Open letter to Kelly McParland, National Post.
In response to your column: “Sex selection ads are a recognition of Canada’s indifference to the baby industry”, forgive me but you seem to be quite ignorant about the definition of a feminist. “Feminist” according to your column, seems to be a homogenous category of people who all believe exactly the same thing.
“The irony,” you write, “is that if sex selection were more popular, and was as uncontrolled in other countries as it is in Canada, it might eventually reduce the ranks of feminists by artificially restricting the growth of the female population in general. It puts feminists in the odd position of defending the right of women to decide against female babies on the basis that females aren’t as valuable or desirable as males. How much more discriminatory can you get than advocating the inherent value of one sex over the other?
Don’t ask me, ask the feminists. It’s their position, not mine.”
Oh, really? Did you ask them all, personally, about their positions? Take a poll of self-declared “feminists” and see what they think? You sarcastic statement makes an assumption not just about women but about the kind of women who self-declare as “feminists.” You are assuming that to be a feminist means you are militantly pro-choice, defending a woman’s right to choose on abortion no matter what, without seeing the possibility of nuance.
Since you disagree so vehemently with this stance, I am sure you will be pleased to know that many feminists do not adhere to it either. I will absolutely agree that there are feminists who do. You will find feminists in Canada who will defend a woman’s right to choose in any situation, no matter what. These radical feminists tend to be activists as well, which is probably why you're so familiar with their viewpoint, and in fairness, many of them are doing very good work. Though I often disagree with them on the issues, I can recognize that radical feminists are often the women answering the phones in rape crisis centres, raising awareness about domestic violence, teaching teenagers how to use condoms and lobbying for better funding for daycare centres.
You will also, however find feminists like me. I’m a feminist because I believe, very strongly, in three things. One, that although women are different than men, they are equal, and should have equal rights and equal access to opportunity. Two, that without equality of the sexes, neither women nor men can achieve their potential – inequality is stunting for humanity as a whole. And three, that currently, we have not yet achieved equality and therefore it is something that we all still have to work towards.
I also believe that a fetus is a human being, with a soul, from the moment of conception. Partly, I believe this because of the teachings of my faith. But even without that I think this is the conclusion I would have drawn. I value motherhood deeply, and I think that is a feminist perspective. I think that the issue of abortion is therefore extremely complex. I do not want to see babies aborted, but frankly, neither do I want to see women being killed or injured by botched abortions. Neither do I want to see women forced to raise children they didn’t want or carry unwanted pregnancies to term and face the pain of giving up children. Decisions about how to deal with unwanted pregnancies are painful, and the only possible solution I can see is education.
And not just education about birth control, but education in general. Certainly educating women about birth control will prevent many of these unwanted pregnancies from occurring in the first place. But maybe with more education, “unplanned” will less frequently have to mean “unwanted.” With education, a woman can have a higher paying job, a higher standard of living, and more access to assistance and resources, and therefore it’s not such a crisis if she gets pregnant unexpectedly. Perhaps there will always be a demand for some abortions – but in Canada, with a high cost of living, high taxes, and expensive childcare, is it any wonder there is currently a demand? To me the solutions lie in social change, not policy change. Therefore I am not looking to revoke abortion rights – but neither would I promote abortion.
I believe my views to be nuanced and I certainly don’t agree with anything in the position you have attributed to “the feminists.”
Don’t assume such a one-size-fits-all definition of feminist, please. It’s ignorant and it’s insulting.
It’s also damaging. It’s damaging because when the word “feminist” is narrowed so that it only refers to the most radical factions of feminism, it takes on negative connotations. That is how you get despicable words like “feminazi” in the common parlance. A misuse of the word, like yours, feeds into the silly myth that we are one homogenous group of bra-burning lesbian man-haters who grown out our armpit hair and spend all our time at pro-choice rallies.
In fact feminists are all ages, all races, all sexual orientations, all political stripes, all religions, all cultures. Many of us shave our armpits, wear makeup and bras. Some of us read Gloria Steinem, yes, but some read Cosmopolitan magazine. Some read both. Some of us vote Conservative. Some of us wear hijab. Some are as militantly pro-life as you are. Some are politicians, and some are stay-at-home moms. Some, in fact, are men.
It is time for you to update your definition.
Thursday, April 26, 2012
Tuesday, March 13, 2012
Uganda: A Little Challenge to the Single Story
Since this Kony 2012 video has gone viral and thus Uganda has gotten so much exposure and been featured so often in the international news, I have been thinking a bit about one of my absolute favourite TED talks, Chimamanda Adichie's The Danger of a Single Story. If you have not seen it, it is worth taking the 20 minutes. Adichie is a writer who grew up in Nigeria. She talks in the video about how her mother would always tell her stories about the houseboy who worked in her house, about his family's poverty. When Adichie finally visited his home, she discovered other aspects to his life that surprised her - since all she'd ever heard about was poverty, she didn't have a wider view of him. When she went to America to go to university, she discovered the same thing in reverse - that since Americans had always heard of Nigeria in terms of poverty, starvation, or war, that they didn't have a positive or complete picture of life in Nigeria. Americans were always surprised to hear that Adichie's parents were scholars, rather than say, subsistance farmers. Her point is that when we always hear one single story about a place, or a people, even if that aspect is true, it is not complete information, and it is what leads to the creation of stereotypes and ultimately prejudice.
I bring this up now in the context of Uganda making the news, because frankly, Uganda doesn't make the news a lot. When it does it is always something horrible, like poverty or AIDS or the regime of Idi Amin, or now the Lord's Resistance Army. It is not that these are not true and important issues. But they are not all that Uganda is, just as genocide in 1994 is not all that Rwanda is.
I certainly don't claim to be an expert on what these countries are, but unlike, well, most Canadians, I have been to Uganda. Let me say upfront that I was only there for a few days, it was five years ago, and I really just drove through some countryside and spent a few days exploring the capital, Kampala. So I can only offer that highly impressionistic perspective. If you really want to know about Uganda, I suggest talking to some Ugandans.
But just for the heck of it, I will offer my limited perspective. It's simplistic and it's blurry, and it's certainly not as important as all the major issues in Uganda. But it is, at least, a second story.
I went to Uganda in 2007. I was interning at the time at Radio Rwanda as part of Carleton University's Rwanda Initiative, a project that is sadly now on possibly indefinite hiatus. I got permission to miss Friday and Monday at work, as I really wanted to visit Kampala. Kampala is home to one of the Baha'i Houses of Worship. Kampala is about a 10-hour bus ride from Kigali, the capital of Rwanda, where I was living.
Rwanda is called the "Land of the Thousand Hills" and is probably one of the hilliest places I've ever seen. It is the ONLY landlocked place I have seen with so many hills. So the first thing you notice on the bus ride out of Rwanda and into Uganda is the flattening out of the land. Before I went, part of my single story about Africa was that it is mostly grasslands and plains - that is true in some places but not Rwanda. Uganda looks a bit more like the stereotypical "Africa" I had in my head - big stretches of grasslands. In our 10 hour bus ride, we stopped twice, that I recall. Once at the border to deal with customs, and once at a bathroom out in the middle of nowhere. The bathroom stop had lots of food vendors selling long skewers of roasted meat. (Probably beef and goat, and not just the "pleasant" parts, either.) I did not eat roasted meat on a stick in Uganda, partly because I was afraid of that meat having been out baking in the sun all day, but a couple of my friends did and they didn't get sick.
The contrast between Kigali and Kampala is amazing. Kigali, population just under a million, could be described as sort of a large village. Its downtown core has government buildings and even a small mall, but most of the city is pretty underdeveloped by North American standards.
Kampala is much bigger - population 1,700,000 - and to my eyes had greater extremes of wealth and poverty. Both cities have big slums but Kampala also has North American style buildings - with stuff I never saw in Kigali, like plate glass windows. Sometimes the "fanciest" buildings surprise you. I remember being sort of bowled over in Kampala because I saw a Shell station. We also ate at a Domino's Pizza in Kampala, although to be perfectly honest I'm not sure if it was part of the actual Domino's Pizza chain or named after it.
Compared with Kigali, and particularly compared with Canada, Kampala is really dirty. My drive out to the Baha'i House of Worship took me through long stretches of road piled high with garbage, often with cows or other animals perched on top of the pile. It's also bustlingly busy, and has probably the most beautiful outdoor markets I've ever seen. Sometimes people put out tables but mostly they stretch out an old blanket on the sidewalk to spread their wares out. Some of the things I saw people selling in the outdoor markets: beautiful scarves, shoes (new and used), clothes, DVDs (mostly bootleg), food (mainly roasted meat and chapatis), motley garage sale style assortments of stuff, books, knicknacks, and vodka in tiny plastic bags, just a little bigger than a ketchup packet. I bought and ate quite a few chapatis from street vendors - it is a common and delicious street food that I can only guess stems from the large Indian population in Uganda - but most of the street vendors I saw selling them were African.
At night, the street vendors stay there and light candles. I can only imagine that they work gruelling long days starting around 5 or 6 am, in the dark, selling by candlelight, until late at night, selling by candlelight once again. Despite my awareness of this, my compassion for it, I still must say that walking through Kampala at night, with the streets all lit up by candlelight, was a beautiful sight.
My last night in Kampala I slept about two hours - I got in late and had to get up early. We walked from our hostel to the bus station at about 5:30 in the morning, and it was an unforgettable walk. It was dark out and the streets were already lined with vendors, mostly selling food, by candlelight. As we walked through the dark streets, already sort of eerie with that feeling of being up at a time that's normally reserved for sleeping, the call to prayer began to ring out from a nearby mosque. The call to prayer lasted about five minutes of our walk. We walked silently, listening to the call, and it was on of the most beautifully meditative, chilling and lovely mornings I have ever spent. Have you ever felt simultaneously completely alone in the world and also completely surrounded by other people? That's sort of what it felt like to me. It is a treasured memory of mine from my trip to Uganda.
I have a lot more stories about my visit to Kampala - the time I fell in a hole, the most hilarious thing I've ever ordered in a restaurant, and of course, my beautiful visit to the Baha'i Temple. Perhaps if this has piqued your interest in Uganda I will come back and tell them. If you would like to see a few pictures from my trip, I am attaching the link to my Uganda Facebook album:. Enjoy.
I bring this up now in the context of Uganda making the news, because frankly, Uganda doesn't make the news a lot. When it does it is always something horrible, like poverty or AIDS or the regime of Idi Amin, or now the Lord's Resistance Army. It is not that these are not true and important issues. But they are not all that Uganda is, just as genocide in 1994 is not all that Rwanda is.
I certainly don't claim to be an expert on what these countries are, but unlike, well, most Canadians, I have been to Uganda. Let me say upfront that I was only there for a few days, it was five years ago, and I really just drove through some countryside and spent a few days exploring the capital, Kampala. So I can only offer that highly impressionistic perspective. If you really want to know about Uganda, I suggest talking to some Ugandans.
But just for the heck of it, I will offer my limited perspective. It's simplistic and it's blurry, and it's certainly not as important as all the major issues in Uganda. But it is, at least, a second story.
I went to Uganda in 2007. I was interning at the time at Radio Rwanda as part of Carleton University's Rwanda Initiative, a project that is sadly now on possibly indefinite hiatus. I got permission to miss Friday and Monday at work, as I really wanted to visit Kampala. Kampala is home to one of the Baha'i Houses of Worship. Kampala is about a 10-hour bus ride from Kigali, the capital of Rwanda, where I was living.
Rwanda is called the "Land of the Thousand Hills" and is probably one of the hilliest places I've ever seen. It is the ONLY landlocked place I have seen with so many hills. So the first thing you notice on the bus ride out of Rwanda and into Uganda is the flattening out of the land. Before I went, part of my single story about Africa was that it is mostly grasslands and plains - that is true in some places but not Rwanda. Uganda looks a bit more like the stereotypical "Africa" I had in my head - big stretches of grasslands. In our 10 hour bus ride, we stopped twice, that I recall. Once at the border to deal with customs, and once at a bathroom out in the middle of nowhere. The bathroom stop had lots of food vendors selling long skewers of roasted meat. (Probably beef and goat, and not just the "pleasant" parts, either.) I did not eat roasted meat on a stick in Uganda, partly because I was afraid of that meat having been out baking in the sun all day, but a couple of my friends did and they didn't get sick.
The contrast between Kigali and Kampala is amazing. Kigali, population just under a million, could be described as sort of a large village. Its downtown core has government buildings and even a small mall, but most of the city is pretty underdeveloped by North American standards.
Kampala is much bigger - population 1,700,000 - and to my eyes had greater extremes of wealth and poverty. Both cities have big slums but Kampala also has North American style buildings - with stuff I never saw in Kigali, like plate glass windows. Sometimes the "fanciest" buildings surprise you. I remember being sort of bowled over in Kampala because I saw a Shell station. We also ate at a Domino's Pizza in Kampala, although to be perfectly honest I'm not sure if it was part of the actual Domino's Pizza chain or named after it.
Compared with Kigali, and particularly compared with Canada, Kampala is really dirty. My drive out to the Baha'i House of Worship took me through long stretches of road piled high with garbage, often with cows or other animals perched on top of the pile. It's also bustlingly busy, and has probably the most beautiful outdoor markets I've ever seen. Sometimes people put out tables but mostly they stretch out an old blanket on the sidewalk to spread their wares out. Some of the things I saw people selling in the outdoor markets: beautiful scarves, shoes (new and used), clothes, DVDs (mostly bootleg), food (mainly roasted meat and chapatis), motley garage sale style assortments of stuff, books, knicknacks, and vodka in tiny plastic bags, just a little bigger than a ketchup packet. I bought and ate quite a few chapatis from street vendors - it is a common and delicious street food that I can only guess stems from the large Indian population in Uganda - but most of the street vendors I saw selling them were African.
At night, the street vendors stay there and light candles. I can only imagine that they work gruelling long days starting around 5 or 6 am, in the dark, selling by candlelight, until late at night, selling by candlelight once again. Despite my awareness of this, my compassion for it, I still must say that walking through Kampala at night, with the streets all lit up by candlelight, was a beautiful sight.
My last night in Kampala I slept about two hours - I got in late and had to get up early. We walked from our hostel to the bus station at about 5:30 in the morning, and it was an unforgettable walk. It was dark out and the streets were already lined with vendors, mostly selling food, by candlelight. As we walked through the dark streets, already sort of eerie with that feeling of being up at a time that's normally reserved for sleeping, the call to prayer began to ring out from a nearby mosque. The call to prayer lasted about five minutes of our walk. We walked silently, listening to the call, and it was on of the most beautifully meditative, chilling and lovely mornings I have ever spent. Have you ever felt simultaneously completely alone in the world and also completely surrounded by other people? That's sort of what it felt like to me. It is a treasured memory of mine from my trip to Uganda.
I have a lot more stories about my visit to Kampala - the time I fell in a hole, the most hilarious thing I've ever ordered in a restaurant, and of course, my beautiful visit to the Baha'i Temple. Perhaps if this has piqued your interest in Uganda I will come back and tell them. If you would like to see a few pictures from my trip, I am attaching the link to my Uganda Facebook album:. Enjoy.
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