blogcutter | Entries tagged with gender

One of the grandchildren recently observed that very few flags use the colour pink. What immediately sprang to my mind was the trans flag, with its stripes of pink and blue. By the way, I think we Ottawans should all be raising that flag to the rafters, as Ms. Smith is apparently gracing us with her presence today.

What about flags for a specific country? Apparently there are a few that have pink in them:

https://www.colorwithleo.com/do-any-country-flags-have-pink/

Pink may enjoy a bit of a revival with the popularity of the Barbie movie. And of course it's already associated with breast cancer charities, anti-bullying and the pink-collar ghetto that many folks working in predominantly female professions will be familiar with.

In other news, I recently finished reading the novel Waiting for Gertrude, set in Pere Lachaise cemetery in Paris, where the dead residents are all being reincarnated (or "translated") as cats. The Gertrude in the title refers to Gertrude Stein, she of "A rose is a rose is a rose". Though as it refers to Ms. Smith, I'd be more inclined to paraphrase Juliet by saying that a rose by any other name would be just as stinky and thorny.

The world's coldest (or possibly second-coldest) national capital is not nearly as cold as it used to be, but some of us are feeling a decided chill in the air today!

Current Mood: cold
Current Location: Ottawa
Current Music: Pink

Happy International Trans Day of Visibility to all trans folk, whether your choice is to be visible or not!

In Fort Frances, a plaque was unveiled today to commemorate Dianna Boileau, possibly the first but certainly one of the first in Canada to undergo gender-affirming surgery:

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/thunder-bay/dianna-boileau-gender-affirming-surgery-plaque-commemoration-1.6796554?cmp=rss

Her memoir is available on the Internet Archive:

https://archive.org/stream/beholdiamwoman00dian/beholdiamwoman00dian_djvu.txt

Gender-affirming treatments and processes, whether surgical or not, have come a long way in the 50+ years since Dianna and her memoir came out. There is greater social acceptance and understanding as well.

But there's still work to be done.

Are days and events such as this a good thing, in that they normalize the gender-diverse?
Or do they have the opposite effect in that they present gender diversity as something extraordinary (which depending on your mindset might be perceived either a special talent and gift or a painful and shameful embarrassment)?

I can't quite decide myself whether to be heartened or disheartened by occasions like this.

Current Mood: curious
Current Location: home
Current Music: Diana

(Note my avoidance of F-words!)

This past week, on "Giving Tuesday", I donated to the Ottawa Art Gallery in support of their acquisition of They, an art installation by gender-diverse artist Cara Tierney. From the OAG website, you can view an 8-minute video in which they discuss their work:

https://oaggao.ca/they-fundraiser-main

Something I wondered about when "they" began to gain popularity as a gender-neutral singular pronoun was: what do gender-diverse francophones generally prefer as their French-language pronouns? And in a language where even inanimate objects must be designated as either masculine or feminine (although I seem to recall there may be a handful of them that swing both ways), to what extent does it matter? Isn't the French Academy totally focused on keeping the French language "pure laine"? Or should that be "laine pure"?

I got a partial answer to my question when I read that that the editors of that illustrious reference tome Le Robert have added the pronoun "iel" to the dictionary:

https://www.pressherald.com/2021/11/18/a-french-dictionary-added-a-gender-neutral-pronoun-opponents-say-its-too-woke/

What does this all mean for the future of the French language or, for that matter, other languages on the grammatical gender binary or trinitary? Will Bescherelle be put out of business? Will dicté(es) become relics of the past?

This post is a celebration both of the Ottawa Art Gallery (which unlike other major galleries and museums in the area, retains a policy of free admission) and of the ready acceptance of gender diversity, an issue dear to my heart. So before signing off here, I would invite you to explore the site of the Canadian Centre for Gender and Sexual Diversity:

https://ccgsd-ccdgs.org/

Current Mood: artistic
Current Location: home
Current Music: She & Him

If there's an overriding theme to today's entry, I guess it would be something like this: what was daring in our young day (and even more daring a generation or two before that) is pretty tame these days. Dianora was just commenting how tame Rocky Horror looks to a modern audience. And a decade or so before that as the Pill became widely available, we had Helen Gurley Brown's Sex and the Single Girl, which some considered quite scandalous.

Still, there are pockets of society that tend to be slower to change - the military, the police, the sports world... which bring me to this piece I found yesterday about the challenges involved in coaching a gender-variant young person and her team-mates and the story of a coach who handled it well:

https://www.cbc.ca/playersvoice/entry/coaching-an-athlete-in-transition

Meanwhile in the education department, it looks as if school dress codes are still an issue, although progress has certainly been made since I was at that stage. It's particularly encouraging to see young men challenging sexist rules and policies:

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/high-school-boy-s-dress-code-protest-arrives-1.5760467?cmp=rss

In a recent post, I also decried the tendency to pit one generation against another and condemn young people for being selfish and irresponsible. Perhaps this could be construed as reverse discrimination or bias here but in this news story, House of Commons pages highlight the problem of their elders, some not-so-honourable members, flouting mask and distancing rules:

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/complaints-opposition-mps-staff-flouting-health-rules-1.5765206?cmp=rss

So in case anyone's still asking "Is there hope for the youth of today?" I would definitely answer in the affirmative!

Current Mood: optimistic
Current Location: the lab
Current Music: A Boy Named Sue

Looking at the Ottawa Public Library site today, I see they've posted a message about kindness and Library Month:

https://biblioottawalibrary.ca/en/blogs/rewards-kindness-–-celebrating-library-month

Meanwhile, Kind Space is not holding in-person meetings at the moment, although their work is still ongoing: https://kindspace.ca

If you need to see a good auto mechanic but are wary of some of the bigotry or sexist treatment sometimes meted out at these places, you might want to consider a trip to Merrickville:

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/mechanic-non-binary-launches-mobile-garage-small-business-1.5743019?cmp=rss

The grocery store is a kind space for seniors in the early-morning hours too. I was able to find most of what we wanted this morning, even fresh Ontario strawberries. Re-stocking our Grand Marnier will have to wait till tomorrow though, as the LCBO is closed on Mondays.

Getting back to libraries, this year's slogan for library month is "One card, one million possibilities":

https://wmrl.ca/locations-hours/brandon-public-library/one-card-one-million-possibilities/

One might indeed wonder what future is in the cards for us, be that our library card, our health card or our credit card...

Current Mood: sleepy
Current Location: home

During my high school and university days, it was the dawning of the Age of Androgyny. There were unisex jeans stores all over the place, along with the boutiques selling incense and Indian-print bedspreads, tops and dresses. It was an age not so much of gender diversity as gender uniformity. Everyone who had hair wore it long. Afros were a thing regardless of the colour of your skin. So was hair so straight you had to iron it regularly unless it was naturally perma-press.

Today marks the end of a mostly-virtual Pride Week. Yesterday I went on a bit of a rant at the Royal Canadian Navy over its RIMPAC exercise but today I'll highlight a couple of the more progressive measures they are taking towards inclusivity. Like their real-life Pride Parade on the canal:

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/boat-pride-parade-rideau-canal-ottawa-1.5705150?cmp=rss

And their move towards more gender-inclusive job titles, still controversial in some quarters:

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/royal-canadian-navy-seaman-sailor-1.5702842

But is there still room for gendered spaces in all this would-be broad-mindedness? Personally I hope so although if I were active on social media, I'm sure I'd face a flaming Twitter-storm of protest for that stance!

Some of the most positive environments I've been in in my life have been female-only. Like CGIT, like the Ottawa Women's Centre and the Consciousness-Raising group I briefly participated in during the mid-70s. Or like the Women's Committee of my union local at Labour Canada. Since I worked in a predominantly female occupation, there were also a number of all-female job environments I worked in too.

In many cultures, my own included, girls and boys were, and to a considerable extent still are treated differently. Certainly those of us growing up as girls and boys in Canada were not treated AS differently from each other as we would have been in some other parts of the world, but the differences were definitely there and have shaped our lives accordingly. For that reason, it's difficult if not impossible to ascertain precisely where nature leaves off and nurture kicks in when looking at sex-linked differences.

At this end of the twenty-first century, we are gradually adding concepts like gender identity and gender expression to our institutional framework of human rights. For the most part, I see this as positive. But it does bother me when I sense that we are no longer allowed to celebrate our differences and be our authentic selves. Take, for example, someone who dares to state publicly that trans-women are not quite the same as cis-women. I for one strongly believe that, even though (or perhaps precisely BECAUSE) trans-women are very much a part of my day to day reality. But I'm just a private individual, not a high-profile woman like, say, J.K. Rowling, who recently stood up for what she believed in by returning a human rights award she had received:

https://www.cbc.ca/news/entertainment/rowling-award-return-1.5704196?cmp=rss

And what of gender expression? If someone who is male opts to wear a dress or any kind of garment or make-up or other items the culture regards as feminine, is that really gender expression? Or is it just personal expression, wearing what they feel comfortable in, or whatever?

And to go even farther out on a limb, what about the racial equivalents to these gendered categories?
Race has in recent years been acknowledged to be quite an artificial construct. You can't necessarily peg it conclusively by skin colour alone, or by any other overt quality that I know of. So why is it considered so appallingly racist and culturally misappropriating for an ostensibly white person to publicly appear in blackface or brown face, while men in dresses or drag queen story times are celebrated as examples of alternative gender expression? What about a black person like, say, Venus Williams, bleaching her hair? What about using skin lighteners? Do we need categories for racial identity and racial expression?

We should dare to ask some of these currently unaskable, politically incorrect questions because only then will we begin to address them and move towards a truly inclusive society.

Current Mood: contemplative
Current Location: the persons' room
Current Music: My Ge-ge-generation, Age of Aquarius

Somewhere, under the rainbow, is where this family resides. But rainbow family values can at times be at odds with those of society as a whole. Capital Pride Week begins on Sunday, so this seems like an opportune time for a donation to Kindspace, formerly Pink Triangle Services:

https://kindspace.ca

Gender issues have played an important role in our lives and those of many other people and families. Sexual orientation and gender identity have effects that go far beyond the individual or couple directly affected, extending to partners, children, siblings, parents, friends, colleagues and others in the identity- or orientation-variant person's social networks.

COVID-19 conditions can strengthen relationships but also place significant pressures on them. I'm concerned, for example, about GLBT youth, particularly those who are still closeted and in conflict with the rest of the household, who face unique challenges in lockdown or self-isolation, leading to depression, anxiety and even risk of suicide. This is compounded by the fact that in-person get-togethers have been put on hold, making it difficult for like-minded people to communicate with one another. While virtual meetings may offer some comfort, they may be plagued by technical issues or privacy considerations.

Pride activities have gone virtual this year, but they are still going ahead. Let's hope that in 2021, in-person marching, singing, dancing and hugging will once again be the order of the day!

Current Mood: hopeful
Current Location: closet country
Current Music: Somewhere, over the rainbow

Some time in the 70s, there used to be a TV commercial for CN Rail saying that before the national railway was built, we lacked a convenience that Canadians nowadays take for granted. My dad once harumphed with his usual dry humour that Canada was still quite lacking in public "conveniences"!

Today is World Toilet Day. Over a billion people worldwide still lack access to a toilet. At least a billion more live in impoverished areas which lack proper sanitation, where people become seriously ill or even die from diseases that could be easily prevented, treated or cured in the developed world.

But while Third World toiletlessness certainly has the most dramatic and catastrophic repercussions, toilet politics are by no means confined to the developing world.

With light rail coming to Ottawa, folks are urging the City to ensure that adequate public toilet facilities are available in the major stations. And yes, there's an app for that. The "Gottago" app available through your smartphone will tell you how close you are to the nearest public washroom. And probably map out how to get there too.

Probably coincidentally, tomorrow is Trans Day of Remembrance, a day when trans and gender-fluid folks and those supportive of them gather downtown to remember victims of transphobia. Remember the kerfuffle about the transgender rights Bill? It got bogged down (pun definitely intended), all because quite a number of gender-normative folks were uneasy about the possibility of voyeuristic trans-women and cross-dressers wreaking havoc on ladies' rooms. Some pretty harsh and unladylike words were exchanged on all sides!

Personally, I think the washroom issue is and should be kept entirely separate from the LGBTQ rights issue. The fact is, plenty of people - in all walks of life and of all family statuses and degrees of disability and sexual orientations and gender identities and expressions - are uncomfortable using many public washrooms as they currently exist. And the solution is probably not (or not primarily) a legislative one, in my opinion. But a public facility warrants public consultation (or at least the opportunity for consultation) with all interested stakeholders - which in this case is virtually everyone!

The move towards "Family Washrooms" in many shopping malls and other public places is a good start. Change tables in the Gents' as well as the Ladies'. Or more of the unisex one-holers. When there are stalls, they should be fairly roomy if possible, and equipped for folks with wheelchairs and walkers. And of course, they need to be properly serviced and maintained!

So often, toilet facilities are either an afterthought or an excuse for discrimination. Well, we can't have women working on a construction site because they can't pee into a bottle. We can't hire anyone who relies on a wheelchair or walker because our only washrooms are up a long flight of steps. And so on.

We certainly have the technology and the necessary infrastructure in this part of the world to build and make adequate facilities available to all who need them. But do we have the will?

I think we do, but in order to make it happen, we need to come out of the closet - in this case, the water closet - and actually talk about it.

Current Mood: busy
Current Location: the reading room
Current Music: Here we go looby loo, Wayne/Jayne County, Toilet Love

I quite like participative and collaborative art projects, especially when they make nice progressive statements. So I was intrigued when I read about the "gay sweater", made of human hair - the hair of hundreds of LGBTQ Canadians - and adorned with rainbow buttons. The sweater is the brainchild of Jeremy Dias, Amelia Lyon and Brenna MacDonald of the Canadian Centre of Gender and Diversity (formerly Jer's Vision), and is to be officially unveiled at a tenth anniversary Day of Pink gala on April 8.

Now this Centre - and these people - have done a lot to address the problems of homophobia, transphobia and bullying in the schools and beyond. The great thing about art (and I think this would probably apply to ALL the arts) is that it can appeal to us - or, for that matter, disgust us - on many different levels. Good art, to me at least, is laden, perhaps sometimes unconsciously, with myriad connotations and overtones. But the greatest strength of art may also be its greatest weakness. If you want to denote a clear and unambiguous message like "Just say no" or "Bullying is never OK", then art is a pretty blunt instrument.

The connotations of a hair shirt (or if you want to, well, split hairs, hair sweater) are to me particularly unfortunate for a project of this nature, suggesting penitence and asceticism. Do these people want to be "cured" of a pathological sexual orientation or gender identity, through electric shock, aversion therapy, "supportive" counselling or whatever? I rather think not! It almost seems to convey the opposite message to gay pride.

Perhaps the problem is that today's generation of young adults, at least those who are not from devout families and have gone through the secularized public school system, are not familiar with the Bible or indeed with any major religious text, be it Islamic or Aslanic - sorry, I still have Narnia on the brain. They haven't studied them even in the context of our literary, historical or overall cultural heritage.

But taken as a whole, the younger generations tend to be far more accepting of gender variance and diverse sexual preferences than was our generation - or our parents' or grandparents' generation. If this project only reaches out to kids and young adults, it is to a great extent preaching to the converted (well, perhaps unconverted is more to the point here). If they want to reach out to old fogeys like us, then they need to speak to us using the lingo and imagery that old fogeys can understand - at an emotional as well as an intellectual level.

Or maybe I'm the one who is missing the point. Maybe they deliberately appropriated the motif of the hair shirt, and transformed it into a gay sweater of many colours by weaving it of "gay" hair and adorning it with rainbow-patterned buttons?

I don't know. But I would welcome the opportunity to go and view this artistic creation some time!

Current Mood: artistic
Current Location: the art gaylery
Current Music: Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat

Men's speedskating. Women's speedskating. Men's hockey. Women's hockey. Are these categories inclusive enough? Are they even relevant any more?

Are there sports where men have an inherent advantage over women? Or where women have an inherent advantage over men? Probably. But whence cometh this advantage?

If we're saying that men have the advantage over women, is it a PHYSICAL advantage? Is it down to men's generally larger size and proportionally greater strength? If so, maybe the answer is to categorize athletes the way they do, for example, in boxing, with heavyweights, welterweights, bantamweights or whatever.

Perhaps the advantage is SOCIOCULTURAL in nature, down to burqas or stiletto heels not being very practical attire for walking balance beams, or lack of the most desirable (or perhaps ANY) ice-times for hockey, or whatever. If so, that's obviously always in a state of flux, and considerably more rapid flux than we would expect of any evolutionary physical rapprochement between the sexes!

And then there's another whole can of worms. Just who decides what makes someone a man or a woman? Is it a question of genes and chromosomes? Of hormones? Of genitalia? Of self-identification? Tennis player Renee Richards (formerly Richard Raskind) argued in her memoir, Second Serve, that it was unfair for her to still have to compete as a male once she had begun hormonal treatments towards transforming Richard to Renee, because she had nowhere near the muscle-mass of the male players. But was it fair for other WOMEN to have to compete against someone who was still betwixt and between, still possibly having some male physical advantages, not to mention the sociocultural ones?

Do we need to add categories for the transgendered, gender-fluid, two-spirited, intersex (etc., etc.) communities? That could easily degenerate into an exercise in futility and absurdity, not to mention perhaps constituting illegal propaganda over in Sochi!

Maybe most Olympic categories should be mixed - that is open to men, women and any shade of sex or gender expression in between. I suppose they could still, for example, offer 3 sets of gold, silver and bronze medals for the first, second and third man to finish the (integrated) race; the first, second and third woman; and the first, second and third "other".

But of course, that's problematic too. Some countries would never countenance men and women appearing freely in public together, let alone competing in something very physical and (though perhaps less so in winter) wearing body-revealing garments.

Then too, where does it end? Do we need categories based on race as well? There's probably plenty of evidence that certain races are more apt to excel in certain sports - taller races in basketball, for example. Is it fair to make someone who's under five feet tall compete with someone who's seven feet tall?

To be sure, there ARE additional Olympic games. The Paralympics, for example, where the athletes all have some degree of physical disability. The Special Olympics for those with intellectual disabilities. I believe there's even a "Gay Games", though I think it has yet to match the fame or level of credibility of either the Paralympics or Special Olympics.

Mind you, even competition on the basis of nationality can be problematic. But that's a topic for another time.

Current Mood: curious
Current Location: home
Current Music: Billy McDaniels

On January 2, The Citizen had on its front page an article about a woman who argued - unsuccessfully - that her wide, square-toed feet constituted a disability and that OC Transpo was guilty of violating her human rights by its policy of disallowing bare feet on its buses.

WHAT? Is she crazy? She wants to go about BAREFOOT during an Ottawa winter? Her feet didn't look that abnormal to me and you absolutely cannot convince me that it would be impossible to make suitable custom footwear to fit her feet! Supposing they had allowed her complaint. If she subsequently got frostbitten toes, would OC Transpo be liable for that as well?

Anyway, the question "Must we change the foot?" is generally attributed to Gloria Steinem. In the context I read it, she was writing about the politics and logistics of gender reassignment surgery, or "sex change operations". And my answer to her question, which she may have meant rhetorically (and may even have changed her mind about in the interim) would be "In most cases, no - although there are exceptions to every rule."

That's not a very popular stance to take these days. The prevailing view of the medical profession is that the physical reality must be altered to conform to the psychological one rather than the other way around. I'm prepared to allow for things like electrolysis and hormonal rebalancing through drugs but when it comes to surgical treatments (which for all intents and purposes need to be considered irreversible), I believe that the doctors are generally doing the transsexuals themselves (unless they were actually born with ambiguous or improperly functioning genitalia), and to some extent society at large, a grave disservice.

Now, there is of course no excuse for discrimination against the transgendered, or any other element of the LGBTQ community. Their money is as good as anyone else's and they need to rent apartments, study, obtain employment, and so forth, just like anybody else. But all rights are subject to "reasonable limitation" - and certainly things like self-expression or gender expression are too broad to be absolute rights. If I were to divulge secrets about my employer or my government, or if I were to go around deliberately being rude and obnoxious in whatever inappropriate forum I chose, I certainly wouldn't turn around and try to file a human rights complaint because I felt my freedom of self-expression was violated.

I also have to say that a majority of transgendered folk I've met, whether in person or through the pages of books they've written, strike me as having very traditional views of sex roles in our society. Perhaps part of the problem I have with all of this is that I tend to be something of a separatist radical feminist in my outlook. For example, I'm very much in favour of Brownies and Guides being limited to girls and women, with strong positive female role models. I also think that same-sex education in the schools makes a lot of sense, at least as one option, especially for certain subjects and grade levels.

Another way to interpret the question "Must we change the foot?" could be slightly less literally. For example, if women want to be out of the labour force, or to work part-time, during their childbearing years, it seems to me that career models must be in place to accommodate them. Law firms with their "billable hours" requirements, for example, tend to be antithetical to many women's life and career goals. And is there any such thing as being a part-time Member of Parliament, Cabinet Minister or Prime Minister? Not likely! So a woman who aspires to these roles, in many cases, is a square peg trying to fit into a round hole, forced to adopt a male-like career model that doesn't suit her needs.

Current Mood: annoyed
Current Location: my woman-cave
Current Music: Lola