O Canada Part II

Is there anything Canadians love more than comparing ourselves to Americans?
(Answer=no)

For Canada Day, Macleans magazine published an article called How Canada stole the American Dream (love the name, right?) in which they compiled some stats comparing Canadians to Americans--and we pretty much kicked their asses.

Snippet that sums it up well:

After digging through the data, here's what we found: the staid, underpaid Canadian is dead. Believe it or not, we now have more wealth than Americans, even though we work shorter hours. We drink more often, but we live longer and have fewer diseases. We have more sex, more sex partners and we're more adventurous in bed, but we have fewer teen pregnancies and fewer sexually transmitted diseases. We spend more time with family and friends, and more time exploring the world. Even in crime we come out ahead: we're just as prone to break the law, but when we do it, we don't get shot. Most of the time, we don't even go to jail.

Completely worth your time to read the whole article, I promise.

In other Canada-is-#1 news, the Order of Canada is going to be awarded to Dr. Henry Morgentaler. If you're not in the know, Dr. Morentaler used to perform safe abortions for women before it was fully legal in Canada. It's due to his legal battle over this that the Supreme Court of Canada decided that the laws restricting abortion were a violation of a woman's right to her own body.

Yea, some religious groups are making a fuss over giving him the award, but I don't think they'll stop him from getting it.

And since we love comparing ourselves to the US, just think about how here we're awarding someone the highest honour in the country for securing abortion access for women, while in the US presidential nominee John McCain wants to overturn Roe vs. Wade, the motion that gave abortion access to American women.

Happy Canada Day. Hug a maple tree.

Quickie: O Canada

I'm not your friend, guy!

With Canada Day coming up, CityNews posted an article about a ceremony for new citizens, and added a link to a practice citizenship test--reminding those who were born here that we may not actually be able to pass it.

Link to the practice test
Give it a try

I took a 20 question one and got everything right. Guess I deserve my birth certificate!

I Do(n't)

From my new morning obsession, Indexed

I read this article on the origins of wedding traditions on Feministing.com the other day, and CNN picked it up today.

I'm not crazy about the concept of marriage for more than a few reasons, but these just take the (wedding) cake.

And yea, some may call these harmless nowadays, merely cute, symbolic traditions devoid of the stuff revealed in the article. But I don't think I'd be cool with having my "special day" seeped in this bull. Just sayin'!

Highlights from the article:

Talk about your runaway brides -- the original duty of a "Best Man" was to serve as armed backup for the groom in case he had to resort to kidnapping his intended bride away from disapproving parents. The "best" part of that title refers to his skill with a sword, should the need arise.

And:

It used to be that after the bride and groom said, "I do," they were to go immediately into a nearby room and consummate the marriage. Obviously, to really make it official, there would need to be witnesses, which basically led to hordes of wedding guests crowding around the bed, pushing and shoving to get a good view and hopefully to get their hands on a lucky piece of the bride's dress as it was ripped from her body (...) and it was decided that for modesty's sake the bride could toss her bouquet as a diversion as she made her getaway and the groom could simply remove an item of the bride's undergarments and then toss it back outside to the waiting throngs to prove that he was about to, uh, seal the deal.

Classy!

MuchMusic Nostalgia

I read in the paper the other day that Ed The Sock's late night CityTV show is being canceled.

I never really watched it, but the article did remind me of how much MuchMusic has changed, and how much I miss having Ed on there.

Seems to me that MuchMusic used have a much more indie vibe, with tacky, endearing graphics and quirky hosts.

Remember the annual Tree Toss special?

Remember the VJs Brad, Sook-Yin, Rainbow and Bill? And more recently George and Rick?

And Fromage! Video On Trial is sticking to the same theme, but lacks Ed's biting hilarity.

It also seems like they used to do more to promote Canadian bands.

Maybe I'm just getting old and cranky.

In any case, here's some MuchMusic nostalgia clips:
The Vines on Fromage:


They used to have Matt Good (<3)


Tree Toss compilation:


Sigh, eh?

PS: New blog colours! Woohoo.

Why I don't like the Toronto Sun

I can get past the shoddy coverage of global events, the right-leaning bullshit and the screaming headlines due to The Sun's "tabloid" label.

But what I think makes The Sun lose the most credibility and respect is their insistence of keeping up the SUNshine Girl feature.

The issue here for me isn't that they have flesh-baring ladies in The Sun to begin with. I have no qualms (theoretically) with women having racy photos of themselves taken for publication. How they have a place in a newspaper I don't know, but I believe people are free to express their sexuality as they like.

The problem I have is the darling captions attached to their pictures.

For example,

"SUNshine Girl Elena is a brown-eyed beauty who hopes to become a teacher. If she succeeds, expect more dads to attend parent/teacher interview night. In her spare time she enjoys dancing and singing."

"SUNshine Girl Natasha is 18 years old. She hopes to skydive and own a motorcycle before she turns 25. Our girl is planning to become a sex therapist. Sounds good -- man walks into office, takes one look at Natasha and is cured."
(emphasis mine)

Both these women's career aspirations were instantly belittled by the implication that all they will stand to do is further titillate men instead of, ya know, being successful or hard-working.

Another jewel:

"SUNshine Girl Claudia likes working out, dancing and wearing pink nighties. Her goal is to be happy, successful and famous. Let's hope she's happy because you can't get much more successful and famous than being our SUNshine Girl."

Now I get that these are supposed to be tongue-in-cheek (right?), but in a culture that routinely and relentlessly tells women that they're only value is their publicly owned body, I don't see how The Sun's SUNshine girl feature is in any way harmless.

As a side, on Monday they featured twins. Some of the online photos show them with their legs over the other's and whatnot. How is implied incest sexy?

Summer Reading List!

Yea, I bought them all up front because a) I have a happy pile of books screaming "read me!" b) I enjoy shopping a little too much and c) I'm a nerd :(

Now that school is out I can read freely again without the guilt of knowing I'm ignoring my course books. So in no particular order other than this is how I stacked them:

Possible Side Effects by Augusten Burroughs
I didn't plan on this one. While buying I'm With the Band, I saw this sitting on the shelf with a 20% off sticker. I really liked Running With Scissors, and I really like sales. This book is a series of stories from Burroughs' life. I've read a few so far. His neurotic tenancies are rather endearing.

Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
I watched the film adaptation and wanted to make sure Kubrick didn't fuck with it like he did A Clockwork Orange.

I'm With the Band by Pamela Des Barres
Des Barres was a supposedly infamous groupie in the 60s/70s. I'm about 3/4 in and so far she's screwed around with Jimmy Page and Mick Jagger and a handful of others. I kept hearing promises that the book would be some big feministy, freed female sexuality saga, but I've been pretty let down so far. All I've gotten out of it is a girl who gets hung up on and ultimately passed around by rock stars. We'll see if my mind changes.

In Cold Blood by Truman Capote
Been meaning to read this since I saw the movie Capote on the movie channel ages ago. Also, I seem to have this crush on the 60s.

The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides
I read this one first, and it's really fairly amazing. If you liked the movie, you'll love the book. The prosy style of writing is addicting to read. Overall just soooo goooooood.

Animal Farm by George Orwell
I've been meaning to read this ever since my fave redhead did an essay about it way back when.

The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
This is lame, but I was cleaning my book shelves and found it. Don't ask me!

The Rolling Stone Illustrated History of Rock & Roll
I like music? I ordered this online and the picture made it look novel-sized. But no, I get it and its this huge thing with unnecessarily large text. And content wise, it hasn't been updated since 1992 and seriously does not spend enough time on 80s post-punk stuff. Otherwise I'm pretty excited to read it!

What are you reading this summer?

NOW PRESENTING...

...the problem with the representation of female sexuality in our culture summed up in a single image:
Take a bow, ass-hugging abstinence pants!

York University Anti-Choice Funding Cut

York U to ban funding for anti-abortion groups

(follow the link to the article in The Star)

Abortion related groups on campus have popped up in Ryerson's student newspaper, The Eyeopener, a few times in the last year. And every time I'm conflicted. Now York U has formally moved to cut funding from anti-choice groups.

And yea, I like using the term "anti-choice." While both "pro-life" and "pro-choice" are loaded and misleading terms, I find the heart of the issue is the choices of the woman, not the "life" of the fertilized egg.

...thats a debate for another post that I frankly don't have the will to make.

The issue of this post is the funding cut.

On the one hand, being pro-choice, this news makes me happy. I find many anti-choice groups are chock full of misinformation and oppression, to put it lightly.

But on the other hand, isn't this a censorship issue? The ruling takes a viewpoint and tells it to shut up. In most cases, I'd say that is the wrong thing to do.

But.

In an Eyeopener article about the same issue at another university, a member of the Canadian Federation of Students said this:

“You wouldn’t take public money to put in an organization that moves to take away people’s rights, you wouldn’t fund the KKK,” said Shelley Melanson, Women’s Representative on the National Executive of the CFS. “Not with student space. Not with student resources.”

And there it is. The reason why censorship isn't always the correct argument.

To give some perspective, would any university dare fund a group that exists for the sole purpose of opposing the right to same-sex marriage?

What about a group opposing a woman's right to vote?

Well, no, of course not. Because we seem to be at a place where bold acts of homophobia and misogyny are condemned (at least the obvious ones, once again thats a whole other post).

Abortion rights are too often not seen as a women's right issue, and more of a murdering, bloody, moral fortitude issue. Seeing York's ban as a censorship issue just shows that we have not allowed abortion rights to hit the mainstream in the same way women's suffrage and anti-homophobia has.

It's going to take more steps like York's banning to normalize a woman's right to her own body, so bring 'em on.