HEATHER MALLICK:
Attack on feminism hurts women here and overseas
CBC News Viewpoint | June 30, 2006 | More from Heather Mallick
Heather Mallick has worked as a reporter, copy editor and book review editor at various Toronto newspapers and most recently wrote a column called As If for the Globe and Mail. She has won National Newspaper Awards for both Critical Writing and Feature Writing. Heather writes a political column for the New York Times Syndication Service that runs internationally. Her first book, Pearls in Vinegar, based on an ancient Japanese form of diary, was published by Penguin in 2004. She is currently writing a collection of essays for Knopf Canada, tentatively titled "Cake or Death: The Excruciating Choices of Everyday Life".
REAL Women are on the warpath, as I guess I would be too if I were REAListic, Equal, Active, and for Life. Hey, I am all those things! Oh, they mean "not in your unREAL way." I think.
REALists have been quiet for a long time. But they see the Stephen Harper minority government as their chance to change Canada back to the way they say it used to be. Whatever that was, I'm sure it was lovely. And frankly, their view of the future does verge on the dire.
"We are living in the best of material times … Yet, simultaneously, we are also living in a time of moral decadence: abortion on demand, the legalization of same-sex relationships as marriages, the cultural and legal acceptance of homosexuality despite its destructive ramifications, both psychologically and medically, rampant sexual promiscuity and euthanasia, legalized drug use and legalized prostitution just around the corner."
But I'm for all these things. Not sure about rampant euthanasia (get it in writing, I say, and point out the drawbacks: "Yer dead") or prostitution, but perhaps they don't grasp that legal changes regarding prostitution are aimed (by good men and good women) at saving hundreds of sex workers and other women who have vanished into the thinnest of air in Canada. Some of them might have been fed to pigs.
Anyway, whether I agree or not with prostitution laws, I don't see the connection between the above gay-loathing stuff and what the REALists are trying to persuade the Harper government to do. But here's their game plan: they want an end to federal funding for anything that has even the mildest fragrance of feminism.
They want an end to the second part of the Federal Ministry of Canadian Heritage and Status of Women (the "Status of Women" bit), and the death of the Standing Committee on the Status of Women. I must say that the minutes of that multi-party committee sound quite civilized to me, rather a model for MPs of all parties getting along. Perhaps I am wrong, but it sounds as though muffins are being brought, so to speak.
REAL women are asking their members to send an avalanche of letters to Harper and the minister Bev Oda to this end, although it does seem odd demanding that Ms. Oda whack half her job, declaring it pathetic and pointless.
If they kill off Status of Women, this means they may be able to threaten future funding for the Women's Legal Education Action Fund (LEAF). This puzzles me, since LEAF is glorious by anyone's standards. It appeared before the Supreme Court recently to argue for compensation of residential school victims and for the schooling of autistic children. If REAL women want home schooling of autistic children, then their ignorance about autism boggles the mind. They would also kill possible future funding for the National Association for Women and the Law as well as child-care lobby groups that, well, lobby for child care.
Next, they want an end to 524 women's shelters across Canada funded by Status of Women. "Feminists claim they provide protection from male assault." But "this does not mean men should be neglected." Men are being killed, hurt and threatened by their partners more than ever, they claim. Given that there are not enough shelters anyway, it seems wasteful of taxpayers' money to set up shelters for a handful of men terrified of their brutal girlfriends. Surely a kick in the teeth would be cheaper, and that does appear to be the path men take with women.
Before the election, REALists prepared a pamphlet on their views and told their members that it was worded so carefully that it could be distributed "throughout the Churches" without churches losing their tax-exempt status. This does seem a bit casual about taxpayers' money, but REALists are just as means-to-an-end as anyone else, I guess.
Really bothered by something
There is one focus for REALists' rage that does bother the hell out of me. They object to what they see as the expansion of feminism.
A lesson: International organizations are increasingly horrified by the treatment of women worldwide, particularly in underdeveloped nations. It is a truism that the key to prosperity in any country is the education of girls and the increased participation of women in the workforce. In Africa, for instance, someone has to raise AIDS orphans. Who better to help than women's organizations from rich countries in Europe and North America?
This internationalization of help — let's call it Bono-ization — is happening in every field. Melinda and Bill Gates are part of it as is the sometimes estimable Warren Buffett. The world is a smaller place now, even if the REALists don't like that change, or any kind of change.
There is an air of dislike, almost envy, in the REALists' description of a 2005 women's conference in Bangkok. Granted, it doesn't look like a convention centre in Hull, but is a performance by the river of a "beautiful transsexual and transgender troupe" singing I Am Woman really so offensive? They're humans too. Yes, it's pricey, but you can't get that kind of fellow feeling in a Tim Hortons. They don't serve drinks with titchy little umbrellas, for one thing.
The feminist report quoted by the REALists in their newsletter says: "Sexuality is a cross-cutting issue that lies at the heart of disempowerment of women." This makes REALists sick and they go on to praise U.S. President George W. Bush's cutting off of birth control funds for poor nations. But sexuality is what causes women intense hardship. It dooms many women to terrible lives.
If REAL Women were successful, the result would be bullying of these women: those wanting off welfare but who can't afford child care (note: there's no blaming the fathers who abandoned their children), poor women who need abortions and women beaten to a pulp who are afraid to venture on the street.
This bullying is vile, surely.
Only recently, a woman was murdered by her boyfriend on the street where I had my student apartment. The slaughter of women is becoming heartbreakingly common in my own city.
But the REALists' current effort to prevent Canadian women's groups from helping women overseas? That's monstrous.
I shall now tell you about "breast ironing" in Cameroon. There, men and boys see girls as sexual targets when breasts begin to bud. Mothers are so frightened for their daughters at puberty that they pound the developing breasts with pestles, and bananas and coconut shells heated in a fire. The breasts are beaten to destroy the connective tissue, as you would tenderize a chicken breast for dinner, and they are burned. Some girls iron their own breasts so as not to be married off.
The government is running a nationwide campaign, with help from a group of teenage girls called the Association of Aunties. They need donations to run a television campaign.
I hope Canadian feminists (and that includes men) are sending money and help. Of course, there are many other projects: solving the torture-murders of 450 women in Juarez, outlawing clitidorectomy, sexual slavery in Eastern Europe and a terrifically successful campaign to send goats to Rwandan villages filled with widows and children (these gifts brought much joy to my friends this Christmas, because the Good Gifts people sent photos!).
I fail to see why REAL Women object to the Canadian government sending our citizens to help desperate women around the world. REALists call it "flittering" and "globe-trotting." I thought they just took a plane.
It's bad enough that you appear to despise other women in Canada who are defending women against problems that you may well face yourself one day. But what did the ironed-breast little girls of Cameroon ever do to you?
Enough.
This week
A huge shipment of books arrived from Waterstone's and bags of fresh hulled peas arrived in the stores, so I just read and ate green marbles. Alain de Botton's The Architecture of Happiness, which has been unfairly reviewed, I suspect, out of envy, was wonderful. What are the ingredients in architecture that give us pleasure? Why does a building "work" or "not work"? We do not, however, agree on concrete. Alain, what you call weathered I call stained.
I also read BBC security correspondent Frank Gardner's memoir Blood & Sand, of being shot six times in the street by al-Qaeda. The worst part was lying there while Saudis walked past, failing to come to his aid. This haunts him more than the shooting. He is a paraplegic.
Vanessa Curtis' book, The Hidden Houses of Virginia Woolf and Vanessa Bell, on the rented holiday homes of their youth, was splendid.
I shall retrace her steps when Blair goes. Do piss off, Tony.
LETTERS:
Thanks so much for your illuminating column on REAL Women. It has
been rumoured that in the months leading up to the last election they
worked closely with the equally regressive anti-women group Focus on
the Family.
It is rumoured that Focus has a war chest of $11 million
dollars, and is set up quite handsomely in Ottawa, to further the cause
of taking Canada back to the dark ages- the Bush ages that is.
Even
some "dinosaur" Liberal MPs are attempting to lead us down this
dangerous path. Their lack of kindness, knowledge, thoughtfulness,
and most important, an understanding of and empathy for the situation
of women here and around the world, which is caused by such regressive
thinking as theirs, is appalling.
Thanks again Heather, for unveiling
this disaster in the making.
—Gracia Janes | Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ont.
It is rare indeed that I agree wholeheartedly with Heather Mallick. Her viewpoint article on the REAL Women organization got me thinking.
While I often feel that many post second-wave feminists have ceased advocating for women and have begun vilifying men, the REAL Women seem to want a return to the 1850's on a global scale. I believe they are wrong.
It seems that the REAL Women are reacting against the Post-Second and Third Waves of feminism; their reaction is misguided but inevitable, considering the excesses of the blame-directing, victim hood-wallowing and irrational emotionalism that is all too visible in much of popular feminism today.
Thanks for your insightful Viewpoint article Ms Mallick. Let's hope that the pendulum of gender politics can settle somewhere in the moderate middle after all this swinging about between ridiculous extremes.
—Marcus Sterzer | Ottawa
I enjoyed today's column very much. I get the sense that we are prepared to
speak the unspeakable of a very few years back. We seem to be entering a
period of free speech. We have boasted about it quite long enough. Let's put
it into practise.
Some time back I read a satirical account written by Mark Twain. His account
deals with the medical practises of the ancients. No medical doctor of today
would limit his therapy to bleeding the patient. The medical practises of the
time seemed to be limited to this therapy "Notwithstanding all of these
measures, none the less, the patient died.
So much for the ancients in the fields of medicine. What about the moral
views of the ancients. Moses promoted the idea of taking rebellious youth who
did not respond to gentler measures like a flogging, to be taken outside the
city gates by the elders and stoned to death. Moses definitely was not a
permissive parent.
He also endorsed the practise of granting a man the option
of selling his wife into slavery if it seemed like a good idea at the time.
Does he still stand up as a moral authority? Among many he does.
When I read your column I had visions of Stephen Harper sharpening a long
knife. I hope he doesn't sell the CBC.
—Brian Borley | Saskatoon, Sask.
Thank you once again Heather for insights tinged with anger and slashed with humour. You keep my sometimes wandering brain cells focused on the big issues.
We will always need to be reminded and informed about the thought patterns of groups like REAL (can't say that I ever heard of them before) and what the screening they like to put around their intentions is really hiding.
I would appreciate any insight.
—Shirley Hughes | Toronto
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