No new post from me, because what I really desire y'all to read today is Erin's well-nigh recent essay over at CWILA on healthy communities and mentorship for women. Erin is also looking for contributions to a crowdsourced guide for effective and responsible mentorship. Here's a flake of what she has to say:

Hither's the thing: for the most part, we—and here, I mean people working in diverse facets of the academic world and the literary economic system—don't know how to mentor women. Or, rather, nearly of us don't. We need improve and more than consistent strategies to mentor women towards the kinds of force they demand in these spheres. If we did collectively know how to mentor, then as a loose-knit community we would see less perpetual damage wrought by asymmetrical ability relations, past misogyny, past the seeming endlessness of rape culture. If we knew how to mentor women we would take a unlike understanding of the valences of access or marginalization inherent in that little pronoun "we."

For the full mail, head over to CWILA.

Imagine this: you're going out for drinks with fairly new work colleagues to bid another piece of work colleague farewell, every bit they* are moving on. Lots of the people present have non met each other before, because some of the people nowadays in that location have been in that work identify for long, while others are quite new. And then, y'all're walking into the pub accompanied by men and women. So far, and so proficient. When y'all reach the table, however, information technology'southward all men, some of whom you've never met, and who become upward to innovate themselves and shake hands with… the other men in your group *just*, while ignoring you, and the other women. All this among the usual banter, posturing, and performance of masculinity of the most patriarchal kind.

Welcome to the club. Non.

Ever since Hook and Middle has started, I take been a fan of reading the positive stories, the wins, the triumphs, etc. My thinking was we all know nosotros deal with sexism and other kinds of discrimination every single twenty-four hours, and so permit'south rally effectually the good stuff, to remind ourselves that we can move in better directions. I however am.

However, since 2010, I've gotten older and more contemptuous, and to tell you the truth, I take lost patience with this type of effrontery. I desire to pull an SNL-manner "Really!?!" whenever I meet with this level of blatant erasure of whatever gender that is not aggressively in-your-face up, homosocial-fashion masculinity.

My jaw dropped on that occasion, and I could not selection it upwardly off the floor during the entire event. I had problem speaking, and y'all already know I'chiliad a talker! My jaw still drops every single time one of my friends tells me about yet some other encounter with sexism of the n th degree, because you lot know what the cherry on top of this BS-filled cake is? We're talking about academia. Where we all think ourselves high and mighty and feminist and all, merely when it comes downwards to information technology, we pat immature women on the head, and declare them "Mannerly! Like Heidi" or nosotros withdraw job offers when they effort to negotiate a living wage and motherhood get out!

And so, let'southward have an Betrayal Sexism Fest, Academic Style, and denounce information technology right here and now. If yous feel like keeping information technology anonymous, send information technology my way at margrit at ualberta dot ca, and I'll post it in the comments. Otherwise tell u.s. what happened to you or your friend or "your friend," and allow'due south betrayal this life in sexism.

*equally much as I loathe grammatical disagreement in number when information technology comes to personal pronouns, I call up that'south the way English is going (or has already gone). On the brilliant side, it does enable gender-neutral expression.

Take you seen the piece by Katrina Gulliver, on how she doesn't like students calling her past her get-go name? She'south funny and cocky-deprecating, writing like she's internalized the critical voice that will indeed before long enough tell her to lighten upwards, already. Gulliver's have on the first name issue is most how she has to piece of work hard to become respect in the classroom. Intriguingly, she calls out her white male person colleagues for trying to exist cool and wearing really casual clothing and inviting students to call them by their first names. She says these guys might be deflating a tiny bit of their own authority, but annihilate hers.

Volition Miller wrote an incredibly smug response, that mocks Gulliver in taking the very structure of her opening to turn it back on her, disavowing her claims: "If what students call me determines whether I am respected or not, I'k not deserving to exist in a classroom." Miller, unsurprisingly, seems completely at ease in his own prose, without the faintest whiff of self-reflexivity jarring his lightly sarcastic and righteous tone.

Ugh. This is making me tired. This is a feminist blog and yous know our politics so I'll just lay it out: this is the paradigm of clueless (in this case white, male) privilege. Information technology's snotty, and silencing, and smug, and denies Gulliver's experience. Volition Miller: stahhhhhhp.

I don't desire to argue this. I want to start a grounded conversation about the how'due south and why's of managing ane's authority in teaching. Erin wrote about the first name outcome. I did, too, in a post about email. And we've had a post near the politics of eyewear. And one on how people treat me nicer when I look pretty than when I don't. Melissa has written about haircuts so have I. And boots! All of these produced great, useful discussions: what's corking is hearing nearly other people'southward experiences and strategies even if and especially when they differ from my ain. Read the comments: they're thoughtful and engaging and crawly!

I want to talk near my clothing choices and inquire yous to share yours, if y'all'd like.

My current positionality is this: mid-career tenured bookish, coming into an administrative post in July, 41 and mostly wait it, white, cis-gendered, non visibly disabled, normative height / weight range, conventionally pretty. Privileged also in the sense that I'm pretty fluent in the rhetoric of clothing, and practiced at constructing (and having access to the tools to construct) grammatically correct utterances in this linguistic communication.

Me, I'1000 all about blazers lately. Nothing connotes immediate authorisation like a blazer. Mine all characteristic rolled up sleeves, and so information technology's more manner-forward than broker-bland, but there's something very comforting to me about the piece of work jacket. I'll wear it over a apparel, or with a skirt, or wearing apparel pants. I can even wear my honey black yoga jeans and the jacket makes information technology work advisable. I accept blazers (with suits and not) in: rust/black herringbone wool, gray wool, grey cotton wool, black wool, navy wool, chartreuse cotton fiber, blue suede (yes!). Most were on sale, some were full cost, two were from consignment shops, but they read "expensive" and "tasteful." I oft have it off to teach, simply put it back on for meetings of all sorts. I continue ane in my office, in case I happen to be without, and I need one.

Sometimes I'm in situations where I'm the merely person nether 45, and the only adult female who's not an adminstrative assistant to some older man. Sometimes I'm pedagogy 17 twelvemonth old. Sometimes I'm on TV. Blazer on / blazer off, similar glasses / contacts are choices I can make fairly easily that allow me to manipulate others' perceptions of me, and thus, manage my interaction with them, in some small mode. Conduct in mind that I take dramatically 2-toned hair, and that I clothing fashion-forward nailpolish (today nine fingers are mint dark-green and one is sunshine yellow). The blazer is part of the whole package.

How nearly you? Perchance you are like Steve Jobs and hate to think about clothes and have a functional uniform. Maybe you lot are junior and trying to stay fashionable and a very express upkeep. Mayhap you are a little older and thinking about appropriateness. Or something else. Delight share!

Every bit you've probably heard, in that location are nonetheless professors out there who say things like this:

"I don't love women writers plenty to teach them. That's all I'thousand saying. What I teach are guys. If you want women writers, you get down the hall." (David Gilmour)

"I got this chore six or seven years ago, normally the University of Toronto doesn't allow people to become professors without a doctorate. You take to have a doctorate to teach here, but they asked if I would teach a course, and I said I would. I'm a natural teacher, I was trained in television set for many years. I know how to talk to a camera, therefore I know how to talk to a room of students." (David Gilmour)

"But I tin can only teach stuff I love. I tin can't teach stuff that I don't, and I oasis't encountered any Canadian writers nonetheless that I love plenty to teach.I'm not interested in teaching books by women. Virginia Woolf is the only writer that interests me as a woman writer, so I do teach 1 of her short stories. Only over again, when I was given this job I said I would but teach the people that I truly, truly love. Unfortunately, none of those happen to be Chinese, or women." (David Gilmour)

And and so blame any law-breaking on misinterpretation, or bad intent, or existence distracted by a Frenchman:

"And this is a young woman who kind of wanted to brand a little name for herself, or something…" (David Gilmour)

"I'k distressing for pain your sensibilities…" (David Gilmour)

"Quite frankly, I was speaking to a Frenchman, so I was more concerned with my French than I was with what I was maxim to this immature woman. Just I call back anybody who teaches Truman Capote cannot be attacked for existence an anti-anything." (David Gilmour)

But provide opportunities for smart and open up-minded critics to say things similar this:

"I've got a cartel for you, David Gilmour. I cartel you – I fucking dare you – to spend six months reading nothing but writers who aren't white cis males. Read female writers. Read Chinese writers. Read queer and trans and disabled writers. Read something that's difficult for you lot to love, then have a deep breath and try harder to love information technology. Immerse yourself in worlds and thoughts and perspectives that are incredibly different from your ain. Find a book that can change you and and so let yourself be changed." (Anne Thériault)

"I at present believe that professors have an ethical responsibility to show their students the world, every bit best they can. I'm non calling for quotas, and I'm not saying bad books should be taught through affirmative activity. I am calling for those in positions to influence the agreement and discussion of literature to think bigger and better, to see farther and wider. To, quite simply, do amend. Nosotros'll all benefit." (Jared Bland)

"Let'south implore all those 'daughter' students who have had the misfortune to enrol in Gilmour's class to go on walkin' "down the hall." That's where they'll find the trained underemployed Ph.Ds who know how to teach a diversity of great books, fifty-fifty if they don't speak to their own narrow center-aged guy perspective." (Cheryl Cowdy)

"'And I said, "No, I tend to teach people whose lives are a lot similar my own, because that's what I understand best, and that's what I teach all-time.' Oh, oh, simply he feels qualified to teach Tolstoy and Chekhov? He probably has a Russian soul, that 1. … Completely unable to reflect on what he is really saying. Translation: I feel that a nineteenth-century Russian male serf-owner is more similar me than a North American woman who is my contemporary. What a prince. Not a sexist os in his body indeed." ( Наталия Хоменко)

And telephone call attention to the ongoing necessity of organizations like this, and blogs like ours:

"Every time Gilmour opens his oral cavity, you lot've got a reason to support CWILA's work for gender and racial equality in Canadian literature." (CWILA)

In the stop:

That in that location are still university syllabuses that include only straight, cissexual, white, able-bodied, neurotypical men;

That there are universities who hire the people who blueprint those syllabuses and teach those courses over those who are open-minded, inclusive, and skilled as both readers and teachers;

That existence offended by coincidental and blatant sexism and racism nonetheless invites accusations of oversensitivity and overreaction;

That men are ever men simply women are frequently "girls";

That students are yet walking out of some university classrooms with the impression that women, non-Caucasian people, transgender people, queer people, differently-abled people, neuroatypical people, Canadians, are 3rd-rate writers and unworthy of our attention and of having the states experience their perspective for as long as the story lasts (and hopefully long after);

That's why Claw & Eye exists. And so thank you to David Gilmour for demonstrating how vital our project actually, and still, is. And for showing just how big the community of pro-diversity, good humoured, literature-loving, vivid, and educatee-centric people actually is. Information technology wasn't what he intended, but equally he claims not to accept intended much of what he said in his original interview, information technology seems apropos.

Note: "Don't read the comments" doesn't apply here–the comments on both of Gilmour's articles, the transcript of the interview, Banal's article, and Theriault's mail service are incisive, supportive, and heartening. And for a special treat, check out The Toast'southward " The Life of Virginia Woolf, Beloved Chinese Novelist, Equally Told By David Gilmour." And, of course, there'south Twitter.

Past at present, it seems that everyone has heard almost the almost-laughably sexist New York Times obituary of aeronautical scientist Yvonne Brill. Y'all know, the one that describes her beef stroganoff, her sacrifices for her husband's career, and her childcare arrangements earlier information technology notes that "in the early 1970s [she] invented a propulsion organisation to help go on communications satellites from slipping out of their orbits." Douglas Martin, the commodity'due south author, notes that "the Academy of Manitoba in Canada refused to let her major in engineering science because there were no accommodations for women at an outdoor technology camp, which students were required to attend," only instead of critiquing the gender bias that prevented Brill from becoming an engineer, uses this circumstance every bit evidence of her resiliency. Martin, and the newspaper, have been roundly criticized for the article'due south sexism, and yet information technology has been but slightly edited since.

Critiques of Brill's obituary and mentions of the Finkbeiner Exam, designed to avert gender profiles of female scientists, take started to go paw in hand. To pass the Finkbeiner Exam and stand up as a contour of a scientist, and non a contour of a woman scientist, the article cannot mention:

  1. The fact that she'southward a adult female
  2. Her husband'due south job
  3. Her kid-care arrangements
  4. How she nurtures her underlings
  5. How she was taken aback by the competitiveness in her field
  6. How she'due south such a part model for other women
  7. How she'due south the "first woman to…

While the test was designed to assess writing about female scientists, information technology works just as well for writing almost professional women in whatever field, particularly in those where men outnumber women and women are often held upwards as trailblazers for their gender. My dissertation piece of work is currently most Canadian poet and academic Jay Macpherson, who died in March 2012. As Cameron Anstee notes, her death was almost entirely ignored by the Canadian literary community, except by people who knew her. When a long and praise-filled obituary appeared in The Earth and Mail, albeit about six months after Macpherson'southward death, I was initially pleased that a major publication had even remembered her. Never listen that it seemingly should have been a given, because that she was for many years the youngest Governor General's Award winner for poetry and one of the few Canadian recipients of the prestigious Poesy [Chicago] Levinson Prize. (I later on learned that Margaret Atwood, 1 of Macpherson's closest and longest friends, convinced the newspaper to run the obituary). But my pleasance largely disappeared when I decided to apply the Finkbeiner Test.

The title of Sandra Martin's slice was the offset red flag: "The nurturing nature of Jay Macpherson." No mention of her brilliant poetic mind, her many awards, or Martin'south ain newspaper'due south statement, back in 1957, that Macpherson was Canada's "finest young poet." Indeed, no mention of the fact that Macpherson was a poet at all. Despite Macpherson'due south selection to remain single and childless, Martin still manages to construct an image of her equally maternal which trumps her professional identity, suggesting that her poetic output was small because "she was a ministering angel to waifs and strays, frequently to the detriment of her own work and health." Point 4. on the Finkbeiner Test: fail. Points 1 and vii are spectacular fails in the first paragraph: "After winning the Governor-General'southward Literary honor for The Boatman in 1957, Jay Macpherson was asked to give a talk about Canadian poetry at Hart Firm at the Academy of Toronto. The invitation, which marked the first time the all-male Hart Firm student matrimony had invited a woman to address its members, provoked such a fuss that women were barred from attention Macpherson'south talk." And while Macpherson didn't take a married man to mention, Martin can't help merely credit Macpherson's success equally "a collegial and difficult-working member of the Canadian poetic community" to her prominent male mentors: "Information technology didn't hurt that as a very immature poet, she had already attracted the attending of 3 central mentors and literary scholars: George Johnston, Northrop Frye and Robert Graves." Let'due south consider that a neglect on Point 2. Even Macpherson'due south work equally the founder and sole editor of Emblem Books, which published collections past major Canadian poets including Dorothy Livesay and Al Purdy that Anstee argues are "surely among the near cute produced in Canada in the 20th century," is construed as an human activity of charity rather than of literary labour: "Macpherson put her meagre financial resources into publishing other poets." I could continue, just I won't. [Note 1]

In contrast, The Globe and Mail just published the obituary of Milton Wilson, who was one of Macpherson's kickoff publishers and reviewers, besides as one of her doctoral supervisors. Different the title of Macpherson'due south obituary, Wilson'south foregrounds his professional achievement: "Romantic poetry expert Milton Wilson 'a truly civilized human.'" The early paragraphs focus not on his gender, every bit they exercise in Macpherson'due south, just on his accomplishments; his family life doesn't come up in until well toward the end, and his wife is described only equally "attractive." But what bothers me virtually is that one of the first things he is praised for is his non-sexist hiring practices: "He hired women at a time when that was a rarity. Jill Levenson, who recently retired as an English prof at Trinity, remembers her chore interview in 1967 at which Prof. Wilson asked only gender-bullheaded questions about her professional person qualifications and nothing virtually her personal life." I find this paragraph problematic for a few reasons. Firstly, I object to the way the writer, Judy Stoffman, uses this instance of non-sexism to whitewash the blatant gender-bias he displays elsewhere; this is a snippet of his review of Macpherson'south The Boatman, which was considered by many the signal drove of the 1950s in Canada: "Her palace of art is distinctly feminine, … her apocalyptic imagery, pervasive as it is, remains gratuitous and decorative, [and] her Atlantis is a pink cloud, not a prophecy." Secondly, I can't imagine that a female professor would ever be praised for request nothing about a candidate'south personal life. Thirdly, there'southward the fact that a lack of sexism should be a baseline expectation of decent human behaviour, and therefore not worthy of praise, whether information technology'southward 1967 or 2007. [Note two] Equally Kelly Williams Chocolate-brown argues on her cult blog Adulting: How to Become a Grown-upwardly in 486 Easy(ish) Steps:

Footstep 277: Do not expect kudos for beingness decent

Permit's say you are a not-racist, thoughtful-to-LGBTQA folks, non-sexist, bill-paying-on-time, recycling-sorting, never-kicks-puppies kind of person: To y'all I say, and mean it, congratulations. That is awesome. Take a 2d and feel prissy about yourself. All done? Good. Considering those are not things that make you worthy of praise. That shit is standard. Do not look others to pat you on the dorsum for a lack of assholishness. Pat yourself, and others, on the dorsum when it is merited.

If there'southward to be a test for profiles virtually men like the Finkbeiner Test, information technology needs to comprise the rule that information technology must not include "How he didn't discriminate against people with less power and social currency than himself." As Brown says, "That shit is standard."

I'm angry a lot about the country of CanLit, and the land of writing in general. At that place's lots to become mad about: Brill'due south obituary, Deborah Copaken Kogan's stunning account of the sexism she's faced as an author and war-photographer, the disparity between what nosotros say when we talk about dead Canadian writers if they're male person or if they're female person. But there's some to get excited about too: despite the fact that I tin predict with well-nigh 100 per cent certainty that CWILA's national survey of book reviews–now underway, if y'all want to volunteer–will again reveal that women are seriously underrepresented as both reviewers and the reviewed, at to the lowest degree someone'southward doing the counting. Hopefully the numbers volition expect amend than last year:

And at least Brill'south obituary now lists "rocket scientist" before "beef stroganoff."

What gets you lot mad nigh bug of gender in CanLit, or in the arts more than generally? What gives you hope?

***
Note ane: Sandra Martin's piece is otherwise well-written, accurate, and positive; she'due south likewise been generous with her time and knowledge in helping me with my ain work, for which I'thou grateful. I as well don't mean to suggest that her gender-bias is intentional; these sorts of gender profiles are far from rare in the genre, and nosotros demand things like the Finkbeiner examination to alert united states to our own bullheaded spots equally readers and writers.

Notation 2: It pains me to annotation that when I raised my issues with a male colleague, I received a brisk dismissal; he did, however, later concede that he understood my indicate. I read his gaslighting, which I'yard sure was unintentional, as a symptom of the normalcy of casual gender-bias.

I was just speaking with a colleague earlier today about how there are things that I dearest nearly Edmonton and things that I hate about Edmonton. And this applies across the board – whether it has to practice with Alberta politics, or local politics; or the character of the urban center itself; or the weather condition – yous name it.

Feminist politics in the city, for instance, I've written virtually here before. Merely they go beyond the public library and the naming of city parks. Edmonton's anti-rape campaign has been widely discussed online every bit a progressive attempt to target rapists and modify their behaviour rather than targeting the victims of sexual assault. Nevertheless, this campaign exists in the aforementioned urban center where a teenager is sexually assaulted, and rather than getting support and assistance, is sent to the overcrowded Remand Centre for the weekend. Although she finally did get to a hospital and become some back up, she also concluded that she didn't desire to printing charges because "How am I going to prove it, with the cops already mad at me, the way they are?" If you follow the link, you'll see it's a complicated story, but it nevertheless speaks to a very problematic culture around women and sexual assault – one that, at the very least, demands progressive campaigns like that noted above.

But my particular example for today is less bloodcurdling and tragic, merely nevertheless office of Edmonton'south anti-adult female urban landscape. For several months now, on Gateway Boulevard (the primary elevate in the centre of the urban center when you arrive from the south), there'due south been a large billboard using a naked woman in a chef'southward hat to annunciate Halford's Hide and Leather company, which appears to offer for sale a range of butcher supplies, leather, fur and craft supplies, and "beast damage command" products.

This is but one of countless billboards with partially clothed (if the chapeau counts) women used to advertise a local concern. Most annunciate bars or restaurants. And while I don't know how a partially clothed woman is essential to welcome you lot to "cowboy land" (not to mention that Edmonton is hardly cowboy country, but that'south a whole other thing), the connexion drawn hither between a naked woman and buying sausage, jerky, and leather making supplies is, on some levels, even more than problematic.

Certainly, all I recollect about every time I drive by is Carol Adam's Sexual Politics of Meat, and her persuasive argument that the oppression of women and animals is historically shared. While a sympathetic reader of the billboard might debate that the woman is the "professional person" shopping for her meat-modification supplies, that seems pretty unlikely, given that no sensible person is going to operate their "Large Easy Infrared Turkey Fryer" or stuff their "Natural Hog Casings (Tubed)" in the nude. At least not if they have any concern for personal rubber or sanitation. The lazy estimation is that naked women draw attending, (it got mine later on all, didn't information technology – aha!) So it'due south a successful ad and we, in our capitalist world, should celebrate the advertising acumen of Halford's. Well perchance, except (a) I rarely feel like celebrating capitalism and (b) the billboard wouldn't work at all if at that place wasn't some sense to the connection being drawn between the naked woman and the products for sale. And this sense lies in the, rarely and so explicit, linking of women and animals as vulnerable, foolish creatures, each subordinate to men.

I can thank Edmonton that information technology offers me tangible, daily, and ridiculous examples of why I am a feminist. Simply in the grand scheme of things, I'd rather such billboards not pollute my urban landscape.

I'm emotionally exhausted out of frustration from a piece of work outcome that is very much about disinterestedness, professionalism, process, and fairness. But I can't write well-nigh it! Fifty-fifty though it foregrounds issues that are pretty high on the calendar around these parts, in that location is no manner that I could possibly talk over the details (at least online) without getting in deep southward#@!

This particular episode follows upon at least two other instances this past semester of egregious sexism that I tin can't blog near because of confidentiality. I am okay with that, on one level. Confidentiality exists for a reason: there are many instances in academia when people have to be comfortable to limited difficult opinions on sensitive and of import matters. Moreover, having agreed to confidentiality, I consider it unethical to then pause that agreement. And so my lips are sealed.

Merely I'1000 likewise not okay with that because that sexism still hangs in the air, at to the lowest degree in my temper, shaping and colouring my work life. And I know that people have advantage of the protection of a confidential setting to express things that they could non get abroad with otherwise. So I detect it problematic that I'm bound by confidentiality, when that works to perpetuate a sexist, chauvinist work culture.

With regards to my current situation (which actually reaches back ii years), there is nothing confidential about information technology. Only to discuss information technology would only stand to injure me professionally more than I stand to proceeds by sharing with you folks. And that is incredibly disheartening because, when combined with the same sexism, it makes me wonder where can modify come from? The hierarchies in my establishment make it clear that I take no ways to accost the issue head on. I could heighten a grievance with my faculty association, but that is putting myself out at that place again in a way that will likely practice more harm to me and so it will actually realize substantive change. If I put my head downward and protect my self-interest, and then of grade zip will change.

I grew up thinking that you lot e'er fought back. Every time y'all saw something that was wrong, you called it out, and you lot kept calling information technology out until you got a response. But in our culture broadly, and narrowly within academia, sexism and inequity can be so pervasive that I accept to "selection my battles." And so my question to you lot folks, given that I can't enquire for specific help on the matter in question, when you option your battles, what criteria do you use to decide?

This week, I thought I would talk most i of the reasons I feel strongly near standing to pursue feminist research. It is, in part, because of the very problems that Liza Piper raised final Thursday in her mail service chicks dig big brains. For me, information technology is the everyday, constant detritus of gender bias and gender inequality that really push me over the edge. I'm talking almost those insignificant trivial details that on their own aren't a large deal, but added upward over the day, over a calendar week, over a lifetime, take a meaning outcome on gendered attitudes.

A new advertisement campaign for Mark's Work Warehouse that is being featured in GTA subways and buses provides a good instance of this very issue. I spotted it on my mode to work 1 morning, grabbed a few photos of it with my phone, and have been struggling e'er since to clear the exact extent of my thwarting with Mark's careless gender politics. Equally featured to a higher place, the ad claims that Marker's is "now welcoming women." I suppose this is a gesture towards some kind of expanded women'south clothing line (although Marking's has had women's clothing for quite some time), simply it really hits an inclusion and equality nervus for me. Well, gosh, if women are now welcome in Mark's Work Warehouse, I'd say that's mission achieved for feminism. Am I correct? …Ladies? …Correct?

I hope that it is safe to assume that this was intended to be tongue-in-cheek. Nevertheless, there is always something a little scrap cringe-worthy about ads that attempt to comprise the rhetoric of political movements, just finish upwardly getting it horribly, horribly incorrect. I experience that the Mark'southward entrada's parroting of gender equality discourses offers a shining example of this. To brainstorm with, although there are many institutions that all the same exclude women in practise, the chest pumping pride with which Mark's announces that women are now welcome is absurdly outdated.

These problematic connotations are taken to an additionally troubling level when combined with the "male person" version of the ad, which features a generic group of attractive, young, masculine men doing man things with the explanation, "Less piece of work. More you."

Now, I might be taking my reading of this ad to its semiotic farthermost here, merely it seems to me that Mark'due south Piece of work Warehouse is inadvertently stumbling upon one of the enduring failures of second-wave feminism. That is, the reason that these men presumably have the leisure fourth dimension and dispensable income to spend at the pub relates to their experience of heteronormativity and gender inequality in which their spouses are working the double shift – adding household income while also continuing to have on the king of beasts's share of domestic piece of work. Afterward all, the women in the advertizement are non out playing pool and drinking pints, they are buying "work" clothes. The advert is an unintentional parody of shifts in the workplace, which are now also "welcoming women," with many growing pains nonetheless being experienced along the way.

My interpretation of the Mark's advertizing can very much be accused of reading too much into information technology, but I stand by my initial disgust at the tagline: "now welcoming women." Joking or non, I don't care to have a clothing store remind me of historic exclusions of women from the workplace, or attempt to capitalize on their supposed corporate progressiveness through misplaced political rhetoric. Now welcoming women? Thanks, Marking'due south.

Amanda Todd's recent presumed suicide made me very sad, and so made me very angry.

My heart goes out to her family, and to those who cared for her. What a terrible loss. That's the pitiful part. I was myself bullied for years and years and years, and it was awful. And that was in the 1980s, and then at least the savage commentary was all in pink pen on ruled paper pulled from notepads. Every story like Amanda's brings me back to what it feels like to be so gleefully excluded, to have random acts of cruelty visited upon you, just so that the residue of the group can bond over your expulsion from it. So sorry.

The angry function is only getting angrier, every time I read well-nigh how Amanda was bullied, about why she was bullied, and about the terrible terrible paradoxes that being a girl has always entailed, simply now much more publicly. I am angry that we are calling this "bullying" like it's not very specifically gendered. And how we are blaming the internet, rather than owned sexism. Information technology is a re-victimization to deny what is really going on hither.

To review. When she was 12, Amanda and a friend were goofing effectually a webcam conversation, having a flattering interaction with a stranger. She flashed her breasts. Screenshots, information technology transpires, were made. At 14 she found herself confronted once again by these images, now being used to endeavour to extort further webcam performances. She refused, and the pictures went public. Barbarous public shaming and bullying, online and off, ensued.

What happened to Amanda is an amplifed version of what happens to all women who were one time girls: we suddenly institute ourselves with new bodies, and a social system that tells u.s., at ane and the same time, to manifest an increasingly normative hypersexualized self-presentation (to be popular, to fit in, to have friends) and to viciously slap downwardly equally sluts any other girl who went just a shade besides far in this hypersexualized self-presentation (once again, in order to be popular, to fit in, to have friends). Dating introduced further complications: be sexy, just non necessarily sexual; put out, but not likewise enthusiastically. The range of acceptable teenage girl behaviours and self-presentations is very, very, very narrow. The ring widens a bit for those who are conventionally pretty, if they also happen to have good self-confidence, and a higher than average starting social or economic position. Kim Kardashian tin can fabricated a sex record and get a global brand icon; Amanda Todd tin can flash her nascent boobs for one person over a webcam and be driven to suicide.

What if we lived in a world where 12 year olds didn't experience like they had to flash their breasts at men to make friends? Or, perhaps more radically, what if we lived in a world where when people wanted to flash their breasts at some point, the later on circulation of these images wasn't so incredibly shameful as to bring down a virtual lynch mob onto this girl?

[Let's get further: what about a world where boys didn't acquire well-nigh adult sexuality from a pervasive porn civilisation, or where such a large part of their own social standing didn't come from treating girls every bit some kind of social currency to acquire and just every bit rapidly spend?]

The internet is a gossip and picture machine. No law in the globe is ever likely to curb the wildfire of teen gossip, stop the screen shots or the camera phone snaps from zipping around a school earlier the bell finishes ringing. What we tin can change are our social relations. Maybe we can stop being ashamed of our bodies and our sexuality. Maybe nosotros can stop letting these be manipulated to our detriment by parties who would exploit or harm u.s. to exert power over us.

Boyhood is awful. Information technology's a time of separation from our childhood and the various kinds of security it offered us. Nosotros are meant to rethink who nosotros are, to take social risks, to experiment with identity at that fourth dimension. This shouldn't kill united states. It shouldn't, either, atomic number 82 us to become monsters in the proper name of social continuing either: so terrified of not plumbing equipment in ourselves, even those of us who were bullied are quick to turn on anyone a trivial weaker, a picayune more precarious, than ourselves, only to plow that heat away, to feel similar we belong even momentarily. And of grade puberty is a misery also, perhaps particularly for girls, who, it seems to me, have admittedly no way of getting through the physical and emotional changes without feeling like they have in some very significant way failed very significantly: too hairy, thighs likewise squishy, desires also potent, boobs to big or too small or too visible or as well hidden. Likewise alpine or also short. Too 'boyish' or too 'womanly'.

Adolescence plus puberty is bad. Adolescence plus puberty multiplied past an unforgetting, unforgiving internet? Multiplies the capacity for harm.

But the net isn't really the problem. "Bullying" isn't actually the trouble. The problem is systemic, pervasive, all-encompassing sexism, and the stifling of female ability, the rigid policing of female person identity at the time when this identity is barely nascent, and its bearer and then very vulnerable.

If we all learned that lesson, almost the impossibility of being female person, nosotros might become kinder. Nosotros might push out the boundaries a piffling farther, to allow the Amanda Todds of the world (among whom I would identify my ain teenage cocky) a petty breathing room, a petty kindness, to go who they are, without shame, without coercion, without violence.

With honey.

This guest mail service, by Megan Dean, a masters student in Philosophy at the University of Alberta, reminds us that non all subjects motion through the world in the same ways, nor are all technologies and practices "selfish" in the same ways. It reminds us as well that interpersonal interactions tin can be asymmetrical in ways that are scary. This is a useful reminder.

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At this year'south coming together for the social club for Existential and Phenomenological Theory and Civilisation, I attended a thought-provoking panel entitled "How Big is the Body?" Tracy Nicholls' contribution assorted the disparate experiences of listening to music with others—described in rich and vibrant language as the expansion of the body through space—and listening to an iPod—characterized equally an isolating experience that effectively limits the body, foreclosing possibilities for community by buffering the earbudded individual from others' "big bodies" which otherwise might "bump into" her. I was fatigued to Nicholls' description of communal musical experience, to the feeling of being thrown out of oneself by music. At the aforementioned time, I was troubled by her description of the ipod as a technology that entails selfish or even rude disengagement from others.

I always deport an iPod. The cardinal reason for this is not to provide a soundtrack to my day, but to lessen the personal touch on of sexual harassment. Appearing as if I can't hear anything isn't ever constructive in preventing harassers from calling out or making comments, but at to the lowest degree I tin pretend I didn't hear them when they practise.

Ii days prior to Nicholl'due south talk I had been sexually harassed while in the line-up for conference registration. The incident had left me flustered and upset, and I had spent the residuum of that day alone in my room, wanting to avoid running into the harasser once more or having to explain my emotional land to colleagues. The harasser's "large trunk" was one that I'd have been better off having never bumped into.

Thinking through Nicholl'southward paper in low-cal of this incident, I suggest that disengagement via iPod should not be dismissed as a selfish, community-degrading practice; while it sounds counterintuitive, I call up self-imposed isolation deserves consideration as a useful strategy for building moral communities, or at to the lowest degree for supporting the sorts of persons who can engage in that work.

Some level of personal fortitude is important for political engagement, especially where one's politics is a fundamentally critical i. Such a politics suggests that one will be regularly disgusted, frustrated, and outraged by the everyday behaviour of institutions and individuals. Dissatisfaction, anger, and frustration generated by such encounters can exist productive and motivate people to get politically active. Information technology can also be dis-enabling and self-destructive. I draw forcefulness from feminist colleagues and friends, whose support helps me withstand "bumping into" the bodies of "normal" individuals—normal significant sexist, racist, ableist, and speciesist—without devolving into rigid bitterness, apathy, or ressentiment. Even with this support, the harassment left me upset and frustrated. The fact is that near of us are more than aware that sexual harassment exists and calls for a response. Existence harassed one more fourth dimension did piffling to heighten my appreciation of this. What information technology did do is undermine my confidence and lead me to withdraw from an important professional person event. Having an option to strategically avert, however imperfectly, situations like this one merits consideration every bit a tool for preserving personal well-being and avoiding some of the very existent negative individual consequences of sexual harassment.

So while I am sympathetic to the imperative to open up ourselves to others in the involvement of building better, more equitable and simply communities, and I am certain that in many cases, we should confront what (or who) is problematic face to face, we should consider the political and personal value of occasionally sticking the earbuds in and tuning those big, "normal" and unfortunately sexist bodies out.

Megan Dean