Tag Archives: women’s rights

International Women’s Day, or here we go again with the platitudes…


I’m all for a celebration of women. As a gender, I think we’re pretty cool. And hard done by, in general. Just look at the housework balance, the pay disparities, the parenting gaps. The complete erasure of women’s accomplishments in so many spheres. So the idea of celebrating women’s accomplishments seems like a good one.

BUT. I can’t help but feel a day just isn’t enough. I’m with the folks at Black History Month who want to extend the celebrations to more than just the minimum. I mean, isn’t it a bit…urgh…to give Black History the very shortest month in the calendar? Whose bright idea was that? Was it a bit of a dig? 

Or the pink shirt anti-bullying day. Ugh. Kids are bullied if they don’t wear pink to school that day. I can’t help but feel this is a bit counterproductive.

‘I wonder if I can reschedule the grocery delivery for Thursday instead of Tuesday?’

Besides, shouldn’t recognition of bullying, women, black history, indigenous people, people with disabilities, and plain old white cis men go on all the time? Of course it tends to run to the latter in this list, so I understand completely the need for emphasis on the other groups, but it is beginning to seem to me that there are so many different ’cause’ days that the serious problems are getting lost in the shuffle.

Like the ongoing, paralyzing racism present throughout the world. Like capitalism’s driving of starvation and grinding poverty. 

Or the bad behaviour by so many men towards so many women. I heard this AM on the radio of a city councillor in Ottawa who has been sexually aggressive to his female staff to an unbelievable level, who is still being paid with the taxpayers dime and has not received any serious repercussions. He is still the representative for the women he abused. Gawd. 

Story after story of men being jerks scroll across my timeline (and trust me, I’m not looking for them – I find them triggering as I have experienced my full share of jerkish experiences) I DO know there are good men, I know they can act humanely and kindly and do good things. I also know women can be jerks. No need to differ with me on that score. But the balance seems to still be off. 

And I simply don’t believe waving an “International Women’s Day” heart on one’s sleeve will do anything to stop honour killings, rape, aggressiveness against women, even forced intimacies of the minor kind. I don’t think men fully understand the feelings of danger we feel when alone with them. 

Even friends can’t be trusted. An old (married) friend of mine once took the opportunity of us being alone in my apartment to press himself on me. I was shocked beyond the ability to respond. It’s damaged our friendship beyond saving, in my mind anyway. I doubt very much he even considered it out of line. I remain baffled as to why he thought he COULD do such things.

But I’ll just bet he celebrates Women’s Day. 

You good men and true, I salute you. You, too, deserve recognition. Maybe having a “Decent Men’s Day” would help rebalance behaviour. We could celebrate it on February 28th? (Just teasing…)

I’ve written a book about a woman who was massaged like Coca-Cola into a merchandiser’s dream. It’s called Recycled Virgin, and it’s an alternate history of Mary and her role in the Christian story. It puts her where I think she should have been, somewhat more in the centre of things.

While I was writing it, I was taking a course on Mariology at the excellent Atlantic School of Theology, under the patient guidance of David Dean. I remember knocking him off his heels by suggesting that all the difficulties with Mary (her ever virginity despite giving birth, her pure blood line, her lack of sin, her assumption into heaven in her full body – all things created well after the fact by clumps of men trying to persuade people to join the church) could be completely explained by making her the god part of the god-human connection, as vs just the receptacle. Those of you who read Catholic doctrine for pleasure (I realize there may be few) might look at the stories through that lens and see how they think they might fit. I found it fascinating to contemplate.

So, in honour of International Women’s Day, such that it is, I’ve put my book on discount for March 10-17. The ebook only, as this is all the mighty Amazon allows at present. Why not take a look and see if you can challenge that prevailing belief that Mary didn’t really matter, but was just a womb on sanctified legs. It’s alternative history. It’s fiction, but then, aren’t most of the stories we tell ourselves?

Check out my book here. If you like it, or hate it, or anything in-between, please take the time to write a review. 

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On the occasion of a horrendous election pending and the women v women way we behave


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Organizing yet another bake sale to fund the hospitals the men wouldn’t let women earn money to build

Ah, women.

I am one, I think, and yet I am filled with puzzlement at them. I have a group of marvelous women friends who I adore. We all would come running to whomever needed support, would offer casseroles, muffins, homemade soup, a warm shoulder to cry upon. My friends keep me alive, make me laugh, give me joy.

But many would leave the recipient’s house, commenting to each other, “Well, I wouldn’t have dealt with things THAT way,” or, “Where’s that man of hers? Why doesn’t he help?” or “Did you see what state her house is in?”

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“Can you imagine?”

It’s the same thing that makes some (never me, I simply don’t care) rearrange the dishwasher if someone else loads it, that makes us repack suitcases for children and men, that sighs at the general incompetence of everyone except us.

It’s why women who succeed are universally regarded with suspicion – by other women! – and why we have never been able to fully mobilize to take back our rights from abusers and others. I still think the best way to frighten abusers into submission is to show up en masse

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“Whose that over there throwing stones at us? Is that Gladys?”

at court dates and funerals of those harmed and stand there, as the police do, a physical and huge threat. We are over half the population. But no one will do that because of the sneaking suspicion that the woman might have somehow deserved it – after all, he’s so sweet…and he might like us. Heck, we might even date him. He wouldn’t hurt US.

So here we are in the midst of an American Presidential election between a career politician woman (gasp! No!) who is somewhat more terrifying than all the male career politicians (somehow that is okay, though slightly sleazy), and on the opposition, an utter boor. And he is still in the picture, though everyone is hoping he’ll step down and

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“My name is Mike Pence and I own your uterus!”

let a truly evil man take his place, one who talks smoothly with the tongue of repression, rather than revealing his slithering insides.

Well, say many, at least it wouldn’t be a WOMAN. Sadly, even women say this, their envy of success being so poisonous against their own gender that it blinds them to the fact she is better qualified than anyone else who ever stood for the office. And allowing them to accept men who openly or quietly demean women, treat their bodies like possessions, shut them out of top positions, keep them virtual slaves.

I can’t help but feel enraged, though I know the green fire of jealousy burns in me, too.

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Happy green

So how can we fix this seemingly permanent line in our nature? Can we erase the poisonous green and replace it with a kinder, springier one?

I’ve met some women who have. One of whom left us this week – my brother-in-law’s sweet mother – one of the kindest women I’ve met, with a belief in her faith that must have been her weapon against jealousy. Unlike many faithful, she never used it as a hammer with strangers. She simply did good.

I know another few women who do this, who step back from selfishness and do good in their quiet way. I love them all and struggle to be more like them.

But much as I love them, I wish we women would get together, stop doing good quietly, and take over the world up front. Enough quietly rearranging the dishwasher in the background, while sighing in exasperation. Let’s teach our fellow world inhabitants how to do things right. As with these quiet good women, we can show by example, but frankly that’s not working well enough. A thousand people tidying the Titanic wouldn’t have saved it from sinking. A woman who knew how to drive the boat who was able to wrest control from the men who blustered their way in charge might have. It’s time for women to do some blustering.

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“If only there was a smarter person to take charge! One without breasts!”

But you know what? Probably in the lifeboats (of which there would have been enough because, um, planning), other women would be whispering, “Who does she think SHE is? She should mind her own business.” And the men would be shouting four letter words and commenting about breasts.

I despair.

 

Being an orphan


tumblr_m0kvlehwjS1r09zijo1_500I was thinking about International Women’s Day today and about the strong women I’ve had in my life and how damnably awful it is that so many of left life so soon.
There’s my mum, a ferocious lawyer woman with a witty twist of the tongue and the ability to argue paint off a wall. I used to schedule arguments with her when I’d come home just to get them over with. She’d best me and we could be friends til the next time. It was like a momma bear cuffing her cubs to remind them she was still the boss.
She passed away 21 years ago from cancer, just about. She was only 60. I’ve been a motherless child for so long.
Then there was my mother-in-law. She was a survivor, the type of woman who could take a bit of fluff, some salt and a twig and make a house and a full dinner out of it. She cared and laughed in equal measure. I loved that there was no task she wouldn’t take on, from biking to volunteer to help the old folks at a local pool (in her 70’s) to concreting patches on the garage floor. She just up and did things. She passed away a few years ago with ALS, leaving a huge hole in my heart.
Then there’s my Aunt Mary. Mary was a nun for a while, bringing spirit and fun to even those cloistered halls. She could laugh with her whole body and with the joy in life shining through every chuckle. She left the convent and worked extensively with death and dying issues until she eventually found love and then died, too soon. I never spent enough time with her, I know. She was strong and vibrant and alive and full of hope.

I was so fortunate – I had many aunts and other women in my life that were strong examples of femininity.
They were all completely different. Yet each offered a different vision of what a woman could be.

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Now they are all gone.

 

il_fullxfull.393422852_n9twSometimes, I need an aunt. Or a mother. Or a mother-in-law. Someone like the Dowager. Someone who knows where the iron bar rests under human behaviour and can line my toes up with it and set me to fly from there.

Today, it’s time to take a breath and honour all those women we know – aunts, mothers, friends, cousins, sisters – and look at what we can do, what we have accomplished.
Then we have to shake our heads and say, no, it’s not enough. We need to grab the reins from those women who led us and step forward, make things better for those who can’t. Use that sharp tongue, that persistence, that hope, that strength to change the world.
We could.

If we ever tried.
Yes, we could.
Maybe we should start with the Stephen Lewis Foundation. I love that guy. He, amazingly, fights for women’s rights.  Endlessly.
Listen to this and be moved…http://music.cbc.ca/#/concerts/Hope-Rising-2012-2012-11-07