- I go back to work on Tuesday. I am feeling better. I am sleeping just 9 hours down from 14. My ulcerative colitis has calmed down and I feel like I have some strength. I had been feeling really stressed before we went to Radium, I now think that stress was related to the trip and not to my return was work. Figuring that out has really helped. I am going to do some things quite differently when I return. I have had a lot of time to reflect and contemplate. I must do this, as the past is not sustainable.
- Holy freaking cold! Our house has cooled off rapidly from the summer. It seems like we are going to right into winter without having fall, much like we went from winter to summer. I really hope we get an autumn, as it is my favourite season.
- Dogs are doing well. Zoe just got groomed so she looks like ‘thindy.’ She is so damn cute when she comes back from there. If you have never experienced shihtzuh cuteness you are really missing something!
- I have some pictures from our trip, which I will try to get up tomorrow. Stay tuned!
- One more entry into the ‘chick’ debate (here and here). The reason this word is so problematic is that it is gender specific. ‘Chick’ is used to denigrate the position of women in society. It is much like the word ‘boy’ which white people have used to degrade African-American men. Again, it is a word that is used on a specific group.
Dispatches from the Swamp – the ‘I guess I am ready’ edition
A little ruckus…
Well it looks like my post yesterday caused a little confusion yesterday. People spend years studying discourse theory[1] and it can be extremely complicated. The thing is that ‘discourse’ or the words we use shape who we are and how we react to people. I am going to try to clarify a few things:
- Wandering Coyote says she uses the word ‘chick’ in sarcasm or when a woman ticks her off. This is precisely the use of the word that is problematic. ‘Chick’ is a demeaning, derisive and dismissive word. When the word is used it is meant to insult.[2] This is precisely why the word should not be in use. This goes further. When women use it to police other women it can truly take on an ugly form. Just think of how often the appearance of women is debated and discussed. We have all been involved in discussions where we might discuss a woman’s provocative clothing, her choice of shoes or her weight. This policing of women by women is also a by-product of the patriarchy.
- Sometimes words like ‘chick’ get conflated with other words that have power. Some examples are words like queer and dyke. When these words are used against people they are powerful however when people reclaim they become equally powerful. These words are different from the word ‘chick’ in particular.
- Christine wonders why I think the word ‘chick’ refers to baby chickens and not other baby birds. The thing is it doesn’t really matter what kind of baby bird women are being referred to when the word ‘chick’ is used a woman is being equated with an infantile bird. Personally, I find this insulting.
Just remember whenever women are devalued and demeaned by the word ‘chick’ it serves to lessen the power of women in our society. At first glance this word may seem innocuous; it is anything but. Use of the word reifies the patriarchy and puts women in a place below men. In the 21st century this is simply not acceptable.
The power of a word
Words carry a great deal of power. This is particularly true when you are talking about words that are misogynistic. The case in point today: the word ‘chick’ used to describe a woman. Whenever I see women referred to as ‘chicks’ or ‘broads’ or any other derogatory term, I am disgusted. These words are symptoms of the patriarchy and the misogyny that fuels it. These words are all part of a systemic level of discrimination against women.
Misogynistic words form the foundation of the rape culture[1] that exists in our society. When children learn that it is ok to refer to women in such derogatory ways a very clear message is sent. Boys learn that they are better than girls and that really girls can be equated with young barnyard animals. Girls learn that they will not receive the respect they deserve and that they are not equal. This creates a power differential that allows women to be criticized on every front.
Quite often when I confront these things I am told that I am being too politically correct. What garbage! Our culture is rife with misogyny. If I pointed every incident of misogyny I would never have anything else to do. Use of this language by men who believe they are enlightened is even more disturbing.
When confronted, these misogynists will argue that none of their other female friends found it offensive. This argument is a complete non-starter. Perhaps they don’t respond because they don’t want to experience the same abuse I get when I say something.
There is a solution to this problem. It begins with children. It requires that adults not refer to women in derogatory ways. Children pick this up and then they feel free to do it themselves. It is never acceptable to refer to a woman as a ‘chick.’
Hurricane Gustav
With hurricane Gustav expecting to hit on Monday a mandatory evacuation of New Orleans has been ordered. Now, one would think that given the experience of Katrina and what people went through they would be clamouring to leave the city. Well, sadly, that is not the case. Check out this post at Shakesville. Apparently some people don’t want to leave because they lose their jobs – as dishwashers. Even more ominous are the people who feel they can’t leave because they are undocumented illegals in the US. Authorities day that no identity papers are required to get on the buses provided by the city but apparently officials from Immigration will be there. What a horrible choice to have to make – stay and risk death or injury or leave and risk deportation.
There is something seriously wrong in the US when people feel they can’t flee an area because of their immigration status. If New Orleans was serious about saving lives there would be no immigration officials present on these buses. But as we all know it is the poor who will need the transportation provided by the City and it seems they are going to use this opportunity to punish the poor yet again. Is it not enough that much of the subsidized housing available in New Orleans has not been rebuilt yet as a result of Katrina?
I came across another post at Shakesville about what has not been accomplished since Katrina. It is truly scary. Clearly, Katrina has been used as a vehicle to remove poor people (most likely women and people of colour) from the city. The run up to Gustav indicates that it is Act II. I feel sick.
What the struggle is really about
In some very sad news, Del Martin, wife of Phyllis Lyon, passed away this morning. Phyllis and Del were in the vanguard of a burgeoning gays right community in the 1950s when they formed the Daughters of Bilitis, a lesbian rights group. They were finally able to marry, this year in California, and did so in June. Rest in peace Del and many condolences to Phyllis.
Our Justice System – Redux
I have a lengthy comment from Mike which you can go and read in the original post. I was going to answer him in the comments section but I think it would be better served as a post of its own. So here goes.
Mike says:
“I don’t think justice was served here, but I disagree with feminists who use such allegorical “evidence” as proof that western political legal system treats women like chattel. Thats quite a stretch. By in large western legal systems take domestic violence seriously.”
It is in no way allegorical. Our laws our based on English commonlaw which viewed women and children as chattel.There is nothing allegorical about that. Altough laws may be updated, here and there, they are still largely written by men for men. The old boys network is alive and well and protects men like Scott Young.
Mike Says:
“People, especially people in power, get away with doing bad and illegal things all the time. Maybe Scott Young knew the right people, had a good lawyer, or just was lucky. By your line of reasoning I could look to OJ Simpson and argue that black people in the US can get away with murdering white people. I strongly disagree with feminists who use incidences like this to push their narrow self-serving agenda.”
Perhaps rich black men do. But this is not about race – this is about domestic violence. There is no ‘narrow self-serving agenda’ here. Unfortunately, the problem of violence against women, in all its forms, is so pervasive that dismantling it would shake our society to its very core. It is seen in the discourse of advertising, our jokes, our culture, our religions, the way we raise male and female children differently. We are not even aware at times when violence is being perpetuated against women. Open your eyes and look around. It is on tv, on the radio, in the locker room and in our homes.
Mike says:
“No society has ever tolerated violence against women. This is feminist historical revisionism. Rapists in medieval Europe were flayed alive (had their skin removed). The ‘rule of thumb’ myth was taken from a misquotation of statement made by a US judge in the 19th century who actually sentenced the male abuser to jail.”
This society sure as hell does!!! It goes on all the time. Many women don’t report rape as they will just be assaulted again when they come up against the male dominated justice system. Forget history, look at the situation today. Look at the murder suicides where men kill their entire families and then themselves. And before you trot Andrea Yates – she was mentally ill and had had so many children and sufferred such horrific untreated post partum depression that she went crazy. What is the excuse of the men?? Look at the honour killings in the South Asian community in BC. I could go on and on. These are not feminist revisionist events. These are real women dying every single day.
Mike says:
“Women are abusers in relationships as well as men. Domestic abuse has less to do with ‘Patriarchy’ and more to do with disfunctional partners and drug and alchohol abuse. Women stalk, kill their husbands and kill their children too. There are bad people of both sexes the same way there are bad people of all races. Just because in general men are capable of inflicting greater injury on women does not mean that men are the only sex capable of commiting evil, or even that society is run by men.”
Yes, some women might hit some men sometimes. Boo fucking hoo. Look at the stats – men kill and beat women at much higher rates then the reverse. Really, this is just a straw man argument to take us off course. Many men are conditioned to believe that they can treat women anyway they want. Furthermore, they have seen that the consequences are a slap on the wrist – conditional sentence with an 8 pm curfew? What the hell is that about? If this is what our justice system is doing to women when we are watching what is it doing when we are not?
Mike says:
“Society does not treat women worse than men. Men have always been the greatest victims of violence in war, genocide, and crime. The vast majority of victims of violent crime (murder and assault) are men.”
Sorry Mike another straw man argument. Who starts the wars? Who keeps them going? Certainly not women. Yes men die in war. But so do women, civilian women. Rape is an instrument of war and I am pretty damn sure that most of the people being raped are not men. Civilian women and children suffer the most in war. The soldiers have a choice. At least in the case of the US – they signed up for it this time. (This of course would be different if concription were in place as it was in other wars). However, the men are still paid to go to war. Even the women working for the international companies in Iraq are not safe from rape. So, tell me again how it is that men suffer? Oh ya, they get to carry big guns, shoot people, and get paid. Sounds like the wet dream of many a teenage boy.
Pronoun use
I have blogged a few times about the use of language and how it affects and shapes society. No where is this more important than the use of gendered pronouns. Now, I am all for non-gender pronouns but society does not seem to be embracing the use of zie and hir. I really hate it when writers try to avoid the use of gendered pronouns by using plural forms. These uses are not grammatically correct and leave the reader (or listener) confused as far as I am concerned.
The default, not surprisingly, is usally to use the male form. Most things you read (particularly non-fiction) where gender is not important to the material the male pronoun is generally used. Some writers try and say he/she or s/he or him/her etc but most do not. This has important consequences. The constant use of the male pronoun marginalizes women and renders them invisible. I can only imagine what medical text books are like. It is not surprising that the use of male pronouns wound render women and their different medical needs and realities invisible. Most medications are not routinely tested on women who have very different chemical and hormonal makeups. In the same way that children are not ‘little adults’ women are not men.
I am currently reading an amazing book: “In The Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters with Addiction” by Dr. Gabor Mate. He is a doctor in the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver which has one of the highest rates of drug addiction, HIV and Hepatitis C infection in Canada. The stories are compelling and sad and Dr. Mate provides a very interesting and instructive view of addiction – including his own. What is unique about his writing is his use of pronouns. The first part of the book is specific stories of patients he has treated and he uses appropriate gendered pronouns. In the parts of the book that are instructive, in which he explains the pysiology of addiction, he alternates male and female pronouns. I was completely struck by this feature of his writing. At first I wondered why it seemed that he was only using the female pronoun when in fact men are also drug addicts. Everytime I saw a female pronoun in these pages it jumped out at me. So then I went out of my way to notice if he used male pronouns. It seems that he uses both equally.
I think it is sad that we are so used to male pronouns that the use of the female, in equal parts, is so noticeable that one wonders if the author is using male pronouns at all. It speaks to how pervasive the male gaze is even with women and feminists. My hope is that more authors will choose to use both male and female pronouns equally.
Shame on our Justice System
So, Scott Young, Mayor of Port Coquitlam was convicted for harrasing and stalking his former girlfriend. He pled guilty to two charges of assault and one charge of breaching an undertaking. He was arrested after assaulting his former girlfriend and her new partner at her home over the Easter weekend in 2007. He also breached an undertaking he had signed to stay away from her. And what did he get for his crimes? A 12 month conditional sentence and an 8 pm curfew which he does not have to obey if he has a council meeting!
It is no wonder that we, as a society, cannot curtail violence against women. Here is a public figure, a mayor of a reasonably sized city in the Lower Mainland who is guilty of assault and all he gets is his hand slapped. There is no deterrent factor. He also has not really lost anything besides a bit of pride (and one could argue that this situation did not really seem to affect him at all) at having to spend the long weekend in jail. He has continued to preside over city council despite many, many attempts to get him to resign. He has refused. I get the sense that he does not think he has done anything wrong. He cops to having a drinking problem (boo hoo), has been in rehab and has stopped drinking. He doesn’t think his ‘personal problems’ should have anything to do with his day job. He is a narcissitic asshole who should be in jail not running a city.
There are much bigger implications here. What does this say to young men in BC who may follow in his footsteps? It says that women are less important and that you can do whatever you want and nothing bad will really happen to you. This kind of behaviour has its roots in misogyny and the out-dated belief that women are chattel. Unfortunately, our justice system has not caught up. There is still mostly a ‘wink, wink, nudge, nudge” attitude towards violence against women. Male privilege at its ‘finest.’
Until we get serious about punishing men who commit crimes against women the problem will only continue to escalate. There must be a zero tolerance policy with regard to this kind of violence. We need to communicate this expectation to our politicians. We need to have had enough of putting up with this kind of whitewashing violence against women.
Now I am really disturbed…
I have been having a ‘discussion’ with some women on the facebook group for “How do you solve a problem like Maria?” They have actually called me a ‘feminazi’ because I dared to bring up the fact that the Marias were being referred to as girls all the time. To quote Simon Lee, I am ‘gobsmacked.’ I expect to have these discussions with some men (there are men who are feminists and who get it) but I cannot believe what is coming from women. They clearly have no understanding of their own ignorance and privilege nor their own oppression. Not only do they not see, they don’t want to see. They do not see how their reluctance to address their own oppression contributes to the oppression of others.
You know, there are days when I wish I did not see these things. When I did not see the sytemic racism, sexism, classism, ableism, hetersexism etc that exists in our society. Life would be much easier if I did not see the intersections of poverty, addicition, mental health, gender and all of the isms mentioned above. Wouldn’t life be so much easier if I was not constantly engaged in working out my own racism, classism etc. But that is not my lot in life. I do see and I need to say something or I am complicit.
More Maria frustration…
I mentioned in my last post about how the women on the show are referred to as girls. Well this carries over into the facebook group and all the posts there. Well I finally took a stand and said what I thought of this practice. Not suprisingly, many of the women posting there say that they take it as a ‘compliment’ when they are called a ‘girl’ or ‘girly’ or the really offensive ‘chick’. The are all wondering why I care about this so much.
it is evident by their comments that they have little no underdstanding of discourse theory. They do not seem to understand that language has power, it shapes how we perceive people and things. When a woman is referred to as a ‘girl’ one immediately things of the qualities of a pre-pubescent female: giddy, silly, uneducated etc. They do not think of strong, talented women who know their own minds. The more we as women accept this terminology and allow ourselves to be referred to as girls the more we undermine our own position in society. How can we ever hope to achieve equality (and no, we have not achieved equality yet) if we allow ourselves to be demeaned in this fashion?
I fail to understand why I am fighting women on this issue. It frustrates me to no end that as a feminist quite often it is other women who don’t get it. How on earth can we expect men to treat as equals when some of us relish being treated as less?
