A Few Good Men

From ActionAid:

It just gets worse and worse for the women in Haiti. But, fortunately, some men are stepping up.

Incidentally, Michael Petrou of Maclean's reports that Canadian donations to Haiti relief are not freely flowing. In fact, they're not even dribbling to that disaster zone. Boldface is mine.

“CIDA officials are in close contact with the Government of Haiti and our humanitarian and development partners to determine the optimal use of these resources as relief, recovery and reconstruction needs are further identified. In keeping with its mandate to manage Canadian aid effectively, CIDA will disburse funds from the HERF as this process takes place.”

Gee. Ya think that, when PM Harper was down there last month, he could have brought some cash?

H/T The Pixel Project

Support Bros

One of the greatest things about PM Stephen Harper's sudden professed interest in women's well-being -- at least that of those women who don't live in Canada, of course -- is how it's making many men here owning up to being pro-choice. They're actually blogging about it.

Now, a quick look at the male opinionators listed in my blogroll will reveal that there were already many guys out there who got it. It's just that, now, even more are speaking out. (And, yeah, even if it's about scoring partisan political points, who cares? We women need all the Support Bros we can get.)

In the US, in the wake of that Tebow anti-choice uproar, feminist bloggers are cheering on the likes of pro-footballer Scott Fujita as well as these guys:

Which brings us to this post today by BCer in Toronto Jeff Jedras (I added the boldface):

In a story in Embassy Mag (behind a subscriber firewall, but I’ve pasted the relevant sections below) Canadian International Development Minister Bev Oda confirms safe abortions, and even contraception, will not be part of the Conservative push on maternal and child care:

Oda says no abortion, contraceptives support
   

But the WHO reports that lack of both contributes to unnecessary deaths.

CIDA Minister Bev Oda says the government's child and maternal health strategy will not address unsafe abortions in developing countries or support access to family planning and contraceptives. Rather, she said that to ensure the aid agency remains effective, "it's the lives of mothers and babies that we are focused on."

<SNIP>

When asked about support for contraceptives and family planning in an interview last week, Ms. Oda said: "In order to maintain our focus, again our focus is on maternal and child health and mortality rates.

"We want to make sure that mothers, pregnant women, are healthy and can have safe births, and that the birthing process is made safer because if you look at the number of births during the actual birthing process, that's where a number of maternal deaths happen," she added.

"We also want to make sure when babies are born, they are born as healthy as possible so that they can live through their early age, up to the age of five, with as strong and good health as possible."

Which is pretty much on the same HarperCon Wombs on Wheels message track she was on when she spoke to CBC Radio's Carol Off last week.

I won't belabour all the reasons why maternal healthcare includes contraception, family planning, AIDS prevention and, yes, abortion. I've done it so often. I just want to emphasize Jedras' point:

The idea of a major push to address maternal and child care is a noble one. But ideology can’t be allowed to dictate the program and the help we’re going to give to women in need. We should listen to the experts on the ground about what is needed and what will be effective to meet the goals we’re trying to achieve and let them direct the resources accordingly.

That has always been the Canadian policy, and the Conservatives desire to address this challenge is legitimate, it shouldn’t change it now. Sadly, though, it seems that the trend of the Harper Conservatives allowing ideology to guide development and aid decisions is ever expanding.

Jedras also dug up this video. It's from CBC News yesterday.

Please pay special attention to the note The Family Canada put up with it.

Your letters and emails to Members of Parliament has paid off! Shelly Glover confirms that Abortion will now not be included in the Canadian Government's plan to help women and children overseas.

Pray for the Conservative Party of Canada and our Prime Minister! Donate and volunteer your time at www.conservative.ca

Forward this video to all of your Christian friends!!!!!

Canada: Now Under OMG Management.

UPPITY WOMAN DATE: Joyce Arthur has more.

Of course, Ignatieff is a politician, and bringing up abortion is no doubt a political strategy in part – but it’s also the absolutely right thing for him to do. It is impossible to tackle maternal health without addressing unsafe abortion, which is a leading cause of maternal death in most developing countries. Given the critical importance of legal safe abortion in saving women’s lives, and the Conservative Party’s well-known anti-choice stance, Ignatieff would have been remiss not to make it a burning issue. The majority of women in Canada are pro-choice, and we are surprised, pleased, and hopeful to see Ignatieff stand up to defend the rights of poor women in other countries.

Conservative politicians and commentators have heaped scorn on Ignatieff’s concerns, however, and condemned him for turning women’s health into a “political football.” But most of the politicking is actually coming from Ignatieff’s critics, who have launched attacks without the benefit of any facts, and even less compassion for women. Some of the coverage is so shockingly ignorant that it qualifies as being misogynist.

Go to her page for a misogyny round-up.

If you can bear it.

Memento Mori

Some links, comments and thoughts on the 20th anniversary of the Ecole Polytechnique Massacre...

The guys who don't get it: The Blogging Tories, brought to you by the ever-watchful Canadian Cynic who notes that none of the drooling Con fans care a whit about violence against women. Only one (at the time of my posting) has even noted the massacre, but just to knock down any links to the long-gun registry.

Guys aside from Cynic who get it include POGGE, Matt and Dr. Dawg. 

Dawg raises a number of points worth further exploration.

First, how, in post 9/11 Canada, so much is being made of the Dec. 6 shooter's paternity.

There's a gaggle of xenophobic yokels who call him Gamil Gharbi these days, as though to score some kind of point. The Montreal Massacre as a narrative about Islam? Perhaps for those whose politics are little more than a slobber of prejudice.

Even in the Globe and Mail.

It's almost as if these people, who are harping on the fact that his birth name was Arab/Muslim, are suggesting that his targeting of women students was ''honour killing'' on a massive scale. I won't stoop to providing links to some of the more hateful examples.

Second, and also from Dawg, there continues to be denial that the massacre had anything to do with woman-hatred.

(T)here will be those who argue that the women's movement, too, has long hitched its political wagon to this rotten star. Some certainly made claims of that kind at the time. They insisted that it was "opportunistic" for a movement dedicated to advocating for the rights of women to speak out about the Montreal femicide. I continue to find this very odd. What on earth was the women's movement supposed to do about this horrific condensation of social misogyny? Be silent?

If a man had entered that polytechnic twenty years ago and ordered all the Gentiles to leave, and proceeded to murder fourteen Jews, would anyone seriously criticize the Canadian Jewish Congress for speaking out about anti-Semitism?

Strangely, while some continue to live in denial, others -- as I pointed out in yesterday's post  -- think the killer was a hero. Just read the first comment here, which I found via JJ. (I swiped the rose image from her as well.)

Marc Lepine was a MARTYR in the war against feminism.  

As Dawg reminds us, members of Canada's Airborne once held a mess dinner to honour the killer. As this moving short film by Ling Chiu recalls, in the aftermath, at least two men treated the massacre like a joke, publicly pranking people into thinking another one was underway. Then, there's this. And this. And this.

Why am I posting links to these woman-haters again? Because some readers of this blog think I exaggerate when I say there is real and frightening misogyny in this world. Just read the hatefest compiled by Ruth.

Note that many of the haters just LOVE their guns.

On a different note, you might want to catch up with Pale, Brebis and, especially, Hysperia's thoughts on this how far women have come, or haven't come, in Steven Harper's Canada.

I, for one, want to make it hurt.  I want to keep sorting out the links between these rightwing policies and liberal betrayals and putting them out there.  I want to defeat the HarpyCons but I also want to make it dead clear that, as a woman, I can’t find a blessed party that truly represents me and my sisters and others for whom I care.  I reject a “headlong retreat into fantasy”.  I’ll not sit around waiting for this culture to die.  That might all sound a little melodramatic but there it is and it suits me just fine.

On this day, December 6th, 2009, when I want to reflect and grieve the women’s lives lost in Montreal in 1989 and all the women of this country who died before or since as a result of intimate partner violence and public violence against women – all those whose names we don’t know – I’ve actually had to time defending my right to define, with my sisters, the meaning of the event and the meaning of those lives and deaths.  When women are murdered because they are women, we still have to fight to say so.  We are so far away, still, twenty years later, from doing those things that must be done to begin the end of male violence against women that we still struggle for the definition itself.

I wish no person physical harm.  But I do want to make that hurt by defeating this government and any other government that thinks it can lead a country while ignoring the needs of half its population.

Indeed.

 

UPPITY WOMAN DATE: Sharon Fraser has some interesting memories.

At around the same time, a young friend of mine was walking into Tim Horton’s to buy some doughnuts. There were two men in front of her carrying a newspaper with a screaming headline about the murdered women and one of the men said something along the lines of, “way to go, buddy.”

FED-UP WOMAN DATE: Sister Sage brings it on home.

Walk a mile in her shoes

The other day, I posted about men who want to help prevent violence against women.

Since then, there's been yet another femicide in the GTA.

Well guys, it's time to step up.

If you can.

Walk a Mile in Her Shoes from Walk A Mile Toronto on Vimeo.

Heh.

This fall, thousands of men will take over the city’s business core in high-heeled shoes to raise awareness – and funds – for the White Ribbon Campaign: the world’s largest effort of men working to end violence against women. 

On Thursday, October 1st 2009, from noon to 2 p.m. at Nathan Phillips Square, men will participate in Walk a Mile in her Shoes®; an event during which men will literally walk one mile in women’s shoes. It's not an easy feat, but it’s a fun way to get people talking about something that’s often difficult to discuss: gender relations and sexual violence.

“We know that 75% of Canadian men feel it is important that men speak out about violence against women,” says Todd Minerson, Executive Director of the White Ribbon Campaign. “The Walk gives men the opportunity to do just that”. 

But the Walk isn’t limited to men alone. Men, women and kids can register online to take part at www.walkamiletoronto.org. 

If you can't do it -- either because you have neither the time nor the tootsies -- please volunteer, donate or sponsor!

Beyond Beatdowns

This popped up in my Facebook news feed.

I am taking the author at his word that it is okay to reproduce this in full. I think it adds a little more much-needed context to my previous post. I added some links but did not edit it.

* Everyone, please post this on the pages of your male Facebook friends, because I want as many men as possible to read this essay.

A Husband Shoots Wife on Brooklyn Street as a Community Watches

By Byron Hurt

On Tuesday, September 1, I spoke to more than 2000 incoming freshman students at Montclair State University in New Jersey. The Department of Student Development and Campus Life invited me to campus to show clips from my documentary film, Hip-Hop: Beyond Beats and Rhymes, and address the issue of men's physical and sexual violence against women as part of their New Student orientation. In my speech, I spoke about the urgent need for men to act as proactive bystanders in the face of such violence.

As I spoke to the students about gender-based violence in north Jersey, in Brooklyn, NY, Lenox Ramsey, 25, taunted, chased, and then finally shot his wife, Kaidan Ramsey, 22, in broad daylight near Brooklyn's Medgar Evers College. Surveillance tapes show a terrified Kaidan running for her life as people on the street watched, doing nothing.

Our communities cannot remain silent and tolerate this kind of violence. We must speak up loudly and boldly when men physically or sexually assault women. We also need to ramp up efforts to educate boys and men about patriarchy, sexism, male privilege, and how men's violence against women is ultimately about men maintaining power and control over female bodies.

This has to stop. Men's violence against women is pervasive worldwide, and we can no longer deflect this issue onto women as if they are the cause of the problem and should fix it by themselves. Each day, new stories emerge about men who abduct, rape, beat, harass, and kill women. We do not need any more statistics or empirical data to prove or legitimize that men's violence against women is a real problem. It is real, and it happens each and every day, all over the world.

Men, we cannot be silent anymore. Non-abusive men who respect women and who disrespect men that abuse women have to speak up when incidents like this occur. You do not have to be an expert or know the latest statistics. All you have to do is care, have courage, be a leader, and speak up in defense of the women you love. (Read Jackson Katz' Ten Things Men Can Do to Prevent Gender Violence at www.jacksonkatz.com)

Through my filmmaking, writing, and community outreach, I will continue to do all that I can to ally with women and educate as many non-abusive men as humanly possible. By simply raising our voices, men and women can use our influence to collectively send the message to other men that the abuse of women is not cool and should not be respected within our communities.

If you have a mother, sister, daughter, grandmother, aunt, or female friend that you love and care about, then you should be an advocate for them and tune in to the issues that affect them daily.

••••••

Byron Hurt is an award-winning documentary filmmaker, a published writer, and an anti-sexist activist. Visit his website, www.bhurt.com.

Feel free to cut and paste my statement and forward widely along with the link to the article and disturbing video footage of the shooting. I also recommend that you google, buy, and read these five books to learn more about what we as men can do to help end violence against women:

• The Macho Paradox: Why Some Men Hurt Women and How All Men Can Help, by Jackson Katz
• Men Speak Out: Views on Gender, Sex, and Power, edited by Shira Tarrant
• The Black Male Handbook: A Blueprint for Life
• NewBlackMan, by Mark Anthony Neal
• The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love, by bell hooks

On a somewhat related matter, what a disgraceful display that was the other night when Chris Brown appeared on CNN's Larry King Live. If you have the stomach for it, there's a satiric take here. Frankly, I think there's been enough joking about the subject.

UPPITY WOMAN DATE: Hurt's Facebook note has attracted many comments, including some on the problem of intervening when somebody has a gun -- and you don't.

Accordingly, he has rewritten part of his note. Here is an excerpt:

As a man, I know how easy it is look the other way and ignore male abusive behavior when it happens, especially when it happens publicly. I’ve been in situations like this and I know how paralyzing one can feel – not knowing exactly what to do. I have been in situations where I have failed to act and remember feeling horrible for lacking the courage to raise my voice. I have also been in situations when I have acted, and fellas, it’s not as difficult or scary as you might imagine.

I understand the fear people feel when faced with intervening when a man is abusing a woman on a busy street. We are afraid the abuser will turn his rage onto us. This fear is real and has to be acknowledged. But as a community, we cannot remain silent and tolerate this kind of violence. We must speak up loudly and boldly when men physically or sexually assault women. Honk your car horn, yell and shout, call 911, or try to somehow distract the abuser from attacking his victim - even if it is for an instant. But please, do not remain silent. Help the woman out. Please understand that I am not suggesting that you jump in front of a bullet to save someone’s life. You must be street smart and use wise judgment at all times. I am, however, suggesting that you do something as opposed to doing nothing at all. At the end of the day, we all have to look ourselves in the mirror knowing that we did the right thing when it mattered most to someone else.

Women hold up half the sky

Absolutely. And Nicholas Kristof rocks our world. (Thanks also to his journalist wife, Sheryl WuDunn)

IN THE 19TH CENTURY, the paramount moral challenge was slavery. In the 20th century, it was  totalitarianism. In this century, it is the brutality inflicted on so many women and girls around the globe: sex trafficking, acid attacks, bride burnings and mass rape.

Yet if the injustices that women in poor countries suffer are of paramount importance, in an economic and geopolitical sense the opportunity they represent is even greater. “Women hold up half the sky,” in the words of a Chinese saying, yet that’s mostly an aspiration: in a large slice of the world, girls are uneducated and women marginalized, and it’s not an accident that those same countries are disproportionately mired in poverty and riven by fundamentalism and chaos. There’s a growing recognition among everyone from the World Bank to the U.S. military’s Joint Chiefs of Staff to aid organizations like CARE that focusing on women and girls is the most effective way to fight global poverty and extremism. That’s why foreign aid is increasingly directed to women. The world is awakening to a powerful truth: Women and girls aren’t the problem; they’re the solution.

Please please read the rest.

And while you're at it, be sure to click on this slide show.

Which reminds me, here's an interview with US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, about how women are the the core of the Obama administration's foreign policy.

Democracy means nothing if half the people can’t vote, or if their vote doesn’t count, or if their literacy rate is so low that the exercise of their vote is in question. Which is why when I travel, I do events with women, I talk about women’s rights, I meet with women activists, I raise women’s concerns with the leaders I’m talking to.

I happen to believe that the transformation of women’s roles is the last great impediment to universal progress — that we have made progress on many other aspects of human nature that used to be discriminatory bars to people’s full participation. But in too many places and too many ways, the oppression of women stands as a stark reminder of how difficult it is to realize people’s full human potential.

Feminism. It's going to save mankind.

Heh.

UPPITY WOMAN DATE (Aug. 21/09): It's a movement! 

(H/t to Doreen.)

Limited engagement

My friend Dan Trommater is a magician. He doesn't normally do street gigs for passersby. But he was recently hired by a Toronto man to help him out with  ... well ... just watch:


I love this kind of thing.

Losing his religion

Nobel Peace Prize-winning former US President Jimmy Carter has been criticized for many things. That includes everything from his stance on human rights for Palestinians to, as featured in today's Star, making the worst political (but most prescient) speech ever.

But nobody has ever questioned Carter's unwavering faith.

Now Carter, in a brief essay for Australia's The Age, has announced that he's cut the tie with his long-time church, the Southern Baptist Convention after 60 years.

It was, however, an unavoidable decision when the convention's leaders, quoting a few carefully selected Bible verses and claiming that Eve was created second to Adam and was responsible for original sin, ordained that women must be "subservient" to their husbands and prohibited from serving as deacons, pastors or chaplains in the military service.

This view that women are somehow inferior to men is not restricted to one religion or belief. Women are prevented from playing a full and equal role in many faiths. Nor, tragically, does its influence stop at the walls of the church, mosque, synagogue or temple. This discrimination, unjustifiably attributed to a Higher Authority, has provided a reason or excuse for the deprivation of women's equal rights across the world for centuries.

At its most repugnant, the belief that women must be subjugated to the wishes of men excuses slavery, violence, forced prostitution, genital mutilation and national laws that omit rape as a crime. But it also costs many millions of girls and women control over their own bodies and lives, and continues to deny them fair access to education, health, employment and influence within their own communities.

The impact of these religious beliefs touches every aspect of our lives. They help explain why in many countries boys are educated before girls; why girls are told when and whom they must marry; and why many face enormous and unacceptable risks in pregnancy and childbirth because their basic health needs are not met.

In some Islamic nations, women are restricted in their movements, punished for permitting the exposure of an arm or ankle, deprived of education, prohibited from driving a car or competing with men for a job. If a woman is raped, she is often most severely punished as the guilty party in the crime.

The same discriminatory thinking lies behind the continuing gender gap in pay and why there are still so few women in office in the West. The root of this prejudice lies deep in our histories, but its impact is felt every day. It is not women and girls alone who suffer. It damages all of us. The evidence shows that investing in women and girls delivers major benefits for society. An educated woman has healthier children. She is more likely to send them to school. She earns more and invests what she earns in her family.

Which is in accord with what this blog is, among other things, all about.

Kudos to Carter for getting it. He recognizes that there is little space between Islamofascist and Christofascist attitudes towards women. We're talking a few degrees which, without women constantly fighting for equality here in the West, would likely dwindle until there's no difference at all.

The sharpest illustration of this came two months ago when Dr. George Tiller was shot. And here on Broadsides, we see how many male commenters have little or no regard  for women's independence, privacy or rights when there's a fetus involved.

Writes Carter:

The truth is that male religious leaders have had - and still have - an option to interpret holy teachings either to exalt or subjugate women. They have, for their own selfish ends, overwhelmingly chosen the latter. Their continuing choice provides the foundation or justification for much of the pervasive persecution and abuse of women throughout the world. This is in clear violation not just of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights but also the teachings of Jesus Christ, the Apostle Paul, Moses and the prophets, Muhammad, and founders of other great religions - all of whom have called for proper and equitable treatment of all the children of God. It is time we had the courage to challenge these views.

Which is why Jimmy Carter ranks as ''A Man I Love.''

H/t to my cyber sister @DigitEyes.

Happy Canada Day!

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

He never looked back.

Mantalk

Today's treeware column pretty much speaks for itself but, because I only get 600 words, I have to add more.

Which I do.

Like you could shut me up anyway.

It started off as a summer romp. Today, exactly, it's a three-year relationship.

Who would have thought Bad-On-Paper-Guy would have turned out to be Mr. Right?

Sure we don't agree on much – from George W. Bush to abortion rights – but he makes me laugh and he keeps my plumbing in good working order.

And that would be all my plumbing, including the new laundry room sink he installed and the basement kitchen he is renovating.

As some women love the smell of babies and some men that new car smell, for me the scent of a man who fixes things – if not with a hammer, then with a cheque or a strong arm – is intoxicating.

And men do love to fix things don't they? Tell them you have a headache and they'll look around for a brain surgery tool kit.

I do love a man who is good with his hands.

Now, before I go on, I must say that I have received four emails likening me to a golddigger and a user because they read the above to mean that I only have men around to unclog my drains.

Uh, no. I write for a family newspaper. So, sometimes a ballcock assembly is not just a ballcock assembly, if you get my drift.

And the smart ones do.

In fact, I love men period.

My dad and my uncles – all gone now – who understood that powerful women made men stronger.

My neighbour guys who happily climb ladders to change a light bulb or replace the barbecue propane tank, two tasks I am too scared to do on my own.

My brother, George (above right, with me), who grew up in a houseful of estrogen only to end up with two daughters and a wife who is now an exec at a huge Canadian corporation.

My personal trainer, Sebastien Rahman, who, during a recent health crisis, came over every day to carry the 60-kilogram oxygen tanks up and down the stairs for me and to make sure I was okay.

My "boys" at the Star, including senior editor John Ferri, reporter Sandro Contenta and editorial writer Martin Regg Cohn, who always have my back. (That's them, below left.)

Oh hell, I'll even throw in my ex-husbands.

The list is long.

It also includes all the supportive guys to whom I regularly link, including those at StageLeft, Dawg's Blawg, Canadian Cynic, Pogge, The Galloping Beaver, MyBlahg and BastardLogic.The cool guys I have met online via Facebook and Twitter, and with whom I have formed political alliances. The teenaged boys on the street whose secrets I keep (Let me tell you, if you want to know what your kids are up to, ask a neighbour who works from home.) My brothers-in-law. And, last but not least, my (technically ex-) stepson Laurence. And on. And on.

Of course, even good men have their flaws. Chief among them, complain my friends, is their inability to express their emotions. Which has always confounded me since men have written the most heart-wrenching love songs. (If you want to know how a guy is feeling, listen to what he's playing.)

But they're so easy to please. As one male friend advises, all men really want is "Food, sex, praise, and not necessarily in that order."

The truth is, men just want to make their women happy, to be good providers and protectors, and to be the boss of the remote control.

And what is the point of my noting this?

Well, Wednesday night, the guy, who shall remain anonymous because, as I have learned from past experience, the crazies out there will seize anything to trash me online, said he was concerned.

Concerned that my constant columnizing on women's rights might create the wrong impression: that I am a man-hater, and as misandric as the misogynists I write about.

No doubt, judging from the comments the goderators of my blog leave unpublished and some of my email.

Said my guy: "I am not saying what you write is not correct on a factual basis. I am saying, nobody likes having the truth shoved down their throats, especially men. Most guys, me included, would gladly die protecting any woman. I think that makes us much more than female haters/bashers/rapists/oppressors."

Agreed.

Over the past two weeks, in the wake of the assassination of Dr. George Tiller, I received more emails of support from men than from women, men such as the "56-year-old white male retired Toronto police officer" who yesterday thanked me for my columns.

So here's to you sir, to the guys who get it, and to all the men in my life, past and present and, I hope, future.

(Happy anniversary, Babe!)

UPPITY WOMAN DATE: Almost forgot. About the hate mail. You would be stunned if you could see how many of these misogynists claim that I ''hate men'' because my father ''abused me'' when I was young, or ''some man did something bad'' to me.