What It's All About

This is an image that everyone should see. Feminism, at least MY feminism, is not about becoming better than men or thinking of them as inferior. It is not about forcing women into pants when they want to wear dresses or discarding supportive undergarments. It is not about reaching "the top". It is about freedom to make decisions based on what you want, without fear, shame or intimidation. I think that being a housewife, a businesswoman, an exotic dancer, or a nun are all great choices, as long as they were actually choices and not forced upon them by circumstance and society. I know that I've been given a certain set of privileges based on the circumstances of my birth, and I'm lucky, but I'm a feminist for the people who were born unlucky. I'm a feminist for the world my someday-kids (daughters AND sons) will grow up in. I'm a feminist for survivors of sexual assault. I'm a feminist for women who face obstacles of racism and homophobia on top of sexism. I'm a feminist for the girls who hit glass ceilings. 

And I'm a feminist for me, too. 

Take Back The Night (not JT)

This is going to be a pretty brief post. I just wanted to throw down some lyrics to a song I wrote for Take Back The Night, which is a march to end violence against women. Hundreds of women die every year at the hands of their significant other. If you're from Saint John, you would have heard of the murder this winter in Rothesay, or the one on Rothesay Avenue last year, where women were violently killed, one in full view of the street and the other in front of her child. This isn't some issue that's happening somewhere else. It's not happening to other women, it's happening to us. Saint John has one of the highest rates of sexual assault in the country. It is a prevalent, important and dangerous issue and we need to show support for an end to sexual violence when we can.

FYI to those in Saint John: The march is this Friday (September 20th) at 8pm in King's Square. 

Without further ado, here are my words:

There's a war against women so we're here to fight
We're here to spread wings. We're here to take flight
We're here to say violence is never right
We're here to take back the night

There's a girl out there with auburn hair
Whose eyes turned bluer when she cried
But no listened, no one saw
Until the day she died

A father lost his daughter that day
Though perhaps he lost her years ago
On the night those boys, they took from her
Her right to her body, her soul

Our mothers, our daughters, our sisters, our friends
There is no mythical "they"
It happens to those we love and who love us
So we're using our voices today

Together we stand; together we say
You can't turn off our light
You can't blow out our candle's flame
Because we're here to take back the night

Remember the suffering of those everywhere
The women and girls who are gone
Tattoo their names on our hearts and stand tall
In their memories, we march on.

There's a war against women so we're here to fight
We're here to spread wings. We're here to take flight
We're here to say violence is never right
We're here to take back the night

Miley Twerk Bandwagon

I'm sure most of you have heard about the VMAs this year where Miley Cyrus twerked on stage whether you wanted to or not. It's caused quite a stir in what I like to call "the feminist world (a world not everyone inhabits, I'm sure)". Comments have bounced between "she should be ashamed" to "she should do with her body what she wants" and thus a conflict has arisen. I'm loving it; I find it so hilarious that the actions of some 20 year old basically only famous because of a one-hit-wonder father are gripping our attention more than issues in Syria, that anniversary of the "I have a dream" speech, and perhaps just as importantly, the gloriousness of Lady Gaga's ass during her own performance at the VMAs (hot damn.).

But since it's been plastered all over every website from silly ones like 9gag and Fox News (you idiots) to actual legitimate news sources, I figure it's worth a discussion.

My immediate reaction: Who gives a shit? Honestly. Not a rhetorical question. Who actually, out there in the world, cares? She wore a bikini, a strange foam finger (with a fingernail - in my view the most offensive part of the performance), danced with some sad looking bears, and twerked upon Robin Thicke's crotch. The whole thing was under 3 minutes. Mostly it was just awkward and not the sexy I feel Miley intended. She should indeed be able to do whatever she wants with her 20 year old body, even if that includes pretending her foam finger is a penis by dangling it between her legs (LOL).  This is the extent of what my brain should have thought about this. I wouldn't have even known about it if the internet hadn't decided to make it an international crisis.

My second reaction: So Miley worked her twerk (and honestly, it wasn't really that great of a twerk - I've seen better...IN MY MIRROR (I kid).). But Robin Thicke is singing a song about blurred lines...singing over and over the lyrics "I know you want it" which is basically a rapist's mantra. You know a girl wants it when she explicitly says "I want it". I personally love the song (so catchy!), as I've said before, but I'm a 23 (almost 24! - go September babies) year old who can appreciate a song without taking the message to heart. So what about the 12 year old girls who hear the song, go to a party and are sexually assaulted? If their attacker says "I know you want it" or "you were asking for it" or "I could tell you were into it", maybe they'll question their own resolve and that's where this gets sticky. Blurring the lines of consent is at best foolish, at worst dangerous. The bigger issue should be Robin's song, not Miley's sad twerk.

The first thought upon seeing the hair and tongue...perhaps there was more artistry to this performance than we thought

My last reaction: If I'm worried about the message that the song Blurred Lines is sending young women...should I not also be considering the fact that Miley Cyrus is a role model to literally hundreds of thousands of young girls in North America? If they see their favorite Hannah Montana bounding around on stage wearing next to nothing, sticking her (giraffe-sized) tongue out and basically miming sex, what kind of message is that sending? Miley certainly can do whatever she wants, but should she? Should she perhaps be morally responsible for the hoards of young fans that she has? Is it entirely the responsibility of parents to protect their children from lewd behaviour? In this world of smartphones and i-everything and kids who are 100% better at technology than their parents (I only play Minesweeper and Solitaire on my laptop for God's sake), how can you control what they see? You can't. But if I thought my actions may
effect young people who look up to me, I would
perhaps be more careful about what they'd see...

Conclusion: There is no easy answer here. It happened and the emphasis that we've put on the event is far more dangerous than the actual 3 minutes of video was. I feel that the vast majority of the population was not watching the VMAs; if everyone had just let it be what it was, I wouldn't be posting about this because I wouldn't have had a clue that it had happened. If, as a culture, we could (as Ron Weasley says) sort out our priorities, we could have prevented all the dialogue on this issue...though this feels slightly ironic seeing as how I'm now adding to the discussion myself. Such is life, I suppose.