6 PR lessons from clinical depression (or "How mental illness made me a better communicator")

"The opposite of depression is not happiness, but vitality."

This very telling quote is by author, journalist and mental health advocate Andrew Solomon, from his deeply moving TED lecture entitled Depression: The Secret We Share. It was midsummer of this year when I first heard the lecture, and at the time I was in the midst of the deepest, most serious bout of depression I have ever experienced. For whatever reason, Solomon's lecture struck a chord in me like nothing I'd yet heard on the subject of depression, and for a few days I listened to it over and over, latching myself onto the man's pristine prose and light-hearted pathos as though it were a life raft. It felt like a roadmap out of my malaise.

Here is the video. I highly recommend it - whether you're depressed or not.

In May of this year I announced to the world, through this very blog no less, that I was "going it alone" as an independent PR contractor. It had been tumultuous and stressful spring, but one from out of which seem to spring unexpected opportunities, and feeling adventurous at the time I embraced them. And for the first month of my voyage into the seas of freelance work, all seemed to go well. It didn't last.

The other thing that happened to me at around the same time I left my old job at the airport is that my doctor recommended that I try going off my anti-anxiety medications. I had been prescribed Duloxetine about two years previous during a time of similarly high stress, and I had been taking it religiously ever since in what had ended up being two years of tremendous professional growth and productivity. Why I thought this was a good idea at this turning point in my professional life I still can figure out, but I took my doctor's advice. This, it turned out, was a colossal mistake.

By the end of May there were plenty of outward signs that my overall mental state had deteriorated. It began with seemingly constant memory lapses, lapses that I simply put down to the stress of client-hunting and financial uncertainty. But by the end of June things had deteriorated to such an extent that I could no longer be blind to what was going on. Work assignments that would have been a breeze months before became epic struggles. All I wanted to do was sleep and hide from the world. My emotional outbursts became more and more extreme. My only moments of reprieve were swimming, running and walks with the dogs in the river valley.

Amazingly enough in retrospect, it wasn't until the first few weeks of July that I came face to face with the true depth of my depression, and when, like Andrew Solomon in his personal account in his book The Noonday Demon, I found himself completely paralyzed - and reached out to my father for help. This was the start of a long climb out of the abyss I had found myself. I found myself a new doctor and I began once again with the medications and the therapy, realizing only then that I would probably have to be on some sort of mood stabilizer for the rest of my life.

I also returned to the job market, figuring that given everything I had been through I was better off in a permanent position with good medical benefits (namely a plan that offered psychological services) and a paycheque I could count on every other week. After several months of job-hunting I figured I would have to take the next semi-decent thing on offer and then hold tight until I found something better. Instead, I landed in a fantastic position that thus far (it's only been three weeks mind you) appeals to me more than any job I've had up to now.

I'm back. A little shaken up still, but I'm back. The vitality I so sorely lacked this summer is back in full force. I'm writing again, back in classes (finishing the PR department I had to put the kibosh on in my previous job due to the onerous commute), involved in the spoken word/poetry scene and in far more of a mood to socialize than I've been in a long time. But my climb out from the abyss this summer has also meant mending relationships strained by my moods. The only way truly to break free from my summer of hurt was to be open and frank about what I had gone through, and in doing so fire a broadside at the taboo that still prevent so many of us about talking frankly about depression.

The opposite of depression is not happiness, but vitality. And as a professional writer and communicator, a key component of that vitality is being open about my experience, with the hopes that it might help others who have dealt with - or may currently be dealing with - similar struggles. And in the last few months, in my numerous conversations with friends and colleagues, I've come to several conclusions, namely:

1. Most of the really smart people I know feel like they're barely holding it together much of the time.
2. The communications profession is particularly rife with mood disorders, probably through a combination of the stress that comes with the job and the emotionally sensitive nature of the type of people generally drawn to the profession.
3. People are generally forgiving when it comes to this sort of thing. And if they're not, chances are they're not people you want in your life anyway. In other words, there's nothing like a serious bout of depression to tell you who your real friends are.
4. We all medicate. Be it uppers, downers, booze, weed, obsessive exercise, RPG games, work, reality TV, porn, Pinterest - we're all on drugs of one form or another.

But enough about me. What can we, as public relations practitioners, take away from our struggles on the fringes of mental health so as to make the world a better place, and be better at our jobs. Because ever since returning to the work world with a refreshed mind, body and soul, I've honestly felt like I'm better at my job than I was before. Could it be that going through what I went through, as unpleasant as it was (and something I wouldn't wish on anybody), was one of those "what doesn't kill you makes you stronger" things? I've never been a fan of this cliché, but my bad run of mental health made me, if not stronger, certainly more aware and mentally agile.

So what were my 'educational takeaways' from this experience? Here's my attempt at distilling them into words. I'll probably have more to add later, but here's what comes to mind now, for what it's worth.

1. The truth lies.

Any experienced public relations person will tell you that "telling the truth" is only the start of your ethical obligations in the profession. Being honest and transparent is, of course, of vital importance and a baseline requirement of any credible organization, but blurting out truths without framing them in a manner that protects you and your organization is potentially as injurious as lying. Some might interpret this as tacit dishonesty of a sort, but a comparable example would be to rephrase the sentence "We're all going to die" (an indisputable truth) with "We only live ones, so let's make the most of it." Is this a spin? Perhaps, but it's one that we're all better off with.

Anybody who has ever battled clinical depression will tell you that, when you're in the throes of it, you feel as though a veil has been lifted from you, thereby forcing you to stare unflinchingly at the dark and horrible truths of the world - and of you yourself specifically. And while some of the statements that a depressed person habitually makes are easily refutable (i.e. "Nobody loves me."), others are less easy to fend off, such as "What, concretely speaking, is the point of it all? I'm a mid-level word-monkey who's out of a job - what the hell am I contributing to the well-being of the world?"

This of course, on a basic level, is true, but at the time it's the equivalent of a company telling its shareholders that "Well, in the fullness of time the sun is going to swell to the size of a supergiant and swallow the four innermost planets of the solar system, incinerating the earth and everyone on it, before going supernova, so what, concretely speaking, is the point of expanding into the European market?" This of course is a caricature, but if nothing else it's made me all the more sensitive to the wording of both internal and external communiqués. The truth lies - this is one of the most impactful statements in Andrew Solomon's TED talk, and one that has stuck with me ever since.

2. SWOT analyses are awesome.

Source: bizbingo.blogspot.com

Anybody with any training in public relations, or has spent enough time in the profession, has at one point or another sat down to do one of these. For those of you unfamiliar with the practice, read my early post entitled 'If Fictional Characters Conducted SWOT Analyses'. And for those of you who are well versed in them, you may be interested to know that the process is not only a crucial step in writing a communications plan, but also a useful process for bushwhacking your way out of a deep depressive episode.

Why a SWOT analysis? Simply put, it helps you filter out all the noise that clouds your judgment and keeps you paralyzed while at the same time giving you the 'comforting' base of cold, hard facts devoid of the cloying platitudes of The Secret-style positive affirmations. In other words, it appeals to the emotionally calloused mind of the depressed individual while at the same time offering a way out, and by way of the 'Weaknesses' and 'Threats' boxes you're neither invalidating nor giving undue credence to what the toxic voices in your head are saying. Because if you simply try to wallpaper over those voices with sanctimonious clichés, in my experience you just end up strengthening their resolve.

3. Aw hell, why not write yourself a whole goddamn communications plan?

I didn't actually do this, but I nearly did. I certainly wrote myself elements of one - key messages about myself and all. And all in all, I think this was more helpful than most of the self-help books I picked up and subsequently tossed aside. After a few weeks back on my medications, I felt like I once again had the energy to get up and do something useful towards getting my life and career back on track, and feeling like I was completely out of touch with my profession, the process served as a useful refresher. It also felt more real, like my own personal change management process. In other words, I was determined to sound good until we feel good - or at least have the right messages.

4. Writing will never let you down.

Once it became apparent to me that I was in the midst of a severe depressive episode, one of the first things I did was disentangle myself from as many commitments as a reasonably could. I quit a summer class. I resigned from a board I was heavily involved in at the time. I simply felt I couldn't fulfill the responsibilities I had taken on, and admitting this fact to myself was one of the first steps in acknowledging that what I was dealing with was an illness - not simply a case of head-up-ass syndrome. Like a drug addict entering treatment, it was an acknowledgement of my own weakness and vulnerability - the first step on any road to recovery.

But at the same time as I was pulling back from my numerous extracurricular activities, I was thoroughly burying myself in my writing - the one place, it seemed, that my brain was still working. I wrote poetry. I revived a novel project I had long abandoned. And I took on new freelance writing projects, projects I knew I could still do a bang-up job on in spite of my fragile state of mind - the type of work I've been doing for ten years now and can virtually do in my sleep. And in my writing work I found a semblance of sanity, and rediscovered my love of words and communication. And from that I started to rebuild my professional life.

In actual fact, I managed to get quite a lot of work done during the summer, in spite of it all. Much of it I feel was on some sort of automatic pilot, and the fact that I was able to keep moving, albeit slowly, through this morass proved, in the end, to be a source of pride. After all, I could scarcely have been able to do that it was truly sucked at my job. Whether you're deeply depressed or at the peak of mental fitness, write your guts out! I have no doubt that Emily Dickinson would have made a fine PR professional had she had access to the types of treatment that exist today.

5. Never lose faith in your network.

Probably the hardest thing about coming out of my midsummer depression, apart from the job hunt, was the fear I had that my depression had made a mess of my own personal and professional social life. After all, PR people, even the most introverted among us, are at heart social animals whose profession is centred on interpersonal connections and imparting meaning between people. And with Edmonton's marketing and communications community being pretty small and close-knit, I found myself re-entering the workforce with a profound fear that my sudden disappearance from the scene and my failed attempt at going independent would leave me scarlet-lettered in the profession.

All this turned out to be classic paranoia. One of the worst aspects of depression is that it's an inherently selfish and self-centred condition that causes one to spend an inordinate amount of time fixated on oneself and one's flaws (real and imagined), which to all around you is practically as bad as being a narcissist who is constantly flaunting their positive attributes. In other words, unless your mental state has caused you to behave in a truly egregious matter, chances are you're still regarded in the same light as you were before things began falling apart. To put it bluntly, people don't really pay that much attention to you most of the time, unless you're really out there screwing things up.

Sure enough, once I had built up the courage to start reconnecting again, it was as though nothing had happened. Moreover, for those with whom I did divulge what I had been through during the summer, the reaction was universally sympathetic, usually followed either by a similar personal account or accounts of people they've known. This is, after all, a line of work full of people who 'feel all the feels', people generally endowed with high levels of emotional intelligence, and as safe a crowd as any for talking frankly about mental illness. That and my poetry circle, of course.

A good friend and mentor of mine told me early on that whatever happens in this line of work, "The network will provide." And in my own struggles this year I've really come to realize how prescient this remark was. The network did provide, and I am now back on my feet, feeling stronger than ever.

6. We need to be talking about this stuff.

As a privileged, educated and well-connected urban professional living in a progressive city and working in a profession dedicated to communicating truth in an emotionally nuanced way, I, if anyone, should feel comfortable talking frankly about ups and downs in my own mental health. And yet I don't. Not really. Even though I live in a country where I enjoy legal protections from discrimination due to mental health, the stigma persists. Even as I write this blog post, the hesitant Piglet archetype lurking in the back of my mind is urging me not to press the 'publish' button. "You don't know what this is going to do to your reputation!" it chirps. "Have you really thought this through?"

My answer to this is a definitive yes. I have thought this through. This is a post I've been wanting to write for months now, and it's only been my schedule and my cognizance of the persistent taboo around discussions of mental health that have kept me from doing so. But I truly believe that as professional communicators, we have a duty to talk frankly about depression and other mental health issues (bipolarity, BPD, OCD and so on). It is estimated that one out of five of Canadians will personally experience mental illness in their lifetime. That means that not only one out of five of our fellow PR professionals will go through it, but that a full 20% of our external and internal publics will. That's a hell of a lot of people!

I am fortunate that I now work for an organization that not only provides a stellar health plan for its employees that includes mental health care, but one that also 'walks the talk' through active promotion of health and wellness (including mental health) to its staff and is also on the frontline in training community support workers to help the most vulnerable people in this province - and help empower them economically. Awareness of mental illness continues to increase in our society, and it is heartening to see more and more employers taking the problem seriously. But at the same time, the taboo around disclosing such conditions to anyone other than a clinical psychologist behind a closed door persists, and it is up to people like us to 'push the needle' big-time on this issue.

And like any paradigm shift, it seems to me that it needs to start with us, among ourselves as a professional community. I know for a fact that I'm far from the only professional communicator who has struggled with clinical depression or worse. We are a sensitive, highly-strung bunch as a profession with a penchant towards workaholism, insufficient sleep and one or two extra glasses of wine at the end of a long event that we perhaps don't need. And a lot of us are prone to an acute sense of isolation (especially those of us who specialize in writing) that creates the perfect breeding ground for all manner of mental malaise. We talk a good talk, but lots of us are kind of a mess deep down.

My challenge to you all is this: let's keep it real when it comes to depression. Let's actively engage in conversation about it, whether that means being frank about our own struggles or acknowledging those of others - and prioritizing the promotion of mental health and wellbeing in our work. As a person who has been through a nasty spell of it and come out the other end, I'm extraordinarily thankful to my family, friends and colleagues who have stood by me and helped me put my life back together. And I'm also more determined than ever than ever to use my position to help make a difference - and that has to start telling my own story.

A number of years ago a campaign entitled 1,000 Conversations, spearheaded by Native Counselling Services of Alberta (through its National Day of Healing and Reconciliation event-planning department), set out to trigger a nationwide wave of conversations about truth and reconciliation in relation to past injustices committed on Canadian soil - primarily the Indian Residential School System but also the internment of Japanese Canadians and other skeletons in Canada's closet. Among the project's greatest champions were CBC radio host Shelagh Rogers (who this May was appointed chancellor of the University of Victoria), a woman who in recent years has gone public about her own struggles with depression - which she has likened to "sliding into caves of emptiness." 

To my mind we need something akin to the 1,000 Conversations campaign for sufferers of depression and the like - a consciousness-raising campaign aimed at ending the stigma once and for all. And if anybody's going to spearhead something like this, it's people like us PR folks. Not that I'm necessarily offering myself up for the job. After all I've got a new job to focus on and a school program to finish - not to mention a poor, neglected blog to revive. Down the road, who knows? But for the time being, I float the idea out there for all it's worth.

The opposite of depression is not happiness, but vitality, and we communicators are in the vitality business. The news we communicate isn't always good news and we're certainly not in the business of spinning bad news as good. But it is our job to empower our publics, internal and external alike, with calls to action and offer solutions. And the more we can collectively chip away at the taboo surrounding depression and other forms of mental illness, the more empowered we'll all be in our efforts to elucidate and punch through the noise.

(Special thanks to Marvin the Paranoid Android from Douglas Adams' Hitchhiker series for his timely visual appearances in this text. Even though I can't lay claim to a brain the size of a planet, I still feel your pain!)

8 Ways Male Musicians Can Fight Misogyny in Music



Poster for feminist concert series in Leeds, UK (source: lippymag.co.uk)

It's a world I love dearly and thus it pains me to say it, but in my experience the music world is one of the most profoundly sexist professional domains out there. I say this partly as an occasional musician myself, but mostly as the spouse of a professional musician who has spent a great deal of time immersed in musical settings. Particularly in recent years I've developed strong friendships with a number of female musicians, and have seen first-hand how much unadulterated sexism and misogyny they have to face on a regular basis.

For those outside the music business this might well come as a shock. After all, surely professional domains such as engineering and construction are more rife with sexism than music. While I've spent less time in these worlds (aside from a year working closely with the construction industry at Merit Contractors Association), I would maintain that it's worse in the music world. While engineering and construction are still overwhelmingly male-dominated professions, there is at the very least a widespread recognition of the ingrained sexism in these domains and, in this country at least, most of the leading construction firms and engineering departments make a point of at least being seen to promote gender equality. Music, by contrast, is perceived by outsiders as a "progressive" field, which ironically has allowed it to endure as a bastion of unreconstructed misogyny.

Of course, anybody with half a brain will tell you that gender theatre is everywhere to be seen at the upper echelons of popular music, a fact that was thrown into sharp relief in 2013 thanks to Miley Cyrus' tongue and Robin Thicke's rapey lyrics on 'Blurred Lines'. But the problem is much bigger than most people not closely associated with professional music making realize. Case in point: how many female symphony conductors can you name, or composers who aren't named Schumann? How many female jazz instrumentalists? How many rock 'n' roll drummers or guitar players, or record producers for that matter? Here's another one: how many male covers of iconic female hits can you think of? Of the top the only one I can think of is Faith No More frontman Mike Patton's cover of Lady Gaga's 'Poker Face', and and while Faith No More retains a loyal following among overgrown nineties indie kids like me, they're hardly mainstream.

Nothing blurred about these lines (source: The Guardian)

For female musicians, the overwhelming maleness of the music business in all roles other than vocals and early childhood education takes its toll in the form of 'microaggressions'. Just about every female musicians who's been in the business for any length of time has their own laundry list of small but tangible slights, from being overlooked for ensemble positions in favour of male instrumentalists and not being treated with disdain by male music store clerks while shopping for gear to enduring condescending 'man-splaining' of music technology to flat-out sexual objectification as lead singers, concertmasters etc. Even classical music is rife with it, a fact that the director of the Conservatoire de Paris made clear recently when he asserted that women "lack the physical strength" to be symphony conductors.

This is not, however, to say that all men in the music business are sexist pigs. Far from it; I have a great many male musician friends who are as appalled by the stubborn misogyny of the music world as their female colleagues are. However, as in any domain with entrenched cultural norms, acknowledging a problem is easier than fixing it. This is why I decided to articulate my thoughts on how to fight it in the proverbial trenches - that is to say in the practice rooms, in the concert halls, in the clubs, in the recording studios etc. This post is primarily aimed at my male musician colleagues, but also to women in the biz who may, unconsciously, buy into many of the gender cliches trotted out by instructors, producers and male colleagues' expectations.

There have been several great polemics on the many and varied microaggressions that female musicians face. Montreal-based synthpop icon Claire "Grimes" Boucher famously tore a strip out of the social neanderthals in her industry in a recent blog post while Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho did the same in a recent speech at McGill University. But while many female voices have spoken out against the entrenched sexism and misogyny in the music industry, disappointingly few men have. This post is my small attempt at helping male feminist allies in the musical world combat gender double standards at the grassroots level, starting with checking their own privilege. Here are my eight tips.

1. Stop assuming every female musician you meet is a singer.

This ought to be a given, but sadly it's not. Virtually every female instrumentalist will recount tales of male counterparts who were incredulous to the fact that they played (gasp!) an instrument. And while we're on this topic, there are far too many male musicians who treat female vocalists like some sort of pseudo-musician. And those who actually feel that way should be locked in a room with Diamanda Galás for at least three solid hours.


Would you mansplain gear to her?
(source: synthtopia.com)

2. Don't assume you know more about gear and music tech than your female peers.

The aforementioned Grimes is, as those familiar with her music know, is a sampling and programming wizard. So are Andrea Parker, Ikue Mori, Yolandi Visser, Maryanne Amacher, Sachiko M. (and Gaga for that matter) and the countless other female samplers, turntablists, programmers and all-around techies. And yet just about every female musician armed with a laptop and Garage Band has had to contend with condescending men purporting to explain how to use tech. Seriously, if your natural impulse upon seeing a woman fuss with music software (and most likely drop a parade of F-bombs when things aren't working quite right) is to give her unsolicited advice on how to 'improve' her handiwork, you're being sexist.

3. Actively seek out female musicians/composers and female-driven acts in your listening.

As I mentioned before, men who cover women are few and far between in the music biz, whereas women covering men, whether it's Tori Amos doing Kurt Cobain or Eva Cassidy doing Bill Withers, are everywhere. This can only mean two things: there's little if any worthwhile music written by women, or there's an enduring but unspoken stigma against men paying tribute to the female greats. Why not be part of proving the latter? That of course starts at the listening stage, and the fact is most guys don't listen to much female-driven music. Which is a pity because there's so much phenomenal female-driven music out there.

4. Take care not to talk over your female peers during rehearsals and gigs.

Unless you're a completely unmitigated douchebag, you don't do this deliberately. But so many guys do. And even if you don't we're all conditioned to give male voices more credibility. Celebrity speech coach Christine Jahnke, whose clients have included Hillary Clinton and Michelle Obama, attests to how much more work women have to do to gain the same degree of public credibility as their male counterparts. Even if you're not guilty of gratuitous man-splaining, chances are you have to work less hard to convince people you know what you're talking about. So when it doubt it's worth dialing it back a little.

5. If you're a student, make a point of choosing a female musician/composer/musical movement as an essay topic.

This phenomenon, sadly, goes far beyond the realm of music. If you're a guy, as yourself this question: as a high school or university student, when you were asked to write a paper about a historical figure/famous author/great composer etc., did you ever pick a woman? If not, why not? I first became aware of this phenomenon as a history TA, and have since encountered it everywhere - women are more than happy to write about male subjects, but not vice versa. And this extends far beyond the undergraduate years. When is the last time you read an article on the Riot Grrrl movement or the Blue Stockings Society written by a man? Belief in cooties seems to extend far beyond age four. Why not buck social convention and pick Meredith Monk or Violet Archer for your next term paper on a modern composer?

6. Be critical of your music 'gods'.

Yes, you're still allowed to like these guys. Or at least their music.
(Source: Last.fm)

As a self-identified male feminist, I have a complicated relationship with some of my favourite male artists. I can't stop loving Led Zeppelin, even though Jimmy Page was infamously guilty of the confinement and statutory rape of 14-year-old fan Lori Maddox. I still have a soft spot for the music of multiple wife-beater Miles Davis, and The Prodigy's Fat of the Land album is still a workout favourite of mine in spite of the presence of the problematically named song 'Smack My Bitch Up'. But while I still like these artists, I have the perspective to not elevate them to the godlike stature that so many male musicophiles do. The deification of music history's great men is one of the more nauseating aspects of male musical culture. By all means admire Jimmy Page and Miles Davis for their musical accomplishments, but let's be honest about their less-than-admirable characters - and don't take offence when they get deservedly knocked off their pedestals.

It should be noted, however, that not all the 'great men' of rock, jazz and other sexist cesspools are misogynist pigs. Kurt Cobain was a great ally who famously helped promote the Riot Grrrl scene of the early-to-mid-nineties. Hardcore punk legends Henry Rollins and Ian MacKaye (author of Fugazi's epic anti-rape anthem 'Suggestion') are both passionate feminists. And R&B star John Legend recently came out as a feminist, arguing that "if men care about women's rights the world will be a better place." There are indeed great examples of men actively combatting misogyny in the music world, and their exploits ought to be celebrated. It also helps when it's combined with kick-ass music!

7. Confront misogyny head on when you see it.

For young guys immersed in 'bro' culture, this is probably the hardest thing of all to do. But it gets easier. A lot of men, especially men in their teens and early twenties, are understandably fearful of social censure when it comes to calling out their own when they engage in blatantly misogynistic behaviour. But there are three reasons for doing it. Firstly, it's the right thing to do. Secondly, you'll gain a whole lot more respect from your female peers (as well as your more enlightened male colleagues). And thirdly, the more you do it, the better at it you'll get - and the more benefits from reasons one and two you'll reap. And besides, many of the guys who engage in douchebag behaviour don't realize they're doing it - and never will unless they're called out on it by voices they respect (i.e. male ones). And for the rest of the male populace that really don't care, their respect - or lack thereof - isn't worth fretting over.

8. Quit taking feminist rants personally.


No, L7 doesn't hate you. They just hate it when you're a dick.
(source: ckuttimecapsule.wordpress.com)

Here's the thing about feminism: it's not about you. In fact it's never about you specifically, unless you're the d-bag making brazenly misogynistic remarks - and if that's you, you probably haven't made it this far into this post. Feminism is not anti-male, nor is it about making individual men feel bad about themselves. It's about deconstructing social grammar that's been inculcated over 6,000 years of human history. It's this basic misunderstanding that turns so many otherwise thoughtful and open-minded men off feminism, with some turning to the mean-spirited and logically bankrupt polemics of the Men's Rights Movement. No, feminists don't hate you - they just hate it when you're a dick.

 

So that's my rant-du-jour. In sum, my message to men in music is that music is far too important a thing to be left to the social neanderthals of this world. I suspect a big part of the problem is that being a musician (at least a professional one) is such an all-consuming process, and what with the demands of practicing, composing, rehearsing, gigging and gig-hunting, there's not a lot of time left over to read the works of Simone de Beauvoir or debate gender politics with your counterparts in the political science department. But thanks to digital media we have unprecedented access to both information and mind-improving conversations with a wide cross-section of people. And thanks to blogs like this one, you can get your information in a pithy, attention deficit-friendly fashion.

 

Start by reading. Read as much as you can. A full list of feminist blogs and news forums would run into the thousands, but sites like Jezebel and Skepchick are good places to start. For a double-dose of feminism and music, check out the appropriately named Feminist Music Geek blog. And then start a conversation. Those of you living in the Edmonton area might want to investigate the Facebook group Feminist Edmonton, a group which I've found to be very welcoming of male perspectives and questions. The world needs more guys reading, writing and engaging in open, frank conversation about this stuff. And the music biz, in particular, is in dire need of a fresh shot of feminism. Help make it happen!

 

(This post was inspired by (and is dedicated to) my amazingly talented better half Allison Nichols and her fellow take-no-crap female musical troopers, as well as their male allies - you all know who you are. You guys are the best!!)

6 Potential New Sister City Partnerships for Edmonton

Commemorative stamp featuring Edmonton's Harbin Gate (source: CTV News)

Edmonton, it is often said, has an identity problem. In spite of the fact that the city is regularly ranked as among the best places in the world to live, it is still a place that most of humanity has never heard of or is barely aware of. And most of the people who know of it, if we're honest, probably think it's a boring, colourless frozen wasteland whose most interesting features are a giant shopping mall and a has-been hockey team.

In defence of the rest of the world, however, it should be noted that Edmontonians have, until recently, not done a particularly good job dispelling this notion. The latter half of the twentieth century saw the Alberta capital fall asleep at the wheel as its downtown core died, its stature as a transportation hub faded, its once vibrant community of corporate head offices disappeared and Calgary became the uncontested economic engine of the province. All the while, Edmonton's notoriously self-deprecating denizens failed to trumpet the city's enduring treasures - its festivals, orchestras, green spaces, universities and research institutes, world-leading construction companies etc. - and as such Edmonton became Canada's Lost City of Atlantis, somehow just off the map.

Fortunately, the Edmonton zeitgeist has changed dramatically since the dawn of the Mandel era in 2004. Edmonton's downtown is vibrant again, the airport is booming, the city's architecture is bolder and more imaginative than ever, public transit is at last being prioritized and the economy continues to thrive. Nevertheless, Edmonton's dream of becoming a global trade and logistics hub continues to be hindered by the city's lack of global profile. People simply don't know who we are as a city.

There are many things we could be doing as a city to change that, some of which might seem frivolous on the surface. One possible tactic would be to expand current our sister city partnerships. While many cities have numerous city twinning arrangements, Edmonton has only four such partnerships, specifically with Gatineau, Quebec, Nashville, Tennessee, Harbin, China and Wonju, South Korea. Of these, Edmonton's partnership with Harbin, the economic hub of China's northeastern Heilongjang Province, has proven the most economically fruitful, with the two cities signing a tourism and business cooperation agreement in 2011.

What other cities around the world would befit a sister city arrangement with Edmonton? Here are six suggestions.


1) Adelaide, Australia

Source: hubaustralia.com

With the notable exception of its famously sublime climate, Adelaide, the capital city of the state of South Australia, is arguably the world city that most closely resembles Edmonton. Its population is virtually identical to Edmonton's, as is its status as Australia's fifth largest city. It also serves a similar transportation and logistics role to Edmonton as the main air gateway to Australia's vast mining operations in the country's geographic centre. Want more parallels? It's also home to a thriving arts and culture scene, including the biggest fringe festival in the southern hemisphere. And as I pointed out in my recent post on Edmonton's airport predicament, it's also a city that has faced some of the same hurdles as Edmonton in building connections with the outside world. Adelaide - it's more or less Edmonton in the subtropics.


2) Dnipropetrovsk, Ukraine



Source: Wikipedia

Why the hell do we not have a sister city in the ancestral homeland of at least one out of every ten Edmontonians? While other Canadian cities have entered into civic partnerships with Ukrainian counterparts (Toronto with Kiev, Winnipeg with Lviv and Vancouver with Odessa), Edmonton, one of the most Ukrainian cities outside the Motherland has notably not done so. The central Ukrainian city of Dnipropetrovsk would seem to be an obvious choice. Not only does it not yet have a Canadian sister city, this riverside metropolis is of a similar size and economic profile to Edmonton. It is also a major educational centre in Ukraine, whose many post-secondary institutions include the National Mining University, a world-leader in resource extraction technology.


3) Concepción, Chile

Source: ab-imagensincriveis.blogspot.com

While it scarcely compares to the city's Ukrainian contingent, Edmonton's 3,000-strong Chilean community, most of whom came as refugees during the early Pinochet years, maintains an outsized presence within the city's Latin American population. Chilean accents dominate Spanish-language radio in Edmonton and empanadas and ceviche share shelf space with perogies and kubasa in the city's 'ethnic' grocery stores. Which Chilean city would be the best fit with Edmonton? The southern city of Concepción, with its metro population of just over one million, its renown as a "university town" (it's home to 15 universities) and its thriving music scene, would be a strong candidate.


4) Astana, Kazakhstan



Source: Wikipedia

A little-known fact about the Ukrainian diaspora of the late nineteenth century is that at the same time thousands of Ukrainian farmers migrated to the west, ultimately settling in the Canadian prairie provinces, an equally substantial contingent migrated eastward, settling in the steppes of what is now Akmola province in northeastern Kazakhstan. Today Kazakhstan is an independent republic that bears more than a passing similarity to Alberta, with its mountain and prairie vistas, extreme climate, multiethnic population and fast-growing economy dominated by oil and gas. At the centre of Akmola province is the country's new capital city of Astana, Kazakhstan's northern metropolis - and its Edmonton. (Almaty, the country's largest city to the south, is very much its Calgary.) Edmonton's architecture may not be as garish as Astana's, but the cities' roles, and the countries' historical and economic parallels, would make for an intriguing pairing.


5) Pasig City, Philippines

Source: Wikipedia

Of Alberta's total immigrant population of around 644,000, nearly 70,000 - about 11 per cent of the total - are of Philippine origin, making them the largest single immigrant group in the province. Edmonton's Filipino population is over 26,000, representing nearly three per cent of the city's total population. If Ukraine represents the city's ancestral past, the Philippines clearly represents its present. So who would we partner with in the land of Jeepneys and adobo chicken? With Winnipeg partnered with the Manila proper and Vancouver with Quezon City, that leaves Makati and Pasig among major Metro Manila cities without a Canadian partner. Makati, with its major agglomeration of banks and corporate head offices, might be a better match with Calgary, with Pasig, a major educational centre, home to the highly respected University of Asia and the Pacific, would be a logical partner for Edmonton.


6) Juba, South Sudan

Source: ssdnnetwork.com

Edmonton's increasingly diverse citizenry includes around 3,000 immigrants from the recently independent republic of South Sudan. The vast majority came to Canada as refugees in the late-1990s and early 2000s during the worst of Sudan's torturously long and cruel north-south civil war. As a relatively new contingent from a country still beset by instability and destitution, Edmonton's South Sudanese population retains a strong vested interest in their beleaguered homeland. Some have even returned to South Sudan to help set up infrastructure, while others continue to lobby on behalf of the country's people, which last month faced renewed unrest. A sister city partnership with the capital city of this young nation, especially one with strong ties to Alberta, would send a strong signal of solidarity to a country still struggling to survive.

Tim Horton's, Environmental Vandal

 

One thing I've never understood about my fellow Canadians is their nationalistically charged evangelism for Tim Horton's. Not that I have anything against Timmy's. I just don't consider cheap, gut-rock-inducing coffee and glucose crash-inducing fried dough products to be a source of national pride on par with our natural splendour, social progressiveness and supremacy at team boxing on skates. Forgive me, but I don't understand the mass appeal.

 

Granted, as a longtime expatriate living in Japan, there were certainly days when I had an inexplicable hankering for Timbits and that weird tasting but oh-so-down-home coffee. Yes, I got those cravings every now and then, although not nearly as often as I now find myself craving okonomiyaki, Asahi Super Dry on tap and maniacal game shows starring bizarre men in loud suits and helium-voiced female co-hosts. But I didn't crave it because it was good; I craved it because it reminded me of home.

 

Now that I'm back in Canada, Tim Horton's is a semi-regular component of my diet by virtue of the fact that it's a) ubiquitous, b) cheap, c) predictable and d) it's more closely resembles actual food than anything produced by McDonald's. Having said that, I do have a serious bone to pick with the Tim's, and one that has nothing to do with the actual consumables they purvey. My bone of contention is the age-old but still enduring "Rrrrroll up the rrrrrim to win" campaign, campaign that's defined Tim Horton's since approximately forever and remains one of the most environmentally unsound marketing campaigns out there.

 

For the benefit of readers outside Canada who are unfamiliar with the Tim's chain, the "Rrrrroll up the rrrrrim" campaign (with the obligatory Slavic-sounding 'R' trill) is a longstanding Tim Horton's tradition whereby customers unroll the rim of their cardboard coffee cups to see if they've won a prize. It should be said that I've never known anyone who's actually won anything through this method, but I would assume that the company would have been sued a long time ago if there weren't actual prizes in the offing. I can remember the "Rrrrroll up the rrrrrim" TV commercials from my childhood, and 30 years later it's still the chain's best-known catchphrase.

 

While Tim Horton's marketing people undoubtledly take the view of "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." Fair enough, except while the campaign might not be "broke" the planet increasingly is, and practices like this are a contributing factor to Gaia's demise. Consider the fact that this campaign not only discourages the use of travel mugs in the place of cardboard cups with plastic lids (because you can't rrrrroll up the rrrrrim of a travel mug), but it also results in damaging an otherwise perfectly reusable cardboard cup. I suppose you could still drink out of a cup with a rrrrrolled up rrrrrim, but it scarcely makes for a pleasant coffee-drinking experience.

 

Our society is decidedly arbitrary when it comes to being ecologically sensitive. We embrace certain sustainable practices (such as bringing eco-bags to the grocery store, which is increasingly mainstream practice) while completely overlooking others, such as the travel mug. Myself I prefer travel mugs, not only for environmental reasons but also because I find them more pleasant to drink out of than a cardboard or styrofoam cup. Why is it, then, that the only people who seem to use them are college students and construction workers? At most university campuses you get cheaper coffee if you use a travel mug. By contrast, when you go to most chain coffee outlets and pull out a travel mug, it's generally greeted with a quizzical expression, if not with irritation.

 

If any Tim Horton's marketing and communications people are reading this, here's my message to you: it's time to scrap the "rrrrroll up the rrrrrim" campaign. Not only is it behind-the-times in terms of sustainability, it's frankly a tired old campaign that could used to be changed. Instead, I would love to see a contest whereby you have to bring a reusable mug in order to win a prize. Not only would it be good for the planet, but it would be a huge publicity boon for you on the corporate social responsibility front - and it would save the company money in terms of cup inventory. You could even keep the same catchphrase format by replacing it with something like "Rrrrreuse your rrrrreceptacle to win" or something like that. Think about it.

 

In the meantime, I encourage everyone to boycott "rrrrroll up the rrrrrim." You personally might not win, but the planet will.

Yes, Actually We Do Live In A 'Rape Culture'

If I were in a position to nominate somebody for Time Magazine Man of the Year for 2012, my number one choice would be Todd Akin. Thanks in no small part to the Missouri senate candidate's extraordinarily stupid and offensive remarks about 'legitimate rape' on St. Louis television in August, the rampant sexism and misogyny that has long pervaded the US Republican Party was suddenly catapulted to the forefront of the election and resulted in the greatest gender divide in any US presidential election in history - and an unprecedented wave of victorious female candidates

The Akin remarks, as well as a number of similarly off-colour comments, also brought the issue of rape to the forefront of the election, and by proxy to the general online conversation. The phrase 'legitimate rape' has over the past few months become a byword for misogyny, and served as a lightning rod for debate about the so-called 'rape culture' within American society. Not surprisingly, the resurgence of this much-maligned second-wave feminist concept has incurred an angry backlash from those who asserts that while Neanderthals like Akin are clearly rape apologists, characterizing North American society as a whole as a 'rape culture' is a dangerous overstatement.

One blog post in particular caught my eye, one by a blogger who goes by the handle Bigot Vanquisher. (Love the name, by the way!) A relative newcomer to the blogosphere from what I can tell, Bigot Vanquisher is clearly the sort of angry atheist shit-disturber that I'm sure I would normally get along with famously out in the intertubes. Nevertheless, her post (I'm assuming she's a she) on American 'Rape Culture' raised a number of points that I felt needed addressing, as I feel they misconstrue the term and ultimately understate the severity of the misogynist virus within our society. Ms. Vanquisher, if you're reading this post, I more than welcome a rebuttal.

Ms. Vanquisher claims that those who characterize the United States as having a 'rape culture' do so on the following grounds:

1. Women are taught not to get raped instead of men being taught not to rape;
2. Women are objectified and oppressed in our society;
3. Rape victims are more often than not blamed for their own rape instead of the rapist being blamed.

She then goes on to refute these assertions on the grounds that the vast majority of men do not commit acts of rape and that violence is a problem that affects both sexes (and indeed men are more likely to fall victim to physical violence than women), and furthermore than men are also judged on the basis of their appearance - and that women do indeed participate in their own objectification by wearing revealing clothing. While it's not clear to me what all of this has to do with concept of the rape culture, the main point of her post appears to be that 'rape culture' is an unfair blanket characterization of a society wherein the vast majority of men are not rapists.

C'mon, it's all in the spirit of fun, isn't it?

There are two inherent problems with this line of reasoning. The first is while it's all fine and good for Ms. Vanquisher to assert that "the average male does not rape, nor has a desire to," the statistics out there paint a darker picture of the 'stronger sex'. Numbers cited by Roger Williams University in Rhode Island indicate that one out of four American women is sexually assaulted at some point in her life (a fairly commonly cited statistic). Regardless of how accurate this is, that's still a hell of lot of women, however you cut it. The American Medical Association also states that two to four million women are abused every year. That means if you're an American woman, you have a greater than one in 50 chance of being raped on any given year. The RWU numbers also show that fewer than 20 percent of instances of sexual assault are reported to the police, so these figures are invariably lowballed.

What about then men then? The RWU study showed that one in 12 male university students surveyed had committed acts that met the legal definition of rape (and again these are men who admit to it). While one out of 12 is by no means 'most', it's still a worryingly high number. If it transpired that eight percent of the population had committed armed robbery, you'd consider that a crime wave. Likewise if you were to find out that eight percent of the elected officials in your region had admitted to accepting bribes, you'd probably call that endemic corruption.

Clearly there's a lot of rape going on and vast majority of it is being committed by men against women, and the sheer numbers reveal that this is no the work of a small but dedicated assortment of creepy back-alley perverts in dirty raincoats. But even this is somewhat beside the point when it comes to discussing the concept of 'rape culture', and here Ms. Vanquisher commits the logical fallacy of confounding 'institutionalize oppression' with the very separate issue of individual men oppressing individual women. This defence is the typical knee-jerk reaction that one gets from men who object to the idea of a patriarchy along the lines of "Well, I'm not like that!"

Unfortunately, even if it's true that a significant majority of men don't condone or apologize for sexual assault in any way (although I myself have my doubts), the fact would remain that we live in a culture that makes all manner of excuses for male behaviour while shaming women who publicly assert their own sexuality. Pornographers and religious demagogues are united in their obsession with female purity (the line between Barely Legal and the 'purity ball' phenomenon is a narrow one indeed) and their contempt for female sexual autonomy. From Sleeping Beauty to today's torture-porn films and hideously misogynistic fashion shoots, the passive helpless female as rape-fodder is an undeniable presence within our culture's psychological landscape.

A gold-plated Infiniti outside a jewelry store in Nanjing, China

Still not convinced that this constitutes a 'rape culture'? Let me give you the following analogy. Let's say you have a hypothetical country someplace wherein eight percent of public officials admit that they either are or have been on the take. From that one can be pretty much assured that a) the actual number of corrupt officials is significantly higher, and b) an even larger number are probably aware of the corruption and either turning a blind eye to it or otherwise remain silent, either out of fear or a sense of hopelessness about the situation. By any standard this would constitute a 'culture of corruption' worthy of a Transparency International dossier.

The analogy of political corruption with rape is, I believe, a telling one. As with rape, nobody in any country no matter how dysfunctional needs to be told that accepting bribes for political favours or rifling the national treasury is a bad and unethical thing to do, and yet somehow it happens. A lot. However, it happens decidedly less in settings where you have transparent democratic institutions, a culture of egalitarianism and a relatively even distribution of wealth. It is significantly less common in countries where whistle-blowers are afforded legal protection and public opinion more often than not sides with the whistle-blower rather than the officials in question.

Corruption is also much less common in societies where it's considered distasteful for public officials and other members of the elite to flaunt their wealth in public as opposed to authoritarian countries like China, Russia and many African countries where high office and high society are virtually synonymous. This is not to say that all wealthy officials in these countries have achieved their wealth through illegal means, but in such milieus defined by opulence and luxury in which officials are seen as getting a free pass, it's fertile breeding ground for bribery and graft.

Hildur Lilliendahl Viggósdóttir, culture warrior

Now apply this analogy to a social setting in which a certain group of people (men) are programmed from birth to define themselves on the basis of their penises and their sexual prowess and where rape is, while not approved of, often explained away as a natural byproduct of male sexual frustration, and you have a rape culture. And when you have an online culture where sexually brutalized women are standard fare not just on porn sites but on 'edgy' fashion sites - and yet women like Icelandic feminist blogger Hildur Lilliendahl Viggósdóttir are banned from Facebook for re-posting misogynist content and calling men out on their misogyny, it's not exactly sending an anti-rape culture message.

Another point that Bigot Vanquisher makes in her post is that it's folly to describe countries like the United States having a rape culture where there are countries in the Middle East and elsewhere where the war on women isn't even remotely disguised and women literally fear for their lives when they walk out the door - and often behind closed doors as well. Again I think the analogy of political corruption is helpful. It's patently obvious that the 'rape culture' as it exists in North America pales in comparison to that in, say, South Africa, where a recent survey revealed that a shocking one out of four men admit to having raped a woman and nearly half of that total admit to more than one rape. However, the existence of different magnitudes of rape culture does not mean that we don't have problems here. The fact that Thailand is more transparent than, say, Cameroon doesn't mean that Thailand doesn't have serious corruption issues that need to be addressed.

Rape culture is a highly complex phenomenon, one that is informed by numerous other social conditions - racism, nationalism, classism, homophobia, religious indoctrination and so on. Volumes could be written on this stuff, and indeed volumes have. But the main problem I have with Ms. Vanquisher's post is the same problem I have with a great many right wingers, which is a refusal or an inability to fathom the concept of institutionalized oppression as a concept entirely separate from individual volition. Denying the existence of a rape culture on the basis that "none of the guys I know have raped a woman" is akin to denying the harmfulness of smoking on the basis that "my grandfather smoked all his life and he lived to the age of 96." Not very helpful.

What could possibly be rape-enabling about this?

Yes, individuals can do a lot, but if you're serious about combating something as massive as rape culture it takes a lot of work. Men in our culture are conditioned to not speak out against sexist behaviour while women who publicly assert a feminist stance are frequently admonished as man-haters. Many men I've spoken to have confided that confronting sexism and misogyny within the context of our prevailing "bros before hoes" guy culture means opening yourself up to ridicule - or worse. And feminist bloggers have become well accustomed to the vilest of online threats wherein the abusers can enjoy the cloak of anonymity. We all know this - and yet somehow we convince ourselves that it's an inevitable reality of life and that there's nothing we can do about it.

So in closing, yes, we do have a 'rape culture' in our supposedly advanced society. No, it's not nearly as bad as it is in, say, the Democratic Republic of the Congo or Afghanistan, but saying that your society is "less sexist than Afghanistan" is not exactly a glowing endorsement. The fact that eight percent of any given group of men admit to 'helping themselves' to women's bodies against their will while being aided and abetted by major strands of our culture still constitutes a big problem in my book. Furthermore, telling women that they "have it good in our society" is nothing but a further silencing tactic whose ultimate aim is putting women in their place and shutting them down when they complain about their objectification by men.

Rape culture is an inflammatory term - but in my experience you need to be at least a bit inflammatory to get a difficult message across. Rape culture, like corruption, is a social condition rooted in a deep-seeded sense of entitlement. And until men the world over stop defining themselves by their penile prowess and viewing women's bodies as public goods, women from Calgary to Kinshasa will - to varying degrees - continue to feel less than safe in their company.

And in the meantime, would Time Magazine please please PLEASE choose Todd Akin as Man of the Year for 2012! I mean c'mon, Hitler's received the nod before. That and it would send a pretty powerful message.

On Bullying and Misogyny (In Memory of Amanda Todd)

The suicide of bullied Metro Vancouver teen Amanda Todd has generated yet another media frenzy over the epidemic of cyberbullying. In the case of Amanda, the 15-year-old from Port Coquitlam left behind a chilling YouTube PSA in which she recounts how her tormentors forced her to switch schools on multiple occasions (which did nothing to remedy the situation) and ultimately drove her to drugs, alcohol, seclusion and self-harming before ending it all. For those of you who haven't seen the video, you owe it to yourselves to see it.

The media's reaction to Amanda Todd's death has been depressingly predictable: outrage of the "How could this possibly happen?" followed by the predictable cacophony of proposed solutions to the epidemic of cyberbullying. As always, some called for increased policing of the web, others for greater bullying awareness campaigns in the school system. Some blamed parents and teachers for not doing more to stop it. Others callously opined that bullying is simply part of the natural order of things and that she got what she deserved. And as always, much of the focus remained on the need for teens to be careful while online lest they make themselves vulnerable to online tormentors.

The really depressing part, of course, is that Amanda Todd will soon be largely forgotten - apart of course from her grieving family and friends, who will never forget. And the frenzy of cyberbullying will quickly subside...until the next Amanda Todd pulls the plug on his or her life and the process begins again. And then of course there are the victims whose names and faces never make the pages of the National Post. Canada's youth suicide rate remains troublingly high. And while the rate is still higher for boys than for girls, the suicide rate for girls has jumped over the past few decades, while the rate for boys has decreased. There are thousands of Amandas out there. And far too many will leave this world unknown, with no YouTube account of their torment.

There can be no denying that the Internet, and social media in particular, has made the problem of adolescent bullying more insidious and difficult to combat. Not only does it allow perpetrators to remain anonymous, it also provides them with a far wider dominion over their victims. When I was a junior high schooler in the early 1990s, a change of school was generally a surefire tactic for curtailing bullying; while one still had to content with being friendless at a new school, at the very least it meant an escape from the devils of the old school. For modern-day teens like Amanda, changing schools offers no such escape. The web has even allowed her tormentors to target the girl's online memorials. Some sort of 21st century equivalent to the Greek Defixiones might be in order.

But while the 'cyber' element has made the problem of bullying scarier and more complicated, the root of the problem remains the same. Bullying is - and always has been - a societal means for maintaining a hierarchical status quo by punishing those who dare to overstep their bounds. It's also a means for placating the 'masses' with the occasional human sacrifice, playing into the dark side to our human nature. (Think Apocalypto in the schoolyard.) It's the 'mild' first-world tip of a very large and sinister iceberg that in other parts of the world manifests itself in the public lynching of gays and the spraying of schoolgirls with battery acid for having the audacity to seek out an education. And as always, those who fall outside of the default group (women, members of cultural, racial or sexual minorities, social misfits etc.) who bear the brunt of it.

"She flashed, felt repercussions, her own fault."

- Anonymous online commenter

The bullying of young girls like Amanda Todd is especially troubling inasmuch as it highlights the yawning gap between our society's post-feminist discourse and notions of equality and the harsh underbelly of misogyny that continues to contaminate our social relations. Granted, the Amanda Todds of the western world are no longer liable to be burned at the stake (as they might have been in Europe 500 years ago) or stoned to death (as she might well have been in modern-day Afghanistan or Somalia), but the horrible bullying to which she was subjected bears the same malevolent misogynist streak that motivated - and continues to motivate - such atrocities. The Amanda Todd story exemplifies the degree to which a great many men (and sadly many women) still view women within the passive virgin-whore dichotomy and consider those who lose their footing on that tightrope to be deserving of cruel censure.

So what are we to do about it? Sadly, there are no obvious cures. My own proposed radical solution for gender equality is not one that I'm expecting anybody to embrace anytime soon, namely a 50-year moratorium on male voting. Under such an edict, men would still be eligible to run for office but would have to be answerable to a female-only electorate (in a similar fashion to how chiefs and warlords within the Iroquois Confederacy were answerable to a council of women). A 50-year period would be long enough to produce profound change but short enough to remain within people's historical memory, a time period similar in length to the beginning and end of the Cold War, the rise of the Asian Tigers and the unfolding of the New Europe. And suffice it to say, 50 years of female rule would pale in comparison to 4,000 nearly uninterrupted years of patriarchy, but then again the goal is equality, not supremacy.

Getting back to the problem of cyberbullying, it bothers me that the onus is always placed on the victims to protect themselves against abusers while the abusers, and the complicit onlookers, invariably escape unpunished. While it is of course important for children and adolescents to be taught how to protect themselves online, it's about time more altruistic IT-savvy people stepped up to the plate and confronted this online terrorists head on. I was recently inspired by a story in the Guardian by Irish journalist Leo Traynor, in which he recounted his own tale of online abuse and how he enlisted a hacker colleague of his to track down his abuser - who turned out to be the son of a colleague with a head full of bad wiring. We need a Hackers Without Borders-type organization, a crack squad of angry nerds (who you would think would be natural allies in in this cause) to scare the crap out of would-be online tormentors.

At the same time, we need a 'coming out' campaign for former bullies seeking to make amends. In the aftermath of Amanda Todd's suicide, many commentors have come forward with their own stories of bullying and harrassment. For any sort of restorative justice to occur, those who are saddled with the burden of having been bullies or passive bystanders need to make themselves known, ask for forgiveness and then take part in combatting the problem. Just as the onus of gender equality cannot exclusively be placed on the backs of women, I don't see how anti-bullying campaign are to make any headway without the involvement of former perpetrators. At least one bully did just this in the aftermath of Amanda Todd's suicide. A good start, but far more of this is needed.

We should all be mad as hell about this - and about our society's ongoing contempt for women and girls who fail to meet mainstream culture's unspoken but understood expectations to be sexy-but-not-sexual, compliant to patriarchal strictures and vigilant in defence of their own purity. And for the sake of online freedom (and not ruining it for everybody else), we need to get tough on cyberbullies. Censoring the Internet will not curb bullying anymore than veiling and secluding women reducing instances of sexual assault, as conservatives in the Islamic world are fond of arguing. As a society we are capable of being better than this, but we won't get there without taking a long, hard look at the poisonous attitudes that persist within our supposedly progressive culture.

And for the love of god, please stop blaming social media for this! Yes, SM is a double-edged sword that makes the issue of bullying more complex, but it's not the crux of the problem. And besides, were it not for social media, none of us would be talking about Amanda Todd right now, as her excruciatingly eloquent YouTube statement could never have been made and disseminated around the world in the first place. Social media is not to blame for this. Misogyny and its never ending capacity to inflict unnecessary human misery is to blame.

In the meantime, my heart goes out to the girls family and friends, for what it's worth. Needless to say no words could ever even begin to take away the hurt.

TEDxMogadishu - Rebirth Through Communication and Technology

Yesterday saw an event take place that very few people would have thought possible. May 17 saw the latest installment of the TEDx lecture series (self-organized events within the TED format) take place in a city that for over two decades has been synonymous with lawlessness, violence and human misery. While media reports of a new (relative) calm in Mogadishu following the recent ouster of the al-Qaeda-afiliated Al-Shabaab extremists from the Somali capital by African Union troops have been numerous in recent months, news of a TED lecture series in this bombed-out disaster of a city took everyone by surprise.

Had the TED series existed many centuries ago, Mogadishu might in fact have been the perfect launchpad for it. The ancient Sultanate of Mogadishu was one of the most globalized cities of its time, serving as a bridge between Africa and the Arab world and enriched by trade contact with India, Sri Lanka, China and Vietnam. This helped turn the city-state into one of the medieval world's great intellectual centres. The 14th century Moroccan scholar and traveller Ibn Battuta described the citizenry of Mogadishu as "generous, urbane, fat and erudite and genuine followers of Prophet Muhammad’s instruction to 'travel in search of knowledge, even though that adventure takes you to China.'"

Fast forward to the early 21st century, however, and the picture is far less positive. As with the rest of the country, the Somali capital has been without an effective central government since the ouster of dictator Mohamed Siad Barre in 1991, and the city's once-resplendent medieval architecture has been largely destroyed by wave after wave of warfare. For most of the past two decades, the city has been controlled by competing warlords and their partisans, including the violent Islamic militant group al-Shabaab, a group whose bizarre law and order edicts included banning samosas (a staple food across the region) on the grounds that their triangular shape hearkened to the Christian Trinity.

But while peace remains far-from-certain in Mogadishu, signs of recovery in the ancient city are becoming ever more palpable. Members of the Somali diaspora in Kenya, Ethiopia and the west returning home and starting businesses. International investors have begun exploring opportunities in the city and banking operations have returned. And now - a TED conference in Mogadishu, centred, fittingly enough, on the theme of 'rebirth'. The conference was pitched thusly:

There is hope in Somalia. An influx of African Union troops has pushed insurgents out of Mogadishu and representatives from the country’s clans are meeting to discuss the formation of a new government and draft constitution. With sustained peace on the horizon, the Somali diaspora is returning home and starting businesses. International investors are exploring opportunities and the first Somali bank has now opened.

While the stability remains fragile, Somalis are optimistic that a turning point has been reached after 21 years of conflict, and we are witnessing the rebirth of Mogadishu.

Ilwad 'Elle' Elman

The talk featured ten guest speakers (all but one of whom are Somali), who ranged from a real estate developer, a camel farmer, a women's aid worker, a physician and a financier. Refreshingly, given the country's appalling record for gender equality, four out of ten presenters were women. The opening presenter was human rights worker Ilwad 'Elle' Elman, a tireless advocate for rape victims and recovering child soldiers who founded the Elman Peace and Human Rights Center in Mogadishu together with her mother. The conference also featured Hassan Mohamed H. (Kaafi), founder and president of Plasma University, a medical science institution founded in Mogadishu in 2005 for the purpose of providing affordable nursing, pharmaceutical and healthcare administration.

TEDxMogadishu was broadcast worldwide via live streaming. For those not fortunate enough to be in Mogadishu for the conference (or to have watched it live), a video of the broadcast will soon become available online at tedxmogadishu.com. In the meantime, a great big salaam to the people of Mogadishu for taking a stand for communication over repression, technology over terrorism and peaceful exchange of ideas over intolerance.

Next stop Yangon? Damascus? After this, anything is possible.