Men Are Scared to Sit in Classrooms with Women, and Women Are Mad About Lipstick Wearing Journalists

Something feminists should avoid, says the Internet. Photo via.

Hello again, lovely readers. It’s time to go through the lady business du jour. The stories that grabbed my attention this week were strangely polarizing. Women shouted, FUCK CAPITALISM, GROW YOUR PUBES! But they also shouted YOU CAN’T BE A FEMINIST WITH LIPSTICK ON! Really, we’re doing this now? Women’s bodies are policed enough without us doing it to ourselves.

In more serious news, more menz

1 have complained about ladies in their classrooms, and the notoriously patriarchal, largely unsympathetic justice system is actually being super awesome in some provinces, by ceasing to crack down on ladies in the sex work industry. So let’s get to it.

Photo via.

Women, can you please just stop going to school?

Dear Canadian women: The menz are too shy and religious to deal with us in their schools. We should all stop enrolling in post-secondary studies in order to assuage their embattled spirits. We need to go away and give the power to back to the men, who are increasingly sad because women are getting all the good jobs. We need to promote men’s rights! Breasts all around, periods, shrill laughter, hair tossing… we shouldn’t be inflicting all of this highly distracting feminine energy in the nation’s esteemed towers of academia.

Fucking please. In case you missed it, last week a kid in Toronto made an attempt to launch a human rights complaint because he was too shy to face the women in his women and gender studies class. He entered the class, found it was full of women and no men, and refused to show up for any subsequent lessons. Ultimately, he failed, and so he complained to the Ontario Human Rights Tribunal that his professor (a woman) failed him because he was a dude. This comes after a similar debacle in the fall, after a male student refused to work with women because his (unspecified) religion didn’t allow it.

To be blunt, this is the most utterly foolish and embarrassing “issue” I’ve heard of in quite some time. Social anxiety is real, it’s painful, and we probably all experience it in certain situations, like meeting the parents, or going to a party where we don’t know anyone. We should have compassion for those who have anxiety and help them to feel at ease. But, hello, Wongene Daniel Kim. How self-centred can you be? The ladies in your class have the right to an education, just like you do. In this case, they’re also paying ungodly amounts of money to be there, in class at U of T. They weren’t trying to hurt your feelings by being born with a vagina. And what’s more, you’ve probably now given the crazier among them fodder to launch a human rights complaint against you. If you were older and more experienced in this world, I would call you a proper misogynist. But you’re not, you’re just clueless.

Honestly, good luck.

Screencap via.

Bringing back the bush?

After American Apparel unleashed a hilariously austere-looking mannequin casually sporting the fluffiest bush imaginable, author Emer O’Toole is claiming 2014 is the year for women to reclaim their body hair. Specifically, their pubic hair.

O’Toole is working on the soon-to-be-released book Girls Will Be Girls. She told CBC Radio’s Q that vicious Brazilian waxes are actually a form of violence against women, and what’s more, that women who argue it’s their choice to remove their hair are mistaken. She’s asking us to re-examine our choices when it comes to our addictions to compulsive shaving, waxing, sugaring, threading, slathering on of stinky creams.

I have to admit, she’s right, of course. The choice to remove our body hair is actually made for us by the Internet, advertising, and the porn industry. For me, the choice was made by the many issues of Cosmo I devoured from about age ten onward, and by one of my first boyfriends in high school, who thought I was the most revolting/negligent human alive when he discovered I hadn’t shaved my public hair. I promptly got rid of it, and have continued to do so ever since. At first it was a matter of propriety—I felt it was rude and shameful to keep it. Later, in university, I realized that said boyfriend was full of shit, and grew it all back in a frenzy of feminist protest.

Sadly, it had been gone too long and just felt uncomfortable. It was easier to just keep removing it. I do let my armpit hair grow, though. It’s a fun and exciting weapon to use to shock conservative people. If one of them says something frustrating, all you have to do is just yawn and stretch your arms up. The response will be priceless. And if someone asks me why I don’t shave it (which they do all the time), I just say that I have other things to do with my time than groom my armpits. Works like a charm.

All awkward overshares of my personal grooming practices aside, I would recommend following O’Toole’s advice and just thinking about it—is it really your choice to remove all of your body hair, or even some of it? Might you feel more comfortable if you didn’t? Have more time? Less irritated skin?

Just think about it, and whatever answer you come to, do you. No subscribing to anyone’s “Natural is beautiful!” campaigns, or to demands from a man (or woman, or friend, or yourself) to go bare.

Honestly, when it comes to prescriptions for femininity, I think it’s time to listen to Drake: “Should I listen to everybody or myself…”

Screencap via.

Feminists don’t wear lipstick I’m loathe to say it, but this past week has been an incredibly catty one amongst female journos in Canada (and those of us who judge them). Newly-minted celebrity journalist and Rob Ford crack reporter Robyn Doolittle was widely lambasted by just about everyone for having the audacity to sit atop a pile of newspapers and pose for Flare in heels and red lipstick.

Doolittle received angry emails from women who supposedly deemed her getup, in some way, undermined her work. Doolittle responded on Twitter, saying she chose to pose.

These supposedly angry feminists are trying to crucify Doolittle for wearing makeup and dressing in a ladylike fashion, saying it will undermine her work and damn her credibility. But they are hypocrites, because that, in fact, is exactly what they are doing by drawing so much attention to her appearance, rather than her work, and stoking that pointless discussion.

My friend and fellow writer Kasia Mychajlowycz wrote an open letter to Sinéad O’Connor in October after O’Connor wrote that incredibly infantilizing letter to Miley Cyrus. She wrote:

“I'm not getting into the ‘Is Sinead a feminist? Is Miley a feminist? Am I a feminist?’ thing because I don't wield the word like a club badge that can be revoked for non-orthodoxy.”

I agree wholeheartedly that the application of labels is a dangerous thing. But, feminists simply shouldn’t tell other women what they should wear. Patriarchy and capitalism tell women what they should wear, and these are the institutions we’re supposed to be fighting. Feminists are supposed to support one another’s choices, fight for those choices, and avoid letting petty differences get in the way of striving toward the common goal, which is social, political and environmental advancement of women—all women, even women in heels; with the end goal being equality between both genders, of course.

Judging women by their appearance only serves to feed patriarchy. Why should we have to dress like men in order to be powerful women? If those who criticize her look carefully enough, they’ll likely find their critiques come from a place of envy and insecurity. Criticizing another woman’s wardrobe isn’t especially progressive, feminist, or useful. And if you think another woman’s outfit can undermine your own power, you need to reclaim some of that power.

Perhaps we should all just shut up and wear what we like, and allow Doolittle to do the same.

Terri Jean Bradford, via Facebook.

One small step for the justice system

When the Supreme Court declared Canada’s laws surrounding sex work unconstitutional in December, sex workers were doubtful the new laws would serve them any better than the old ones. In fact, several sex workers told me there was still a high chance these laws would continue to enforce classist and racist policies. I had to agree with them.

But it looks like the provinces are actually loosening up on charges relating to sex work, and that’s a good thing, even though it’s a small step that should have been taken ages ago. The Canadian Press reported Saturday that B.C. is the latest province to stop prosecuting most prostitution-related offences, as the court deems the laws unconstitutional. B.C. is the most recent, but several provinces, including Ontario, Alberta, New Brunswick, and Newfoundland and Labrador have already said that won’t prosecute prostitution-related offences struck down as unconstitutional.

Dominatrix Terri-Jean Bedford, who is largely responsible for the Supreme Court decision, wrote a sort-of-hopeful blog post about it, but mostly, she just expresses words of warning:

“For now we are free and we activists must ensure that any new laws (and there should be none) are fair and don’t do the same damage as the old ones.”

1 A popular misspelling used on the internet by especially sarcastic feminists, like the author.