Erin Berney

2015-04-22 05:53:34 -0400

Well, if anything else, Lauren Southern’s video sure fired up a lively debate. It took me quite a while, but I finally finished reading all the comments, from the oldest up to the most recent. That, in and of itself, warrants some attention, I think. So listen closely:

1. The back and forth commenting is most notable for proving that “feminism” definitely means different things to different people. For those commenters that referenced dictionary definitions, I would suggest googling the words “connotation” and “denotation”. The stripped-down, apoliticized, dictionary definitions cited are not representative of the myriad different conceptions and “connotations” of feminism that exist today, many of which are seemingly independent of culture, nationality, gender, relgion, social/economic status, etc. Many female commenters have claimed conservative affiliation, and some derided all conceptions of feminism different from their own (or other than the dictionary definition) as a liberal, leftist, yet simultaneously male-dominated conspiracy of some sort. Admittedly, I fail to see any logic to this insinuation, and yet I also tend to identify as conservative/libertarian. Go figure. I’m also a woman, but I found Lauren Southern’s video inspiring and relevant. Obviously, you all did too, otherwise why 8 pages of comments from more or less the same people?

Almost everyone here has attempted to define or describe what feminism means to them — personally — in this thread. Few have actually attempted to relate the historical context and evolution of western, Judeo-Christian based feminism, which comments I appreciated reading immensely. I merely note the western perspective has been emphasized in all explanations of what feminism means, whereas most of the modern-day examples of female repression offered up in the comments arise from an entirely different historical/cultural/religious perspective — one in which the concept of “humanism” was never advanced (Islam.)

By contrast, references to male rape and domestic abuse are (not to be disrespectful or diminish the occurrences in any way) somewhat of a red herring, and statistics of any kind are always subject to manipulation and bias of some sort. This includes statistics re: female sexual assault in Canada, where sexual assault in the Criminal Code covers every sin from inappropriate (and perhaps unintentional) touching, to full-blown unwilling pentration of any kind. Plus, modern Canadian “Rape-Shield” laws protect women sexual assault complainants from being subjected to scrutiny or cross-examination about their sexual history, relationships, style and manner of dress, etc.

And yet still, we are constantly reminded about female underreporting. So, isn’t it at least possible (if not even more likely) that male underreporting of the same crimes also occurs, thus underrepresenting whatever number StatsCan presents about male victimization by women, that’s likely already 3-5 years out of date? Men are inarguably less likely to report being the victim of a crime by a female assailant than are women likely to report being victimized by a man. That is a simple cultural fact. Further, I know from professional experience (10 years in print journalism) that news media generally isn’t interested in stories about male victimization by women. So even when it is reported, society at large generally doesn’t hear too much about it.

Look at the film Fight Club, which shows a male perspective of modern, masculine cultural emasculation and their refusal to identify as victims. Better yet, look at almost all home product commercials, or most family sitcoms on television today that depict the father/husband as an incompetent doofus while the mother/wife figure is portrayed as eminently intelligent, and the real head of the family.

But as I said, statistics and examples are merely a distraction and not directly relevant to the topic of feminism.

2. Feminism’s multiple waves – generally, most scholars and theorists refer to three waves of feminism, with a fourth wave either perpetually on the horizon or having already passed, depending who you believe. Myself, I ascribe to the four-wave theory, having studied much feminist scholarship in my undergrad (Comparative Literature major, emphasis on Canadian Lit., Sociology and History, minor in Philosophy, focusing on Symbolic Logic, Metalogic and Comparative Relgious Studies and Worldviews). Might as well say I also had a 10-year career in journalism before eventually going to law school, and have now been practising for the past few years. So that’s my background, which I hope helps contextualize where I’m coming from.

I very much enjoyed Pat Anjali’s comments about societal/technological developments in history being connected to changing sex/gender roles. Not all of you may agree, but this is a fairly persuasive argument, although on its own cannot explain the stunting of Arabic/Islamic culture as compared with Western civilization. Now that is a value-laden judgment, and one for which I will not apologize. Making use of our capacity for rationality, judgment, and yes, even hierarchical evaluation and categorization, is no more evil than a monkey picking and eating its own fleas, despite whatever the high priests of political correctness may preach about so-called “equality”.

Equality is a man-made concept, and laudable it may be, is not realistic except in striving for equality of legal treatment and opportunity under the law. Equality of will, input, ambition, desire, energy, intelligence, physical ability, etc. is impossible, and as such, equality of results is a pipe dream. So there aren’t as many female CEOs as male CEOs in Canada. Big deal. Logically, it doesn’t equate to injustice. Many women still choose to leave the workforce sooner, or take themselves out of competition and consideration for promotion, partnerships, etc. No one can have it all, despite what feminists used to claim, which is what my mother grew up with.

I probably come close to Lauren Southern’s experience in that I am relatively young (33-years-old), attractive, white, Canadian, educated, and above all, female (and I occasionally wear high heels and lipstick). For those characteristics alone, some of the other female commenters may discount everything I have to say, but it is to be expected. These older women come from a different period in feminism, when perhaps it did used to really mean ‘equality for all’ and not just the promotion of femininity at any cost, including at the expense of masculinity. My own mother eventually woke up and realized that, no, she couldn’t do it all, no one can. Male or female. For those with a religious bent, perhaps this is why God made both man and woman, in orderr to help each other, with each using his and her own unique, sometimes more male and sometimes more female, strengths and weaknesses, which although different, are capable of combining occasionally in a beautiful harmony and achieving dramatic results.

As a Type A female, I only recently realized I couldn’t do it all. No matter how hard I try. I’ve certainly experienced my share of discrimination, sexism, harassment and even sexual assault (ranging from anonymous slaps on the ass while making my way through a crowded bar to full-on, black-out drunk, not necessarily consensual sex.) When I could locate the particular culprit of a specific ass-slap, I did not hesitate to call out the idiot, usually a drunken buffoon on which my rehetoric was entirely wasted. But I at least felt I was taking control and being an active agent in my own life, responsible and accountable for my own life choices. Yes, I was in a crowded bar, many times… it’s not a crime, nor do I deserve to be groped just for walking through the door, no less than I deserve to be minimalized because I happen to be attractive, young, and disagree with the feminist experiences of a bunch of women decades older than me. I respect these women had vastly different experiences than me, but that doesn’t mean their opinons are more authoritative, or conversely that the opinions of today’s young women, like Lauren Southern and myself, are wrong, uninformed or evil.

Instead, I’ve had to grapple with the insecurity and uncertainty arising from not knowing whether my achievements were truly my own, as in solely due to my abilities, or if I “earned” them through some other means. I’ve wondered at least a thousand times, from at least junior high on, how much I owe simply to being born a woman, and especially to being born a white, attractive, English-speaking Canadian woman, into a stable, middle-upper class family? I was born into the belief that I could do anything, be anything, etc. But I couldn’t help but wonder if I was accepted into law school just to fill a female quota, or if I really deserved my spot? How many jobs applied for were legitimately offered to me because I was the most qualified, vs. simply being pretty, young, well-dressed, articulate, etc?

This is the true spectre of the early waves of feminism. This, I posit, is the fourth wave — western, female, gender-based guilt. My female antecedents supposedly fought so I could do it all, but the problem is, I can’t. I have human limits.

At least, however, I acknowledge their efforts on my behalf. I know full well where we came from, and unlike some here, won’t diminish those true struggles by re-writing history through a feminist lens. Sure, some women farm wives helped out their husbands roughing out an existence on the prairies in early Canada, but that doesn’t mean this help was in any way equivalent to the intense physical labour that was essentially all done by men, while women reigned supreme over all things domestic.

All through the history of western civilization, at least women have had some piece of the pie, albeit not an equal one (historically, but as I would argue, more or less equal in contemporary Canadian society.) This is in stark contrast to Islamic and other societies, where women are still, even today, entirely excluded from the pie altogether — they are what Spivak calls “subaltern”.

It is highly ironic then, that some commenters appropriated the voice of the historic, allegedly male, oppressor, by responding to Lauren’s video with aggressive, vitriolic, knee-jerk reactions devoid of logical argument, focusing instead upon the singular task of tearing her down on the basis of her (seeming) youth, attractive physical appearance (and choice of lipstick colour), and entirely non-expressed and irrelevant political associations (conveniently googled and posted herein.) Spivak would not disapprove, in fact, she would probably say that adopting the voice of the oppressor is one way to get the oppressor’s attention. Respectfully, I disagree.

First, western, north american and especially white Canadian women are not subalterns. They are just as much the colonizers as their/our male counterparts. To blame the entirety of the feminine condition and so-called female repression/oppression on men in general is to deny the existence of females having any active agency, and essentially reinforces the historic rationale for male-dominated female subjectivity. Just like Pat Anjali notes, women obviously played an active role in establishing and preserving gender roles, and had just as much to protect and gain from doing so as men. Why else would (married) women have emerged as the leading lobbyists for Prohibition?

All this discussion over history, and the experiences of older vs. younger generation women (whether “feminist” or not) shows is how free we actually are. Quite obviously, things have changed. But rather than celebrate how far we’ve come, some here choose to ignore our achievements. Some, in what I can only perceive to be motivated by Islamophobia, predict the imminent demise of female equality in Canada due to the threat of the influx of sharia law. Not a fan, myself, and I will definitely fight to prevent the erosion of Canadian parliamentary democracy and the rule of law by radical Islamic individuals and groups. But I can’t help but wonder how these same commenters, so vocal about the insidious takeover of Islamic, and the spread of sharia law in Canada, feel about Muslim women wearing the niqab during their official Canadian citizenship ceremonies (and face veils and burkhas generally?) I’ve been extremely surprised by comments from self-described “feminists” in support of a so-called “right” to wear a face veil at an official Canadian public function, even one as important and venerable as an official citizenship ceremony.

I can’t help but observe that many of the comments from other women in this thread achieve nothing but division. Feminism, if anything, was concerned in the beginning with uniting women along common goals, like suffrage, personhood, equal treatment under the law, property rights, and voting. Sewing division in the ranks was the typical response of male opposition to the growing feminist movement.

I admire and congratulate Lauren Southern for posting her video, which she did probably knowing full well what kind of stramach it would cause. That truly takes balls. Call it a generation gap, but I wholeheartedly agree with her position. She succinctly put into words what I’ve felt intuitively for probably the last 15 years (or the majority of my adult life.) Perhaps, as with "L"iberal vs. “liberal”, we need to differentiate between "F"eminism and “feminists”. I am an avowed non-Feminist, but share most if not all of the first-wave, pioneering feminist ideals about basic equality of individual opportunity and treatment before the law. Where I disagree is the point where "F"eminism diverged into a multiplicity of (supposedly) equally valid, subjective experienced-based conceptualizations in the wake of the application of so-called post-modern theoretical approaches to analysis of feminist criticism. Post-modernism is indeed interested, but logically speaking, the basic premise is as bankrupt as a New York stockbroker in early November of 1929.

Trust me, in my second year at university I got an A+ on a 400-level comparative literature term paper, titled something like, “The Simpsons: A Postmodern Sitcom”. Think about it, watching The Simpsons as research. I know from which I speak. Ask me anything about modernism or post-modernism, from pastiche to metalepsis. Ask me about literary, philosophical and cultural theory. Ask me about the development of different world legal systems, or the history of science, technology and medicine (greatest technological achievement since 1500 A.D.: printing press, hands down.) Invite me to discuss the philosophies and aesthetics of Aristotle, Marx, Hegel, Nietsche, Gramsci, Atorno, Horkheimer, Benjamin, Baudrillard, Dalton, Marvey, Gilbert and Gubar, Spivak, Said, Dijkstra, McLuhan, Lacan, Mitchell, de Beauvoir, Rich, Atwood, Friedan, Showalter, Kristeva, Duras, Ettinger, Irigaray, Fanon, Barthes, Bordieu, Hutcheon, Jameson, Waugh, Verda, Cixous, etc. But don’t get me started on whether I agree that the pen is actually a metaphorical penis, the continental-based phallocentric theory of writing, Verda’s appropriation of Lacan’s theory of the mirror phase into her New Wave films (e.g. Cléo de 5 à 7), or, most importantly, don’t bother asking why I’ve included men on this list as the rationale is quite obvious.

I only offer this background since there seems to have been quite a lot of back and forth attacks, but I’m not naming any names. You know who you are. I can only say that even those who came across as being the least tolerant of others’ views occasionally had something of value to offer to the discussion. Others stepped up to direct the discussion back to the topic at hand, valiantly ignoring or brushing off some of the most negative and ignorant comments. One of the most reactionary and prolific commenters admitted to not reading any of the previous comments posted by her target, and still concluded that they were all the same hate-filled messages and hence not worthy of her time. Ahem.

That same commenter also said “equality is a gift” from the superior to the inferior in society, and turned a simple philosophical question about abortion in general vs. gender-selective abortion in particular into an accusation that the poster supported killing fetuses. The same commenter also denied one of the oldest, most basic philosical/logical truths: equivalence (explanation of same nobly, but unsuccessfully, attempted by another anonymous poster.) From my thousand-foot view, it seems certain commenters are unfamiliar with foundational logic, or are at least confused by them. For example, while equivalence means having all the same properties, non-equivalence does not necessarily mean having none of the same properties, i.e. like the Euro-centric idea of binary oppositions. It simply means not having all the same properties. That’s it. Different, but not necessarily opposite, or even better and worse, the latter of which are moral judgments.

The ability to recognize similarity and difference and make rational, value-based judgments is an essential part of being human. Religious or not, no one can logically argue that it is preferable to deny and subdue our human nature (and our evolutionary or God-given traits/gifts, or some combination thereof) for any reason or under any circumstances. Yet my problem with modern "F"eminism is its rigidity and tendency for extreme, illogical reaction to any suggestion of reverse sexism against masculinity in modern culture and society, even as an unintended consequence.

Rewriting Canadian history in an effort to be more inclusive, ultimately exaggerating the societal roles, economic contributions and overall experiences of women and minorities, doesn’t make it so. Moreover, one should be cautious about erasing and ignoring history for fear of repeating it. Some commenters have repeatedly offered dire predictions based on an imagined imminent decline of women’s rights in Canada. If women like some of the commenters on this thread continue to deny history and the reality of continuous female agency throughout, it may very well happen.

To even suggest that women have never asserted any will of their own or had any hand in directing the course of their own lives and histories is tantamount to an admission of the triumph of male domination, and completely disrespects the actual struggles of early feminists.

My biggest fear, however, is that these same women, in a well-intended but misguided effort in the name of feminism, will only end up hastening the erosion of Canadian values of equality. Tell me, how do the women on this thread feel about the niqab?

Some of you are very quick to judge, yet are supremely incapable of producing a single civil response to anyone else’s criticism of your own offered-up personal opinions and experiences. Yours are the only valid views, apparently, and everyone who challenges or disagrees with you is automatically not worthy of serious response. You revel in name-calling and cry foul when it comes back to you.

Instead of lecturing everyone else, I suggest you engage in a more profitable exercise and learn how to make a polite response, without degenerating into ad hominem attacks. Seriously, it’s barely a step up from “I’m rubber, you’re glue.” Do us all a favour and don’t come back until you grow up and are able to converse in a civil manner like the adult you claim to be.

Lauren, again, your video was much appreciated, and obviously stimulated a lot of comment! I’d call that a success, despite the few cranks and trolls that are bound to pop up here and there.

Keep it up.

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