I spent some time in a rental car this weekend. This always gives me the opportunity to listen to top 40 on the radio (of course, I was out of town and Co-op Radio, CFRO was not an option). I heard two pop hits that stuck in my head. The first was by some shitty boy band (the next generation of boy bands!) and the chorus went like this:

“When you smile at the ground, it ain’t hard to tell you don’t know you’re beautiful.”

That actually makes my skin crawl. This song advocates powerlessness — “darling, your lack of self confidence is so alluring. I love women who defer to my judgement.”

The next tune was by Mission, BC’s Carly Rae Jepson. It was her hit song “Call Me Maybe.” I know this song is so sickly sweet that it’ll rot your teeth. But take a look again at the chorus:

“Hey, I just met you, and this is crazy. But here’s my number, so call me maybe.”

There you go! A girl in charge of her own destiny.

Tags: Music, pop culture

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It’s true. I’ve known more than one abusive man in my day. Some I knew intimately and some were only acquaintances. You know, just friends of friends. Some men still think it’s ok to maintain friendships with abusive men dontchaknow. At a certain point someone might accidentally let it slip that so-and-so, you know, that guy we party with, you know, maybe tormented or threatened or tried to strangle his girlfriend, and funny thing! I wouldn’t want to hang out with those dudes anymore. How awkward for everyone. “Meghan, Meghan – we don’t acknowledge those things.” “Hey! Buddy never abused me so who knows, right? His girlfriend is probably lying about that abuse.” If you don’t see it with your own eyes you should just assume it isn’t happening and go on with your life, yes? OH those ladies and their nutty stories.

But I digress. My friend Easily Riled wrote a post about the Bedford decision and some of the rhetoric coming from those who advocate for the decriminalization of pimps and johns. She pointed out that:

“The appeal judges decided that the Communicating law did not violate the Charter rights of prostituted people sex workers, and represented a reasonable limit on rights to expression.  Because as we know, it is difficult to tell–no matter how much time you have to “screen” some guy– when he’s going to go off on you. Women in prostitution have told us many stories about going with men they knew, regular ‘clients’, men the met and talked with for an hour or so in the bar, men referred to them by trusted friends– who, when alone with them, became violent. And, you know, women often MARRY men who turn out to be abusive– five minutes on a street corner isn’t going to make a difference–he always decides how to behave, she will never have  that control. In theory, then, the communicating law can be used against the men who buy sex.”

One of the more common arguments for the decriminalization of johns is that if buying sex in the street is completely legalized, prostituted women will have more time to asses a client before getting into a car or going to a room with him.

This argument has been refuted by many, including Janine Benedet, who acted as co-counsel for the Women’s Coalition for the Abolition of Prostitution during the Bedford trial, who noted in a recent talk that the 27 year old man who murdered Nicole Parisien was seemingly, just a “regular” guy. Andrew Evans was a rugby player and former peer counselor. Benedet noted that he found Parisien through an ad on Craigslist and met her at an apartment of her choosing – an apartment that was being used as a brothel in Kitsilano.

Are these the “safe” indoor brothels people are advocating for? I imagine that Parisien thought this man was “safe”. Turns out he wasn’t. Turns out that being indoors, being able to suss out clientele first didn’t stop Evans from becoming violent when he couldn’t maintain an erection. Benedet added:

“This is a good example of the male sexual entitlement that is quite evident in prostitution. When she didn’t give him what he wanted he turned to violence and she was dead very, very quickly. There was no time for anybody to intervene. A good reminder that just putting things in a brothel or in a woman’s own apartment doesn’t stop this kind of violence.”

So Evans may be spending his life in jail but Parisien no longer has a life.

Devastatingly, these stories are not uncommon – there is something about men who buy sex who seem to think that the women they buy are disposable. Male entitlement is tied to prostitution. Men who buy sex think they are entitled. They believe that their pleasure is more important than women’s lives, women’s health, women’s well-being. Do you think that the man I saw the other day while waiting for the bus at Main and Cordova, who stopped his black SUV at the corner and dropped off a woman limping in platform shoes, steadying herself with a cane, cares about her life? Do you think he wants her life to get better? I doubt it. I doubt any man who buys sex wants the lives of prostituted women to get better. If their lives were better there would be no one left to give him blow jobs on his lunch break.

These are the men we are talking about decriminalizing. Not some imaginary “nice john.” What “nice man” wants women to remain so poor that they have no choice but to service him? What “nice man” kills a woman because he can’t maintain an erection? And what “nice man” thinks he deserves this – that he is owed, nay, is entitled to a blow job? Because he is a man. It is his right. Women are his right. Access to women, 24/7, is his right. That’s what we are talking about when we talk about decriminalizing pimps and johns.

I’ve known a number of abusive men in my lifetime. And you’d never know by looking at them. You probably wouldn’t even know it by talking to them for five or ten minutes (although you do begin to recognize certain traits in certain kinds of abusers – but the smart ones know how to hide it). Sometimes women don’t find out that their partners are abusive until they become pregnant. I can pretty much guarantee that if I had A) gone through with my pregnancy, and B) stayed with the man who impregnated me, the abuse would have escalated. Sometimes women only find out their partners are abusive once their partners get drunk. And hey, sometimes we even get clues early on but sometimes we don’t know they’re clues. Or maybe we’ll ignore the clue. Or maybe the abuser will manipulate us into thinking we are crazy or mess with our heads so that we no longer trust our own instincts. Or maybe we’ll leave. But the idea that women can somehow predict which men are abusive (whether it is verbal, emotional, or physical – and often all these forms of abuse work in congruence) and then avoid said abuse is bunko.

The abusive man is often quite a popular dude. He is often a pillar in his community. He is often charming and intelligent. I know tons of these guys. They are still invited to parties, to meetings, to community gatherings. The women they tormented are not, of course. Those women are not to be trusted. Those women must hide out or feel ashamed or are ostracized. Or they simply remain silent, never saying a thing. Women who name their abusers don’t always get support and, in fact, they often get the opposite of support. Often they are blamed or they are not believed.

So I’m not convinced that talking to a man through a car window, or over email, or even over the phone will tell a woman whether or not this man might become violent or whether he might call her names or whether he will degrade her. We do know that, whoever these men are, even if they aren’t physically violent, they believe that women exist on this earth in order to provide men with sexual pleasure. It is also clear that men who buy sex from prostituted women are often violent, are often abusive, and are often murderers. Sometimes they are “non-violent” misogynists. But not always. We also know that regardless of whether or not a woman has had the opportunity to chat with a man for five or ten minutes, she will at some point be alone in a car or in a hotel room or in an alley with him, and he may or may not have displayed his violent tendencies within the first five minutes of meeting.

What I’m addressing here is of course the idea that decriminalizing johns will make prostitution safer. Or rather, that it will make johns safer. Because that’s what were really talking about, right? Violent, sexist men? We aren’t really saying that women can somehow predict or avoid violence. We’re saying we need to stop violent men. We’re saying we need to stop normalizing sexist behaviour. We need to stop reinforcing the idea that men have the right to access female bodies 24/7.

In a past relationship I told a man that what he was doing constituted verbal and emotional abuse and that he had no right to treat me in that way – I told him I didn’t deserve to be treated in that way. And you know what he said to me? “It was your choice to stay”. And do you know what that means? Do you know what he meant when he said that? He was telling me it was my fault. He was telling me that there was nothing he could do to change and that since I had “chosen” to stay, I must either be ok or somehow deserve that abusive treatment. That since I chose to live in the same house as him and knew that his behaviour was abusive, it was ok for him to continue to treat me in that way because, in the end, it was my responsibility to stop that abuse from happening. Not his. Of course I did leave eventually but I’ll never forget the feeling of being blamed for my own abuse. Of making it about “my choice”.

This isn’t the only time this has happened. Another time I told some people about a man who was their friend who had been abusive to me throughout our relationship. I had already left him at this point. Do you know what they said to me? “Well, you chose to stay, didn’t you?”

OH choice. Magical, magical choice. If you “choose” to put yourself in a position to be abused, according to our f**ked up culture, it’s your fault. So if women do a bad job of  sussing out johns before getting into cars with them, and those johns turn out to be violent, who is to blame?

The answer is obvious, but based on some of the rhetoric coming from those who advocate only for a harm reduction model and from those who want johns to be decriminalized, you wouldn’t know it. There is NO reason to protect these men. There are many reasons to protect prostituted women. These women, most certainly, need to be decriminalized so that they can safely go to the cops if they need to. These women, most certainly, need other options. They need to not have to service misogynists or get into cars with them or go to brothels or hotel rooms with them in order to survive. But decriminalizing johns isn’t going to make those men any safer. It certainly isn’t going to convince them not to abuse women and it certainly isn’t going to convince them that they don’t have the god given right to a blow job at any given moment, so long as they can pay.

Tags: abolition, abuse, Bedford v. Canada, johns, Misogyny, prostitution, Sex Work

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YAY! Ladies dressed up as Playboy bunnies stopping cancer with sexxxxxiness!

Ugh. But seriously. Do we have to go over this every year? I don’t know that people who have cancer feel like it’s super sexy, but whatever! Those people are party poopers. Cancer = boring amiright?

Tags: awareness campaigns, cancer, sexualizing cancer

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I’ve been frustrated with a language trend over the last few years: the revival of using the terms “retard(ed)” and “bitch(es)” as common accepted slang.

When I was a little kid in the early 90s calling someone a “retard” was the go to insult. It was used as a synonym for stupid, loser, loner etc. The thing about this slur was that as you got into your teens it became an embarrassing insult to use ― it was so obviously juvenile. One of those rare instances where maturity simply wiped out a harmful use of language.

Nowadays it’s not uncommon for me to hear adults who are otherwise mindful of harmful language spit out the r-word in regular speech. I very non-scientifically attribute this change to the popularity of 2003’s hit single Let’s Get It Started In Here by the Black Eyed Peas. Of course many of us know the original title was Let’s Get Retarded in Here. I think this song subtly changed the slang definition of “retarded” enough to make it appear to be more politically correct. Among adults, not sure about the child-folk, it’s now sometimes used to describe a ‘crazy’ situation rather than stupid person.  The “crazy situation” can even be a positive like, “bro that party was retarded!” This usage makes it doubly hard to eliminate from common usage since it does not appear to be harmful. Of course if this were the case then there wouldn’t be massive campaigns like R-Word: Spread the word to end the word.

The “bitch” issue is very similar and, of course, even more relevant for discussion on a feminist blog. I’ve seen change in usage which has made it more widespread in circles I had not seen before. Historically it has been used and continues to be applied as a put down for women. Often reserved for women behaving outside of their expected gendered norms (i.e. being aggressive, assertive, domineering etc.) This is not news. But, what I’ve noticed in the last couple years is a prevalence of men (and women) saying bitch in reference to some sort of perceived “unmanly” action. For example, a group of friends scolding a guy for wanting to go home instead of having another drink, “don’t be a bitch, have another drink.” Another interesting manifestation has been using the term “bitches” to refer a group of people (of any gender) in a mainly positive spirit kind of way, “what’s up bitches?” or in a pumping up exclamation about something a group of people should be excited about. See banner from a bar in my neighbourhood:

Slightly different is the boasting usage that I will, again, non-scientifically attribute to the popularity of the terrible song I’m in Miami Bitch. LFO may have met their match with such lyrical gems as “Anna wants it bad she’s got some big kahunas, but I say I’ll be back gotta get some more coronas.” I’ve seen this usage extend to even the most inane situations: “I made cornbread bitches!” (I didn’t actually hear this specifically but you get the idea..) This one bothers me the most because, to me, even within the “lightheartedness”  it feels very similar to the idea of “take it like a bitch” which is pretty much saying that women are bitches who deserved to be raped so you better “take it.”

I know language is highly complex and that behind closed doors with folks we know well the most progressive of folks (myself included) jokingly use a lot of these terms. I’m not even going to try and get into reappropriation of terms because each “reappropriated” word requires a thesis worth of arguments on whether it’s possible or not. But I do think it’s a simple request to stop using terms in public spaces that were historically used to denigrate a group of people if you are not a part of that group of people. Even if the newer uses of it seem somehow less harmful.

Fortunately there’s a solution since I actually love to curse and throw insults at people (playfully of course…). I don’t recommend watching or re-watching 1996’s Independance Day but it holds a dear spot in my heart for introducing me to Yiddish. Jeff Goldblume’s father is fussing over meeting the president and he says, “If I knew I was going to meet the president, I would have worn a tie. I mean, look at me: I look like a schlemiel.” Schlemiel!? What a lovely sounding word to my  11 year old ear. My German speaking mother told me it meant a sloppy person.

I was mulling over my frustrations with the trendiness of the new usages of the r-word and the b-word whilst strolling through a bookstore when I came across this new graphic novel: Yiddishkeit – Jewish Vernacular & The New Land.

Thus I was reunited with my love for Yiddish. The following is from the introduction of the book and it should get you started on your journey to Yiddish swears:

“Yiddish may be the most onomatopoeic language ever created. Everything sounds exactly the way it should: macher for a self-appointed big shot, schlemiel for the fellow who spills the soup and sclmazel for the poor guy who gets the soup spilled on him, putz for an active louse, schmuck for a hapless one (as in “poor schmuck”), shnorer for a freeloader, nudnick for a pest. The expressiveness is bound into the language, and so is a kind of ruthless honesty.”**

**For those of you interested in the basic etymology of a whole slew of English words of Yiddish origin check out this helpful wikipedia article.

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How many more times will we have to hear about how ALL WOMEN are horrible, insecure, jealous, other-lady-hating bitches? Probably at least a few more times.

In case you missed it a couple of weeks back, Samantha Brick, a lady who I’d never heard of until just now, but apparently is so beautiful that men give her booze and train tickets and stuff, wrote what is possibly the most entertaining article of all time, explaining that being the prettiest flower on the plane, in the bar, or in all of France isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.

In an effort to finally address the age old oppression of the very, very good looking and to, at long last, end the silence! around the true fact that no attractive woman anywhere has ever been a bridesmaid or had dinner at a friend’s house while their husband is present without the evening ending in a soap opera style cat fight, Ms. Brick, a journalist, took it upon herself to write an entire article detailing the ways in which men love her and women hate her, pointing to examples such as these:

“I’m not smug and I’m no flirt, yet over the years I’ve been dropped by countless friends who felt threatened if I was merely in the presence of their other halves. If their partners dared to actually talk to me, a sudden chill would descend on the room.”

“It is not just jealous wives who have frozen me out of their lives. Insecure female bosses have also barred me from promotions at work.”

“I don’t drink or smoke, I work out, even when I don’t feel like it, and very rarely succumb to chocolate. Unfortunately women find nothing more annoying than someone else being the most attractive girl in a room.”

Not only that, but attractive women everywhere are being forced into “baggy, sombre-coloured trouser suits” you guys! Enough is enough.

This sort of thing goes on as she explains how hard her life has been, all because other women see her as a threat, whereas men fawn all over her. Basically men are good and women are bad.

“It was clear that when you have a female boss, it’s best to let them shine, but when you have a male boss, it’s a different game: I have written in the Mail on how I have flirted to get ahead at work, something I’m sure many women do.

Women, however, are far more problematic. With one phenomenally tricky boss, I eventually managed to carve out a positive working relationship. But a year in, her attitude towards me changed… When I asked her right-hand woman why, she pulled me to one side and explained that my boss was jealous of me.”

Not once does it occur to Brick that, perhaps she has such negative experiences with other women because she actually really, really hates women? And because her hatred of other women has been rewarded by men and a misogynist culture?

All women are not envious, jealous, evil people. My friends are my friends because we enjoy each others company, not because I think they are safely unattractive. I know many conventionally attractive women who have lots and lots of female friends and who have never been fired for being “too pretty”.

Often you hear about women who supposedly don’t “like” other women. What is that about? Are women really so unlikelable? When women are painted as mean, catty, boyfriend-stealers by other women, what does that tell us? That all women are, in fact, shitty? Or that women internalize their own oppression in a way that sometimes manifests itself in misogynist ways?

Women are pitted against one another. Women are told that their primary power lies in their looks and in their ability to attract men. Women are told that other women are a threat to their marriages (letting the cheating men off the hook, of course). Women are picked apart constantly throughout their entire lives – they’re too fat, they’re too skinny, they’re too old, they’re too hairy, and their vaginas are just all wrong all the time.

We’re made to hate ourselves and its no wonder we sometimes end up hating one another.

The only times I can recall feeling “threatened” by my female friends is when my actually evil partner took it upon himself to invent flirtations – just to, you know, keep me on my toes. This kind of behaviour is fairly common in abusive men. It’s a way to keep you feeling isolated, insecure, and paranoid. It’s called crazy-making. Otherwise known as emotional abuse.

If you look around, you’ll start to get the feeling that the whole world is in on this kind of crazy-making. The more we’re told that women are jealous, insecure bitches who hate one another or are out to “steal your man” (because, you know, men are brainless puppets who are drawn through life by a string attached to their dicks), the more likely we are to believe it. We’re all supposed to be in competition with one another, right? We need to work to catch and hang on to men because at the blink of an eye, a younger, blonder, thinner lady might come along and, as evil ladies do, steal your man away. Whatever you do, don’t put any of that onus on the dudes. Boys will be boys and it’s the responsibility of women to deal with it.

I wonder if Ms. Brick’s obsession with her looks has anything to do with the fact that her father told her over and over again how beautiful she was, or because other men did, and because now her husband does? I wonder if the fact that women’s appearances are the focus of so much of society’s attention makes us, in turn, obsess over the same? I wonder if we were told, instead, how smart we are or how athletic or good at math or knitting or building houses or fishing or making muffins or whatever it is we do, instead of being told we are alternatively ugly or beautiful, over and over again throughout our lives, we wouldn’t think that was all others cared about.

It isn’t only men who see women through a hypercritical lens. Wonder why flawless, objectified women fill the pages of women’s magazines as well as men’s? We learn to see ourselves through the eyes of a sexist culture too. We are taught to study and pick apart our own as well as each other’s bodies and faces.

By now you all have probably read or read about the piece Ashley Judd wrote, calling out the media for their treatment of women, naming this obsession over women’s appearances (and, in this particular case, her face) “nasty, gendered and misogynistic,” pointing out that:

“The assault on our body image, the hypersexualization of girls and women and subsequent degradation of our sexuality as we walk through the decades, and the general incessant objectification is what this conversation allegedly about my face is really about.”

Brick says that her father’s love and affection was the key to her being able to love herself. But I get the feeling that her “love for herself” is actually a love of being admired by men.

Brick reminds me of my 20 year old self – cocky as hell because a bunch of drunk dudes wanted to pay for my drinks. That shit is temporary. Eventually I wanted more from the world, more from men, and more for myself. Feeling like the only thing you have going for you is male attention isn’t a good feeling.

I can’t say that feeling attractive to men hasn’t made me feel good about myself. It has and often it still does. I can’t say I’m immune to that learned desire to be perceived as attractive. But I can say that I know where that comes from. I doubt I’d wear makeup if I didn’t feel as though it would help me move more easily through this world. Or if I hadn’t been told by advertisers and media that having under eye circles should make me feel suicidal. Here’s hoping that the more aware we all become around how all this works, the less we will buy into it and the less we’ll hate ourselves for having flaws.

So Ms. Brick claims that all women hate her and are out to make her life difficult because ALL women are horrible, jealous, insecure, bitches. What are we to make of this? It’s woman-hating, internalized. Not only does the whole world hate us, (unless we are acceptably beautiful and available for consumption, at which point we will be “loved” temporarily and then discarded), but we’re also taught to hate one another and to hate ourselves.

I don’t care what Samantha Brick looks like. She’s some blonde lady who looks like any other blonde lady. Who cares. As much as I think she is ridiculous, I don’t hate her. I feel sorry for her. I feel sorry that she doesn’t have any friends and I feel sorry that she’s learned that this is because women are jealous of her. I’m sorry that she’s learned to value men’s attention in such an extreme way and I’m sorry it’s led her to have so much disdain for other women. But in a culture that tells use we are worthless and either “to be looked at” or invisible, in a culture that has made violence against women sexy, that sells women as consumable products, and has managed to find flaws from our heads to our toes, it isn’t surprising.

Sure. Brick is annoying and delusional. Ok. Self-obsessed, narcissistic , and arrogant? Perhaps. But she also represents the extremely insidious impact a misogynistic culture has on women – wherein male attention is everything and woman-hating is assumed. Brick is the product of a culture that objectifies women and that tells us we are simultaneously delicate flowers and unfuckable trolls. We are told that women hate porn because they are “jealous”, that feminists are critical of the sex industry because we can’t get a man or because we are angry that we aren’t getting enough male attention ourselves. We are told that male philandering is normal and that we should expect to be cheated on by our male partners and that this is either the fault of other women or our own faults for not providing a consistently abundant level of blow jobs. We live in a culture that treats women like trash, blames them for their own abuse and their own oppression and then, on top of all that, we’re taught to hate one another. Divide and conquer.

All Samantha Brick is is a woman who bought into all this and, instead of becoming politicized, became complicit.

Tags: Ashley Judd, feminism, Misogyny, objectification, pretty women, Samantha Brick, sexism, the male gaze, woman-hating, women who hate women

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