Attack of the 5-foot woman

Real family values

A pregnant trans-gendered man gave birth this week in the States.

Thomas Beatie, 34, endured 40 long hours of labour and gave birth to his daughter Susan Juliet on Sunday. Thomas, who was born a woman, gave birth vaginally to the healthy baby and his wife is now breast feeding thanks to induced lactation.

This amazing situation highlights how radically the family has changed over the last 50 years.

Data from Stats Can shows married-couple families accounted for 68.6% of all census families in 2006, down from 70.5% five years earlier. Meanwhile, the number of common-law-couple families rose from 13.8% to 15.5%, while the share of lone-parent families increased slightly from 15.7% to 15.9%.

The number of same-sex couples surged 32.6% between 2001 and 2006, that’s five times the pace of opposite-sex couples. Of the same-sex couples in the 2006 census 16.5%, were married couples.

The definition of “family” is clearly expanding and isn’t likely to ever mean just the hetero-married unit again.

The next time an old white right-wing politician uses the term “family values” I’m going to assume he’s talking about people like the Beatie’s too.

Drunk = consent

Here’s a little known fact about Canadian law: Turns out getting very drunk with a man can be considered consent for sex but not tea-bagging. 

This interesting interpretation of rape laws brought to you by Judge It’s-Hard-Out-Here-For-A-Pimp, aka Justice Peter McIntyre.

“The accused’s lewd comments towards her did not compel her to leave,” the judge said. “The complainant was not forced to consume alcohol -- she drank ... beer willingly and then switched to alcohol. It is not at all clear why she drank so heavily.”

What kind of 14-year-old girl doesn’t know her limit!

Now if she’d been drinking wine it would be different. Everybody knows wine goes straight to your head while beer and vodka go straight to your crotch.

To complain about the Honourable Justice Peter McIntyre write to the Canadian Judicial Council at info@cjc-ccm.gc.ca or by mail to: Canadian Judicial Council, Ottawa, Ontario, K1A 0W8.

Big girls you are beautiful

It’s summer and advertisers want to help us all get slimmed-down, toned-up, tanned and hair free.

It seems like the war against natural human bodies is reaching a fever pitch and now a new study shows that kind of body negativity stays on your mind long after you’ve been good and objectified.

We’ve gotten to the point where it’s revolutionary for a teenage girl to stand in a full length mirror and like what she sees. Hell, it’s revolutionary for a woman of any age to think of her body as a tool that gets her through life rather than as a piece of art for someone else to enjoy or dismiss.

Why do women think of our bodies as if we’re standing outside of them?

Body image has been a feminist issue for at least 40 years. But it seems like the impossible to achieve beauty standards in ads and on magazine covers is actually getting further from reality.

Image editors are working magic with computers that was never before possible. Celebrities are getting so thin that they actually have to be filled out digitally to look like a healthy human being.

The extreme thinness celebrities are achieving is getting pretty insane. The gossip rags dripping with their concern over the health of the rich and tiny while plastering their covers with tanned skeletons are not helping.

The tinier our female celebrities get the more worrying it is for average women.

When we’re told that a girl is only attractive if she looks like a paper doll what we’re being asked to believe is that women don’t have a right to take up space in this world.    

Every woman I know is convinced she needs to lose a few pounds or tone up but every one is gorgeous just the way she is and is falling victim to a highly fat-phobic culture.

This preoccupation with physical perfection serves the status quo very well. While you’re starving yourself it’s very hard to break the glass ceiling. If you have to be in a gym every day fighting your natural build it’s very hard to find time to challenge the patriarchy.

Eve Ensler said in The Good Body “Maybe because I see how my stomach has come to occupy my attention, I see how other women’s stomachs or butts or thighs or hair or skin have come to occupy their attention, so that we have very little left for the war in Iraq—or much else, for that matter. When a group of ethnically diverse, economically disadvantaged women in the United States was recently asked about the one thing they would change in their lives if they could, the majority of these women said they would lose weight.”

Instead of women breaking free from highly unrealistic beauty standards, men are now getting wrapped up in them to. Boys are now being bombarded by images of fat-free freakishly-muscular hairless masculinity. Objectifying everyone is not exactly the type of equality feminists were aiming for.

There are tonnes of ways to improve your body image. Here’s my favourite: if a company tries to sell you a product with a veiled threat of how hideous and unlovable you’ll be without this lipstick/razor/convertible don’t buy it. Nothing like wielding a little consumer power to make you feel hot.

If you don't have a va-jay-jay put your hand down

I have always thought that men have a really important role to play in the women’s movement.

The most important men in my life are feminists and I think working towards equality between the genders is everybody's job and will benefit everyone in the end.

So it's troubling to start wondering whether there aren’t certain issues that should be considered “women only”.

Dr. Henry Morgentaler was awarded the Order of Canada, a lot of people were really happy to hear the news and a lot of people are still freaking out.

A small article in the National Post pointed out that a lot of the people weighing in on the issue will never find themselves unexpectedly pregnant — they’re men.

So the question is this, if you can’t get pregnant can you really imagine the panic that can follow an unplanned, unwanted pregnancy?

I would be really curious to see a women’s only debate on abortion in Canada. While it will always be a controversial issue, I have a feeling the discourse would be a lot more empathetic and a lot less slut-shaming. At least that’s what I’d like to believe.

I’m not saying men have no role to play in the abortion debate, but until their lives are half as disrupted by an unwanted pregnancy as women’s are, I’m not sure their opinions should hold the same weight.

It’s a women’s issue first and foremost.

"What's in a name?" depends on your gender

I knew I was getting off too easy.

Through my engagement, no one looked at me like I’d grown a second head when I said I’d be keeping my maiden name. Everyone seemed incredibly unruffled by my choice and I thought ‘how cool we’re at the point where a woman isn’t expected to take her new husband’s name’.

Now I’m learning they just weren’t listening to me and Quato.

I have no problem with women who giddily fill out forms changing their name after they say ‘I do’. I might have a few minor practical reasons why I think it’s a crap idea (loss of identity, difficult for old friends to find you, confusing and possibly damaging for your professional reputation... sorry couldn’t stop myself) but to each their own.

What I do have is a small problem with is being rather unceremoniously renamed by well meaning friends and family. Jenny O is out and Jennifer K. is now what I’m being called, like it or not.

The fact that I don’t intend to go by Jennifer K. does not seem to be making sense to the people I tell.

An excited family friend pulled me aside the day before the wedding to tell me “Just think tomorrow you become a Mrs.” I explained I’d be keeping my maiden name and so would stick with Ms., it didn’t seem to sink in. “But tomorrow you become a Mrs.,” she repeated gripping my hand tightly. “Mmm,” I said nodding, clearly the title had a gravity I just don’t understand.   

The majority of the wedding cards were written to my new, if yet unappreciated, identity. Ninety-nine per cent of the generous cheques given to us by my family I couldn’t actually cash because they were made out to Mr. and Mrs. K. or even better Mr. and Mrs. Alexander K — I’ve always thought Alexander a bit butch for a girl’s name.

While I’m trying not to panic at the thought that one really doesn’t have control over what people call them, Mr. K. is finding all this hilarious.

In between peels of laughter and running for his life he managed to squeak out something about how of course I’m a different person now that we’re married — I’m a complete person.

I do have to give the man some credit, he has been cool about me keeping my name and is even entertaining the idea of swapping last names as middle names. So I’d be Jennifer Patricia K. O’Meara and he’d be Alexander L. O’Meara K.

It’s about as close to him taking my name as I’m likely to get, and it’s as close as I want to get — I’m not sure I could handle the potential backlash from his friends and family. 

Isn’t it interesting how a married hetero-couple sharing a last name is a lovely romantic way of building a family until we’re talking about the man taking his ball-crushing harpy of a wife’s name? 

My reputation as a ball-crushing harpy needs no help.

This is what a feminist bride looks like

Usually I try to keep these posts focused on the bigger issues, but I’m going to be away from my beloved blog for a few weeks as I get married and take a holiday to celebrate said marriage.

The whole wedding thing, aside from taking up tonnes of my free time, does raise an interesting question.

Why does a feminist get married?

I am one of a growing number of young women who plan to keep my name, my career and my own bank account. I have lived happily with my fiance for years and we just bought our first house in the fall. I certainly don’t think parents need to be married to raise well-adjusted well-loved kids.

So having said all that, why go through the hassle and expense to make an honest man of him?

For those-women-who-came-before-to-whom-we-owe-so-much not getting married was a huge resistance to that status quo. One of the oldest divides between feminists were between those who resisted the expected heterosexual marriage and those who wanted that family.   

A few years ago, Gloria Steinem defended her decision to get married in an interview with the New York Times: “I had no desire to get married and neither did he. He often in his life did what men were not supposed to do and I spent mine doing what women aren’t supposed to do. And I guess a little bit of it too was that what seemed conformist at 26 -- getting married -- seems rebellious at 66.”       

I do love the idea of seeing marriage as a form of rebellion, the only problem is of course I am 26 and no one thinks it’s bad-ass to get married at this age.

I believe forming a modern egalitarian marriage between two people can be its own form of fighting patriarchy.

Marriage has a nasty history of female subjugation. Women can and have been victimized through marriage, whether it was watching their family property transfer to their husbands, having no legal guardianship over their children, or just being expected to serve their husbands every domestic need.

But saying you can’t have a marriage without the woman being subservient is a bit like saying you can’t have men and women on the planet without women facing discrimination.

If we believe that true equality between the sexes is possible one of the first places to implement that change to an egalitarian dynamic is in our personal relationships.

Sexist art overshadowed by racist art

Any art exhibit titled “The Assassination of Hillary Clinton/The Assassination of Barack Obama” is a little worrying right from the start. The images available from the New York exhibit are completely shocking.

It’s easy to see why the public outcry has been huge and how the performance artist, Yazmany Arboleda, found himself interrogated by police.

“It’s art. It’s not supposed to be harmful. It’s about character assassination — about how Obama and Hillary have been portrayed by the media,” Mr. Arboleda tried to explain.

Some of the media coverage on the Clinton/Obama primary campaign has definitely been sexist and racist, but the artist seems to be raising the bar rather than fighting the prejudices.

People are up in arms about the blatant racism displayed in the exhibit. That’s understandable. It is deeply saddening to see a picture of Obama’s beautiful children with “Nappy Headed Hoes” in bold type over their heads.

What’s strangely missing is the outrage over the sexism aimed at Clinton.

It’s really typical feminist bashing stuff. She’s old, wears ugly clothes and no one wants to have sex with her. 

Pretty juvenile really, but there is a distinct lack of outcry over the sexism.

She blinded me with science

Just when you thought there was nothing more aggravating than a report claiming scientists have found a “biological basis” for why women are hardwired to prefer pink to blue, someone comes along to prove you wrong.

Say by taking “hard science” like this and putting it all together in a book on how these gender differences can affect the workplace.

After many years of women climbing the corporate ladder and trying to break the glass ceiling, the book ‘Leadership and the Sexes: Using Gender Science to Create Success in Business’ encouraging HR people and managers to think of everyone as male or female on the job, rather than as individuals, is not good news.

To be fair, the author (Michael Gurian, with contributor Barbara Annis)  does say that one gender isn’t predispositioned to be a better business leader than the other: “I think what we’ve been able to prove over the last 20 years is that there is not superiority or inferiority. It’s different.” he told Forbes.com

Like women have better facial recognition, a handy negotiation tool, but if you work for one you better be braced for longer meetings; “I have to be more patient because their magic is going to come through them verbalizing more and connecting more dots.”

Managers just need to value men and women’s natural strengths and create gender partnerships to get the best from both sexes.

But before we all go to work tomorrow to find our cubicles and work stations painted pink, I have to call BS on this entire premise.

The scientific findings on the differences between men and women are often hugely flawed by both bad scientific studies that are designed to confirm what people already believe to be true and bad coverage of studies that exaggerate the results.

While there may be some general differences between men and women as a group the fact remains that in most of these studies the differences in-group are much, much bigger than the differences between groups. Meaning there is a greater difference between individual women than there is between women and men.

There is a great article at Bitch Magazine on Mad Science and gender differences. As Beth says “Perhaps it’s reassuring to believe that sexism isn’t sexism, it’s science.”

This Franken-science book is doing no good by collecting these studies on the hardwired, genetic, unchangeable gender differences and encouraging workplaces to view employees as men and women instead of as individual people, with individual strengths and weaknesses.

Here’s hoping your boss has enough sense to give this one a pass.

The Law Won

This could be a big year for women in the legal system.

A seat on the Supreme Court of Canada will be opening up in June when Justice Michel Bastarache retires.

Newfoundland is the only province to never have had a judge on the Supreme Court, and there a serious push to appoint the replacement from Newfoundland.

The Newfoundland front-runner is Justice Margaret Cameron. The 16-year veteran of the province’s appeal court is also fluent in French, an unwritten rule of appointment. Cameron was sworn in as the first female and youngest ever justice of the Supreme Court of Newfoundland. She had been an associate deputy minister of Justice for the province since 1981 and worked for the Department of Justice from 1975 until she was appointed to the bench.

On the Supreme Court now there are five men and four women, which means if Cameron is chosen to replace Bastarache it will be the first time in Canadian history that women have out-numbered men on the Supreme Court bench.

Those who have always wondered if things would run differently if women ruled the world, stay tuned. The Prime Minister is expected to make the final decision on a new Supreme Court judge in the fall.

- Thanks to Kim for the tip.

Pour one out

Alexa McDonough is retiring from politics after an incredible almost 30 year career.

The MP made the announcement at a news conference in Halifax today.

She has represented Halifax in the federal government since 1997. Ms. McDonough said she will stay on until the next federal election, but she will not run again.

Ms. McDonough led the New Democratic Party of Nova Scotia from 1980 to 1994, and was subsequently elected leader of the federal New Democratic Party (NDP) in 1995.

She brought the federal NDP back to official party status in 1997 after it failed to hold on to enough seats in the 1993 election. She stepped down as party leader in 2003.

In 2006, Ms. McDonough became the first woman to win four consecutive federal terms in Nova Scotia, the first woman and second MP (since Gordon B. Isnor) to represent Halifax four consecutive federal terms, and the only woman elected from among 32 MPs in Atlantic Canada in the 39th federal election.

Aside from being a great political leader, Ms. McDonough worked on international development and peace advocacy.

Let’s begrudgingly wish the bad-ass 63-year-old a happy retirement, hoping that she’ll keep fighting the good fight part-time.