to be a Woman. Heather's enthusiasm and desire for a loud, in your face, this is the best time to be a woman, empowerment for all, ra-rah feminist is not surprising, Moran's wit and humour can be very infectious. I myself have had a bad case of Moran-itis in the past and thankfully, so very, very thankfully, have developed an immunity to it. So, I am going to give Heather a bit of a break, due to a possible fever and some delirium post-Moran, so to speak.
Because Canada does indeed have some very effective, and somewhat famous, feminists living and working and doing the hard job of actually BEING a feminist in our country and I have the great honour of being friends with some of them!
We have feminists like Annie from Phd in Parenting being asked to write for the NY Times. We have feminists like Lyndsay Kirkham, with her giant head, and outing of the continued misogynist culture in the tech world, being featured on The View. There is Danielle Paradis, whose a regular contributor at Policy Mic and whose writing has been published, well, pretty much everywhere (but, hmmm... not so much by many Canadian media outlets). We have feminists working to end violence against women, we have feminists working hard to pressure our government into making formal inquiries into missing and murdered indigenous women in our country, we have feminists who are raising the bar for everyone in the fight against street harassment.
What we don't have is a token "rock star" feminist. We don't have a Caitlin Moran telling/yelling at everyone, "If you have a vagina and want to be in charge of it, you are a feminist!" We don't have a Beyoncé with her glowing giant proclamation of FEMINIST behind her at the VMAs, we don't have an distinctively Canadian iconic feminist similar to Gloria Steinem, passing the torch to the younger generation and the next wave of feminism.
The thing is, I don't think we should have just one go-to feminist. That in and of itself is problematic. No one person can encompass all of the differences and intersections and individuals that make up modern day feminism. I can hear the critics now, "But Natasha, why not? Feminism just means equality for all and if we are all on the same team, why can't we have a team captain?" Because. We can't. No one person will experience and practice feminism exactly the same as the next. My white, cis-gendered, middle class feminism, is not the same as that of a person of colour or indigenous woman, it is not the same as a new immigrant's feminism and it is not the same as a LGBTQ person's feminism. It would be selfish, extremely self-centered, and irresponsible of me or any one feminist to claim to speak for or represent all feminists in Canada. What we can do though, is speak of our experiences and create a feminist collective. What I can do is speak about my life experiences, give my opinions within my frame of reference and when I can, amplify the stories of others to the audience I have and on the platforms that I have built for myself.
And that right there is the round about long way of coming by the simple answer to the question that Heather Mallick originally asked. "Why can't Canada build a prominent/famous** feminist?" Because Heather, most of the mainstream media in Canadian, does not really care to bother themselves with us. Canadian feminists for the most part are doing their work, being advocates and activists, and getting the message out via personal blogs and Facebook groups and grass-roots, non-profit, academic and non-academic organizations. They are doing their feminist work by being an example for and influencing, either directly or indirectly, people in their families and in their communities (online and IRL), their groups of friends, their children and their children's friends too. And that kind of feminism is just not that flashy and in-your-face, it is not the firebrand-rock-star-famous-making kind of feminism and therefore not usually deemed worthy of any kind of serious media attention.
Just like there is no one way to be a feminist, even though many will try to tell you otherwise, there is no one Canadian feminist that can lead us to the great land of milk and equality. Collectively though, we are a force, we may not be a nationally or internationally recognized one, we many not have best-selling books and go around telling folks that "I literally couldn't give a shit about it" and have an I'll be as crude and ableist and transphobic as I please attitude about one's feminism, we choose the more polite, inclusive and distinctively Canadian way. We pick ourselves up by our bootstraps (we all have boots) and get to doing the work that needs doing in whatever way we can. Not for the glory and the fame...
Because it is the right thing to do. And because as this GoodReads reviewer puts it in her analysis of How to Be a Woman,
Feminism doesn't need to be rock and roll, it's much better than that.
Cheers,
A not very famous Canadian Feminist doing her part.
(AND who would definitely consider a nationally syndicated column in which I could feature and profile our collective Canadian feminist voices. I'm just saying...)
~~~~~
What do you think?
Who are your favourite Canadian Feminists?
Please share your answers here and on Twitter with the hashtags #canfem and #BraveCanadianFeminist
*The actual quote from Field of Dreams is "If you build it, HE will come."
**The original title of the Toronto Star article was "Why can't Canada build a feminist?" and after much backlash online, the editors changed it to read, "Why can't Canada build a famous feminist?"
Standing on the edge
Does anyone else feel like we are at the point in human history where revolution just seems inevitable? Where the systems and constructs that we've so carefully crafted to have order in our world and our societies just don't seem to be cutting it anymore. How much more can we take of the tired rhetoric of "this is the way the world works" and "this is simply the way it has always been" and all the other variations on the status quo? Are we not supposed to evolve as a species? As a society? Please don't hate me internet, but as the boys in Nickelback are saying these days, "We're standing on the edge of a revolution."
~~~~~~~~~~
The shooting of Michael Brown was a tipping point. It has brought the ugly truth of racism in North America right to the front lines of our news feeds, Twitter streams and viral, live-streaming world. It showed us what happens when we question the system. It showed us the levels at which authoritarian governments will go to maintain "the peace"and what happens when you step out of line. How they will try to control the narrative of events and the status-quo of a world where everyone needs to know their place in it.
I've had a few conversations over the past month with people who have said to "wait for all the facts" and "let the courts and those in charge figure this out" and THEN, I can make an "informed" decision about what happened. For me, and for many others too, this line of thinking falls apart when it's the very people in charge who are the ones that are working within a system that fails to recognize it's own ingrained biases. What this says to me, is "Let us figure this out, and then we'll TELL you what to think" and I, for one, am just not down with that.
"What do we want? We want change.
How we gonna get there? Revolution."
~~~~~~~~~~
Anita Sarkeesian was forced to leave her own house last week because of threats made against her and her family on social media. What terrible thing did she do to bring on this level of abuse you ask? She released the most recent of her series of videos on "Tropes vs Women in Video Games." and by pointing out and discussing the way that the rape, maiming and murder of women is uniquely used as background narrative or character development in video games, she was subsequently threatened by members of the gaming community with all of these very things. I am not sure how much more her point needs to be hammered into someone's head when the very thing she is criticizing about video games, ie, violence against women, plays out in real life. That certain individuals (men) believe that this level of violence against women is just a NORMAL part of video games and somehow integral to the gaming experience is a problem people. A BIG one. Sarkeesian says that when these games are critiqued for their levels of violence against women it further perpetuates these beliefs and frames the "misogyny and sexual exploitation as an everlasting fact of life and as something inescapable and unchangeable." It is NOT and we do NOT have to accept these narratives "as some kind of necessary cultural background for our media stories."
"What do we want? We want change.
How we gonna get there? Revolution."
~~~~~~~~~~
Now on the "Ladies Master List of Things NOT to do to Avoid Being Violated" you can include taking racy photos of yourself with your smart phone. Add that to, don't get drunk, don't wear short skirts/low cut tops, don't walk alone in a dark back alley/parkade, and don't ever, EVER, leave your drink unattended - unless you have your special nail polish on that is - and it's just becoming a bit (read: A LOT) ridiculous. The level to which rape culture/victim-blaming is alive and well in our world is so insidious that it takes a couple of minutes (days) for people to register that the rape-drug detecting nail polish is actually NOT a great idea/invention or that saying, "Well, in this digital age, people (ei: WOMEN) should know better than to put naked pictures of themselves on their phones." is tantamount to saying that the VICTIMS of this CRIME are somehow partially to blame for said CRIME. In case I am not making myself clear, all of those pictures circulating on the internet are not a LEAK, and this is not a celebrity SCANDAL. This was a planned and deliberate crime, perpetrated by pathetic individuals who violated personal property, STOLE personal images and distributed them to the world for consumption at will. And EVERY SINGLE PERSON who downloaded them and got a nice good look at them is equally at fault for continuing to violate the privacy and personhood of these women. Take a stand people! Tell your friends that Googling the pictures is wrong. Tell Perez Hilton that he is a major ass creep for posting them. Unfriend /Unfollow anyone on FB or Twitter sharing them and let them know WHY. If you need some more info to convince them, Deb Rox at Blogher says it all right here: "We can start by calling this "leak" by its real name: sexual harassment via theft and publication."
"What do we want? We want change.
How we gonna get there? Revolution."
~~~~~~~~~~
I watched a documentary the other night called "L Word Mississipi: Hate the Sin" about the lives of lesbians living in the deep south, deeply Christian bible belt of America. It was a tough film to watch as these women tried to navigate living their lives and loving their partners surrounded by family members who openly told them they were going to burn in hell, strangers comparing them to child molesters and living lives denying their true selves for the sake of the church. I cried as I watched these women struggle with coming out to their deeply religious parents and the especially difficult story of the one woman who was "reformed" and trying to reform her gay son. At one point, my husband came in the room and asked me why I was watching such a depressing show? I was crying too much to answer him, but here is why. Because I wanted to bear witness to these women's lives, to their pain and struggle. And while that pain is not mine, I felt a profound allyship with these women. I felt loss when one woman's family left all of her childhood belongings on the doorstep of her house, as if to say, you no longer exist in our lives. If God is Love, then why can't Love be Godly? In all it's forms? Hating the sin is simply HATE folks. And that just has to stop.
"What do we want? We want change.
How we gonna get there? Revolution."
~~~~~~~~~~
The thing is, revolution is never pretty. It's not quiet. It is not NOT angry. It is not always orderly and it doesn't happen with all parties coming to the table for a "civilized" conversation and leaving happy. Revolution is by it's very definition an overthrowing of a social order in favour of a new system. Revolutions are emotional, they are fuelled by passion and anger and that stuck in your craw feeling that enough is finally, and absolutely ENOUGH! It takes strength to not back down. To not retreat to the way things have always been and just live out a mediocre existence in a world full of overt or not so overt oppression. You've got to get in some people's faces and keep doing it over and over and over and over again. Revolution happens when someone takes a stand, plants themselves there and refuses to sit down. And then someone else joins them. And then another person. And another. And another. And, well, you get the point right?
I do believe that in a lot of ways our world is indeed on the edge of a revolution. The question is, are we willing to step off that edge?
n~
Nickelback just released the new video for Edge of a Revolution yesterday.
You are welcome/I am sorry.
the list
I've been quiet here lately. But not in my head. In my head it is loud and full. The words and thoughts are bouncing back and forth and I am getting to the point where I can write/type them again.
In the mean time, please watch this. Because Jay Smooth is my Youtube boyfriend and because he speaks TRUTH in ways that I just can't get enough of. (You could just go subscribe to his channel too and see more of what I am talking about).
But seriously folks. Watch, Share, Repeat.
[youtube]http://youtu.be/MlNUIIyDA_w[/youtube]
Be back soon...
n~
Feminist Fare Friday: Edition #26
Let's just get to it today shall we...
..........
1. I have never watched Mad Men. I know, it's a great show, Jon Hamm is a wonderful actor, Christina Hendricks and Elizabeth Moss are brilliant in their roles and blah, blah, blah... I just can't. I am all for historical dramas, but the history of sexism on that show just isn't for me. In the following post, you'll see why. Advertising in the mid-twentieth century was enough to make you want to throw up a bit in your mouth. As my friend Kathleen says,
"But really, feminists just made up that entire misogynistic patriarchal paradigm crap. It's all a figment of our collective feminazi vagiocentric imagination..."
.....
2. By now you know that Disney bought Lucasfilms last year and with it the rights to all things Star Wars. Walk into any Disney Store and you'll find that they are already capitalizing on merchandise sales from the films and the TV series. It seems that in their haste to get products on the shelves, they neglected to include one particular and rather important character in the mix. Princess Leia.
One mother asked about this last week and this was Disney's response:
This week, Disney backtracked and has officially said that yes, in fact, there are plans for Leia merchandise in the pipeline. And if you have ever wondered about the power of Social Media, this might be one for the books - The #WeWantLeia hashtag started after Natalie's tweet was responded to and within a week, one of the largest companies in the world changed their tune. I call that a win this week!
.....
3. I like Jimmy Fallon. I really do. He's funny, he's multi-talented, he has epic lip-synch battles with some of my favourite actors. This week though, I am not impressed with him (or possibly the producers of The Tonight Show) for cutting out a part of his interview with Shailene Woodley in which she discussed gender politics.
Way to just keep perpetuating the status quo Jimmy. I expect better of you next time!
.....
4. And while we are talking about young Hollywood and gender politics, I have to give a shout out to Scout Willis. Her #FreetheNipple protest against Instagram's censorship (and deletion of her account) has garnered much attention this week from both critics and supporters and is further evidence of our younger generation "connecting the dots between nipple policing and larger issues of gender, sexuality, slut-shaming, victim-blaming, and body politics..."
.....
5. Yesterday, my five year old daughter asked me if I have a job that I go to. It was the first time she has asked me this and it kind of caught me off guard. I am quite sure of my choices in life, but I do worry at times that I am not DOING enough to show my children that there are other equally valid and fulfilling choices in the world. Last week a study was published about gender roles in the home and the subsequent headlines were making the rounds on Facebook claiming that if Dads do more housework, their daughters are more likely to become scientists and doctors and engineers. I am not one to fall for such blatant click-baiting headlines and neither is my good friend Annie at Phd in Parenting.
..........
Have a great weekend everyone!
natasha~
The clothes that you wear
A few days ago I was in our neighbourhood cafe around dismissal time for the local junior high school. The cafe is frequented by a lot of the neighbourhood kids and that day was no exception. It was one of our first VERY hot days of the summer and slushy drink sales were at an all time high! I was in line behind two teenage girls ordering said slushy drinks and I couldn't help but notice what they were wearing. One had on a tank top and the typical short shorts that one wears when your hips are still narrow and you are mostly legs and the other was wearing a very loose black tank top that had very wide arm openings that went all the way down to her waist and cropped black leggings. Underneath her tank top, she was wearing a sheer black bra. And in my head, two voices started battling it out. One was saying, "OMG! I can totally see ALL of her bra! That is so inappropriate! Why would her mother let her wear that! Stop staring at her bra!"
The other was saying, "Shut up already. It's hot outside and she is obviously very comfortable in what she is wearing. YOU are the only one who seems to have an issue here, get over yourself. You are not the fashion/modesty/appropriateness police, so just get your coffee and move on lady."
You see, I am a product of my society, the culture that I grew up in and in that culture, a woman's body (regardless of her age), and how she dresses it, are for others to comment on, to admire, to admonish, to assess and to judge. As much as I hate to admit this, a part of me did judge and I felt uncomfortable that I could see so much of this girl's underthings and went to that familiar, ingrained place of "has she no shame??".
I then hung my head in my own shame.
..........
This week my Facebook and Twitter feeds have been filled with story after story of young girls being shamed and punished for what they are wearing. Tank tops seem to be causing the most issues, because of those terribly distracting bra straps. Last week, 28 girls (and two boys - just so no one feels the need to point this out and then tell me this was not about gender discrimination) were sent home from a high school in Newfoundland because they wore tank tops to school on a hot day and this was distracting to some of the male students and teachers. A 17-year old was kicked out of her senior prom because her dress-code conforming fingertip length sparkly dress was making a bunch of 40-something dad chaperones feel uncomfortable and a Utah High school decided to arbitrarily photoshop year-book photos of female students who were showing too much skin.
All of this is happening in the wake of Elliot Rodger and the UCSB shooting and numerous posts being written about the insidious levels of sexism and misogyny that exist in our world. We've spent the last few weeks trying to come to grips with this tragedy and the very real fears that #yesallwomen have for themselves in this world that continues to want to make sure that women know their place in it and know how to dress and behave appropriately in that place, and now this. This shaming of teenaged girls. For what?
Having boobs?
And legs?
And skin?
The message here is loud and clear. YOU, oh girls and women of the world, must be ever conscious of your evil, tempting, womanly ways of instilling lustful thoughts in the minds of others (mainly men), by merely existing in this world. You must do this by covering your bodies, because otherwise, what is presented to the world is obviously meant for the taking. Or the judging, or the leering, or the cat-calling, or the grabbing, or the assaulting.
All these dress-code issues are really just thinly-veiled perpetuations of the kind of culture that we live in that blames girls and women for the thoughts and actions of other people. We have a name for that you know. It is called rape culture. It's the line we often hear that goes... "well, if she didn't want people to look at her like that/touch her like that/make rude comments to her like that, she shouldn't dress like that." It's the cop-out that many people default to when they say, "In an ideal world, it wouldn't matter, but we don't live in that world, so just be smarter about what you wear/where you walk/how much you drink, and those things won't happen to you."
The thing is, we are not talking about dangerous alleys in the dead of night here, we are talking about supposedly safe places like the hallways of high schools and parent-chaperoned prom dances and the pages of school yearbooks. And the people who are having issues and condemning these teens for their attire are the grown-ups in these situations. People who are having all kinds of "uncomfortable" feels because they are being turned on by, or disgusted by teenaged girls bodies. So, who exactly is the problem here??
One particular quote from a school board administrator in the Newfoundland case really made me ponder this issue. He said,
"Our focus would be around wearing clothes that's appropriate for a learning environment, making sure that we help students learn that as you transition through school and onto the workplace that the clothes that you wear respects the values of people around you, respects the diversity of the community that we live in ... so it's really about respecting others, as well as respecting yourself," said Pike. {emphasis is mine}
The clothes that you wear must respect the values of the people around you. Hmmmm....
I can see where this statement is true to a certain degree. When my husband and I visited Zanzibar in 2005, I was well aware that the area we were visiting was primarily Muslim. Out of respect for the customs and norms of the local people, I did not go out without covering my arms and legs and with a scarf on hand if I needed it to cover my hair, even when it was well above 30 degrees Celsius. So yes, I admit that there are situations that call for a certain kind of dress code, but the above statement also made me wonder. At what point do people around you respect you as a person, REGARDLESS of what you are wearing? Or is it as Mark Twain said, "Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society."?
Personally, I have to disagree with Mr. Twain on this one. I think that naked people, or naked women to be more exact, have had a big influence on our society. Pick up a magazine, watch TV commercials or browse online for a bit and you will find images of naked women, or parts of a naked woman (because it's not like women are ever portrayed as whole human beings), being used to try to sell you something.
{image credit: Suit Supply}
A constant barrage of images and messages constantly showing us and telling us that any or all of a woman's body is primarily a sexual "thing", makes it hard for society at large to see women as anything else. It is the reason that Facebook and now Instagram too, consider breastfeeding photos nudity and pornography and routinely remove them and ban the users posting them, yet will leave pages like "Big Boobs", which contains photo after photo of breasts in all states of undress, well enough alone. It is blog post after blog post telling women that leggings are not pants, and tumblr and Pinterest sites shaming women with people posting pictures of strangers to illustrate their arbitrary policing of others bodies. It's Robin Thicke thinking it would be "fun" to objectify women in his Blurred Lines video and not understanding why people were upset about that. While so much of this kind of thinking may be commonplace in our world, none of it is OK or acceptable and we should be doing all we can to challenge and change this status quo.
..........
This past weekend in my city it was the 4th Annual Slutwalk, an event that since it's inception in 2009 following remarks from a Toronto law enforcement official that "women should avoid dressing like sluts in order not to be victimized", is pushing out the message that there’s nothing a person can ever do to deserve sexual violence. I did not attend the walk this year, but heard from the organizers about a group of angry teenaged girls walking who got all up in the face of a member of a men's rights group protesting the event. I can't help but feel a bit of hope when I hear about things like that or watch videos from the young, bold, and super smart Laci Green, or read Claire's story about her prom experience, or know what Malala Yousafzai is doing for girls all over the world. Girls are speaking up, are saying ENOUGH and fighting back against a culture that is so reluctant to change the status quo. This new generation of young women, of young feminists, are giving me hope and teaching me a few things as well.
Back at the cafe, once the voices in my head had finally had it out with each other and there was a clear winner - I realized how much I still have to learn and UNlearn in this life. My thoughts were my own and I had to own that and admit my own shortcomings in this regard. And I know I have to do something about that. I have to do it for my children, because they are watching me and like the tiny little sponges they are, they are absorbing all the messages I am sending. What I say and do matters more now than it ever has before. And today's message is this: NO, clothes do NOT make the {wo}man, the person she {he} is does.
Now, go ahead, tell me that my bra strap is too distracting for you.... I dare you!
natasha~