Bitch-v-Bimbo

Now that Senator Hillary Clinton is said to be slated to join President-elect Barack Obama's cabinet as Secretary of State, the right-wing sexists (including women who denounced liberal women for calling Sarah Palin an airhead) have pulled out all the photoshop stops to paint her as a ugly old monster. That despite her total hawkishness.

As for Palin, well, what can I say? She did turn out to be an airhead, who nearly destroyed her party.

But, I must be honest. I think Palin got a rough ride, although it was different from Clinton's.

Palin's appearance and attention to her family (or lack of it, depending on how you saw it) worked against her in that she was stereotyped in certain ways. Clinton on the other hand was attacked for the same things, even though she is no beauty queen and, although a mother, and a very good one, was not surrounded by an ever-expanding brood.

In this week's New York magazine, Amanda Fortini examines how, despite all the breakthroughs made by women in politics during the 2008 election campaign, women were still confined by the not-so-good old fashioned stereotypes:

In the grand Passion play that was this election, both Clinton and Palin came to represent—and, at times, reinforce—two of the most pernicious stereotypes that are applied to women: the bitch and the ditz. Clinton took the first label, even though she tried valiantly, some would say misguidedly, to run a campaign that ignored gender until the very end. “Now, I’m not running because I’m a woman,” she would say. “I’m running because I think I’m the best-qualified and experienced person to hit the ground running.” She was highly competent, serious, diligent, prepared (sometimes overly so)—a woman who cloaked her femininity in hawkishness and pantsuits. But she had, to use an unfortunate term, likability issues, and she inspired in her detractors an upwelling of sexist animus: She was likened to Tracy Flick for her irritating entitlement, to Lady Macbeth for her boundless ambition. She was a grind, scold, harpy, shrew, priss, teacher’s pet, killjoy—you get the idea. She was repeatedly called a bitch (as in: “How do we beat the … ”) and a buster of balls. Tucker Carlson deemed her “castrating, overbearing, and scary” and said, memorably, “Every time I hear Hillary Clinton speak, I involuntarily cross my legs.”

<SNIP>

Palin was recast as the charmer, the glider, the dim beauty queen, the kind of woman who floats along on a little luck and the favor of men. In a recent issue of The New Yorker, Jane Mayer recounted how a handful of conservative Washington thinkers became besotted with Palin during a trip to Alaska and subsequently began to promote her in Washington: The National Review’s Jay Nordlinger described the governor as “a former beauty-pageant contestant, and a real honey, too,” Bill Kristol called her “my heartthrob,” and Fred Barnes noted she was “exceptionally pretty.” While it’s obviously not Palin’s fault that men find her attractive, it is fair to criticize her for campaigning on a platform of charm rather than substance. In what Michelle Goldberg called a “brazen attempt to flirt [her] way into the good graces of the voting public,” she waved and winked and smiled—even during the debate—and called herself “just your average hockey mom.” (Never mind that it’s impossible to imagine a male candidate mentioning fatherhood as the source of his readiness to be the nation’s second-in-command.) Her running mate called her “a direct counterpoint to the liberal feminist agenda for America,” and her “Joe Six-Pack” fans seemed to appreciate her nonthreatening approach. To quote a former truck driver named Larry Hawkins who was interviewed by the Times at a Palin rally: “They bear us children, they risk their lives to give us birth, so maybe it’s time we let a woman lead us.”

<SNIP>

(A)mong the darker revelations of this election is the fact that the vice-grip of female stereotypes remains suffocatingly tight. On the national political stage and in office buildings across the country, women regularly find themselves divided into dualities that are the modern equivalent of the Madonna-whore complex: the hard-ass or the lightweight, the battle-ax or the bubblehead, the serious, pursed-lipped shrew or the silly, ineffectual girl. It is exceedingly difficult to sidestep this trap.

And it's not going to get any easier because the die has been cast.

Getting screwed

You know, up until this week, I firmly believed that prostitution should be legalized, that government should tax and regulate it, and that we should have red-light districts to avoid the NIMBY problems that result in Johns cruising residential streets and kids slipping on used condoms on the way to school.

Then I started talking to professional sex workers, in Ontario court right now to strike down sections of the Criminal Code which lead to their getting exploited, assaulted, raped, robbed, arrested, jailed, deprived of normal relationships, and, worst of all, killed.

They convinced me that decriminalization -- and not legalization -- was the way to go. This is the aim of their constitutional challenge.

And they're right. Total legalization would lead to regulation, including forced medical exams and other invasions of privacy. (Lots of explanation here and here, if you care to learn more.) Sex workers are perfectly capable of getting medical certificates from their own doctors and hanging them on their walls.

Sex worker rights are human rights. Complete legalization would effectively make sex workers cede control of their bodies to the government. But sex workers don't enlist, the way soldiers do. They are entrepreneurs, independent business people, and they should not be subject to any more licensing procedures than any other service.

By coincidence, during the 2008 election campaign in the US, San Franciscans had to vote on Proposition K, which would decriminalize prostitution, much like the way it has been operating hassle-free in New Zealand for the past few years.

Prop K did not pass.

But this is Canada -- and the Crown will find it, in my not-so-expert-legal opinion, tough to argue that sex workers are less human than the rest of us. But we won't know the outcome of this for at least a year.

Meanwhile, how many sex workers will end up floating in the lake?

Anyway, here's the column, with some links and other goodness.

If there's one thing that divides feminists, it's the sex business. On one side, you have those who regard the world's oldest profession as a form of slavery, which only desperate women would get into, or get forced into. They maintain that it victimizes all women because it makes men see them as sex objects, or worse.

On the other side, there are those – count me among them – who look at it as a career choice, and a necessary service. It has nothing to do with patriarchal structures because it probably predated any form of patriarchy – and may well outlive it.

It's the woman's body and she's free to use it as she wants, we say.

After all, nobody stops race car drivers from risking their lives for fame and fortune, thrills and chills. So why put the brakes on sex workers? Why criminalize sex – a perfectly natural act – when drinking, smoking, gambling and other vices are not a crime?

The funny thing is, prostitution is legal in Canada. It's everything that allows a worker to safely ply her trade that will land her in jail.

All of which results in exactly the kind of exploitation from which the sex police want to shield prostitutes.

"People have a moral problem with us," says Amy Lebovitch, interim executive director of Sex Professionals of Canada (SPOC). "The media definitely play a part. They've created this view that sex for money is exploitative – but sex goes on every day."

So why should the religious right and righteous left impose their morality on sex workers, despite how virtually all the research indicates that sex workers' are put at risk by laws that cause more problems than they prevent?

This was the battle in San Francisco during the 2008 election campaign. Proposition K, which would have corrected the criminal approach to sex workers, while redirecting police resources to traffickers and pimps, missed passing by some 60,000 votes last week.

As for Lebovitch, she is no victim.

"I began in the profession because I wanted independent security," she tells me. "There are always going to be people involved in it for all sorts of reasons – to pay off debt, or to go through school or because they enjoy it. There isn't just one box you can put all us into it. I don't feel exploited."

This is why, last year, SPOC mounted a legal challenge to strike down three provisions of the Criminal Code: s.210, which forbids the keeping of a bawdy house, s.212 (1) (j) which makes living off the avails a prostitution a crime and s.213 (1) (c), which bans communication for the purpose of prostitution.

All week, sex workers, lawyers, academics, experts and the Crown have been duking it out in a closed boardroom at the Superior Court of Justice. The case will be heard well into next year.

SPOC says that barring bawdy houses prevents women from working in their homes, or sharing spaces with other sex workers. Not only is that a violation of their human rights, but it forces them into the streets.

Living off the avails means they can't be in normal, healthy relationships because their partners will be charged.

As for communication, to make a deal, women must climb into cars with strangers before they can safely assess the situation.

None of these laws, say the experts, have ever prevented the real problem – human trafficking. In any case, there are kidnapping, abuse and rape laws on the books for the slave trade.

In fact, the Criminal Code, as it now stands, makes it easier for traffickers.

"These laws create an environment where trafficked girls are prevented from going to the police because they're told they will be deported if they do," says Lebovitch. "If these laws are struck, sex will move from the underground into the open where people can see it as a legitimate choice."

All sex workers want is what all the rest of us working girls do.

Says Lebovitch: "We want to be able to live with partners. We want to have safe lives. We want our rights and freedoms."

Seems fair enough.

Just because sex workers do what they do, doesn't mean that they should get screwed.

Don't look down

Oh hippy day!

Ladies, the next time you start hating on your lower half, remember this:

The hips of females from the species Homo erectus, a primitive relative of   modern humans, have been found to be wider than was previously thought.

That means they were well equipped for delivering babies with a larger cranial   capacity which ultimately allowed intelligent human beings to evolve.

Scientists came to their conclusion after reconstructing a 1.2  million-year-old fossil pelvis discovered in Gona, Ethiopia.

The new pelvis fossil suggests that Homo erectus infants were more than 30 per  cent larger than has been believed until now.

The need to give birth to large brained infants was probably the primary  driver behind the shape of the pelvis.

Previous research based on the skeleton of a young male, named Turkana Boy,   had led experts to believe that Homo erectus had a tall, thin body shape   adapted to a hot climate or endurance running.

A narrow pelvis for females would have caused infants to be born with   relatively small brains.

<SNIP>

Modern humans of the species Homo sapiens typically have a brain size of 1,400  cubic centimetres, which is more than twice the size of a modern chimpanzee   or gorilla.

Homo sapiens originated in Africa about 200,000 years ago and the species is   descended from Homo erectus.

Homo sapiens displaced Homo neanderthalensis, and other species descended from   Homo erectus, partly through reproducing more successfully.

This explains a lot.

Unfortunately, it won't change a thing. No-hipped, big-boobed giraffes will be the body of choice for a long time, or until an eco/eco cataclysm comes, and only the best fat-storers will survive.

Until then, console yourself with the thought that men who choose the Skinny Minnies over you are bound to have dumb babies.

Mother Nature

At this time of year in Toronto, hundreds of starlings flock together at dusk in treetops and on phone lines all over town. The first time I saw this was just after I moved here in the fall of 1985. I was in the garden when I was aware of a kind of darkness that had settled all around me, and this incessant chirping. When I looked up, I had visions of a bloody-faced Suzanne Pleshette and a messed-up Tippi Hedren. This was my introduction to these garrulous birds.

Anyway, I just tripped over this video, shot in southern Scotland earlier this year. I find it utterly mesmerizing.

Keep an eye on the outer edge of the flock where a sparrow hawk is trying to pick off some dinner. It's very easy to miss that.

How they don't all go crashing into each other has to be one of the many many wonders of this beautiful world.

The pits

And now for something completely different. Something I feel very deeply. Something that makes me weepy and makes me angry.

And you know me: I get worked up about a lot of stuff.

But, if there is one thing I find utterly unnecessary, and cruel, and ignorant, it is Ontario's determination to destroy any and all dogs unfortunate enough to be born the wrong breed. Other jurisdictions are banning the breed as well. The numbers of dogs ''euthanized'' -- nice word -- and homeless as a result are staggering.

Bear with me here.

There are, and have been many so-called pit bulls -- American Staffs and similar breeds -- in my life. Like all other dogs, they are creatures of breeding and training.

Pits, whose tenaciousness makes them fearless and dogged tracking and rescue dogs, and whose strength has made them war heroes, have had their best qualities turned against them by ''humans'' -- and believe me, that's not the word that immediately comes to mind -- who cruelly use them as fighters and weapons.

In the inner city, where they are the drug dealer dog of choice, backyard breeding, lack of  neutering, confining dogs without proper exercise and socialization and outright torture have led to attacks. Attacks that the media always jump on, even while other breeds are just as guilty of hurting people and other dogs. (Note: Please see update about statistics below.)

I cannot tell you how many out-of-control dogs I encounter every week, on the sidewalk and in dog parks. There's a Lab just up the street which, probably under-exercised and confined to a tiny yard all day, lunges at us every time we walk by. A few months ago, I was bitten by an off-leash German shepherd. I thought I'd lose a finger. The owner didn't even apologize but hustled off. I still have the scars from when my first dog, a tiny Pomeranian, was seized out of my arms by some big mutt and torn to pieces.

My current dog Jericho, an American Eskimo rescue I adopted in January, was extremely fear aggressive. Given the chance, I am sure he could have done some serious damage to life and limb.

Given the chance.

But he's been reformed, with a lot of tough love, hard training, exercise and, for a while, a muzzle.

Two years ago, when my last Eskie Sydney was on her last legs, we were in the veterinary emergency clinic lobby with a young couple came in with a pitbull type dog whose ear had been torn off by a Portuguese water spaniel who lunged and attacked. This poor bleeding dog was so sweet and so submissive that she rolled on her back for a belly rub for me, even though she was in excruciating pain.

Helen Keller had a pitbull, okay? Jon Stewart has two. The list of loving pit owners who get love back is long. What's more, it has a wonderful history, as a ''nanny dog.''

My friend Darlene, who used to walk Syd for me, has pits as well. (That's a Star file photo of her with her daughter Teja, and  Fred, George and Syd.) She has had to fend off ''humans'' who have put out cigarettes on her dogs' backs at intersections, or attacked them with bats while they have been leashed outside stores. They have never even defended themselves.

This is the breed. It can take a lot. Which is why it is used against it.

Yet the myths persist. And the media are happy to perpetuate them, even as other dogs, just as powerful, attack and kill.

Anyway, my friend Steve Barker, who used to walk his beautiful mixed breed pitbull-type dogs with Sydney, emailed me from Victoria B.C. Monday evening to alert me to a potential tragedy. It was the subject of today's treeware column:

Somewhere in eastern Manitoba, Kerry Pakarinen and his best friend are headed for Toronto.

On the Trans-Canada from Vancouver for four months, they're equipped with nothing more than a shopping cart and sleeping bags, raising awareness for the plight of Canada's homeless.

They've been welcomed everywhere and even received favourable coverage in print and on TV.

Unfortunately, the moment they cross into Ontario, one of them could face a death sentence.

That's because Preacher, whom Pakarinen identified to the Calgary Herald (and other papers -- Antonia) as a Bullmastiff, looks to many dog experts, like a pit bull cross.

Which means he isn't welcome here.

In Ontario, ever since 2005, when then-Attorney General Michael Bryant cruelly banned the breed – ignoring the expertise of animal organizations, humane societies and veterinarians – any dog born in the past three years that even vaguely resembles a pit bull is guilty until proven innocent.

For them, it's the needle, or the gas chamber.

No exceptions. Not for people who move to Ontario. Not for military personnel transferred here. Not even for Preacher who is just passing through.

In fact, if bestselling author Cesar Millan, star of the hit show The Dog Whisperer, were to bring his popular Daddy here, the goofy-grinned dog would be dead meat.

So, if even a celebrity dog is doomed, what chance does a homeless mutt like Preacher have?

Now, according to all interviews with Pakarinen, his young dog, about 9 months old, is a mastiff. I reached his mother last night who confirmed that.

But here's the thing: If any official here gets the notion that Preacher has any kind of pit in his blood, Pakarinen will have to provide proof. What are the chances that he has pedigree papers for Preacher? 

There's a Facebook group to support Pakarinen, with people offering funds and shelter. It's here, if you care to join.

Breed Specific Legislation is a very emotional topic in Ontario, with great divisions of opinion. If most of the debate was based on fact and not fiction, it would be fine. But it is not.

In fact, two years ago, at a MuchMusic party, I cornered Bryant and started ragging on hims for this legislation. He came up with no cogent argument in its defence except that it was what people wanted. Yeah, well, people want a lot of things but does the government always comply?

This law was political grandstanding, in my opinion. Nothing more.

Hysteria breeds many horrible things. History is filled with cruel and vicious behaviour directed at religious groups, for example.

As for dogs, well, the other day, I stumbled across this, a piece on how white Pomeranians -- the old name for American Eskimos like Sydney and Jericho -- were targeted for extermination by hysterical New Yorkers in the late 18th century because the Times reported they were the cause of rabies:

A man called Mr Bergh was entrusted with the job of ‘punishing by death’ but had yet to decide on the most humane method – he was considering suffocation with carbonic acid, drowning and blowing the dogs up with dynamite!

From the July 6th edition – Destroying of the dogs. This article is graphic and hard for the modern reader to work through without shedding a tear. Essentially an iron cage had been made seven feet long, four feet high and five feet wide and 759 adult dogs and 23 puppies were installed inside in batches of 48, taken to the river and drowned. A large crowd had gathered to witness the execution. Twenty dogs considered to be of some value by the pound keeper were spared. The carcasses were taken to a nearby rendering plant and the pelts were valued at $1 each.

When I was a girl, the scary dog was the bloodhound. Then the shepherd. Then the Doberman. Now it's the pitbull.

Your dog could be next.

Just saying.

Thank you for coming by.

Back to our regularly-scheduled feministicizing.

UPPITY DATE: I should add that, thanks to reporter Gabrielle Giroday at the Winnipeg Free Press who interviewed Pakarinen, I was able to locate his mother in northwest Ontario late last night. I left her a message for him to call me collect. Gabrielle told me that Preacher is a mastiff.

Also, I just heard from the Brandon Sun's Colin Corneau, whose CP photo accompanies my column. He writes: ''His dog's a mutt, but he did mention it's only 9 months old (and a giant already, albeit a friendly one).''

LATER THAT EVENING SHE WROTE: I have just heard from a reader who suggests that I linked to a faulty analysis of dog bite numbers. She breaks down why. So here it is, part one and two.

Michelle O is not Jackie O

Salon's Rebecca Traister has an interesting on ''The Momification of Michelle Obama.''

Michelle Obama is a mom. And her girls are small. This kind of change will undoubtedly be extremely discombobulating for them, and they will require the attention of their parents. Michelle herself has been more than happy to tell people, most notably in a summer interview with Ebony, that her first responsibilities upon getting to Washington will be finding schools and making sure her daught ers get comfortable in their new fishbowl, all invaluable responsibilities of a parent resituating his or her kids, a parent who in this case happens to be a mommy.

It's Michelle's job because Daddy is going to be the president, and he has to save the country and the world from an economic crisis and war, and so he might be too busy to come check out the new schools and decorate their rooms and help with the dog. But the fact is, he seems to be a pretty good dad, and I bet he will do some of that stuff anyway. What rankles is the smooth and unquestioning assumptions by the media that the fallback position is to assign all those duties to Michelle.

Prior to Hillary Clinton, we'd never had a first lady who had a post-graduate degree. Michelle Obama went to college at Princeton and law school at Harvard. She was a practicing lawyer at the Chicago firm Sidley Austin when she was assigned to mentor the summer associate who would become her husband. She was his mentor. And when Barack writes of first meeting her, in "The Audacity of Hope," he notes that "she was part of the intellectual property group and specialized in entertainment law ... Michelle was full of plans that day, on the fast track, with no time, she told me, for distractions -- especially men."

While I generally agree with Traister, I also feel that Mrs. O is free to make her own choices. To criticize those choices from the sidelines seems to me as anti-feminist.

In one of the smartest pieces that has been written about the next first lady, Geraldine Brooks' profile of her in the October issue of More magazine, Brooks writes that while you can see Michelle's life as the quintessential modern woman's success story, the trajectory can also be read as a "depressingly retrograde narrative of stifling gender roles and frustrating trade-offs." In serious ways, Brooks writes, "it is her husband's career, his choices -- choices she has not always applauded -- that have shaped her life in the last decade."

How do we know that?

This situation is not entirely unique. The battle to conform to wifely expectations was previously fought by Hillary Clinton, a woman who recently made a hell-bent run for the exact same job her husband held in the years that she was forced to choke on her health plan and write books about the White House cat. (So let's not pretend that the role of stifled icon might not take some independent women on a wacky psychological ride.)

But Michelle is in an even tighter bind, in part because of the legacy left her by Hillary and her detractors. Powerful couples must now tread as far as possible from the "two for one" talk, lest the female half get smacked with a nutcracker.

<SNIP>

In certain critical ways, Michelle Obama will come to stand in more prominently than anyone could have imagined for the shortcomings of feminism, as described by Linda Hirshman in her 2006 book "Get to Work," in which she argues that the weighting of domestic responsibilities toward the woman in a family handicaps her chances for professional and economic success. Obama has already said that one of the issues she plans to put front and center while in the White House is the impossible bind faced by working mothers. She knows the trade-offs and sacrifices all too well.

And now, she is in the unenviable yet deeply happy position of being a history-maker whose own balancing act allowed her husband the space to make his political career zip forward, his books sing, his daughters healthy and beautiful, and his campaign succeed. In having done all this, Michelle Obama wrought for herself a life (temporarily, at least) of playing second fiddle. Then again, did she have a choice?

My guess is, yes. That's because the Obamas, in recent years anyway, were financially secure enough so that nannies could be hired. Michelle's mother was available for childcare throughout the campaign. There's no reason to believe that she wasn't always available, and won't be in the future.

Change has come to the White House and Michelle will redefine the role of First Lady as Hillary Clinton did. The difference now is that Senator Clinton cleared the way.

Oh, and just for the record? I hated the dress Mrs. O wore on the podium at Grant Park last week. It was a clumsy knock-off of a beautiful fashion-forward dress, and it looked horrible on TV. I even considered writing about it, and the semiotics of the colour scheme.

For days, people on the innertubes were tossing out all kinds of ideas. Black widow spider, for example, to symbolize how MO keeps BO in line. Somebody said that her X-cummerbund was reminiscent of the Confederate flag, but in black, not blue. One person had a very scary theory. Recalling Jackie O's blood-spattered pink suit in Dallas, this commenter posited that, if Obama was hit, Michelle's dress wouldn't get ruined. Jeez.

But, because there were more important issues to discuss, I moved on. Not so many others, online, on TV and in print.

If you ask me, if anybody is Stepfordizing Mrs. O, it's the media. I have no doubt that she is the right woman in the right place at the right time.

Strangers among us

This story, by The Star's John Goddard, sure got a lot of readers, including yours truly, going today:

A mosque asking that Canadian workplaces respect a strict Muslim dress code is at the same time disseminating slurs against Jews and Western societies, and warning members against social integration.

The Khalid Bin Al-Walid Mosque near Kipling Ave. and Rexdale Blvd. serves as the religious authority for eight Somali women complaining to the Canadian Human Rights Commission that UPS Canada Ltd. violated their religious rights at a sorting plant. The mosque, founded in 1990 and serving upwards of 10,000 people, preaches strict adherence to sharia, or Islamic law, and no compromise with the West.

Regular readers know that I am all for religious tolerance -- as long as religion itself is tolerant (especially when it comes to women's rights.) But this is an outrage.

Teachings on the mosque's website, khalidmosque.com, refer to non-Muslim Westerners as "wicked," "corrupt" and "our clear enemies."

Sometimes Jews are singled out.

"Is it permissible for women to wear high-heeled shoes?" begins one posting in question-and-answer format. "That is not permissible," comes the reply. "It involves resembling the Disbelieving Women or the wicked women. It has its origin among the Jewish women."

<SNIP>

In September, a Canadian Human Rights Tribunal heard two weeks of testimony from eight mosque members alleging "Islamophobia" at the company's west Toronto plant. Three final days of testimony are scheduled for next week.

The eight women, who lost their jobs at UPS, say Islam dictates that they wear a full-length skirt for modesty. The courier company insists that any skirt be knee-length for safety, as workers climb ladders up to 6 metres high.

Under their skirt, the women wear full-length trousers but say they do not want the lower part showing in case the shape of the calf can be discerned.

The complaint originally centred on the company's use of temporary workers and uneven enforcement of its safety rules.

But the key question remains: Is UPS insisting on shorter hems for safety or is it violating religious rights by denying the women permanent jobs unless they conform?

So far, no Khalid Bin Al-Walid Mosque representative has attended the sessions, but the women cited the mosque as their place of worship and religious authority, and tabled a letter from its administration. "This is to certify that the religion of Islam requires all Muslim women to cover her entire body inclusive of the legs, arms, head, ears and neck," the letter reads. "As such, (the women) would not be able to wear pants as an outfit."

This is absurd, tribal and backward. I know many devout Muslim women in Toronto who don't wear hijab. What's more, growing up, our next door neighbours in a Montreal suburb which was then easily 80 per cent Jewish, not only got along with all, both husband and wife were prominent doctors -- and he was the Imam at the nearby mosque. She never covered her head -- except when it was cold, snowing or raining.

Just like the rest of us.

That said, I agree with this comment on the Star's website:

Missing the Point Entirely

The anti-Muslim sentiment here is amazing. Switch your perspective to that of the women involved. They are caught between being ostracized by their cultural support system (their Mosque), and their source of livelihood. Neither is easily replaceable. Although the armchair judges posting comments here can easily dismiss the issue, and decry those immigrants who "insist on imposing" their specific practice (not necessarily belief), the women trying to eke out a living are caught in the middle.

Posted By Starburst at 9:14 AM Wednesday, November 12 2008

There is a push by some feminists to make hate directed at women a crime. Research supports the idea that gender is often a factor in hate.

If Canadian authorities determine that Khalid Mosque disseminates hate against Jews and members of other religious groups, I sure hope it also considers its attitude towards women.

Oh, and while we're on the subject? ''Female circumcision'' is not at all comparable to male circumcision. It is genital mutilation, resulting in permanent disabilities. Interestingly, the mosque calls it ''an honour for women'' but refers to nose piercing as painful and mutilating.

Who wrote the book of love?

MSNBC's Keith Olbermann gets farklempt and furious about Proposition H8.

If you aren't married Keith, I'm available.

UPPITY DATE (later the same morning): This is what you get for posting late at night. I mean to link to this story in yesterday's Star, one which continues to top our most-read list.

It was a sunny afternoon, school was out and children were gathering in the playground.

Jane Currie and her partner, Anji Dimitriou, both small, soft-spoken women, were waiting with other parents at Gordon B. Attersley public school in Oshawa, when, fists flying, a man attacked them, his blows as harmful as his words.

"Which one of you two 'men' spoke to my kid? F------ dyke. Lesbians," he said, spitting in Dimitriou's face. As she wiped her face, eyes closed, he punched her on the cheek and wound up again, slamming her backward into her truck. As Currie ran toward him, she remembers him shouting, "F------ dyke bitches," and punched her on the cheekbone so hard the skin burst apart, blood splattering.

What Currie remembers most, from the afternoon of Nov. 3, is the stillness of the schoolchildren, and the sound of her six-year-old son screaming. "It was a face of complete and utter horror," Currie said in an interview yesterday. "His mouth was wide open, and he just stood there, screaming."

Way to go man. Teach your children well.

Not without my daughter

A Canadian woman and her children are essentially being held captive in a foreign country, and the government says it can't interfere in a domestic dispute? Is this the attitude it takes when there's abuse in a marriage here at home? Or are Canadian women second class citizens?

MONTREAL- The mother of a 24-year-old pregnant Quebec woman living in Saudi Arabia wants Prime Minister Stephen Harper to intervene personally to get her daughter back to Canada.

But late yesterday, a spokesperson for the Department of Foreign Affairs suggested it could not resolve what is essentially a domestic dispute.

Johanne Durocher is afraid her daughter, Nathalie Morin, may be forced to give birth prematurely to her third child today, one month before she is due to deliver her baby.

"She wants to come back to Montreal with her children and have the baby here in December," Durocher told reporters, "but she is living with a Saudi, and she can't leave the country.

"She has no telephone, no friends, no family there, and I am concerned for her safety. The man she is living with is cruel and abusive."

<SNIP>

Lalonde called on Prime Minister Stephen Harper to intervene to see that Morin is brought home safely.

There is concern Al-Bishi may force his wife to give birth today because he wants his child born a Saudi.

"She is a Canadian, not a Saudi citizen and under the Geneva Convention she has the right to leave the country with her children," she said. "I want her home in Quebec with the children."

Actually, it doesn't seem clear that the Geneva Convention is valid here. The Hague Convention could have applied -- but Saudi Arabia didn't sign on.

Saudi authorities indicate that Morin and Al-Bishi are in fact married under Islamic law.

Foreign Affairs spokesperson Eugenie Cormier said yesterday any resolution "needs to be consistent with Saudi laws and regulations. Individuals living or travelling in Saudi Arabia are subject to local laws, irrespective of their citizenship."

Cormier said Canada can only provide consular assistance "after Nathalie and her spouse have reached a consensus on the issue of custody of their young boys."

Oh, like that's going to happen.

Of course, one could argue that young Nathalie should have known better before going to Saudi Arabia with the father of her child. But who knows what transpired between them, and what she was told before she got on that plane?

What's more, Canada's travel advisories are not very detailed when it comes to women, at least not compared to what the US government has online.

Women considering relocating to Saudi Arabia should be keenly aware that women and children residing in Saudi Arabia as members of a Saudi household (including adult American-citizen women married to Saudi men, adult American-citizen women who are the unmarried daughters of Saudi fathers, and American-citizen boys under the age of 21 who are the sons of Saudi fathers) are considered household property and require the permission of the Saudi male head of their household to leave the country.  Married women require their husband’s permission to depart the country, while unmarried women and children require the permission of their father or male guardian.  The U.S. Embassy can intercede with the Saudi government to request exit permission for an adult American woman (wife or daughter of a Saudi citizen), but there is no guarantee of success, or even of timely response.  Mothers are not able to obtain permission for the departure of minor children without the father’s agreement.

According to the news report, the Canadian government says it won't even bother to seek exit permission.

But what's this?

As of February 20, 2008, a new regulation went into effect requiring Saudi men seeking the mandatory permission from their government to marry foreign women to sign a binding document granting irrevocable permission for foreign born spouses and children of those foreign spouses to travel freely and unhindered in and out of Saudi Arabia.  However, this regulation is not retroactive.  Under Saudi law, women married to Saudi men prior to the effective date of these new regulations still need their husbands’ permission to leave Saudi Arabia, and their children still require their fathers’ permission to leave the country.

Since this couple is not married, then where does the retroactivity kick in?

While I am certainly no Islamic scholar, I can't find anything that indicates that this marriage is, you should pardon the expression, kosher under religious laws. The opposite, in fact.

And, even if it is, so what? The government could, at least, try, no?

Miriam Makeba, 1932 - 2008

Nelson Mandela pays tribute:

"The sudden passing of our beloved Miriam has saddened us … For many decades, starting in the years before we went to prison, MaMiriam featured prominently in our lives and we enjoyed her moving performances. When she went into exile she continued to make us proud as she used her worldwide fame to focus attention on the abomination of apartheid. Her music inspired a powerful sense of hope in all of us. She was a mother to our struggle and to the young nation of ours.

"It was fitting that her last moments were spent on a stage, enriching the hearts and lives of others - and again in support of a good cause."

I chose this clip not because of the music but because it shows what she stood for.

"I never understood why I couldn't come home. I never committed any crime."

Sail on Sarah

Two weeks ago, I practically swore I'd never write about Sarah Palin again but there she is, back atcha, you betcha, on Fox News tonight in an exclusive on Greta Van Susteren's show, and all over the blab-osphere.

Make it stop.

Please.

She makes as much sense as usual -- which is to say, no sense at all:

I think the Republican ticket represented too much of the status quo, too much of what had gone on in these last eight years, that Americans were kind of shaking their heads like going, wait a minute, how did we run up a 10 trillion dollar debt in a Republican administration? How have there been blunders with war strategy under a Republican administration? If we’re talking change, we want to get far away from what it was that the present administration represented and that is to a great degree what the Republican Party at the time had been representing. So people desiring change I think went as far from the administration that is presently seated as they could. It’s amazing that we did as well as we did.

Alrighty then.

The Nation's Katha Pollitt bids Palin goodbye in this trenchant look at her legacy:

Palin's presence on the Republican ticket forced family-values conservatives to give public support to working mothers, equal marriages, pregnant teens and their much-maligned parents. Talk-show frothers, Christian zealots and professional antifeminists--Rush Limbaugh and Phyllis Schlafly--insisted that a mother of five, including a "special-needs" newborn, could perfectly well manage governing a state (a really big state, as we were frequently reminded), while simultaneously running for veep and, who knows, field-dressing a moose. No one said she belonged at home. No one said she was neglecting her husband or failing to be appropriately submissive to him. No one blamed her for 17-year-old Bristol's out-of-wedlock pregnancy or hard-partying high-school-dropout boyfriend. No one even wondered out loud why Bristol wasn't getting married before the baby arrived. All these things have officially morphed from sins to "challenges," just part of normal family life. No matter how strategic this newfound broadmindedness is, it will not be easy to row away from it. Thanks to Sarah, ladies, we can do just about anything we want as long as we don't have an abortion.

Go. Read the whole thing.

Unlike Palin, Pollitt uses like, you know, verbs and stuff.

Scrambled, with a side of cow patty

Take a look at this photo. Take a good look. What does it represent to you?

WRONG!

This, according to the sore losers in Colorado, where Amendment 48 failed to pass last week, is an American citizen "protected by a series of God given and constitutionally protected rights."

Yes, God, a co-signer of the American Declaration of Independence. Who knew?

Foiled in their attempt to define personhood as beginning at fertilization, they're girding their loins to march unto their continuing war on women's loins once again with Personhood USA, an organization which, well, I'll let them have the stage:

... plans to assist local pro-life groups in different states to put personhood amendments on their states ballot by using the petition process.

The 17 States that allow citizens to place constitutional amendments on ballots will be the target states. Personhood USA will also help with opinion petitions to encourage politicians to run personhood amendments in other states. During the Colorado Personhood campaign, organizers were contacted by individuals in many different states with excitement and the desire to start personhood efforts in their own state.

"Praise Jesus! The pro-life tide is rising in America, now is the time for the entire pro-life movement to turn the focus off from permitting murder but attempting to 'regulate' it, to pushing for the recognition of the God given right to life for all innocent persons. Persons are humans beings from the moment of fertilization." Cal Zastrow, Co-Founder of Personhood USA.

Now normally I would ignore the Zygote Defence League of America except for one thing. Here in Canada, members of the Conservative Party are trying to resurrect proposed legislation that would, in effect, accomplish the same thing: define personhood as beginning sometime between that last cocktail and your morning trip to the bathroom. It's on the agenda of their policy convention this month.

Anyway, as Feministing points out, Personhood USA even has a creepy video that makes the uterus into a map of the USA:

Ladies, did you know that your uterus is shaped like AMERICA? Yeah, I didn't either. I'd write more about the pathetic attempts by anti-choicers to limit women's reproductive freedoms, but my Texas is cramping like a (BLEEP -- Antonia).

Yeah, well, ya shoulda hung on to your Virginia, Honey.

And isn't that what this is all about? Controlling women? It's no accident that the right to legal abortion came at the same time as women started to demand equal rights.

Pam puts it all into context:

(C)reating a "fetus citizen" status has real-world applications and will necessitate laws and regulations that the womb control advocates need to think out and explain to the rest of us.

* Will the highway patrol need to carry pregnancy testing kits to confirm the ability for them to use HOV lanes on the spot?
* Can airlines charge a woman for two seats since the fertilized egg is a person?
* Can an impregnated woman be punished for poor eating habits, or consuming alcohol or artificial sweeteners?
* Is the boyfriend/husband an accomplice to a crime if he drives her to the abortion clinic?
* Can a woman claim her fetus as a tax deduction?
* For couples who fertilize multiple eggs for in vitro, are they guilty of murder if the unused eggs are discarded?
* Should a woman register with the state whenever she has unprotected sex (without using any form of birth control), since she might be carrying a fertilized egg?
* What about a woman who skips her birth control pills, has sex, the egg is fertilized and she later resumes her contraception, unknowingly causing an "abortion." What punishment should she receive?
* And, of course, the current bar people on both sides banter about -- consideration of the a medical emergency of the mother or cases of rape and incest -- how will the state-based fetus citizen council determine punishment?

Eggcellent questions that those Zygote Zealots never answer.

This is getting ugly

Further to this, this:

You could see this coming, and this is what I'm talking about when you ignore the elephant in the room. Rod McCullom of Rod 2.0 blogs reports on the escalation of the "blame the blacks" meme that has been swirling about the blogosphere and the MSM.

<SNIP>

The backlash is upon us, and it's going to get uglier unless our organizations step forward and say something. The desire to scapegoat blacks for Prop 8's defeat has exposed the now not-so-latent racism in our movement. 

The lady has a point. What's more, as another blogger points out:

But I'm wondering why these folks are so caught up in the black voters, who obviously can't ever be persuaded on this issue because... well, because. There are so many other groups in the exit polling that voted for Prop 8 overwhelmingly (as in, more than 60%):

    * The elderly (65+)
    * Republicans
    * Conservatives
    * People who decided for whom to vote in October (but not within the week before the election)
    * People who were contacted by the McCain campaign
    * Protestants
    * Catholics
    * White Protestants
    * Those who attend church weekly
    * Married people
    * People with children under 18
    * Gun owners
    * Bush voters
    * Offshore drilling supporters
    * People who are afraid of a terrorist attack
    * People who thought their family finances were better now than 4 years ago
    * Supporters of the war against Iraq
    * People who didn't care about the age of the candidates
    * Anti-choicers
    * People who are from the "Inland/Valley" region of California
    * McCain voters

I'd link to him but he uses language that some Star readers -- and my overlords here -- might find offensive. But, if you follow the yellow brick links from the first blog, you'll get all the dirt.

UPPITY DATE (8/11/08): Two important comments I would like to post here.

The first was added to my original column on the Star's website:

feeling uneasy after reading this...

As a gay man, I was unhappy to see Proposition 8 pass in California last week. However, to suggest that "Proposition 8... passed because of the large turnout of African-Americans....who supported it" is more than problematic. Heteronormativity, not unlike patriarchy, is a transcultural phenomenon that manifests itself in culturally specific forms. It is alive and well across the cultural spectrum in North America and beyond. To essentialize one culture as more homophobic than others is borderline racist.

Posted By soaringcrane at 2:32 AM Saturday, November 08 2008

The other was posted here by blogger mattb. who has a pretty good post on the subject of bigotry himself.

Glenn Greenwald has the right idea:

http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2008/11/06/doma/

If at first you don't succeed ...

Here we go again?

Later this month, when the Conservatives hold their policy convention in Winnipeg, guess what might land on their agenda?

Well, if the leaked Tory resolutions, found via National Newswatch, are any indication:

RESOLUTION P-207

NEW

Protecting Pregnant Women

PROPOSED BY PRINCE ALBERT AND SASKATOON HUMBOLDT

The Conservative Party supports legislation to ensure that individuals who commit violence against a pregnant woman would face additional charges if her unborn child was killed or injured during the commission of a crime against the mother.

Oh gee. And people accused me of being cynical when, on the eve of last month's election, the Cons took Bill C-484 off the table.

There were "certain articles that were of concern to us" Harper explained, referring to Bill C-484, the " Unborn Victims Act."

Snort.

So, if it was "of concern," why did it make it past second reading, only to be cynically aborted in its third trimester, on the eve of the election? How did it get so far?

So yeah, Mr. Harper. You must think us lady voters are really stupid.

Womb of their own

Are they kidding?

Women in the Netherlands deemed "unfit mothers" may soon be forced to take contraception, if a draft bill currently before the Dutch parliament is passed. The bill "targets women who have been the subject of judicial intervention due to their bad parenting," says its author, a member of the Netherlands' socialist Labour Party.

Under the proposed legislation, a woman judged unfit who refuses to take contraception and becomes pregnant would have her child taken away at birth. The infant then would be placed in a foster home.

The Pill isn't good for every woman. Where does a state even contemplate making a woman play with her hormones? Or go against her religious beliefs on contraception?

What's next? Forced sterilization?

What about disabled women? There are already judicial battles over whether physically and/or mentally-challenged women have the right to have children.

More here:

Is it really the state's role to protect the unborn and does it have the right to control people's bodies in such a way and to deprive them of the basic right to procreate? Whatever happened to the presumption of innocence? Just because a parent was bad with one child, does it mean (s)he will repeat the offence?

More to the point, what about men who ''have been the subject of judicial intervention due to their bad parenting?'' What about rapists? What about abusers of women? Anybody proposing a few snips to stop them from reproducing?

Oh. Right. Nobody is ever trying to control their reproductive freedoms, are they?