‘Forced Sexual Activity’

Language and its use is very powerful. Take for example Cross-Country Checkup on CBC yesterday. They were talking about the Toronto District School Board Report released last week. Rex had Julian Falconer on who headed the commission that produced the report. I must say that I was very impressed with how Mr. Falconer grasped the issues. He was discussing the rate of sexual assault of young women in schools and the abysmal rates of reporting. His conclusion that for a young woman to report brought down the whole weight of the legal system, her parents etc was not working. After consulting with women experts in this matter he came to the conclusion that the issue should be handled like abortion. A young woman can make her decision about terminating her pregnancy without the involvement of parents. This way, he reasoned, young women are more likely to report the crimes committed against them school authorities and then the schools can take action against the perpetrators. To the parents who would complain that they would want to know if their daughters had been raped he basically let them know that under the current system they don’t know and at least if young women are reporting more then perpetrators are being dealt with and the parents may find out at some point. I was very impressed with Mr. Falconer’s clear and concise thinking around these issues. But I digress.

Back to the language issue. I hate it when people use euphemisms. Rex seemed to have a hard time with the word rape so he called it ‘forced sexual activity.’ What a way to diminish what is actually happening. Last time I checked ‘forced sexual activity’ is rape. Why can’t we call it what it is? Even sexual assault puts a softer touch on rape. We need to demand that violence, like rape, be labeled appropriately. If we do not then we risk a minimization of a huge crime committed mostly against women. You can bet that if it were the young men being raped it would not be called ‘forced sexual activity.’

Another one that is really pissing me off these days is the term ‘gender-based violence.’ I am not sure why we are calling violence against women ‘gender-based violence’ now. Again, it is throwing ambiguity at an all to real and serious issue. When that term is used people have to stop and think about what it could mean. Most people only see two genders (that is a whole other post) and so they have to stop and think about this applies to men. Well it doesn’t really. The bottom line is that in ‘gender-based violence,’ for the most part, men commit violence against women. Julian Falconer did not discuss violence perpetrated by females in schools. I am sure there is some. But for the most part it is young men who commit these crimes against their peers.

What are the solutions? I am not really sure. I do know that we have to call it like we see it. We need to expose violence against women and we need to call ‘forced sexual assault’ rape. As a society we need to address male privilege and how we keep passing it on to young men. Men need to take responsibility for their actions and women need to hold them accountable.

Is it really getting worse (and other items from the blogosphere)?

In light of my difficulties with the CBC (to which no one has yet responded) I have been asking feminist women I know if things seem to be getting worse. By ‘things’ I mean racism, sexism, open misogyny, sizism, ableism etc. The general consensus seems to be yes, it is getting worse. Then I started asking why. Why are things getting worse? We have a good economy and relative prosperity - if you belong to one of the privileged groups. The answer that seemed to make the most sense to me was war. Our soldiers are dying in Afghanistan. American and the ‘coalition of the willing’ are losing soldiers in Iraq with no end in sight. The number civilian casualties in Iraq is huge. Oh, and there is genocide going on in Darfur.

It seems that being fat is one area where many people feel that it is ok to discriminate. A woman in Britain, who weighed 245 pounds died because the paramedics were too busy cracking fat jokes to actually get her to the hospital. I would bet that many professional athletes (think football players) might weigh 245 pounds. I fail to understand why they could not move her to the hospital.

Still on the issue of weight there was a study released that did not make the media. Why is this you ask? Well, because it did not confirm general beliefs about healthy eating. In a nutshell, there was an 8 year study done on post-menopausal which tried to determine the benefits of healthy eating. The split the women into 2 groups - one group followed a low fat, ‘healthy’ diet and the other group ate what they wanted. They found no statistical difference in rates of cardiovascular disease, cancer etc. Another surprising result was that there was no difference in weight. Yup, that’s right. While the healthy eating group initially lost some weight they had gained it back years before the end of the study. What does all this mean? I am not really sure. I would say that for most people weight is not a simple matter.

One more interesting thing about weight. One blogger has completed a BMI project. Basically, she took pictures of women and calculated their BMI. It really shows that the BMI is an inaccurate and arbitrary measurement. Fascinating.

From Shakespeare’s Sister: Did you know that “when sexual arousal reaches a certain point, the person goes insane?” This is quite the little gem of misogyny and homophobia from Oral Roberts. And we wonder why American Republicans are so screwed up they have no idea when they are engaging in homosexual behaviour.

One other update: Mr. Lube did send me a cheque to reimburse me for the cab ride home after they drained my transmission by mistake.

My Battle with the CBC

I am an avid CBC listener. I have it on in the car and in my office all day. When there is programming I am not fond of I listen to other CBC programs via podcast. Generally speaking, CBC programming is excellent and non-offensive. Lately there seems to be a change.

I was listening to On The Coast, the afternoon show from 3-6 every day. On September 13, Belle Purie was interviewing Grant Lawrence who is the host of a CBC Radio 3 podcast that focuses on new music. He was talking about a band called Said the Whale who sing a song called “On the Banks of English Bay.” He then went on to say that whales don’t beach themselves on English Bay unless you count his ex-girlfriend.

Being the feminist I am, I took great offense to this and fired off an email to the CBC decrying this blatant misogyny on the CBC. I received an email back from producer Karen Burgess promising to listen to the clip. I then advised her that while she was listening to clips she might also want to listen to the “google trends” piece that aired the next day as the misogynistic crap continued. I still have not heard back from Ms. Burgess.

Yesterday, Grant Lawrence was at it again. In a clip discussing Rufus Wainwright (I am still unclear how he was able to insult women given his topic) he said that Rufus was going to give them some ‘fabulous fall fashion tips.’ He should have stopped there. He goes on to add that Jenna Chow can do it for the girls. Now, unless Jenna Chow has become a fashion consultant for pre-pubescent females I have no idea to which group he was referring.

Representations of people in media are crucial. The CBC, as Canada’s publicly funded broadcaster, has an extra responsibility to ensure that all groups it discusses are represented accurately. Then there are the blatant misogynistic comments that we cannot let slide. I am unclear why the CBC seems to think this is alright. Perhaps they think they are appealing to younger, more hip audience and that somehow it is ok to sacrifice women. We need to let them know that this is not alright with us.