One Woman is Too Many

One of today's trending news stories is the abduction and murder of a young British woman by a police officer as she was walking home.  It has sparked a hashtag war on social media between #NotAllMen and #TooManyWomen.

The Not All Men supporters are missing the point.  Yes, we understand that not all men are predators, but from a woman's perspective, they might as well be.  From an early age we are taught to not dress provocatively, to carry our keys in our fingers, to not go out after dark alone.  Why are boys not taught to not harass women?

Even the media narrative focuses on women.  "So many women were raped last year" instead of "how many times men raped women".  "How many girls were harassed" instead of "how many men harass girls". And so on.

Ask almost any woman and she will tell you a story.  I have many, starting from when I was FIVE.

I was in Kindergarten. A boy in my class chased me, and other girls, so he could flip their skirts and see their underwear.  Complaints to the teacher were met with the 'boys are boys' argument.  I never wore skirts to school again, except for my high school graduation.

When I was 12, two boys in my Grade 7 class bullied me regularly and stole my lunches when the teacher wasn't looking.  I complained and the teacher told me that they were only doing that because they 'liked' me.  I developed trust issues toward boys and men after that.

When I was 18 I was on the bus going to meet a friend.  A man sat next to me, tried to put his arm around my shoulders, and flirted with me.  I pretended I was deaf and signed some ASL, and he moved away.

I was 20, a friend of mine was getting married.  Her fiancé approached me one day, grabbed my hand and forced me to touch him, telling me that my friend 'didn't like to do that'.  I yelled and pushed him away.  When I told my friend what a sleaze her fiancé was, she didn't believe me and married him anyway. (They had a messy divorce a few years later.)

I was 22, my then-boyfriend had invited me to his place for a home-cooked dinner, and then expected something more afterwards.  I refused.  He pinned me down on his bed (he was a large man) so I couldn't leave.  He told me 'I'm raping you' and laughed when I tried to escape.  I had to bite him on the face to get him off me.

When I was 28, my then-husband would come up with any excuse to watch me get dressed, peek in on me when I was in the shower, and sneak up behind me for an unwanted tickle or grope.  When I protested, he would accuse me of not giving him enough 'attention'.  His demands nearly cost me my job, as I arrived at work late several days in a row after being guilted into giving him what he wanted early in the morning.  Our divorce papers cited irreconcilable differences, but the reality was that I had a nervous breakdown due to the sexual and emotional abuse.

Reaching a healthier mental state took years and two rounds of therapy with psychologists.

I'm proud to say that now I'm a much more confident woman, but the haunting memories will always reside in the back of my head.  I don't fear men, but I still find myself being careful.  It'll probably take a very long time, if ever, for women to not need to watch out for themselves at every step.

Overprotection

The estate of Dr. Seuss has decided to no longer publish six of his books due to stereotypical imagery that many people might find offensive.  It's certainly within their rights to do so, and they feel that it's in line with modern sensibilities.

I understand why, but I also have to ask: what are you so afraid of?  That people might take these images as commonplace?  Or that the images might actually cause people to think about their attitudes?

Lady Chatterley's Lover by D.H. Lawrence was banned in many countries until 1960 because of its sexual language and use of then-unprintable four-letter words.  That book is tame in comparison to many published works today.

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee was heavily censored because of its depictions of class systems and racial injustice.  Now in many places it's taught as part of the high-school curriculum.

The Harry Potter series was banned in many places because of the depiction of "witchcraft".  Seriously?  It's a work of fiction.  It's no less an espousal of magic as, let's say, the Xanth books by Piers Anthony or the works of Edith Nesbit.

The mathematician and satirist Tom Lehrer once sang, "When correctly viewed, everything is lewd."  I've always taken that to mean that anything can be found offensive if one looks hard enough, and that seems to be happening with increasing frequency.  Not to mention the hypocrisy of challenging certain works while leaving out others.

If we ban Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men for vulgarity and racism, why not ban Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice for its slander of Jews?  If we ban Huckleberry Finn for its use of the N-word, why not ban the Bible for its portrayal of slavery and the patriarchal domination of women?

Where does it end?  Should The Flintstones be censored because one of the episodes depicts a judo instructor with squinty eyes, big teeth, and an accent?  Should The Honeymooners be banned because Ralph Kramden frequently threatened his wife?

Just because sensibilities evolve doesn't mean the past needs to be removed or erased.  We have to accept that in certain eras and cultures, people are portrayed in a certain way in some people's opinions.  We don't have to share those opinions.  Instead, use them as a teaching moment to say "this is wrong now, and here's why".  Don't sweep it under the rug.

Some have said: "A disclaimer on a kids' book?  Really?"

Yes, really.  There are disclaimers on the Looney Tunes, on many TV shows from the 60s and 70s, and even The Muppet Show (which had an episode removed from the lineup because the guest was later convicted as a sex offender).  I grew up on such shows and could well understand the difference between uninformed attitudes and satire, but many people do not.

Instead of locking "objectionable" material in a vault, people need to be taught how to think for themselves and view the world in the shades of grey that it is, not in black and white.

Incidentally, Dr. Seuss also wrote Horton Hears a Who, that declares "A person is a person no matter how small" and Come Over to My House that offers "Some houses are marble, some are just tin, but they're all alike when a friend asks you in".  It's entirely possible that he became aware of his own questionable content during his frequent travels and wrote certain books as a kind of implicit apology for what had come before.

Try to understand the work for what it is, not for the perception or the politics.

The Right Side

My grandfather was part of an Antifa organization. It was called the Canadian Army when he was in World War 2 and fought the fascists and the Nazis in Europe for the freedom of the world. When did being anti-fascist become a bad thing?

Here's a helpful guide by my friend Melanie, if you are still not sure which side to be on.

Clarifying, in case anyone you know is, um, confused? A helpful rule of thumb I borrowed from a friend.

Huge numbers of our population believe in a complete alternate reality. Alternate facts as it were.

But just as intensely as I believe they are deluded, they think I am the one who is deluded. Maybe I am. So how can I be confident in my perception? It can be quite difficult.

But, I have found that in times of political confusion, particularly when emotions are running high and creating tunnel vision, the presence of Nazis can be an extremely helpful indicator.

If I am attending a local demonstration or event and I see Nazis… neo-Nazis, casual Nazis, master race Nazis, or the latest-whatever-uber-mythology-Nazis, I figure out which side they are on. And if they are on my side of the demonstration? I am on the wrong side.

It is tough to argue moral equivalence when I am standing next to a Nazi. Look to my right. Is there a guy wearing a 6MWE (6 million wasn’t enough) t-shirt? I am on the wrong side. Look to my left. If that guy is wearing a Camp Auschwitz t-shirt? Wrong side.

Are speakers being applauded for referring to things that Hitler got right? Wrong side.

Team-spirit face paint and hat with animal horns? This is actually an unclear indicator that could mean anything, but safest to keep my distance from that guy anyway, even at a football game.

However, I can always, always, always rely on the presence of Nazis as a guiding light through a fog of disinformation. Some things are relative, and politics can absolutely have its opposing sides and grey areas.

But evil and good are absolute. As are the lessons of history. So, just look for the Nazis, and make your own decisions.

Patriotism or Fanaticism

I among many of my fellow Canadians were frozen to the news on Wednesday afternoon as reports came of a mob storming the U.S. Capitol building.  But it was not surprising.  The signs had been building for months, with grievance and calls-to-arms posts all over social media.  My first impression was that either the Capitol Police were woefully underprepared, or they were complicit, as quickly shown by videos of officers calmly removing barriers and walking away, allowing insurrectionists past the perimeter.

After the fact, what I call the Holy Book meme is making the rounds again. The top photo is of a young woman carrying a Bible and a gun against a backdrop of an American flag. The bottom photo is of a young woman carrying a Qur'an and a gun against a backdrop of ISIL flags. The caption reads: "Is it just me, or is Republican Christianity starting to look a lot like extremist Islam?"

I've never really understood the correlation between guns and holy books, because the two should not go together.  But many religions are studies in hypocrisy.  They instruct believers to love their fellows, but at the same time, anyone who does not believe like them is to be eliminated.

Religion, by its very definition, is extremist, exclusionary, and hostile to competition.  The entire history of Christianity is marred by extremist behaviour: the Crusades, the Catholic persecution of the Huguenots, the Irish Troubles, and many more.  All monotheism is flawed in this way.  This is why I am not a religious person.

When one looks at the online profiles of many Trump supporters, they tend to espouse devout Christianity.  They somehow righteously feel persecuted, or feel that it's "God's will" and use that as an excuse to behave and think as they do.  They'll be "saved" if they behave in that manner, regardless if it happens to be against the law of the land.

Many politicians know how to exploit this.  Take the disaffected, the shunned, those on the fringes of society, the angry, the isolated those that don't "belong" and give them a banner to join together under, a sense of camaraderie or belonging.  Then exploit their grievances, foster their anger, and point them toward a target.  The attack on the U.S. Capitol was the result.

The absolute mockery and hypocrisy of someone carrying a "Jesus Saves" sign as they rushed up the steps to the Capitol proved that these people are the new ISIL, on home territory.  They should be treated as such.

It has been pointed out that if Wednesday's mob had been a BLM protest, there would have been a bloodbath.  Instead, the mostly white male insurrectionists were able to breach the seat of a democratically elected government, vandalize the place, and take chummy photos with the police officers inside.  All while members of said government were cowering in fear under their desks.

In the past we've seen similar events in other countries and thought that it couldn't happen here.

Yes, it CAN and HAS happened here.  Which is why we need to be more vigilant and less divisive.

Dramatics

It seems that my 2021 is beginning on a bit of a sour note.

I found out this morning that I'd been blocked by and/or lambasted by several people for simply asking questions about an alleged incident of "drama" that occurred on a favourite content creator's platform.  Said incident had caused several other mutual friends to abandon the platform in disgust and say things like "they'll get it when people start abandoning the platform in droves".

I did not witness the incident in question, which is why I asked about it.  If one can't understand the underlying issue, one can't take steps to not repeat the same mistakes.

Now I understand that some people don't want to discuss such things on their public feed.  I also understand that everyone has their own viewpoint of certain things.  But to block or ignore the issue entirely is not the way to solve things.  Since when has asking questions become grounds for censure?  It's not like this is top-secret info we're talking about.

My original query on a fan page for said content creator was seen by numerous people, but the only person who deigned to reply wrote "I thought we weren't supposed to have drama here? I'm out."  This prompted me to delete the message and ask to be contacted privately about the issue.

I will guess that part of it is that most people don't know the whole story and don't want to answer for fear of making things worse.  But those who do know the whole story aren't talking, which isn't any better.

"Drama" in whatever form exists everywhere and we have to learn how to deal with it in a healthy and effective manner.  We can't wear rose coloured glasses all the time.  That's not how the world works.  Denying hardship doesn't make you a better person.