Return fire

Today the Star's editorial pages published a letter from Helena Guergis, Minister of State for the Status of  Women. Typically, it was edited for length.

As regular readers know, Guergis has figured heavily in my posts and columns about the anniversary of the Ecole Polytechnique Massacre, mostly because she voted to abolish the long-gun registry which law enforcement and medical groups supported.

I thought it only fair that I reprint her complete letter, unedited here.

In keeping with the Star's policy on allowing readers to have their say, I will post this without added commentary. I've said my piece on this subject. But you may feel free to weigh in.

Here's the letter:

As Canadians observe the 20th Anniversary of the Montreal Massacre, I would like to believe that some things are above partisan politics.   Not everyone shares my view.  Antonia Zerbisias’ recent piece, “Tory ‘girlfriends’ hew to party line on femicide” was appalling.

 We are not “girlfriends,” we are all strong members of Caucus who represent our constituents’ views on legislation, bring in new and effective programs and work alongside our colleagues in parliament.

We will not let our critics stop us from holding important ceremonies.
We will not allow their attacks to deter us from being strong members of Parliament and passing our tough-on-crime agenda.

Our Conservative Government has made many positive policy changes as well, like providing funding directly to grassroots programs that serve hundreds of thousands of women and girls in the communities in which they live.  For more than 40 percent of these groups, this is the first time they have received funding and support from the federal government.

Just last week, I announced that our Government is contributing $1 million to support the establishment of Uniting to End Violence against Women, a project that will help to end violence against women and children by bringing together shelter organizations from across Canada.
In addition to the targeted action within my portfolio at the Status of Women, we are taking concrete steps to protect women across government. Our Government has passed The Tackling Violent Crimes Act that provides better protection for young girls against sexual predators. We are also working to end conditional sentencing for serious crimes such as rape, and recently released a new citizen’s guide which explicitly states Canada will not tolerate barbaric cultural practices that debase and demean women and their role in society. These are only a few of the measures we are taking to deliver safer streets for women and for all Canadians.
While there may be different ways to address an issue, a difference of opinion on policy neither changes our personal commitment to ending violence against women, nor our Government’s commitment to do the same.

Signed,

The Honourable Helena Guergis, P.C., M.P.

Minister of State (Status of Women)

Note: I changed the photo to the haunting image captured by staffer Carlos yesterday.

UPPITY WOMAN DATE: Pale gets in there.

Negrita Jayde (1958-2009)

As some people know, the death of Negrita Jayde last Friday, Aug. 28, has hit me hard. The world is a poorer place -- not just for me, but for her friends, her family and the many, many, many others whose lives she touched.

Her heart was the biggest muscle in her strong body.

As the news of her passing spreads throughout the bodybuilding community, one in which she used to be a star, it's clear that not only was she an inspiration to me but to the countless people who knew her or who bought her books, saw her fitness articles in the Star or caught her discussing health and nutrition on TV.

This is how Negrita and I met.

It was 1996, a freezing dark Saturday morning in late January, the kind of blizzardy day which made you want to stay under the covers. Even worse, I had a head cold from hell.

I was probably at the worst point of my life, personally, professionally, and physically. My weight, cholesterol and blood sugar were dangerously high. My spirit was irretrievably low.

But I dragged myself out to a local hotel where I was to attend a media training seminar, for a column I was doing. I arrived late, and chose a seat at the back, sitting next to a pretty and petite brunette who greeted me with a Klieg light smile.

She offered me a Fisherman's Friend to ease my stuffed head.

At the coffee break, she chatted me up, about my work, my background, my Greek heritage. (Ukrainian via her father, Italian via her mother, Negrita was fascinated by Greek culture.)

When we returned to our seats, she fished around in her bag and plunked her latest book, Supervixen: Secrets for Building a Lean and Sex Body, on the table. Stunned, I looked at the muscle-bound woman on the cover and looked at this delicate dark beauty next to me, looked at the book and looked at her, and said, “Holy s---! Those aren’t shoulder pads.’’

She laughed. And laughed. And laughed.

We talked some more and I told her that I had been into bodybuilding in the 80s, following the likes of Ms. Olympia winners Rachel McLish and Cory Everson but, after my marriage broke up and I made a long-distance move, I abandoned the sport.

It was pretty obvious how I had neglected myself.

We exchanged numbers.

What I didn't count on was that she would start calling me. Actually, it was more like haranguing me, but in a gentle, loving way, to join her at the small personal training gym she co-owned with her fitness business partner Gunnar Sikk. It was a 35 klick drive away, up the Don Valley Parkway and across the 401, both routes I despise, especially during rush hour.

I always found excuses not to go. Work, friends, family, even my cat having cancer.

She called me for a month. Then, one night, she got me again, and found me crying.

''What's wrong?'' she asked.

"We just put the cat down,'' I explained.

She said she was very sorry -- right up until she died she fed all the feral cats in her neighbourhood -- and then said, ''So. What's your next excuse?''

I was speechless.

That's how I ended up at her gym the following Monday morning, squatting, pressing, pulling, pumping. I have been doing it ever since.

She saved my life.

She probably would have liked to save my soul but I guess that was one barrier of mine she could not kick down. She accepted that.

Over the years, we became friends, sharing secrets and laughs.

Negrita understood so much about human nature. And she was so forgiving, so non-judgmental, so loving.

I was truly blessed to have known her.

Here's my treeware tribute to her today, with some added links:

On the day she got her devastating cancer diagnosis last August, Negrita Jayde insisted on driving home from the hospital, over the protests of her friend and business partner Gunnar Sikk.

Anybody else would have been too freaked out to go barrelling cross-town on the 401, a death- defying trip that would always have me cowering riding shotgun in her clunkers, my eyes closed, while she la-lal-la'd along.

As Gunn related in his eulogy on Tuesday, after she got the terrible news – five years to the day that her longtime love and fiancé Gregory Hines died of bile duct cancer – Negrita was steady at the wheel.

The former body-building champ was on a mission.

She was always on a mission.

The most spiritual and self- disciplined person you could ever hope to meet, she would set her sights on something and stop at nothing to get it.

She was a world-class athlete, an author, actor ... and my angel and inspiration.

On that day last August, nothing would stop Negrita from planning, as she did every year, her celebration of Gregory.

There never was a love like that. You would melt in their warmth. You basked in their joy.

Her parties would begin, as always, with a picnic at his gravesite at Oakville's St. Volodymyr Cemetery, where his tombstone, etched with images of his Emmy and Tony Award-winning dance moves, also bears her name.

There would be tap dancing.

Then it was on to her modest northwestern Toronto home, which would fill with Broadway performers who had been mentored by Gregory, as well as friends and family and a cast of characters ranging from reformed bikers to retired heavyweight champs.

You never knew whom you'd meet through Negrita, as we all discovered this week at her packed funeral.

That's because Negrita would talk to everybody, extending a hand, opening her arms, and enfolding all.

If only she had embraced the idea of regular Pap smears.

Understand that Negrita didn't have to drive beat-up old cars. She could have stayed at her beachfront home north of L.A. She was the type of woman who, despite attempts by stylists to dress her in designer gowns for the red carpet, preferred to tuck her hair back and wear Value Village dresses – fooling them all.

So, anyway, after she dropped Gunn at his house that day last year, she drove down the block only to stop suddenly and offer a ride to a woman – a complete stranger – struggling with her groceries.

She would do that all the time, her younger sister Tina Truszyk told me as we stayed up late on Wednesday sharing stories. It would mortify her that Negrita, who died at 51, would drive her to the subway, with strangers, and leave her to carry on awkward conversations all the way downtown.

A Christian in the truest sense.

Negrita, had faith that would leave me, a non-believer, awed.

She did daily charity work in Santa Monica, California.

If I had to attend a church for some ritual, she would tag along because she was fascinated by all the ways to reach out to Jesus.

It didn't matter what restaurant, trendy or greasy, we were in. She would insist on grace before we tucked into our post-workout pig-outs.

She accepted that I was internally rolling my eyes. She never laid her religion on me – although she hoped it would be contagious.

In the end, she turned to her faith, rather than to science.

She suffered so much, so unnecessarily.

But, when we laid her to rest on Tuesday, we who loved her were comforted by one thing.

Negrita was sure Gregory would be waiting for her, with a "Hey, Baby, what took you so long?''

If there is a heaven, they're dancing in it.

Every sperm is sacred

Three different readers have sent this to me. It makes the points I've been making lately, but only it makes them funnier.

Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you this number from Monty Python's The Meaning of Life!

For the record there's a longer clip on YouTube but it contains language the Star overlords would prefer I not post.

The Name Game

Further to this post about language and the abortion issue, comes this email.

I have edited it because I believe it is the decent thing to do (the writer reveals much about his personal life) in this case:

From: ian
Sent: Fri 5/22/2009 2:38 PM
To: Zerbisias, Antonia
Subject: "I Am Pro-Life"; facile labels

Hi Antonia,

I shook my head while reading your recent blog post "I Am Pro-Life".  At the
outset, it seemed like you were going to repudiate the facile labelling and
name-calling that characterizes 98% of the content of abortion arguments.
But it quickly became clear that you're only rejecting the choice of label
of The Other Side, while foisting awful ones onto them. Do you believe this
is a contribution to the debate?

As for the label, you're (small p) pro-life, i'm pro-life, everyone's
pro-life. Of course. That's easy. I'm also pro-choice. How could i not be? I
support all kinds of free choice, even some that our levels of government
don't allow us. That's easy.

I have never called myself Pro-Life because of the associations involved,
political et al. However i believe life begins at conception (how could one
honestly believe otherwise?) and my other beliefs and actions stem logically
from that.  My wife is equally persuaded.

Am I a misogynist? Absolutely not.

<SNIP>

I hate misogynists, and it's a concept that's totally foreign to me.

Am i Anti-Choice? Am I Pro-Forced-Pregnancy? Those are facile terms that
don't capture the complexity of the issue we're dealing with. You seem to
acknowledge that complexity in your citations of David Frum, but quickly
back away by using those awful labels.

What about Fet-o-Phile? Disgusting. Every time i see it in one of your posts
and articles i am inclined to disregard the whole thing.

In short, please elevate dialogue by finding common ground. When you
use labels for The Other Side, you're hitting the wedge with your biggest
mallet, and that's not good for anybody. It makes you look like a hypocrite,
alienating everyone but your base.

Sincerely,

Ian

Fair enough.

But what does one call ''the other side'' when it denies women control over their own lives and bodies? What does one call ''the other side'' when it places more value on a clump of cells than on a living, breathing woman? What does one call ''the other side'' when it lies to women about the psychological and physical effects of abortion? What does one call the other side when it denies the reality that women will  seek out back alley abortions if they have no choice? What does one call ''the other side'' when it calls for prison sentences for doctors who save women?

Let's see ...

Pro-life? No, sorry. You can't co-opt that term, as I blogged yesterday.

Anti-abortion? Nope. That's because it implies that ''my side'' is ''pro-abortion'' which it's not. We would much rather that conception be prevented in the first place if a child is not wanted. (And yet, some factions on ''the other side'' are also demanding that The Pill be banned because it supposedly is abortifacient.)

Anti-choice? Maybe, but ''the other side'' will be the first to tell you that it is ''pro-choice'' -- for the ''unborn child.''

You see the dilemma here?

Which is why I use terms like pro-forced-pregnancy types, zygote zealots, fetus fetishists, etc.

No, they don't conjure pretty images.

But neither does a woman dying of septicemia.

The suggestion box is open.

No honour here

 From my mailbox, yet another long lecture on how I always criticize Christianity (and Judaism) but give Islam a pass. You know, like I do here and here and here and here and here and here...

To readers like this, when a Muslim man kills his wife (or female relative), it's an ''honour killing.'' But when an American non-Muslim does it, it's just another story in the back pages of the paper.

That's if it gets reported at all.

I replied several times to this guy but, typically, he just keeps coming after me.

I'll spare you all the blah-blah-blah. Here are the nut graphs, where he accuses the Star and me of being too politically correct to connect the dots.

The paper has repeat stories which show us the true face of Islam but refuses to connect those stories with Islam.

So Ms. Zerbisias, since you "criticise all religions",  but you some how seem inclined to paint your criticism with a brush which gives Islam 3ird and less severe billing after Judaism and Christianity, (as per Toronto Star policy?) do you truly believe that there is, in the world we read about today, a moral equivalence between the three?  Do you believe (unlike the leader of Turkey) there can be secular Muslims who don't necessarily buy into the more ugly aspects of their ideology.   Well so do I. I think however, that they need to be challenged big time in our media instead of being molly coddled. The problem is how will they behave and what choices
will they make when things are a bit dicey?  Where will their trained loyalties lie when we are on the line between what I feel would be an agreed upon (between you and I) standard for light and the dark.  Which way would the tide go?

The theat is real and the potential picture looks ugly to me.  Lets talk about it and truthfully report on it well ahead of time.

These guys always write as if somebody is coming to take away my rights and wrap me up in a burka, like any second now. To them, every killing of a woman by a Muslim man, even when it's clearly by a deranged psycho is an ''honour killing.''

Just like this latest tragedy:

A Jordanian man confessed to stabbing to death his pregnant sister and mutilating her body to protect the family honor, said Jordanian authorities on Sunday.

Prosecutor Mohammed al-Tarawneh said the man turned himself into police and has been charged with murder.

The 28-year-old married woman was five months pregnant and stabbed repeatedly in the face, neck, abdomen and back as well as being hacked up with a meat cleaver, according to government pathologist Awad al-Tarawneh.

Police familiar with the case said the woman had moved back in with her family after an argument with her husband six months earlier. The brother believed that she had then started seeing other men.

The names of those involved have not been released.

The incident, the ninth such case this year and the second this month, took place in the village of Basira, in the conservative Bedouin heartland of southern Jordan.

Strict tribal and religious values are enforced in these villages, including the belief that women carry the family's honor.

Around two dozen women are killed each year in these conservative areas of Jordan by male relatives who typically accuse them of besmirching the family honor through adultery or having sex outside of marriage.

Around two dozen women? This is terrible. But it's a drop in the bucket compared with the U.S.

So anyway, tonight, prompted by this blog entry, I looked up some numbers.

Turns out that in Jordan, and hey, what the heck, throw in all the other Muslim countries, honour killers are amateurs compared with the guys right here at home.

For example, American men have it all over Muslim men in the wife-killing department. They even kill their kids just to spite their wives.

Like this guy did last week.

Or this guy tried to do yesterday.

And what about this guy last month?

On Saturday US media reported a brutal scene discovered at a Boston home -- a man had stabbed to death his 17-year-old sister, decapitated his five-year-old sister and began stabbing another sister before being shot by police.

Need more?

PRICEVILLE, Ala. (AP) — A man facing a divorce trial shot and killed his estranged wife, their teenage daughter and two other relatives in rural north Alabama before returning to his home in a nearby town and killing himself, authorities said Tuesday.

Kevin Garner's body was found Tuesday afternoon near his Priceville home, which burned to the ground overnight. His divorce trial was to start Wednesday.

Garner apparently shot himself in the chest, said Travis Clemmons, chief investigator for the sheriff's office in Lauderdale County, where the four bodies were found earlier in the day in a home in Green Hill, a small community near the Tennessee line.

The victims were identified as Garner's estranged wife, Tammy, 40; their 16-year-old daughter, Chelsie; Garner's sister, Karen Beaty of Illinois; and Beaty's 11-year-old son, whose name was not released.

Not in Canada you say? Again, last month:

A 33-year-old man accused of stabbing his wife in the face and head with a screwdriver while the couple's four children watched will be in court Monday to face a charge of aggravated assault.

The Steinbach RCMP detachment was called at about 8 a.m. Saturday about a woman who had just fled her home with her children after being stabbed in the tiny community of Mitchell, about 60 kilometres southeast of Winnipeg.

Police said the man repeatedly stabbed his wife with the screwdriver inside a bedroom while the children were present.

In fact, my guess is, any day, at random, if were to go to Google News and punch in ''man kills wife,'' you'd get plenty of stories. Every other day, some guy goes nuts because his wife/girlfriend/sister/mother hurts his feelings/ego. Isn't that  ''honour killing'' too?

Now obviously, comparing numbers is difficult as it's impossible to know how many women are killed by the mates in Muslim countries. And in the U.S., femicide is one of the most under reported crimes by the media.

But get a grip, dear letter writers, and spare me the Muslim-bashing. Quit spilling your crocodile tears when women and children right here are being slaughtered.

The only differences between what goes on over there and here are (1) there they put a label on it and (2) here women sometimes kill before they get killed.

Coat of many memories

I wrote about an old coat for the treeware edition today. The column has touched so many people that I can barely keep up with the email.

It's staggering how we are so attached to the dumbest things. For me it's an old down coat.

Anyway, the column is here, if you care to read it.

My dry cleaner/seamstress has since sewn up the coat -- but I have moved on.

UPPITY DATE (28/01/08): This column continues to inspire people to write to me.

But what a surprise to go to the office and find a stunning high-tech down coat on my desk.

A gift from Canada Goose, the red parka, which would withstand Antarctic conditions, has been added to the Star Living section's inventory for our next silent auction in aid of women's shelters and/or the United Way.

Thanks to Canada Goose marketing and public relations coordinator Nadia Angeloni for the thoughtful gift but, of course, I could not accept it.