lotusland - nervous politics from a laid-back city

feminism

i still hate on most men 24/7. ok. my hate-on for male stupidity is due to the fact i socialize as a man with men because i like to listen to loud music, watch cartoons, and discuss politics over too many beers. i hear what most of these tools say about us women, and as a result, i am completely appalled. the worst men on earth for this shit are those who fancy themselves progressives.

i yell at my guy friends regarding their treatment/discussion of women all the time, and it either gets
a) hearty laughter
b) hearty dissing of feminism for being a bourgeois construct

note to self:  kick all men in the balls more often. 

are women stupid? i think we are socialized to be somewhat pathetic. i believe i was, but i do not take well to any socialization process. i think the way men are is due to a really pathetic machismo socialization process.

ive taken a liking to judith butler, because i think that ditching gender as a binary is only a good thing. i dont think you can ditch gender as a binary entirely, since a lot of the gender discrimination is predicated on the male/female or queer/hetero splits. there needs to be a way that people can discuss gender and queerness while defining it for themselves in a way that does not negate either the feminist or gay rights histories/projects.

what i mean by that is i am so tired of all the "im a feminist, but i shave my legs"/"im not a feminist, but i think women get paid less than men" bullshit.

1. you are a feminist if you think the advances made by the womens movement (birth control, pay equity, access to all professions, etc) are noteworthy achievements. this doesnt mean you are a radical feminist or a feminist activist or a butch who doesnt ascribe to a depilatory regime.

the reason i am telling you that you are a feminist is because the history of keeping women down still affects women today, and it would be nice if all women who believe these advances are good could have a label that just means 'i believe in equality and freedom from being a birthing cow' so that we could present a united front against the way things were. nobody is going to confiscate your nailpolish or alienate your male friends the second you are comfortable describing your beliefs as feminist.

2. expanding peoples ability to identify with a wider gender spectrum would enable women to demonstrate that there are so many different ways of living as women and that none of them conflict with acknowledging the need for women to stand up for themselves and their rights.

i know this sounds whack since im advancing one big label while encouraging more small labels.  im trying to advance the notion of one big label that means 'i think women shouldnt be screwed over/treated like babies' co-existing with a complex idea with gender that would enable people to combine their personal gender identity with the broader aims of feminism.

(this post has been drafted as a massive flip of the bird to all the haters out there.)

chantal hebert's secret message: liberals are like a second green party, so ndp/pc better catch up

if i didnt have three finals this week, id write a long post about how the greens need to reclaim the environmental issue.  while we greens often find ourselves asked to articulate what we stand for "besides the environment," we are now in a political arena that is focussed on using environmental issues to differentiate the parties.

dion's minions hand out green scarves to distinguish him from the pack.  chantal hebert issues an exhortation to the tories and dippers to catch up on the environment.   may's 2nd place byelection finish is one of the more exciting bits of news this year.

green groups have been ranking the parties' respective environmental records for ages.  dion was environment minister for quite a while, and his name definitely comes up in these evaluations.  you can wear all the green you want, but it doesnt make you irish on st. patrick's day or green in the eyes of those devoted to studying the impact of environmental policy.

if i had more time to do anything but rant, id cite some of these.  ill return to this over christmas break.

i hope the green party studies and employs these critiques, busts a slim shady, and tells the other parties that we are the green party, yes we're the real green party, all those other green parties are just imitating, so wont the real green party please stand up, please stand up?

had ken dryden won, this would be more interesting

ken dryden was a member of the semi-secret quill and dagger society at cornell.   imagine ezra levant freaking out, regaling us with hypothetical scenarios he stole from  the skulls, which he rented the night before as opposition research.  so much more interesting.

can someone please fill me in on precisely what kind of twat you have to be in order to treat dual citizens with suspicion?  dion spends a decade or so serving the canadian government, but the fact he has french citizenship is just questionable.  his mom's french, so what?  it's an identity thing.  he hasnt used the passport, voted in the elections, or any of that. 

and damian penny counters this dion quote

"There is nothing wrong with multiple identities. The hearts of people are big enough to accept different identities. Canadian citizenship will give me my rights. Identity is the way I feel about the country."

with this, something the media apparently shouldnt let him off the hook for:

No talk of loyalty or obligation, not talk of duties.

do actions speak louder than words, or what?  the guy served in your little legislature as a cabinet minister for years.  he didnt even vote in a french election.   

people, get over it.   this is beyond stupid.

new zealand students may text-speak on exams

WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) -- New Zealand's high school students will be able to use "text-speak" -- the mobile phone text message language beloved of teenagers -- in national exams this year, officials said.

this is fucked up beyond belief.  i write this blog and my personal email in a brand of punctuation-free lowercase netspeak, but ive never done so in any academic or professional communication.

wtf nz ur on crak!!!1!! LoL! idk y u wud let pplz wryt lyk dat!  n8iv spkrs shud wryt gud 3ngl1sh! plz dun d0 dis.

and now, one of my favourite netspeak classics:

Romeo and  Juliet - Text Messaging Version

Act 1

Login: Romeo : R u awake? Want 2 chat?
Juliet: O Rom. Where4 art thou?

rona ambrose hair drama

the deuce with all these wannabe feminists for rushing to defend rona ambrose from crrrazy environmentalists mocking her hair.  yet again, the right of a girl to dress up and play gender and be pretty is among the most strongly defended rights extended to womankind.   fuck that.

now, let us speak frankly of her hair.   fuck her hair.   dramatic flowing locks 24/7?  come on, does every occasion call for the blatant 'look at me, im young and have a lot of hair' do?   would it kill her to go out with a ponytail or chignon or braid?  im not the only one convinced it is probably covering a neck tattoo.  id feel bad if i was sitting here making fun of her and it was covering up some scar that she was self-conscious about.  but whatever. 

playfully mocking her hair, which she has consciously made into a trademark by wearing it the same fucking way every day she has been on camera, is not a serious affront to the participation of women in politics.   give me a break.  men, such as pierre pettigrew, survived many a barb in reference to his signature locks.   how significant is grooming in relation to political performance?  not at all, unless it cuts into the budget.   if youre going to be on camera every day, can people playfully mock your appearance?  its bitchy, but such is public life.

Linda Trimble, chairperson of the University of Alberta's political science department, said the environmental groups are giving ammunition to their opponents, who now have an excuse not to take their comments seriously.

"It's churlish, sexist, and gratuitous,'' said Trimble. "It's sending the message that you can't be a woman and a politician, that they are somehow mutually exclusive options which is of course, ridiculous.''

partisan hackery at its finest, folks.  uh, yeah its mean.  its a literary device called caricature, which was not executed that brutally.  please visit your colleagues in the english department.

yeah, dont take greenpeace or civil society (and why the fuck are reports saying 'environmental groups' rather than nailing a specific environmental group responsible for the offending publication) seriously because they dissed poor rona's hair and pushed female participation in politics back a hundred years because the real thing holding us back is the refusal of the patriarchy to defend our most-serious right to have big, sexy hair.

having a stupid, ever-present hairdo is rona's right, but being mocked for it is a privilege of public office.   we shouldnt judge women on their bimbo hairdo, and ive had many a woman prove me wrong in this department.   

that being said, fuck you if you are rushing to defend a young womans right to show off her mane and calling it feminism.   back in the day, feminism was about pushing for rights, being active in the political sphere, and helping your fellow woman.  now, its all about irony, college students yapping about gender performance, and average women picking the right to wear a corset under a business suit without being judged on the fact your boobs are hanging out as their marquee issue.

women are free to be feminine, but this is not the right we should really focus on.  are women avoiding politics because all women in politics have to be butch, or are there other economic and social considerations?

men who have had sex with men banned from donating to cbs, gay virgins and closet cases a-ok!

i took this from this website - its author was on a local news channel this morning.

Canadian Blood Services explicitly states: "all men who have had sex with another man, even once, since 1977 are indefinitely deferred [from donating blood]."  The organization's rationale for adopting this policy is allegedly based on information that suggests a higher risk of HIV/AIDS infection among men who have sex with men (MSM) compared to other groups. Blood Services' practice of rejecting MSM blood donors is being challenged for three reasons:    

* It is illegal under Section 5(a) of the Canadian Human Rights Act.    
* Assessing the overall proportion of HIV/AIDS infection among MSM is impossible, since the exact population of this group in Canada remains unknown.    
* Given that 54.3% of HIV positive tests in 2004 were attributed to causes other than MSM activity, all Canadian blood donors should be equally subject to rigorous testing and screening.

For more information, please read Hossein Kia's open letter to Canadian Blood Services CEO Dr. Graham Sher, which explains each of these points more specifically.  The news release also provides additional information.

my take?  test the blood for freakin aids!  thats how you tell if blood has aids.  hot and steamy unprotected gay sex since 1977 may be one of a few risk factors but asking people if theyve had gay sex as a means to counter this risk is pretty dang unscientific and unreliable.

petition found here

peter mackay is not hot (from the department of how many times do i have to say this shit)

peter and condi, sitting in a tree, etc.  cute.  lets proceed to what is not cute, and thats peter mackay.  i feel like im taking crazy pills because hes so admired as "the hot mp" when hes actually quite ugly, even by 'lol hes 40' standards.

ok. 

pros:  decent build, nice shoulders
cons:  beady eyes = very no.  big chin.  non-descript wasp face not given character by odd-looking long nose.  am i the only person who notices how beady those eyes are?  please.  he looks like a frat boy, except at least they tend to have innocent wide doe eyes exploding with enthusiasm every time kegs and tits are mentioned, and not the beady eyes featured on mr mackay.

anyone can go to a gym and get buff and i have great respect and admiration for the buff as the muscles are sexy, as is the devotion.  he is buff, but that does not make him hot.

PETER MACKAY IS A BUTTERFACE, PEOPLE.  not a hot guy.  a butterface.

have i seen mr. mackay in person?  bitch, please.  of course i have.  it's not like seeing bill clinton in person - somehow he radiates man-essence and you are compelled to find him attractive.  peter mackay is boringly polite and likes to do cutesy nonsense like wink at women, which is bullshit i just dont appreciate.  call me a feminazi but i feel like saying "no thanks, i prefer ego boosts from people who arent you at places that arent a workplace" every time i get that shit from a dude.

"racially divided fisheries" is a bullshit misnomer.

in his bid to appeal to the whiteman like a modern-day brown vs the board of education, harper announces he is going to end "racially divided fisheries."

canada, an institution which was built from the structures of pre-confederation british and french governance, never properly addressed the issue of aboriginal title (specifically in reference to BC).  this is why we have supreme court decisions like this, and treaties like nisga'a (and soon tsawassen).  canada's creation was racially segregated as mostly white settlers called the shots. 

it is a misnomer because "racially divided" tries to evoke the idea of evil segregation.  this segregation is more of a contractual obligation to honour aboriginal title than blantant racism.

and im sure its no effing coincidence that phil eidsvik, the chief activist lobbying for this decision, ran unsuccessfully in surrey last election.  plus ca change, bitches.

blame multiculturalism and trudeau and the damn ukranians AND FUCK YOU FOR NOT LETTING ME ENTER THAT ESSAY CONTEST!! I AM SO OPPRESSED!!!!

the robert fulford opinion thing in the national post from monday june 12 was full of fun.  did you read it? 

this column is quite ignatieffian as it a) disses ukranian nationalism and b) attempts to discredit an institution simply by labelling it a sacred cow even though its a totally critiqueable institution and canadians ought to be capable of entertaining a serious debate on the matter.  this hommage to the great american liberal leadership contender is particularly evident in the 8th paragraph of the piece, where fulford blames ukranians for impregnating canada with the sacred cow of multiculturalism when they petitioned alberta for some third language status. 

laughably, fulford cites a 1994 essay contest open to first nations and people of colour as an example of the oppressive power (he calls it "the ugly side") of multicultural policy.  yeah, lets lump this writers' union essay contest (that nobody could give one iota of a fraction of a tiny little piece of shit about) in with possibly the some of the most shocking canadian news we have had in a while.

i dont think ethnic neighbourhoods (uh, i mean, balkanized terror-breeding ghettos from hell) are the sum total of what multiculturalism has meant in canada.  ethnic neighbourhoods existed well before the charter.  it wasnt these guys' neighbours who were encouraging them to blow you up and behead harper.  they were reading and corresponding with people in other countries (and not necessarily their countries of origin) who shared their extremist goals.  id think theyd do it whether their neighbours were homies from the old country or some white dude named doug.

i dont think one needs to seek out a hyphenated canadian to find a young person who "neither understood nor respected the institutions that had made canada a desirable immigrant destination" ... muslim-canadians do not have a monopoly on this whole 'alienated to the point of criminal intent' thing.  yes, violent islamic extremism is experiencing more popularity than the flq these days, but theyre not the first people to come up with this sort of thing.

really, this issue is less about multiculturalism (and policy on multiculturalism) and more about religious extremism, a fact fulford only discloses at the end of his rant.   people dont start building bombs over the charter of rights and freedoms.  im pretty sure this one is going to have something to do with individuals reading stuff they got from all over the world that talks about revenge and reckoning and provides straightforward answers and solutions to global problems (that usually involve some measure of theocratic thought control and violence, but hey).  im no fan of this sort of thing either, mr fulford.

we do demand conformity from our immigrants in that we expect them to follow the laws and live within  restrictions and learn an official language or two before they enter the workplace. 

happy june 2nd, wops.

this is probably the greatest two days in the history of north burnaby as the italian republic's national holiday (we are a bunch of fascists) falls the day before hats off to burnaby day, which is the annual neighbourhood merchants street fair (you miss the guest appearances by svend robinson). italians know how to have a fucking referendum.  this is the ballot.  it has two words and two pictures. 

do want to vote for cross of savoy or fascist insignia?