It’s always a bit embarrassing to watch a government minister co-operate in the humiliation of her own department, don’t you think? Poor Bev Oda. You just know what the heavies in Stephen Harper’s PMO were thinking when they gave her Canadian Heritage and Status of Women Canada, two departments that the New Canadian Government obviously doesn’t respect very much. You’re the sacrificial lamb at the cabinet table, Bev Oda.
Out of sympathy for poor Bev, who just presided over a 40 per cent cut to the operating budget of SWC, Polly Jones at Marginal Notes suggested this meme to the progressive bloggers a few days ago. We can tell that poor Bev hasn’t been able to think of any very good reasons for defending SWC on her own, so we are here to help her.
If you have a blog or blogspace, please join, and let Scott Tribe at progblogs know you’ve posted. My five things:
1. I am an ancient women’s libber who is grateful to have made friends with a lot of younger women over the last few years. I still can’t get over how smart and strong young women are, how forthright they are in asserting their own equality and then just getting on with the work and the living. Even the ones who are nervous about calling themselves feminists (why is that?) seem to start out smarter and stronger than I did, than I usually feel even now. So above all I owe to the women’s movement and its many successes all the beautiful young women who have renewed my tired old world for me, who will go farther faster because they started out knowing that they had a right to live unafraid, unintimidated, and unashamed.
2. And then there are all the nice young men. Wow. If you’re my age, you have definitely noticed that there are a lot of nice young men about. They cook; they do the laundry; they don’t think they’re “babysitting” when they are looking after their own kids. If you don’t think that’s new, trust me: it’s new enough. Even some of my fellow old farts colleagues of the male persuasion – not thinking of anyone in particular, of course – seem to have taken a few notes as they’ve watched the nice young men getting ever so co-operative. So for all the nice young men in our lives, I figure we must owe quite a few great feminist mums who have wanted the humane best for their boys as well as their girls, and are succeeding pretty well, I’d say.
(The scandalous bits follow on the flip.)
3. My dentist is a woman, a very funny woman who straps me down in the chair and tells me dirty jokes all the way through the drilling because she knows that I hate the drill most. My GP is a woman. My oncologist is a woman. Through the luck of the draw (but the odds are getting better), both the surgeons I’ve had to submit to have been women. None of them has ever brushed aside my questions about the science involved in any treatment by telling me not to worry my pretty little head about such things, and yes, that is the way it was back in the sixties, before women got uppity about their own health. I do know some nice guy doctors, of course, but I believe that the first and fastest success of the women’s movement was the shock we delivered to the medical profession when we started informing ourselves about Our Bodies, Ourselves, and demanded that the researchers and doctors catch up.
4. I never endangered my health by taking HRT, because many feminists, including the Canadian Women’s Health Network, had begun their intelligent criticisms of the pathologizing of women’s aging years before the Women’s Health Initiative announced their findings (increased risk of breast cancer and heart disease) and halted their study.
5. I live in a society that has yet to live its way fully into its own ideals of equality but has at least, after many separate campaigns led by feminists, enshrined many of those ideals in law and in institutions that we can turn to and that we can work to improve. Status of Women Canada (SWC) is such an institution – or at least it is supposed to be, has been in the past. The Court Challenges Program, which has just been shut down by your New Canadian Government, has also been such an institution, the only resource that many people have had to approach the courts when their rights have been violated. Yesterday, of the Court Challenges Program, Treasury Board Chairman John Baird said, “I just don't think it makes sense for the government to subsidize lawyers to challenge government's laws in court.”
A woman’s work is never done, eh?
Written in support of government funding to ensure that Canada continues to meet its commitment to the Beijing Platform of Action to promote equality for women within our country and around the globe.
Great post, skdadl. :) Now I'm feeling sorry for Bev Oda, too.
Yeah. That poor miserable, pathetic woman, eh? ;-)
But here we are, proving just how loving and compassionate and supportive feminists are by their very nature, doing Bev's work for her as she cowers under the cabinet table. Why would anyone ever think we were fearsome meanies?
My list: http://velvetpage.livejournal.com/585756.html
erin, your list is an important list. The people who are trying to demonize the word "feminist" like to pretend that none of us is a wife or a mother, that none of us cares about men or children or anyone else in our world, which is a wicked lie. I really value your testimony to the truth of a real feminist's real life.
Make sure that Scott Tribe at progressive bloggers has the URL for your entry.
I got it.. thanks to both Skdadl and Erin for posting their lists.. and I've added both to the big page detailing this at Prog Blog here
This is in response to Canada's Minister for the Status of Women Canada, Bev Oda, who has just presided over a 40% cut to her own budget and doesn't seem to realize what it is she's supposed to defend. Canadian women (or for that matter, women anywhere) feel free to take the challenge: name five things feminism has done for you.
1. I can own property, and therefore, I can own my house.
2. I am a single mom because I chose to be. And if I had wanted not to be a single mom, I could have chosen that too.
3. I have a university education. I am taken seriously in the academic environment; nobody thinks I'm there just to find a husband.
4. I can vote, and I can run for public office.
5. I grew up truly believing that I could be anything I wanted to be. And I still believe that.
I agree with your list too. I just hope young women nowadays know how fortunate they are that their foremothers had the courage to fight for the status that women now have, and that they know they must still be vigilant and ready ro keep and enhance their gains.
I have to say, though, that one of the negative spinoffs of our insistence on equality is the demise of male chivalry! Used to be guys would open doors and offer to carry heavy stuff for me, but nowadays these whippersnappers are so accustomed to gals doing their own thing and resenting male patronizing, that poor little ol' puny me has to struggle with awkward heavy parcels and try to open doors meself while so burdened, with nary a polite inquiry as to whether or not I would like some help.
Then again, maybe it's because I'm getting old now and look it - easy to ignore and dismiss. Probably time now to start a movement for old women's rights.
As for me, I open doors and offer assistance to anyone struggling with heavy stuff, male or female. I figure that's just being polite!
Some of us old farts have gone through a period of wondering whether we're supposed to offer or not. At this point, I offer but I don't insist.
Yo skdadl"
Up to the 50's my mother told me she was not allowed to vote in municipal elections.
Municipalities were set up and run by the tax payers ... and tax payers were either property owners or renters. If renters it was only the head of the household that counted - so the "head" was the only one with the vote. The kicker of course was that men were automatically taken as the household head. We were renters, Dad got to vote, Mum did not.
I believe the Supreme Court found this was not in line with the Rights of Canadian. (Yes, we had rights before the charter).
Sometime in the early 50s - Mum got to vote.
Croghan27
Then again, maybe it's because I'm getting old now and look it - easy to ignore and dismiss.
Personally, I've always found that older people, men or women, tend to get more help than younger women, and significantly more than younger men. On the other hand, it does seem like there are a lot more jackasses (and not the good, funny, gross-stunt-performing kind) running around these days, so could be you just got stuck with a hight per-capita of them in your area.
Great post.
I think we sometimes forget that it wasn't all that long ago that women were treated very differently. When my mom went to university back in around 1960, one of her uncles took her out for lunch and spent the entire time chastising her for wasting her and her parents' money when all she was going to do was get married and have babies. What business did she have going to university?
The thought that anyone could say such things boggles my mind. When I went off to university some 30 years later it was absolutely accepted that I had a right to be there. The difference is thanks to my mom and other women like her who were strong and fiesty enough to achieve the goals the wanted to acheive despite criticism from others.
Great idea, skdadl. I'm doing this.
edited to add--I don't have time to register at progressive bloggers to let them know; is Scott going to be taking names from here, too? Or should I register there later so I can comment directly on his post?
Andrea, if you send your URL to Scott by email, he'll add you to his list. I'll alert him too, if you like.
I mean to respond to lots of what people have said here, but ... later.
I must be blind, becuase I went back over there and couldn't see his email anywhere.
Scott, if you're reading over here, here's the url:
http://www.athenadreaming.org/Beanie/archives/2006/09/five_things_fem.html
Hi Andrea:
For future reference, the email addresses of the people who help administer and moderate the Prog Blog site are on the left hand colum of the page... scroll down until you get past the Google ads and the Technorati logo.. you'll see a list of our names and emails there.
But.. I've got your url.. and I will add it ASAP.
Thanks
The points you bring up about health are so critical. I love Our Bodies, Ourselves!
I went to see a specialist for chronic health problems about a year ago. Looking at me sternly, he suggested a certain course of treatment, saying with skepticism that he wasn't sure that there would be more than a 'placebo effect'. I turned it right back on him and said: "Look -- when you're as ill as I am you don't care if the medicine is creating physiological changes or if it's just 'all in your head'". He looked puzzled and said, "I suppose you're right"!