My Canada includes ...

Yesterday's Canada Day column sure got some people worked up. 

You can tell by the comments on The Star's main web page. But you should see my email. Everything from high praise to low blows. I'm sure you can figure out why.

Here's the column, with some links and annotations.

My Canada includes:

Collective Bargaining: Yes, I know the strike by Toronto city workers means kids can't cool off in public pools, parents' best-laid summer child-care plans have gone awry and garbage bins are overflowing.

I feel your pain.

Just like most of you, I don't have 18 sick days a year to bank and cash out.

I also know that, without unions, many of us would be working in Dickensian conditions. 

How would you like to be a miner without a union ensuring that the company meets safety standards? Or a sweatshop worker without proper ventilation, light or even fire escapes?

Collective bargaining floats all our boats. Without it, there would be no minimum wage, no paid sick leave, no health and pension benefits, no vacations. Do you honestly believe workers would still get a fair break if the bottom liners had nothing to keep them in check?

It's not workers who drove us into this economic mess. Workers weren't paying themselves multi-million-dollar bonuses for running companies into the ground. In fact, as executive salaries were rising, workers' wages were falling.

This isn't the time to get rid of unions. This is the time to be strengthening them.

I am amazed by how many people resent unions. I wonder how many people realize, for example, that if it weren't for unions negotiating health benefits for their members, nobody would have health insurance today? Thank Tommy Douglas.

Collective bargaining is a human right.

Public Broadcasting: Fully funded public broadcasting is good for Canadian culture, which includes tens of thousands of workers who perform and produce programming.

It is also crucial in an era when private broadcasters fail to live up to their licence requirements to provide local news and other domestic content.

Greedy private broadcasters, who squat on the public airwaves, who benefit from tens of millions of cable subscription fees viewers are forced to pay, who buy US programming and shelve it just so their competition can't have it and who went on corporate shopping sprees while accumulating crushing debt loads are now crying the blues because they are having a few relatively lean years. This after decades of rolling in huge profits.

Well, boo-hoo-hoo. That's no excuse for not living up to the commitments they made for winning their licences.

Even more important, as much as I adore the Internet, it is no substitute for rigorous Canadian eyes and ears on all levels of government – as well as on Canadian corporations, which might otherwise rip off consumers while raping the environment.

CanWest Global and CTV give so much uncritical coverage to the Harper government that it is stunning complains aren't storming their signal towers. CTV might well have changed the course of history when it ran outtakes from an interview with former Liberal leader Stephan Dion, which made him seem like he couldn't understand English. The industry own standards council rapped the network for that.

Forget CTV and Global. They are beyond redemption, as they demonstrated during their campaign to make viewers pay for what they are now getting free – i.e. cable fees for local over-the-air stations.

CTV actually held open houses at its local stations, and got its on-air personalities to shill for these fees.

I'm talking CBC.

I'm talking excellent original and thought-provoking programming on CBC Radio's Ideas.

I'm also talking The National, which is now riddled with commercials and no longer has the weight or authority it used to have.

That's because, to sell ads, it has to produce eyeballs. That means more Michael Jackson, less Stephen Harper.

And that's not good for Canada.

I hate to say it but The National is too often pre-occupied with trivia. And CBC no longer has the resources to do consistent hard-hitting investigative journalism that answers to no advertisers.

Freedom of Expression: Excuse me but since when did the interests of Zionist lobby groups determine who or what Canadians can see and hear?

In recent months, to list just three examples, there have been concerted campaigns against the staging of Caryl Churchill's controversial Seven Jewish Children: A Play for Gaza and an academic conference at York University where the so-called "one-state solution'' was to be discussed. We also saw British MP George Galloway be denied entry to the country for a speaking tour, just because he brought aid to bombed-out Gaza.

Now comes word that the only way the respected Al-Jazeera English news service, currently applying for TV distribution in Canada, can win the support of these same Jewish groups is to have them become consultants.

Journalistically speaking, that is hardly kosher.

Hoo-boy, did I hear about this one. The usual slurs of anti-Semitism, etc.

My answer? What part of this isn't true?

U.S. War Resisters: Canada's proudest moment this century was when it refused to join George W. Bush in his attack on Iraq.

Yet we deport Americans who didn't sign up to brutalize civilians.

If this, this and this don't count as brutalizing civilians, what does?

Those kids were hoodwinked, both by their government and its lapdog media, into thinking they were joining up to protect their country from terrorism and Saddam Hussein's non-existent weapons of mass destruction.

Rather than welcome them, we send them back over the border and to certain prison sentences.

That's not my Canada.

Is it yours?

So, here's the thing.

When former Prime Minister Lester B. Pearson, the man who won the Nobel prize for inventing UN peacekeeping, came up with the red and white maple leaf flag, he envisioned it as the sort of flag that would not be associated with war.

Kind of like the way the Norwegian flag is today.

It no longer is the case. 

Here's the other thing.

When John Lennon and Yoko Ono chose Canada as the venue for their Give Peace a Chance bed-in in 1969, they did it in part because they considered this country as the embodiment of anti-war values.

It no longer is the case.

As I wrote on the wall at the Imagine exhibit at Montreal's Musee des Beaux-Arts, ''John Lennon would not recognize Stephen Harper's Canada.''

Why We Need Feminism: Chapter 6,492

The other day, the Star ran Oakland Ross' incredible story about the Samaritans, as in the Biblical ''Good  Samaritan.''

Who knew they were, essentially, an unlost tribe of Jews? Not only that, but they're still around.

Barely.

Boldface is mine:

"For all the world, we haven't enough girls," Kohen says. "We are suffering from this problem for the past 200 years."

Greetings from Kiryat Luza, a somewhat careworn village perched high atop Mount Gerizim, the holiest place in creation for the people who dwell here, members of what is possibly the smallest religious sect in the world and certainly among the oldest.

Kohen, a grey-bearded father of five, lives with his family in an apartment above the Gerizim Center and Museum, of which he is founder and curator.

Next door, a half-dozen concrete pits burrow into the ground.

Here, the Samaritans celebrate Passover each year by sacrificing a small flock of sheep as an act of gratitude to God for allowing them – along with those other Israelites, also known as Jews – to escape enslavement in Egypt.

Many people know the parable of the good Samaritan, the passerby who, in the Gospel of Luke, cared for a battered man whom he found lying half-dead on the road from Jerusalem to Jericho.

But the Samaritans – that is, the people of Samaria, as the northern West Bank is sometimes called – existed for centuries prior to that New Testament tale.

Their split with Judaism was sparked by conflict over the location of the first Jewish temple.

Jews believe the structure, built on the site of the biblical tale of Abraham and his son Isaac and destroyed by King Nebuchadnezzar in 586 BC, was located on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem.

Samaritans are convinced it stood here on Mount Gerizim near the Palestinian city of Nablus in what is now the West Bank.

Once, Samaritans numbered more than 1 million people, Kohen says. By 1917, following a history of persecution, their ranks had dwindled to just 146.

<SNIP>

Like observant Jews, Samaritans cherish the menorah, celebrate Passover, and mark the Sabbath on Saturdays, when they refrain from answering the telephone or switching on any electrical devices.

They worship in synagogues, have their own version of the Torah, and conduct religious ceremonies in an ancient type of Hebrew.

But the shortage of Samaritan women of marriageable age has led to inbreeding.

Kohen reacts testily when this subject is raised, estimating the incidence of genetic defects among Samaritans at no more than 3 per cent of the population.

"God allows us to marry our cousins," he insists. "If God allows me to do something, why is He going to harm me for doing it?"

Still, Samaritan men have been seeking to marry women from outside the community for at least the past 90 years.

This made me wonder. How is it that there are so few women in relation to men, especially when you conisder that the men are more likely to have the freedom to leave town?

Do the women run away? Or is something killing them? Are they worked to death? Is there infanticide? Or are women so undervalued, as they are in most of the world, that their health is neglected while men benefit from medical attention?

These questions arise from the ''missing women'' conundrum I recently wrote about. In many places, men drastically outnumber women.

Of course, women suffer from so much, including maternal deaths. I have repeatedly noted that some 500,000 girls and women die every year in childbirth and from pregnancy-related causes.

Then tonight, I found this, posted on the profile of Facebook friend Markella Hartziano. Again, the boldface is mine while the photo is from the Digital Library of the Commons:

From political freedoms that are essentially designed to empower people — such as the right to freedom of speech, association, movement, etc — the concept of human rights has moved on to a vast non-political area encompassing practically every aspect of human development that impacts on the quality of life of an individual. The latest to enter this hallowed precinct is ‘preventable maternal mortality and morbidity’ which the 47-member UN Human Rights Council has now recognised as a human rights issue.

In a landmark resolution adopted on June 18, governments (including Pakistan) expressed grave concern at the “unacceptably” high rates of global maternal mortality (1,500 women die daily in childbirth or due to pregnancy-related causes) and committed themselves to enhance their efforts at the national and international level to protect the lives of women and girls.

The resolution identified some of the factors that lie at the root of this problem. Poverty, gender inequality, multiple forms of discrimination and lack of adequate access to healthcare are some of them. The resolution recognised that the prevention of maternal mortality requires effective promotion of the human rights of women, in particular, their right to life and equality in dignity, education and access to information.

This is a positive development not just from the point of view of health. It reflects on the assertiveness of women’s rights activists worldwide that such a demand can be made. It is now being increasingly recognised that maternal mortality rates are intrinsically linked to the status of women. A society that holds its female members in high esteem also cares for their health, maternal health being a top priority. That is why in UNDP’s human development index the countries that figure high on the gender empowerment measure (GEM) also have a very low maternal mortality rate. The two are inversely proportionate.

So you know what struck me?

This resolution was adoped two weeks ago.

Now, I don't live in a bubble. I track these things all the time. But nowhere did I see a mention of this, at least not in the mainstream media.

Is it because nobody cares about the UN? Or that women's human rights are not deemed worthy of coverage?

(Say ... didja hear? Michael Jackson is still dead.)

Anyway, for a larf, I decided to compare and contrast the reactions put out by the pro-choice movement with that of the fetus fetishists.

First up, those who value women's lives:

Leading causes of maternal death are divided into two categories. “Direct” causes include conditions such as pre-eclampsia or eclampsia, obstructed labor (especially prevalent among adolescent girls whose pelvises are not fully formed), and infection and haemorrhage (which may result from complications of unsafe abortion or unsafe delivery practices). “Indirect causes” include conditions (renal, heart or other conditions) left untreated and exacerbated by pregnancy.

Complications of unsafe abortion are responsible for at least one-fourth or roughly 75,000 maternal deaths annually worldwide, according to WHO.

Ninety-nine percent of maternal deaths worldwide occur in developing countries where women often cannot control whether, when, and whom they marry; may be subject to early marriage; and may be forced to bear children “too early and too often.” These conditions, paired with lack of access to the basic family planning methods needed to delay, space, or limit childbearing, lack of access to safe abortion services, and lack of access to emergency obstetric care in cases of obstructed labor (just one example) contribute to the ongoing toll in women’s lives and health.

And now, those who don't:

As Patrick Buckley, who covered the Geneva conference on behalf of the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children (SPUC), told C-Fam’s “Friday Fax,” the reference to "sexual and reproductive health" is qualified by placing it in the context of the right to enjoy "the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health," and does not expand the meaning of the phrase nor create any new rights.

Member states have consistently rejected attempts to include a right to abortion within the term "reproductive health." New United States Secretary of State Hillary Clinton stoked concerns that the Obama administration would push to expand the UN definition when she testified before the Foreign Affairs Committee of the United States House of Representatives that she understood “reproductive health” to include abortion.

<SNIP>

The HRC resolution retains the agreed-upon language where it explicitly references (Millennial Develpment Goals), which it limits to “improving maternal health.” This can be seen as a victory for pro-lifers who lobbied delegates on the document language.

The involvement of the pro-abortion Center of Reproductive Rights, an abortion advocacy public interest law firm, in promoting this month’s HRC resolution had also raised red flags.

Critics contest any linkage between abortion and maternal mortality reduction. Buckley stressed that "Maternal mortality stems from poor nutrition, lack of basic health care such as adequate pre- and post-natal care, transportation et cetera, rather than lack of legal abortion." 

Nothing about contraception. Not a word.

Which brings me to this -- and this time the boldface is the author's:

(T)he right wing isn't concerned with the fetus.  By huge margins, they're concerned with controlling sex, specifically the sexuality of women.  And that fact actually makes what should be a complex argument over abortion in this country fairly easy.

The fact is that if you believe that life truly begins at conception, abortion should be illegal in all circumstances (barring perhaps exception made strictly for the life of the mother).  If you can't kill a baby with a horrible birth defect, you shouldn't be able to abort it either.  If you can't kill the baby born of an incestuous rape, you shouldn't be able to abort it either.

It's that simple.  Those who claim to be pro-life but still grant exceptions in the case of horrible birth defects or rape and incest are not concerned with the fetus, but rather with sex.  The notion of blame is critical to the Right, and derived from conservative religious mythology stemming from Genesis onward: girls who have sex should be forced to "pay the consequences".  It's almost never about the fetus--which is why the "no fault" circumstances of birth defects and rape/incest don't bother the vast majority of those who claim to be "pro-life".  They're not "pro-life"; they're "pro-consequences."

<SNIP>

The movement that calls itself "pro-life" is by far the sickest, most intrusive movement of anti-sex petty religious moralizing.  The fact is that a person truly (and, most would say, bizarrely) committed to fetal welfare would have the following political characteristics:

    * Adamant support for contraception and family planning
    * Adamant support for comprehensive sex education
    * Adamant opposition to abortion in ALL cases, except potentially for the mother's life

The fact that the number of Americans committed to all of these principles can be counted in mere thimblefuls says all you need to know about the petty moralizers who dare call themselves "pro-life", wrapping their petty sexual morality in the fradulent banner of love for the fetus.

It's almost always about sex, and always has been. 

Judging from the usual suspects' going on about ''the consequences'' in the comments section of this blog, and the lack of contraceptive options offered by the PILL KILLS! anti-choicers, I'd say that it's all about controlling women.

Maybe those Samaritans ought to be good to their women.

Just saying.

Note: Some of the numbers cited above don't quite match up but I am citing them from UN documents verbatim.

Happy Canada Day!

The ship that brought my Dad to Canada, May 13, 1929:

He never looked back.

Breadwinners and losers

Last week, this post, about the U.S. stimulus plan billions were not all poured into the ground for male-oriented shovel-ready projects generated some heat. But then, the piece which it was all based on was a dishonest rant blaming feminists for just about every economic woe "burly'' American men face right now.

Here, also on the economy, is quite a different piece. Instead of setting men and women against each other, author Courtney Martin proposes ways that everybody can pull together and pull out of this financial mess.

But first, some men need to rethink their roles -- specifically, what it means to be a man. Too often, they think it would be emasculating to promote equal rights.

Men have a real stake in feminism, and no, it's not just getting laid more often.

For example, until men advocate for and take paternity leave in America's workplaces, women will always be viewed as "special" -- and not in a good way -- for taking time off after giving birth. The more men who "come out" at work as dedicated fathers, the more comfortable the next generation will be in advocating for family-friendly work policy. As Jeremy Adam Smith argues in his new book, The Daddy Shift, we need a "gradual movement away from a definition of fatherhood as pure breadwinning to one that encompasses capacity for both breadwinning and caretaking. … It is time for twenty-first century dads to go on the offensive." This overdue "daddy shift" will normalize the notion that all caregivers -- women and men -- have to juggle work demands and family responsibilities.

Another area in which men must and generally haven't stepped up to the plate is in advocating for less sexism in the media. When Bill O'Reilly called veteran White House Press Corps journalist Helen Thomas "the wicked witch of the east," where were her male peers to defend her right to be judged based on the quality of her work rather than the wrinkles on her face? And when David Letterman recently made an inappropriate joke about Sarah Palin's 14-year-old daughter Willow, Sean Hannity and a few other conservative pundits took it seriously, in order to claim that "Obama's surrogates" on the left only care about sexism against liberals. It wasn't a genuine stand against sexist commentary in the media; it was an attempt to score political points.

Why should men invest in this fight? Because until women are judged based on the quality of their work, not their conformity to gender stereotypes, men have no hope of being judged based on the full range of their humanity.

<SNIP>

Ultimately, so much of this comes down to framing. As long we use the language of "women's issues," we will be separate and unequal. But when we talk about worker's rights, health care, media integrity, and freedom from violence as quality-of-life issues, we will all become less endangered and more enlightened.

Which the point I was trying to make in that other post.

Handing a guy a shovel and a paycheque will not make this world a better place. Blaming feminists divides us instead of uniting us. If men and women have equal footing in the workplace, the home and the mediasphere, all our boats will float.

Incidentally, as recently-published research indicates, men with daughters understand that much more readily than do most  others.

And why is that? Because they come to recognize -- perhaps even resent -- how their daughters have fewer opportunities than their sons.

The Way We Were

There's something familiar about this.

Maybe I saw it the first time around. (I used one of these Pitney-Bowes postage thingies in my teens while working as a part-time file clerk in a legal office.)

Maybe I have already posted it -- although a search of Broadsides didn't turn it up.

Anyway, I don't know, and I don't care. I found it while searching for something else. It's worth a rerun.

Speaking of which, I can hardly wait for season three of Mad Men!!

(Via Tumblwah)

Throw the book at them

THIS POST HAS BEEN UPDATED AND CORRECTED.

Understand, I am not one of those feminists who insist that merit be sacrificed on the altar of equality. However I do believe that (1) women start from behind and (2) the race is too often judged by boys' rules.

Which brings me to Newsweek's ''50 books for our times,'' What to Read Now. And Why.

Only eight by women. That is just 16 per cent deemed to have the ability to

open a window on the times we live in, whether they deal directly with the issues of today or simply help us see ourselves in new and surprising ways.

Top of the picks by women, coming in at No. 24? Mary Shelley's 19th century classic Frankenstein. (See update.)

Right behind it at No. 25, another female authored book, about motherhood. Then at No. 37, Marjane Satrapi's couldn't-get-more-current Persepolis.

No A Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood? This in an age when so many are trying to turn back the clock on women's rights, and force them to become breeders? What about her genetic-engineering-gone-mad Oryx and Crake?

Nothing by Barbara Tuchman? Erna Paris? What about Barbara Margaret MacMillan's Paris 1919, the book which lays out how the western powers messed up the Middle East?

As my Tweep @ShelbyKnox points out, what times do Newsweek's editors live in?

OOPSY DAISY DATE: My friend Skdadl from over at POGGE points out that I missed Flannery O'Connor's short story collection A Good Man is Hard to Find at No. 12.

Diplomatic Impunity

My Canada includes human rights for women.

Or at least it used to:

OTTAWA – Canadian diplomats were tipped weeks before Afghanistan passed its so-called rape law but did not alert their political masters, newly released documents indicate.

Officials at the embassy in Kabul were warned Feb. 15 that other countries were worried about the proposed Shiite family law.

But the diplomats had no specific knowledge about the provisions of the law or when it was to be considered by the Afghan parliament, say the documents obtained by the federal New Democrats.

The law gives sweeping powers to Shiite husbands over their wives, effectively legalizing rape within a marriage. The legislation triggered international outrage when it was signed into law by President Hamid Karzai five weeks later.

<SNIP>

Soraya Sobharang, a prominent member of the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission, testified before the same committee via teleconference that Western countries let down the women of her country. She said Canada needs to be more vigilant about intervening on human-rights matters.

Once Canadian officials had heard the law was passed they had trouble tracking down details and getting the legislation translated, the summary said.

Diplomats tried to secure meetings with Karzai and his top ministers, but it wasn't until mid-April that ambassador Ron Hoffmann had a face-to-face meeting with the president.

The Afghan government is reviewing the law, but Sobharang was not confident the measures will be overturned. She warned in May that she was worried that similar legislation would be introduced for the majority Sunni population.

So ... here are the questions:

1. If Canadian diplomats knew but didn't think it worth a briefing, what do they understand about our mission in Afghanistan?

2. If Canadian diplomats knew and actually did give the government a briefing, why didn't we hear about this law sooner?

3. Why are Canadian men and women dying to keep Karzai in power?

4. Isn't our ''mission'' in Afghanistan supposed to be humanitarian?

The Illogical Song

Absolutely the best compilation of arguments for choice I have seen, at least recently, put together by libertarian feminist author Wendy McElroy.

Here's an excerpt:

Implication #1: If the fetus is accorded individual rights, then the aborting woman and anyone who assists her are murders and must be subject to whatever penalty society metes out for that crime, up to and including capital punishment. The punishment should be applied to past abortions as there is no statute of limitation on murder. If anti-abortionists shy away from this conclusion, then they do not really consider abortion to be murder. Note: it does not matter that the woman didn't view the fetus as a child; if her state of mind exonerates her, then it follows that a racist should be exonerated for killing blacks.

Implication #2: if a woman cannot 'kill' her fetus because it is a separate human being, then she also cannot injure it. If she does, she should be prosecuted in the same manner as if she assaulted an innocent bystander. If she ingests harmful substances, then the law should view the act as though she had strapped down a child and force-fed a toxin to it. Thus, the pregnant woman is vulnerable to criminal prosecution based on her diet, her lifestyle choices, etc. If anti-abortionists do not follow their own logic this far, it is not because the logic doesn't lead here. It is because the conclusion makes them uncomfortable.

Implication #3: if a woman wishes to abort or to take actions that will harm the fetus -- e.g. smoking crack -- then she should be imprisoned or otherwise forcibly restrained from inflicting death and/or injury on the innocent "child." Constant monitoring would be required -- presumably by the state; the woman would be a slave to her fetus. Anti-abortionists must explain how -- short of totalitarianism -- they intend to protect fetuses in peril.

Six more implications where those three came from.

Go, read them.

And then, try, just try, to come up with a logical counter-argument.

H/t to my Tweep Passionate Provider.

Bite me

Really, what can I say?

Don't get me wrong. I could say plenty. But it would only get me into deep, um, trouble.

New! Improved!

From BBC's BAFTA-winning comedy series That Mitchell and Webb Look, now in its third season, a look at sexism in advertising.

H/t to Facebook and Twitter friend Francesca Dobbyn.

Body blow

Okay, once more into the burqa breech ...

Today's treeware column was basically a summary of my previously-blogged ideas about women's leadership in the Iranian uprising as well as some thoughts on hijab, especially in the wake of French President Nicolas Sarkozy's pronouncements on the burqa the other day.

You can read it here.

Note that NOWHERE do I endorse the wearing of a burqa. In fact, I say things like ''given my druthers, I'd rather not walk around with a black veil. But I'm a Godless feminist, with no time at all for patriarchal orders from male religious leaders.'' I call it ''a prison for women.''

But, judging from some of the comments and emails, you'd think I sold out my Muslim sisters to the regressive and controlling people -- yes, not always but usually men -- who treat them like chattel. That ''less than livestock'' theme is one that I have repeatedly explored on this blog.

The essential issue my column raises is CHOICE.

It asks this:

What gives anybody – the state, the mullahs, the media, husbands and/or fathers – the right to say what women can wear?

And further down, this:

Seriously: How can a state complain about women being forced to wear something – and then force the same women to take it off?

Why are there incredibly restricting rules for women, and not for men? Is this not sexist (a word I am denounced for using, by the way, by one commenter)?

And what good does such a law do? Will women who refuse to unveil in France be jailed like women who refuse to be veiled are in backward and repressive Islamic countries? Aren't they the victims? Why punish the victim?

Both the National Post and the Star ran editorials today essentially agreeing with my take. When these two political polar opposites concur, well, you have to know that an argument is pretty airtight.

But still.

One notable attack came in from a well-know Muslim Torontonian who claimed I was keeping Muslim women enslaved, that I was selling out his female relatives to the misogyny in the Islamic world. 

Me?

Where?

This was my response:

I advocate for women's complete dominion over their bodies.
Do you?
I believe that, if a woman wants to dress in a miniskirt, it is her right. She is not to be condemned for "asking for it."
Do you?
I think that the burqa - something I personally despise - should be a CHOICE.
Do you?
Why should the state go after women who have no choice?
I see that as sexist and counterproductive.
Do you?
I think that the state should be targeting those who abuse women - and I consider the burqa to be abuse - and not the victim.
Do you?

Now not all women agree, including devout Muslim women -- and, by the way, I know plenty, none of who veil themselves. Here is what a British Muslim woman had to say today:

Shopping in Harrods last week, I came across a group of women wearing black burkhas, browsing the latest designs in the fashion department.

The irony of the situation was almost laughable. Here was a group of affluent women window shopping for designs that they would never once be able to wear in public.

Yet it's a sight that's becoming more and more commonplace. In hardline Muslim communities right across Britain, the burkha and hijab - the Muslim headscarf - are becoming the norm.
In the predominantly Muslim enclaves of Derby near my childhood home, you now see women hidden behind the full-length robe, their faces completely shielded from view. In London, I see an increasing number of young girls, aged four and five, being made to wear the hijab to school.

Shockingly, the Dickensian bone disease rickets has reemerged in the British Muslim community because women are not getting enough vital vitamin D from sunlight because they are being consigned to life under a shroud.

Thanks to fundamentalist Muslims and 'hate' preachers working in Britain, the veiling of women is suddenly all-pervasive and promoted as a basic religious right. We are led to believe that we must live with this in the name of 'tolerance'.

And yet, as a British Muslim woman, I abhor the practice and am calling on the Government to follow the lead of French President Nicolas Sarkozy and ban the burkha in our country.

The veil is simply a tool of oppression which is being used to alienate and control women under the guise of religious freedom. 

Agreed on all points but one: the ban.

How many of us who advocate for a ban have actually approached a heavily veiled woman and talked to her? Asked her if she is happy under that black tent?

I haven't, even though I see such women almost every day when I walk my dog near a rapidly-expanding mosque near Donlands and Danforth. Some of them actually work as nannies for the yuppies in my hood. On summer evenings, in a local park, I see maybe a dozen women, completely veiled in black, sitting on the grass in a circle eating sweets and yakking away, their kids nearby on the playground. I have talked to the children, let them pat the dog, but I have NEVER spoken with the women. 

How sad is that?

I guess that's the point of the burqa.

Now obviously there's a big difference between the burqa and a scarf. As my friend and colleague Rosie Dimanno emailed this morning,

In a burqa, you can't see your feet. That's why women fall down.

(Well, I can think of other reasons but ... heh heh ... kidding Rosie.)

Point is, I have met very strong-minded women at U. of Toronto, who are in hijab. None of them seems to be under any duress.

Yesterday, while walking past a house where a Muslim family lives (and there are plenty near here), two little girls, maybe 5 or 6 years old, were playing Mommy with a doll and its stroller. One of the girls actually put a piece on of cloth on her head and tied it like a scarf so she could be ''grown-up.'' I stood there in astonishment.

Bottom line: choice.

Choice.

There should be no more rules for women than there are for men.

That's why it's legal for women to be topless in Ontario and some other jurisdictions.

That said, if a government were truly concerned about how women in burqas were being treated, it would set up mechanisms so that they could get help when they wanted to shed them, escape tyrannical family situations, and break the chains of "subservience.''

Otherwise, a ban will only cause more problems for these women.

Incidentally, I couldn't help but use one more image from the wonderful movie, Persepolis. (And yes, I know it doesn't depict a burqa ...)

UPPITY WOMAN DATE: Almost forgot to link to this story from Cairo:

At the Embaba Youth Center in Cairo, teenage girls in headscarves that signify Islamic modesty whack at each other with deft karate moves.

It’s fun, they say, but also a defense against nasty boys and men on the Egyptian capital’s mean streets.

“No one is going to touch me when I can hit them real hard,” said Nada Gamal Saad, 16.

The training is a grassroots reaction to a problem Cairo women’s groups say is growing: public verbal insults, groping and even rape. Such harassment contrasts with emerging signs of female political advancement in Egypt and other countries across the Middle East.

“Changes for women are surface improvements,” said Madiha el-Safty, a sociology professor at the American University in Cairo. “There is a deeper cultural problem: male hostility toward women who want to do more than stay at home.”

I wonder how much freedom a woman will have once she can no longer wear a burqa -- but her family won't let her out of the house because she is ''exposing'' herself.

Surely there are better solutions than bans.

ONE UP ME DATE: Balbulican sure knows how to reduce a blog post to the very basics.

a) We find it appalling that your religion dictates what you may and may not wear.
b) We therefore propose to dictate what you may and may not wear.

Questions?

I am not worthy.

Burly men

''Mens Rights Now,'' whose handle always cracks me up, suggests somewhere in the comments on some other post that I blog this piece of propaganda by a right-wing think tank type for an ultra-conservative publication.

Well, you know how I just live to please guys like Men's Rights Now.

Anyhow, the piece is about how unemployed ''burly'' men in the US -- who, admittedly, have been hit hard by the decline in construction and manufacturing jobs -- are supposedly being shortchanged by some grand feminist conspiracy to keep them from benefiting from stimulus spending by President Barack Obama.

Seriously.

Never mind how the author cherry-picks statistics, and compares apples with oranges, to make it seem as if women are living high off the hog while men are on the bread lines. Never mind how women make up the bulk of the poor. Never mind how, except for right now, the unemployment rate for women is consistently higher than for men. Never mind how so many families are headed by women who have no fallback support. Never mind that most women struggle in part-time jobs that the author never mentions. Never mind that women are less like to qualify for unemployment benefits. Never mind how women make less. Never mind how, when the government bailed out the financial sector, it was men's jobs that were saved.

According to the author:

A "man-cession." That's what some economists are starting to call it. Of the 5.7 million jobs Americans lost between December 2007 and May 2009, nearly 80 percent had been held by men. Mark Perry, an economist at the University of Michigan, characterizes the recession as a "downturn" for women but a "catastrophe" for men.

Men are bearing the brunt of the current economic crisis because they predominate in manufacturing and construction, the hardest-hit sectors, which have lost more than 3 million jobs since December 2007. Women, by contrast, are a majority in recession-resistant fields such as education and health care, which gained 588,000 jobs during the same period. Rescuing hundreds of thousands of unemployed crane operators, welders, production line managers, and machine setters was never going to be easy. But the concerted opposition of several powerful women's groups has made it all but impossible. Consider what just happened with the $787 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009.

Last November, President-elect Obama addressed the devastation in the construction and manufacturing industries by proposing an ambitious New Deal-like program to rebuild the nation's infrastructure. He called for a two-year "shovel ready" stimulus program to modernize roads, bridges, schools, electrical grids, public transportation, and dams and made reinvigorating the hardest-hit sectors of the economy the goal of the legislation that would become the recovery act.

Women's groups were appalled. Grids? Dams? Opinion pieces immediately appeared in major newspapers with titles like "Where are the New Jobs for Women?" and "The Macho Stimulus Plan." A group of "notable feminist economists" circulated a petition that quickly garnered more than 600 signatures, calling on the president-elect to add projects in health, child care, education, and social services and to "institute apprenticeships" to train women for "at least one third" of the infrastructure jobs. At the same time, more than 1,000 feminist historians signed an open letter urging Obama not to favor a "heavily male-dominated field" like construction: "We need to rebuild not only concrete and steel bridges but also human bridges." As soon as these groups became aware of each other, they formed an anti-stimulus plan action group called WEAVE-- Women's Equality Adds Value to the Economy.

Now, although this story is American, it has some relevance here in that Canadian men have also suffered in the job market -- although our government completely ignored what women said about so-called ''shovel ready'' projects.

I won't bother to eviscerate the entire piece, despite the easy pickings. I will point out however that these evil feminists were not conspiring to take away jobs from men, but to ensure that money went to families for such things as, horrors, health care and food. They also thought it would be only fair that, since women's tax dollars were going into this (and so much has been lost by the macho men on Wall Street), that it would be a good opportunity to even out some of the incredible inequalities that persist in the trades.

Here's a summary of what WEAVE wanted:

No. 1: Affirmative action plans:
These ensure that women and people of color are actually hired and trained for public-sector jobs. In the years since Bush took office, the number of federal contracts has risen sixfold. Spending has also gone way up, to almost $368 billion currently from $209 billion in 2000. Staff to monitor these contracts at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, meanwhile, dropped. In his inaugural address Obama talked about government conducting its business in the "light of day" and on his first working day in office he emphasized financial transparency. Government contracts are the place to put those sentiments into action.

No. 2: Infrastructure projects:
In 2003 only 4 percent of the roughly 400,000 registered apprentices were women. Scholars with expertise in these matters must be brought to the policy table so this gross discrepancy can be fixed. This is critical because while women hold 10 percent of construction jobs, most--5.8 percent--work in offices where wages are about 16 percent lower. Unless the Labor Department recommits to workplace integration--by gender and race--the jobs that pay a truly livable wage will not benefit women or people of color in proportion to their presence in the labor force.

No. 3: Spending on health care, child care, education and social services:
This spending both provides jobs to women and provides services needed by all families. The fastest-growing segment of the homeless population is families. Forty percent of requests for emergency shelter come from families. More than 85 percent of homeless families are headed by a lone parent, and most are women.

Now, while it's true that WEAVE pushed for more jobs for women in the trades, it also recognized that people were in serious trouble:

Overall, two-thirds of the stimulus program will go toward tax cuts, relief for state budgets and direct payments to the unemployed and others hurt by the recession, part of the administration's desire to provide immediate fiscal relief. Much smaller pieces of the pie will be allocated for weatherization, affordable housing and other projects designed to create jobs.

John Husing, a Southern California economist, said keeping teachers and police officers employed should help prevent the recession from getting worse. But he said the stimulus package would have improved communities' ability to grow over the long haul if it had dedicated more money to public works.

While billions of dollars eventually will flow to infrastructure projects, Democrats who crafted the package say they directed most of it to existing government programs such as Medicaid and education to prevent state economies from slipping even more. One goal was to help fill state budget gaps, keeping teachers and others employed while strengthening the social safety net.

Let's be clear about one thing: A bunch of feminist economists, no matter how smart, are not going to divert gabillions of dollars in government spending away from men just because they hate them.

Which is what this ridiculous piece insinuates.

The truth is, when you look at who wrote it, who paid her, and where her piece was published, the truth emerges.

Any money that doesn't go to business is baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaad.

Any money that goes to the public sector is feminist-driven socialism.

Talk about shovel ready.

Happy Men's Rights Now?

Stone Cold Sobering

For all the talk of ''The Lipstick Revolution,'' and for all the photos of beautiful Iranian women raising their manicured fists in defiance, the truth is, as Lila Ghobady, an exiled Iranian writer-journalist in Canada, blogs, women's rights will be crushed no matter who becomes president in the current regime.

She didn't vote in this month's elections and here's just a couple of reasons why:

As a woman whose husband refused to divorce her when she escaped the country and came to Canada as a refugee, I am considered this man’s wife as long as I am alive. It does not matter if I lived separate from him for years, have divorced him in my new country and am in a relationship with a new man. Under Iranian laws and the Iranian constitution, which are based on strict interpretation of Islamic laws, I am considered his wife and am at risk of being stoned for “adultery” if I ever go back to Iran. In fact as a woman, I have no right to divorce my husband under the country’s laws while he has the privilege of marrying three more times without divorcing me. This is the case no matter who is the president of Iran; Ahamdinejad or Mousavi.

I would be lashed in public, raped in jail or even executed or stoned to death for selling my body in order to bring food to my family, as so many unfortunate Iranian women have been forced to do secretly including many single mothers who have no access to social assistance in a rich but deeply corrupted country like Iran. Even the simple crime of being in love, engaged in a relationship outside of marriage, or worse yet, giving birth to a human being out of Islamic wedlock is considered a crime against humanity! The product of such a union would be considered a bastard and would be taken away from me, and I would receive 100 lashes immediately after giving birth to my baby. No matter who is the president of Iran.

No wonder women are putting themselves out there. This isn't about which man gets to continue the theocracy. It's about a fundamental struggle.

Again, I refer you to Persepolis, about which I blogged yesterday. (Yes, I loved this movie!)

There's a scene in which Marjane, the rebellious young Iranian woman, kicks regime butt -- actually she does this several times -- prompting her mother to repeat her concerns about getting thrown into prison and facing execution.

But it seems that execution is not for ''virgins.'' And so, girls are ''married'' to guards before they are taken to the gallows.

That totally freaked me out.

UPPITY WOMAN DATE: What she said.

The Iranian clerics know that women pose a profound threat to their authority: As activist Ladan Boroumand has written, the regime would not bother to use brutal forms of repression against dissidents unless it feared them deeply. Nobody would have murdered a young woman in blue jeans—a peaceful, unarmed demonstrator—unless her mere presence on the street presented a dire threat.

They may succeed. Violence usually succeeds, at least in the short term, in intimidating people. In the long term, however, the links, structures, organizations, and groups set up by Iranian women, not to mention the photographs of the last week, will continue to gnaw away at the Iranian regime's legitimacy—and we should take note. I cannot count how many times I've been told in recent years that "women's issues" are a secondary subject in the Islamic world. Whether it's the Afghan Constitution under discussion or the Saudi government, the standard line among the standard commentators has always been that other things—stability, security, oil—matter more. But regimes that repress the civil and human rights of half their population are inherently unstable. Sooner or later, there has to be a backlash. In Iran, we're watching one unfold.

Not the Hindu Kush

Uh ... I don't know how I lived this long without a Kush.

Now is it me or does it look like ... oh never mind...

UPPITY WOMAN DATE: It's how much???????

Paris fashion

Yesterday, while sitting in the food court of Gerrard Square, a nearby mall which really should never have been built but that's another story, I marveled at the diversity of women around me.

There was one group of five, all apparently Middle Eastern and East African, in various stages of hijab. Which is to say none at all to a colourful kerchief to the full-on head-to-toe black robe.

The ladies were lunching and enjoying a good giggle or two.

I sat there wondering if the woman in chador really wanted to be in chador. Was she forced to be in it because of a husband? Didn't she want to cast it off and dress in more appropriate wear for downtown Toronto in the summer?

I thought about going up to ask. I should have. But I didn't want to appear rude -- especially if it was her choice.

After all, I wouldn't go up to an ultra-Orthodox Jewish woman and ask her if she chose to be covered and bewigged. Nor would I go up to a turbaned Sikh man and ask him if he wouldn't like a cut and a blow-dry.

So why do we feel that it's fair game to go after Muslim women in our midst? Why has hijab -- and not the mullahs, not the mosques -- become the single most pervasive symbol of Islam in western culture?

In fact, I would argue it's also used as THE representation of Islamofascism, the suicide bomber of newspaper and TV images.

Consider how it has become one of the prevailing media memes in the Iranian revolution, while giving editors an excuse to run admitted arresting photos of beautiful women in Tehran looking defiant? And it's no accident that a horrible, horrible YouTube video of a young woman, reportedly named Neda Soltani, being shot and killed during a street protest has probably become a virtual rallying cry, at least for Western Tweeple.

Now don't get me wrong. Regular readers know I have no time for ANY patriarchal religions that treat women like second- or  fifth- class citizens.In fact, I trash them all the time.

What's more, if the purpose of chador is to keep a woman from being assaulted, visually or physically, by men then I would argue that men be forced to wear blinders. Why blame the victim?

But what if the woman is devout and truly believes that hijab reflects her faith? Should we be ripping it off her?

I have been grappling this for a long time.

I mean from a crime standpoint, okay. Just about anybody could be hiding under a burka and rob a bank. It would make identification impossible. But then, most people wear some kind of mask when committing an armed heist, no?

Anyway, all this to link to a couple of news stories about France's President Nikolas Sarkozy's statements today:

PARIS - President Nicolas Sarkozy said the Muslim burqa would not be welcome in France, calling the full-body religious gown a sign of the "debasement" of women.

In the first presidential address to parliament in 136 years, Sarkozy faced critics who fear the burqa issue could stigmatize France's Muslims and said he supported banning the garment from being worn in public.

"In our country, we cannot accept that women be prisoners behind a screen, cut off from all social life, deprived of all identity," Sarkozy said to extended applause at the Chateau of Versailles, southwest of Paris.

"The burqa is not a religious sign, it's a sign of subservience, a sign of debasement - I want to say it solemnly," he said. "It will not be welcome on the territory of the French Republic."

Dozens of legislators have called for creating a commission to study a possible ban in France, where there is a small but growing trend of wearing the full-body garment despite a 2004 law forbidding it from being worn in public schools. 

I don't know.

I tend to think that, rather than focus on what women wear -- which is pretty damned sexist -- perhaps a government commission should look into whether Muslim (and other immigrant) women and children have the social services they need to escape abuse.

True, the chador covers up a lot of bruises.

But it seems to me that making a woman choose between the state and her God/husband/father is cruel and unusual punishment.

Incidentally, last night I re-watched Persepolis, a compelling and heart-wrenching animated film based on the autobiographical books by the Iran-born Marjane Satrapi. The image above is from the film. It got me going on a whole train of thoughts relating to the veil and revolution.

More to come ...

UPPITY WOMAN DATE: Brilliant at Breakfast has a less equivocal view.

Say what you will about the French, but in a world where the line between the extremists who would go and blow themselves up over an issue like this, and the political correctness of trying to allow for religious freedom, grows ever finer, Sarkozy kicked some ass and made a strong statement about what is expected of those who wish to live in France.

This is not a free speech/personal choice/religious issue, but an issue of ingrained abuse of women that is making a comeback in certain areas, and which is disruptive to the entire society. The women may say that they want to wear these garments, but this is beyond what any one person wants; its what is demanded by a free and fair society that is taking into account all of it's citizens.

I really think abuse starts at home and under the chador ...