HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Citizen, 2011-08-18, Page 5THE CITIZEN, THURSDAY, AUGUST 18, 2011. PAGE 5.
My nomination for most politically
incorrect Song Title of All Time:
The show-stopper from the musical
My Fair Lady entitled “Why Can’t a Woman
Be More like a Man?”
Sure, it’s a 50-year-old chestnut that was
written tongue in cheek and actually takes the
mickey out of macho, but tongue in cheek
doesn’t play well in these earnest times. Taken
at face value, the title is provocatively
incendiary; it’s calculated to set Maidenforms
a-smoulder at 100 paces.
Gender equality has been a dicey business
ever since Adam and Eve elected to turn over
a new leaf. Then we had Jack and Jill
mobilizing that bucket brigade ascent to the
well on the hill, ostensibly in search of water.
You’ll recall that it didn’t end well – Jill took
a bad tumble and Jack ended up with a
possible concussion and whiplash – but at least
the damage was gender neutral.
Which I guess is what the folks in charge of
that preschool in Sweden are aiming for.
The administrators at Egalia Preschool,
near Stockholm have initiated a policy to
“avoid instilling gender stereotypes in our
students”. Accordingly, kiddies at the school
wear identical, shapeless blue vests. The boys
are encouraged to play with kitchen utensils;
the girls are urged to get down and dirty with
the toy trucks and tractors.
“Society expects girls to be girlie, nice and
pretty and boys to be manly, rough and
outgoing,” says Jenny Johnsson, a 31-year-old
teacher. “Egalia gives them a fantastic
opportunity to be whoever they want to be.”
Which is fair enough I guess, given that
Walmart has announced plans to market a full
line of makeup including mascara, sheer lip
gloss, pink blush and purple eye shadow –
aimed at eight-year-old children.
You read right – eight-year-olds.
People fight the marketing machine any way
they can. It’s not surprising that a Toronto
couple became a publicity sensation earlier
this year – not so much because they named
their new baby Storm, but because they
declined to announce whether Storm was a
boy or a girl. The father declared that he
found it obnoxious to identify a child’s gender
on the basis of his/her genitalia. “If you really
want to get to know someone,” said David
Stocker, “you don’t ask what’s between their
legs.” Then mom and dad announced that
their child’s gender would be revealed “only
when Storm decides Storm would like to
share.”
Predictably, the world went nuts.
Columnists sneered and editorialists tut-tutted.
The parents were deluged, denounced and
roundly proselytized upon. Cynics were
absolutely certain it was an attention-getting
media con a la Octomom or the boy in the
supposedly runaway weather balloon.
Not true. In a letter to the editor of the
Ottawa Citizen, Storm’s mother Kathy
explained:
“The strong, lightning-fast, vitriolic
response was a shock…To protect our children
from the media frenzy we did not anticipate,
we have declined over 100 requests for
interviews from all over the world, including
offers to fly to New York all expenses paid and
to appear on almost every American morning
show. We have learning to do, parks to visit
and butterflies to care for.”
We’ve been down this gender bender road
before. Almost three centuries ago, as a
matter of fact. Let me introduce you to a pair
of the blood thirstiest pirates ever to sail the
waters of the Caribbean. One was a nasty
piece of work named Read; the other was a
savage, tattooed brute who answered to
Bonny. In 1721, a Jamaican warship cornered
their pirate galleon and a bloody battle
ensued. The pirates were finally defeated.
Read and Bonny were the last to drop their
cutlasses.
British justice was swift and final. The
entire pirate crew was tried, pronounced guilty
and hanged.
Except for Read and Bonny who were
spared.
They were pregnant, you see. Bonny’s first
name was Anne; Read’s was Mary.
That’s the thing about gender stereotypes.
They have a tendency to turn around and bite
you.
Right in the assumption.
Arthur
Black
Other Views Gender blending: a new trend
W hen times are tough, times are tough
all over and Canadians know that
better than most. Canadians have
always been a generous people, both locally
and internationally.
The thought has always been, “If all men
were to bring their miseries together in one
place, most would be glad to take each his own
home again, rather than take a portion out of
the common stock.” So it’s with that thought in
mind that when Canadians are hurting, they
know there are plenty out there hurting worse
than they are.
It’s disheartening then when you hear about
donated funds and goods not being used in the
way the donor may have intended.
In July the news broke that the Canadian
Cancer Society spends a mere 22 per cent of its
wealth on cancer research, while spending over
42 per cent of its cash on additional
fundraising and administration costs. And just
last week it was reported that at least one truck
full of goods donated to the people of Slave
Lake, Alberta in their time of need ended up in
a local landfill.
When donations began exceeding the need,
they were stored and eventually taken away by
a local junk hauler. Those in charge were
assured that donated goods would be sorted
and anything usable would be given to local
charities. However, a truckload of brand new
children’s clothes, blankets, coats, video games
and even a crib ended up in the landfill.
When Canadians facing their own tough
times went shopping for the people of Slave
Lake, they would not have been as liberal with
their money if they knew their purchases
would end up in a landfill.
Similarly, those donating money to the
Canadian Cancer Society deserve to know the
exact breakdown of each dollar they give.
Of course there isn’t one of us who hasn’t
been touched by cancer and it is a worthy
cause, but having just over 20 cents of every
dollar spent on research is a little alarming.
I grew a mustache for Prostate Cancer
Canada’s Movember fundraiser last fall and
raised nearly $2,000. However, during that
campaign I heard from several friends and
family members that there was skepticism out
there as to how much good fundraising does
and how it differs from organization to
organization.
In the end I went through with it because I
felt that any money being raised was a good
thing. I look at local groups like Abi’s
Awesome Angels among others participating
in the Relay for Life and I feel like it all has to
be positive.
However, this reporting is essential in letting
people know where their hard-earned money is
going and what they’re paying for when they
choose to open their hearts and their wallets.
Of course office space has to be paid for and
employees need to put food on their tables too,
but when people are being asking for money
and being offered simply the return of “doing a
good deed” we have to make sure that good
deed is being done.
As the annual Terry Fox Run rolls around
again on Sept. 18, the Terry Fox Foundation’s
most recent annual statement measures over
$25 million in revenue with the bulk going to
the Canadian Cancer Society to just over $4
million in costs, a percentage that sounds good
to me.
I’m not saying people out there shouldn’t
give when they can. They most definitely
should give when they can afford to. I’m just
saying, like everything else in life, a little
research and a closer look can never hurt.
Good times, bad times
Irealize that this will be the second
Orwellian-themed column in as many
weeks, but during a recent trip to a
childhood haunt of mine, I found myself
shocked by the presence of video
surveillance.
Without naming any names or locations, I’ll
say that I visited a place I spent a good deal of
my childhood at to find things not quite as I
remembered.
To help set the scene, I will say this place is
a lakefront area with private beaches where
several of the homes that had been there had
been replaced with monstrosities playing as
homes.
The area has always been, sometimes to my
delight, others to my chagrin, an escape from
technology and the pace of the weekday
world.
Recently, it has become overrun with houses
that don’t fit the aesthetic, central air systems
running all week at vacation homes and video
cameras to make sure no one illegally uses a
path to the beach.
Now, without getting into the legalities of
who owns a beach, and where the water line is,
and what the Ministry of Natural Resources
claims, I will say that this used to be an area
where you didn’t lock the doors and could
usually use any path to get to the surf and
sand.
I know many places can say that but even I –
an individual tempered by his five years living
in urban centres – used to feel comfortable
leaving my car open and unattended. Now I
suddenly don’t feel secure leaving my car
unlocked.
It was like the few new people who had
moved in and forced technology on this haven
had somehow stolen the innocence of it.
It makes me mourn the loss of these small
communities.
Some may wonder why I don’t mourn the
lost innocence of these small communities, or
why I choose to think of the community as
gone.
The simple answer is that technology, as
much as I consider it an important and
enjoyable part of my life, also comes with a
huge drawback – it’s undoable.
The minute you “connect” an area, be it with
something as simple as cable television or the
internet, you can’t go back.
You can’t go back to a time when aerials
were the predominant method for getting
television signals.
You can’t turn off the cell phones and the
computers quite as easily as you think.
In short, you can’t turn back the clock and
re-isolate a small community.
The more screens you have in a home, the
less time people spend connecting in that
home, and the effect seems to be doubled
outside of the home.
Speaking for the location I spent a good
chunk of time in when I was young, we always
had one television hooked up to an aerial and,
on a clear day, we might have gotten a total of
four channels.
It certainly made going to the beach and
soaking up some sun and some Lake Huron
water a very appealing option.
I can’t imagine why these people would
move into an area so beautiful and serene and
so steeped in nature only to install a central air
unit to keep the fresh air out and a satellite dish
to make sure you never have to go outside to
be entertained.
Don’t get me wrong, at home I enjoy my
computer, my video games and my television
screens.
I’m a huge fan of Doctor Who, Torchwood,
House, and the recent insurgence of auction-
themed shows that has taken over the air ways.
I enjoy living with these things because the
television and the computer are really a
necessity when it comes to my day-to-day
life.
I need the television to watch the news, I
need the computer to catch up on my work and
keep in touch with my friends from Toronto,
Guelph and Orangeville without a huge long-
distance bill, and the video games, well
sometimes you just need to blow off some
steam.
However, this has all the more made me
appreciate having a place free from
technology.
This has made me long for the days when a
family game of Mexican Rummy (a card
game, for those not familiar) was the after-
dinner fare, perhaps paired with a new episode
of the Red Green Show and the Royal
Canadian Air Farce (if the CBC was coming
in clear enough) instead of people dispersing
to their separate areas to watch their own
television shows, play on their own computers
and become completely separated from each
other.
I know I’ve said this before, but the
sentiment echoes strongly here – the more
connected we become through technology,
the less connected we become with the people
we live with or the neighbour across the
street.
So it is with a heavy heart that I watch
surveillance cameras take over the nature that
denoted this place of my childhood. It is with
sorrow that I watch small, sensible one-storey
vacation homes being replaced with
sprawling, monstrous central air-conditioned
homes and it is with disappointment that I
realize my technology-free haven is probably
not long for this world.
Shawn
Loughlin
Shawn’s Sense
Denny
Scott
Denny’s Den
Big brother is always watching
You are never too old to set another goal or
to dream a new dream.
– C.S. Lewis
Final Thought