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.

Lest We Forget - Why Remembering The 'Great War' Matters Now More Than Ever

It's not often that I find myself agreeing with conservative Sun Media columnist Lorne Gunter. We tend to be on opposite ends of the political spectrum on most issues. And yet, I found myself nodding in agreement with his column today excoriating parents who pull their children out of Remembrance Day ceremonies for either religious reasons or a belief that such ceremonies glorify militarism and warfare. Lorne, I don't say this very often, but hats off to your thoughtful and cogent column!

In less than a year from now, we will mark the 100th anniversary of the outbreak of the First World War. While the Second World War continues to occupy prime real estate in our collective historical memory (thanks to its relative recentness and our continued fascination with its chief antagonist, Adolf Hitler), the 'Great War' - as it became known in its aftermath - is largely overlooked. After nearly a century since its outbreak, it is now in serious danger of slipping completely from public consciousness. Indeed there are very few people left who experienced it. On February 4 of this year, former Women's Royal Air Force mess steward Florence Green and the world's last surviving WWI veteran, died at the age of 110.

Field Marshal Haig, war criminal

The First World War broke out on July 28, 1914 and lasted until November 11, 1918. While eventually overshadowed by the Second World War in scale and bloodiness, it was at the time the most devastating military conflict in history, whose total death toll ranges from a low estimate of 15 million to a high of 65 million (if one includes Spanish Flu deaths as a direct consequence of the war). To put that in perspective, on the low end of the scale that's nearly one percent of the entire human population at that time, to nearly four percent on the other end of the scale.

It was also a conflict characterized by callousness and contempt for human life on the part of many of the military leaders involved. Such leaders included the criminally insane Field Marshal Sir Douglas Haig, a man whose zealously violent military tactics and sky-high casualty rate (including 60,000 of his own men in a single day at the opening of the Battle of the Somme) would earn him the nickname 'Butcher Haig'. At the time the scale of the conflict was unprecedented in human history and led to a radical reshaping of every society touched by it.

Fast-forward to the present, many people - particularly those of a liberal bent - find today's Remembrance Day celebrations an uncomfortable business. Remembrance Day, one sometimes hears, is merely a glorification of our military akin to the jingoistic 'Support Our Troops' cries that we're accustomed to hearing from right wingers critical of anyone who, say, questioned the wisdom of invading Iraq back in 2003 or calls for our troops to be removed from the line of fire in present-day Afghanistan. And indeed our current government here in Canada has proven to be particularly prone to over-the-top flag-waving military fetishism, a trend which I agree is worrying.

Nevertheless, I do believe that liberal-minded people are entirely wrongheaded in boycotting Remembrance Day - or pulling their children out of such ceremonies. For one thing, the old cliché about those who forget history being destined to repeat it seems to be as true now as it has ever been, and with World War I now pretty much as historically remote as the Napoleonic Wars, it seems all the more important that it be recognized for what it was. To my mind, any self-declared pacifist does their cause a profound disservice by denying their children this profoundly important reminder about the horrors of conflicts past - and why such military entanglements should be avoided at all cost.

Still not convinced? The First World War was one of modern history's most important catalysts of social change. It was a war driven first and foremost by greed on the part of European colonial powers, and as such the war represented the beginning of the end of European colonialism in Africa, Asia and elsewhere. It saw the overthrow of oppressive, out-of-touch monarchies in Russia, Germany, Austria and Turkey, as well as political liberalization elsewhere. In much of the developed world it saw massive improvements in women's rights, including female suffrage in Canada and elsewhere. In addition, the public health and welfare crisis that the war engendered was probably the single most important catalyst in the development of the kind of state-funded social supports that are the core of today's social democracy.

Flanders' fields are still littered with war remains.

Lastly, Remembrance Day is, above all, about the troops, not the countries and governments involved. It honours people who were forced to the front lines in Western Europe to fight in a futile war of attrition that, in the memorable words of Captain Blackadder in Blackadder Goes Forth, "would be a damn sight simpler if we just stayed at home and shot fifty thousand of our men a week." No war in history has more graphically illustrated the destructive futility of warfare. The Second World War was a different affair altogether as there were bona fide good guys and bad guys, the latter being the German Nazi Party in the west and the imperial forces of Japan in the east. In the case of the First, the good guys were the soldiers on both sides of the front, the ones who famously declared an impromptu Christmas Truce in 1914 in direct contravention of high commands on both sides.

This, if nothing else, strikes me as well worth remembering. Feel free to criticize the military and its current entanglements. By all means criticize our leaders when they wax poetic about our country's 'proud military heritage'. Just don't deliberately keep your children ignorant of one of history's most cataclysmic conflicts. Do that and you're helping sow the seeds of future warfare.

The Dungeons & Dragons Guide to Political Decision-Making

I have a confession to make - one that will, I fear, to great harm to my geek cred. I actually know next to nothing about Dungeons & Dragons. I know that it's a fantasy role-playing wargame that has had an enormous impact on the development of today's online RPGs. I know that it's been derided by many as a domain for losers and misfits and inspired the occasional fit of moral panic among social conservatives for its supposed links to Satanism and the occult. But beyond that I know very little about it. I'm open to being educated.

That said, I've recently become fascinated with D&D Alignment Charts, thanks to their current popularity as an Internet meme. From what I understand, in basic D&D, players create characters based on one of three alignments: lawful (implying honor and respect for society's rules), chaotic (implying the exact opposite) and neutral (something in between). Advanced D&D then introduces a second axis of good, neutral and evil, offering a combination of nine alignments. The D&D Alignment Chart therefore looks like this:

In the Dungeons & Dragons worldview, all individuals are to be found somewhere within these nine classifications. Here is a basic rundown of the archetypes in question:

• Lawful Good: Also known as the 'Saintly' or 'Crusader' character, the domain of compassion, honour and duty. The domain of chivalry and bushido.
• Neutral Good: Also known as the 'Benefactor' alignment, the domain of characters driven by conscience and altruistic motivations without regard for or against the established rules. Most Nobel Peace Prize winners fit within this category.
• Chaotic Good: Also known as the 'Beatific', 'Rebel' or 'Cynic' alignment. This is the domain of the Robin Hood types who have nothing but disdain for the 'system'.
• Lawful Neutral: Also called the 'Judge' or 'Disciplined' alignment, the domain of individual driven first and foremost by a personal code and placing a high value on traditions and historical precedent. Conservatives, in other words.
• True Neutral: Also referred to as 'Neutral Neutral','Undecided', 'Nature's' alignment or 'The Swiss'. No strong feelings towards any alignment.
• Chaotic Neutral: Also known as the 'Anarchist' or 'Free Spirit' alignment, the domain of roguish individualists who follow their own heart with general disdain for rules. Think libertarians and socialist agitators.
• Lawful Evil: Also referred to as the 'Dominator' or 'Diabolic' alignment, those who see a well-ordered system as being easier to exploit, usually inclined to obey their superiors while twisting the rules to work in their favour.
• Neutral Evil: Also called the 'Malefactor' alignment, characters with no qualms about turning on their allies-of-the-moment and making strategic alliances solely for the purpose of furthering their own goals.
• Chaotic Evil: Also known as the 'Destroyer' or 'Demonic' alignment, the ultimate wreakers of havoc, destroyers of public order - often for its own sake. The domain of serial killers, suicide bombers and génocidaires.

In recent times the D&D Alignment Chart has become a popular meme among sci-fi fans for classifying characters. Here is an example of one from a movie series we all know well.

A fun little exercise in character study, and one that got me wondering what its applicability might be in the 'real world'. Specifically, it struck me that this system might be directly applicable to political decision-making. How might we vote if instead of classifying candidates on a crude left-right spectrum we classified them in the two-dimensional D&D fashion? As an experiment I applied the same classification system to Canadian political history. This is what I came up with:

How are we to read this chart? Clearly the lawful-chaotic axis is more or less analogous to the conservative-liberal axis that dominates our political system, but what of the vertical good-evil axis? While it might seem obvious that one always wants to vote for the 'good' candidate, the track records of these nine individuals bears a closer examination. Of the three 'good' characters, the only one who can truly be described as successful is Lester B. Pearson, and even he had a rough time in his short stint as prime minister. René Lévesque and Louis Riel may well have been good, honourable men, but both were dealt losing hands by history.

When it comes to political longevity, it's clear that neutral is the way to go. Macdonald, King and Trudeau all enjoyed long careers at the epicentre of Canadian political life, with 'True Neutral' W.L. McKenzie King dwarfing all others in longevity, with 22 years as prime minister over the course of three terms. As for the 'evil' category, it remains to be seen how our current Machiavellian prime minister will fare, but the other two enjoyed brief halcyon periods before going out in a destructive blaze of glory. Mulroney famously laid siege to his own political party upon his exit from public life, while Parizeau nearly took out the entire country - and destroyed any credibility his ever had beyond his fellow hard-core sovereigntists by blaming his narrow loss on "money and the ethnic vote." 

Binders full of 'evil' or 'neutral'?

Who do you want in power? Do you want a Dudley Do-Right along the lines of Pearson or Jimmy Carter or cautious calculators like McKenzie King, a man whose perpetual fence-sitting (e.g. "Conscription if necessary but not necessarily conscription.") while in office was instrumental in navigating a divided nation through human history's most desctructive war? Is it ever beneficial to vote for 'evil'? Few did more to ruin the credibility of the Quebec sovereigntist movement than Jacques Parizeau, which in retrospect might have made him an attractive choice for Quebec federalist voters.

Could the D&D alignment system serve as a more nuanced alternative for discussing political candidates than the rather limiting left-wing/right-wing axis? And speaking of which, how might we have classified the two candidates in this week's US election? Does Mitt Romney's track record for flip-flopping and questionable alliances make him 'Neutral Evil'? Is President Obama more of a 'Lawful Neutral' or a 'True Neutral'? Over to you.

Inigo Montoya Teaching Moment #4 - Sexism vs. Misogyny

Last week I wrote a post on the Amanda Todd suicide, in which I expressed the opinion that the media ought to be focusing more on the issue of misogyny than that of bullying and the role of social media. 'Misogyny', it turns out, has been a newsworthy word as of late, and as such I think it's worth digging deep into the word itself in the latest of the 'Inigo Montoya Teaching Moment' series of posts on misused - or allegedly misused - words and expressions.

Misogyny and discrimination against women in both the developed and developing world has been in the news a lot in recent weeks. When not making news in Metro Vancouver in the aftermath of the Amanda Todd tragedy it was doing so in Pakistan's beautiful but chronically unstable Swat region, where a 15 girl by the name of Malālah Yūsafzay became an international heroine thanks to a passion for education, a Taliban thug willing to kill in the name of preventing girls from being educated, and by valiant intervention by surgeons in Peshawar, Rawalpindi and Birmingham.

Meanwhile in Australia, the word itself became the centre of a media frenzy following a tirade by Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard against opposition leader Tony Abbott. Gillard's rant, which quickly went viral over YouTube, was delivered in the Australian parliament two weeks ago following demands from the opposition leader for the firing of House Speaker Peter Slipper, accused of making derogatory comments about women in a series of text messages. The prime minister, while stopping short of defending her colleague's actions, took the opportunity to expose her the famously macho and socially conservative opposition leader's hypocrisy in this 15-minute verbal smackdown. If you haven't seen it yet, it's well worth watching.

Gillard's rant - noteworthy even within Australia's famously bellicose political culture - quickly became international news, winning her praise in many corners both in Australia and overseas for her unapologetic stance against entrenched sexism and - a word she invokes frequently in her rant - misogyny. It also resulted in changed the PM could hardly have expected. Within a week of her 'misogyny' tirade, The Macquarie Dictionary, which bills itself as Australia’s National Online Dictionary, announced that it was changing its definition of misogyny from "a pathological hatred of women” to “entrenched prejudice against women."

This linguistic shuffle prompted a degree of backlash, particularly from Australia's opposition Liberal Party. "Ms. Gillard called Mr. Abbott a misogynist. Mr. Abbott clearly does not hate women," asserted Senator Fiona Nash in the Sydney Morning Herald. "It would seem more logical for the Prime Minister to refine her vocabulary than for the Macquarie Dictionary to keep changing its definitions every time a politician mangles the English language."

Political pleading notwithstanding, the incident begs the question of what precisely misogyny is, and how does it differ (if at all) from garden-variety sexism. In the aftermath of the Gillard attack, The Guardian asked six leading feminists to define the term. In the end, all of the them more or less agreed that 'misogyny' was simply a darker, more malicious form of sexism. British feminist author Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett characterized the difference between the two being akin to the difference between Benny Hill and Rush Limbaugh, noting that "While sexism demonstrates a disregard and disrespect for women, I always have associated misogyny with something darker, angrier, and more cynical."

When a man claims that women are naturally maternal, or are by default, bad drivers, he is a sexist. If he was to add that women are only good for a fuck and should be confined to servicing men and their children, it is misogyny.

- Julie Bindel

American author and renowned Third Waver Naomi Wolf digs deeper, contending that while 'sexism' is the product of unthinking prejudice, 'misogyny' is the product of a deeper, more emotionally charged contempt for women. "A public figure who tolerates the systemic under-prosecuting of rape is guilty of serious and unforgivable sexism," she explains. "Making rape jokes or explaining away the damage of rape in public [see Missouri Congressman Todd Akin] or legislating, as over a dozen US states are now doing, transvaginal probes that are medically unnecessary, simply to sexually punish women for choosing abortion – well, that is misogyny."

Note to Tony Abbott: appostrophes are your friend, even if women aren't!

This then begs the question as to whether or not the 'misogynist' tag truly apply to the man at the centre of the controversy, the man who the Australian Prime Minister attacked saying "If [Mr. Abbott] wants to know what misogyny looks like in modern Australia he doesn't need a motion in the house of Representatives; he needs a mirror." What exactly is Tony Abbott's track record for misogyny? Wolf argues that Gillard used the term accurately in her characterization of Abbott's view of abortion as "the easy way out" and his anti-Gillard placard campaign in which he urged Australian voters to "ditch the witch, wherein she was also described as '[Senator] Bob Brown's Bitch'."

Other Abbott classics might be more aptly described as sexist, such as his famously thoughtless on-air remark in 2010 when he referred to "What the housewives of Australia need to understand as they do the ironing," or when he notoriously quipped that mandatory paid maternity leave would happen "over this government’s dead body." Such declarations clearly reveal the opposition leader's adherence to an antediluvian view of the proper place of women in society - unquestionably sexist but not quite misogynistic. The 'Ditch the Witch' campaign and his acerbic and patently untrue dismissal of women seeking safe and legal abortions, on the other hand, betray an active mean spiritedness that can only be described as misogynistic.

Perhaps the most apt characterization of the difference between these two states of mind comes from Julie Bindel, British feminist author, LGBT advocate and co-founder of the group Justice For Women. "When a man claims that women are naturally maternal, or are by default, bad drivers, he is a sexist. If he was to add that women are only good for a fuck and should be confined to servicing men and their children, it is misogyny. Misogynists are always sexist, but sexists are not always misogynists."

Was Australia's leading dictionary right in revising its definition of 'misogyny' from 'a pathological hatred of women' to 'entrenched prejudice against women'? In my opinion, probably not. Moreover, I believe Julia Gillard was bang on in her characterization of her rivals views as being both sexist and misogynist, and that no such dictionary revision was needed in the aftermath of her now legendary knockout round.

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.

Shit History Undergrads Say - Woodrow Wilson's 'Fourteen Pants'

Anybody who has ever worked as a teacher knows how mind numbing the marking process can be. Just about every teacher has his or her own strategies for plowing through a mountain of exam papers or essays without completely losing their mind. As a former TA in 20th Century World History at the University of British Columbia, I've had to endure many an evening slogging my way through booklet after booklet of verbose regurgitations of in-class notes on Vimy Ridge and the sinking of the Lusitania or, even worse, intensely morbid essays on war atrocities that relished in every gory detail like a Saw movie.

What was my coping strategy? Generally a combination of beer and derision, specifically combing through exam papers and essays for the egregious and comical abuses of the English language. We've all been guilty of this, of course. We've all been in the position where we're frantically scribbling away in an exam booklet in the hope of half-blindly stumbling on enough correct points to get a decent mark. The result is generally a cornuccopia of wounded sentences, awkward constructions, breathtaking run-on-sentences (runs-on-sentence?), tautological assertions, and just flat out bizarre factual statements.

Here are some particularly good ones that I've been hanging onto some over the years for my own amusement. This is what you get when you're grasping at straws or trying to fill an exam booklet as quickly as possible.

Syntaxed To Death



Diplomacy, apparently

Hitler achieved economic, military and physical growth.

Mao was married at the age of 14 but his wife died three years later. Then Mao had countless relationships with many children.

The Soviet Union used diplomacy to invade Poland.

Suspekt Speling

The Colombian Navel fleet was busy stropping American ships.

Wilson is most famous for his “fourteen pants” which outlined the steps he felt needed to be taken.

Pubic opinion on the subject has varied over the course of history.

Mathematical Genius

Mao Zedong and Adolf Hitler were considered one of the few greatest leaders that transformed their own countries in the early 20th Century.

In this way, both of them were one of the strongest countries in the Second World War.

Geography Fail

Japan resumed its expansionist policies, especially in the Middle East.

 
Going for Broke (a.k.a. Trying To Fill An Entire Exam Booklet)

More different than similar

Mao Zedong and Okonkwo [the main protagonist in Chinua Achebe's novel Things Fall Apart] were more different than similar in many aspects. Being from different cultures, this is to be expected. They share some similarities, but it is evident that these two leaders did things and thought things differently from each other.

Throughout history, there have been many great people, and many more unknown people. There have been many who have done wonderful things, and many who have done nothing at all. And every person has different attitudes towards everything around him or her, and it is these attitudes that shape actions.

You Don't Say!

Perception is crucial in understanding history.

Educated guessing is a large component of media writing as the future is still open to any number of possibilities.

Throughout history, many events have occurred which have greatly impacted the world. Such events are also bound to keep happening.

Hyperbolic Overdrive

In Japan’s case, the “two-two-six” rebellion is one such crisis that led to Japan’s involvement in WWII, and the subsequent history of the world.

Say That Again??

These comparisons of documents and accounts provide a number of questions about the reliability and reasoning behind such discrepancies in the comparisons, establishing an understanding of the lengths the Great Leader would go in order to attain freedom for his people.

The means Hitler and Mao used to achieve leadership roles were similar and different in different ways. Hitler used threat, secret police and democracy.


Similar....yet different

When juxtaposed on a comparative perspective, the methods Hitler and Stalin, of Germany and the Soviet Union respectively, implemented on their rise and solidification in power are very similar.

These two situations are similar in that they are opposite.

Stalin didn’t want to get his country involved with silly things such as world conquest.

As we live, we make history. The present is the history of the future, and the past is the future of our contemporary time.

Meanwhile, the Russia country was governed by the communist party under the Stalin Regime.

His views, albeit firmly believed, are often objective in regards to the external concerns, and only become prejudiced when the conflict strikes and internal locus.

When Nwoye [the protagonist's son in Things Fall Apart] becomes a Christian, he and his father fall apart.

This forced a period of hardship on the people triggering the despair of poverty, the anguish of war and the tragedies of death.

Just as in human nature, agreements on major events in history are fraught with inconsistencies, untruths and confusion.

[The soldiers in WWI] didn’t need or want absolutely anything else other than some food, rest, shelter, and most importantly, of course, not to end up dead.

Win!

The author writes his memoirs of his visits to the Front because the worm (or curiosity) of context got into his ahistorical apple.

Music Review - A History of Now (Asian Dub Foundation)

I don't generally do music reviews on this blog. It's not its raison d'être and there are far better blogs out there for audiophiles than this one. But I couldn't resist doing this one. Not only was Asian Dub Foundation's latest album my audio highlight for 2011 but it was also an album which, for whatever reason, fell completely through the critical cracks. Virtually nobody reviewed it. Here's my review, for what it's worth.

I first fell in love with Asian Dub Foundation in the late-1990s following the release of their critical breakthrough album Rafi's Revenge. At that time of their emergence, the Indo-British collective occupied completely unprecedented musical territory with their idiosyncratic blend of punk, rapcore, dub reggae, drum 'n' bass and Indian raggas and their angry-yet-nuanced lyrics that touched on everything from anti-Asian racism in the modern-day UK to Britain's colonial heritage in India and the social problems that continue to plague the Subcontinent today. Many pegged the band for eventual stardom along the lines of the Beastie Boys and Rage Against The Machine.

From left: Martin Savale, Aktarv8r, Cyber, Chandrasonic, Al Rumjen, Sun-J

Somehow this never quite happened. After two critically acclaimed albums, ADF's iconic teenaged frontman, the elfin Bengali rapper Deeder Saidullah Zaman, left the band, leaving a hole that ADF has continually struggled to fill. The first post-Deeder album Enemy of the Enemy (the band's big anti-Bush statement in 2003) took the approach of a 'collective', featuring various people in the MC role. The disappointing 2005 album Tank introduced MC Spex into the leading role - an arrangement that didn't last long - while uneven but occasionally brilliant 2008 album Punkara introduced a twin MC format featuring rapper Aktar 'Aktarv8r' Ahmed and the punk-oriented vocals of former King Prawn frontman Al Rumjen, as well as memorable cameos by punk legends Iggy Pop and Eugene Hütz.

With all the personnel changes that the group has undergone in its 15-plus years of existence, Asian Dub Foundation has come to resemble a prog rock group along the lines of King Crimson or Genesis. Of the original six members, only three remain: guitarist Steve Chandra 'Chandrasonic' Savale and DJs Sanjay Gulabbhai 'Sun-J' Tailor and John 'Pandit G' Pandit. Enemy of the Enemy saw the introduction of percussionist Prithpal 'Cyber' Rajput whose dhol and tabla mastery gave the band far greater rhythmic depth, while Chandrasonic's brother Martin Savale eventually replaced Dr. Das on bass. As always, the new album features a lineup of guest artists, which this time around include female vocalists Shahla Kartouti and Kerieva, hip hop-influenced flutist Nathan 'Flutebox' Lee, string duo Chi-2 and a group of Cyber's own percussion students under the banner 'Ministry of Dhol'.

One reason why A History of Now received very little press was that the album was not paired with a tour - at least not in the western world. However, the new album was marked by a significant event in the band's history, namely its first ever tour of the band's motherland, a four-leg tour that began with an appearance at the Bacardi NH7 Weekender music festival in Pune in December 2010, will follow-up performances in Mumbai, Chennai and Delhi. ADF's first ever India may have set the tone for the new album, which provides some of the freshest, most energetic and most focused music we've heard from them in a decade.

The album's epic opener 'A New London Eye' establishes a fierce intensity that refuses to let up until the album's gentle eighth track 'Power of 10'. 'Urgency Frequency' is classic drum 'n' bass-heavy ADF that hearkens back to Rafi's Revenge, while 'London to Shanghai' is a charming 21st century travelogue underpinned by sampled Bollywood orchestra and Cyber's peppery tabla. The album's title track (a smart little song about digital media overload) features Aktarv8r at his verbal finest, while the subsequent 'Spirit in the Machine' (possibly the best track on the album) is a thundering instrumental jam featuring Cyber's Ministry of Dhol drummers and some steroid-fuelled riffs by Chandrasonic.

Cyber, Sun-J and Chandrasonic at the Hard Rock Cafe in Mumbai

Other highlights on the album include the haunting, funereal 'In Another Life' (a number that evokes nighttime riverside funeral pyres in Varanasi) as well as the furious nu-metal-esque 'Futureproof', in which the band sounds like an Indian version of Pitchshifter. As is now ADF tradition, the album steers off for a track into decidedly un-Indian musical territory, this time into Tierra Latinoamericana with the Indigenous Resistance-themed 'This Land Is Not For Sale', featuring angry Spanish-language vocals from British-Roma vocalist Kerieva. And the album finishes with a decidedly un-ADF sounding piece of shoegazer dreampop reminiscent of Galaxie 500 or Cocteau Twins ('Hey Lalita'), possibly the closest this band has ever come to a bona fide love song.

It's not a perfect album. 'Where's All The Money Gone?' (Track 6) is probably the weakest number on the album, a retreat to the sort of tired leftist 'Occupy' platitudes that made Tank a less compelling album. 'Temple Siren' is a sludgy, slightly irritating statement on organized religion (or something like that) that doesn't quite hit the mark. But other than this, there is very little to fault the band on here. Among the few who have reviewed the album, some derided it for lacking the sort of undistilled anger that characterized their earlier albums. While this is unquestionably true, it's equally true that this is an older, more self-reflective band than the rage-fuelled sextet of Rafi's Revenge and Community Music. The big themes are still there but the lyrics are more philosophical and measured. And I'm inclined to think that they don't owe us anger all the time.

Even at their youngest and most petulant, Asian Dub Foundation always did an admirable job being even-handed in their political criticism. When criticized in some quarters for what was seen as focusing on anti-Asian racism and western imperialism while neglecting social problems within their own community, the band responded with '1000 Mirrors' on Enemy of the Enemy (memorably featuring Sinéad O'Connor as guest vocalist), a scathing indictment of misogyny and domestic violence in the Indo-Pak community. A History of Now carries on this tradition with 'In Another Life', an obvious commentary on poverty and caste in India. At the same time, their tireless solidarity with oppressed peoples around the world continues on with 'This Land Is Not For Sale', a track that will surely score them a continued following in Latin America.

There's more I'd like to see ADF do. While the band has notably stayed away from the Israel-Palestine conflict (and refreshingly refrained from any discernible Israel-bashing), it would be nice to hear ADF take a stance against Islamist extremists in the wake of cartoon and video controversies and continued religious violence in the Middle East. Coming from a band with a strong following on the ideological left and at least a couple of members of Muslim background, such a statement would pack quite a punch. I would also love to see these boys confront the enduring homophobia and LGBT discrimination within South Asia and the diaspora, particularly given recent moves by LGBT groups in India to push back the tide of homophobia. Guys, if you're reading this, those are my thoughts.

Requests aside, A History of Now is Asian Dub Foundation's strongest album in a very long time, both musically and lyrically. It's certainly their best material since Community Music - and certainly a more evenly excellent album than Enemy of the Enemy or Punkara. It's an album that points to a very bright future for these now-firmly middle aged Desi electro-Bhangra-punkers as they bang and riff their way into what looks to be a tumultuous decade both at home and around the world. This band's rediscovery of its old moxie is not a moment too soon. A revitalized Asian Dub Foundation might be exactly what this angry and confused world needs right now. ADF Zindabad!