When I was twenty-one years old, I declined a monumental apology.
If everyday apologies – oops sorry, I bumped you with the cart, oops sorry I cut you off at the intersection, oops sorry I accidentally had sex with your room-mate – are pleasure crafts, this apology was a freighter. A tanker. A leaking oil tanker about to slick up some helpless sea-life and require flotillas of volunteers, enormous donations and teams of public relations professionals to clean up.
Not only did I refuse the apology, I declined to offer an audience to even hear the apology.
Yet in that decision there was no malice. There was no vengeance. There was nothing. I had been wronged as a child – sadly, habitually, sexually wronged – and now an apology was being offered to my adult self. And I didn’t need it. It was over. As a six year old, as an eight year old, as a ten year old, the only thing I needed from anyone was for someone to make it stop. But as an adult, I had made amends for myself, to myself, and I was fine. I was neutral. I needed nothing from my abuser: no apologies, no explanations, no reparations, no reconciliation. Nothing.
I didn’t need the apology, I didn’t need vengeance, or justice, and I didn’t need to offer forgiveness. Not even for myself.
Forgiveness is a slippery fish. There exists the idea that forgiveness can be offered, like a plate of cookies, or maybe a shot of penicillin, or a priestly palm to the forehead, to cure what ails you. There exists the idea that granting someone forgiveness can help you to release your pain and cure yourself: that forgiveness is, possibly, a selfish act of self-care.
I’ve wondered about that, this week. I thought about apologies that I’ve received and grudgingly accepted, which is not acceptance at all, and apologies I’ve greeted with a tongue-lashing. I wondered about the right way to apologize, to hear an apology, to receive an apology, to accept an apology. I wanted a formula for achieving authentic graciousness, accountability and magnanimity.
I have been struggling to remember a formula I forgot that I knew by heart when I was twenty-one.
Maybe there is grace in refusing to engage in an awkward social show that, deep-down, you don’t require. Maybe it is generous to return the gift to the giver and say:
here.
here is the harm you granted me.
it is for you to intimate and decipher.
the only relationship to be decoded and repaired is yours with your actions.
the pain has passed.
it is nothing to me.
Maybe forgiveness is not mine to give. Maybe asking it of me, at all, is asking me to right your wrongs. Maybe forgiveness is a journey you take, yourself, with yourself. Maybe that is the only path that leads to peace. Maybe what I offer – the nothingness, the absence of any need to inquire, to understand, or to accept – is the meaning of magnanimous, itself.
Apologies are on my mind. I’m due an apology; I owe several apologies from my flaky days and I’m trying to summon the courage to offer them; and I’m pretty much convinced that Chris Brown is the worst apologizer, ever. Or at least he’s the most sorry sorry-giver in the last 14 days.
Apologies are actually simple. I know this from my children. When they have done wrong – when one sister has snatched a barbie or a precious book; looked at the other one too many times or for too long; when one’s leg has been brushed during dinner; when harsh words have been uttered, like the ever offensive “I don’t want to play with you, I need privacy”; or when life has gone sideways and naps have been missed and it is all too much and hysteria ensues – they know how to set things right.
Here is the child’s guide to apologizing:
1. Take time to yourself. Sometimes this is dictated from on-high (ie your mother sends you to your room to Think About What You’ve Done). Sometimes it is voluntary and involves flouncing and a ritual slamming of the bedroom door. Often it involves sobbing yourself to sleep. Ceilings must be contemplated. The answers must be assembled, the grief must be felt, and the need not to be alone and away from those you love must be acute.
2. When you have the answers – why you did what you did, how awful it must have been to have received those bad actions, why/how you will not do this again, and what you propose to do to make amends – venture out of your cave/princess lair/self-imposed isolation and say this: I’m so sorry.
3. Mean it. Don’t justify. Take whatever comes. Accept it. Be explicit. Say exactly what you did, with no pretty, vague words. Say you’re sorry. Repeat it. Say it again. Explain #2, in detail.
4. Repeat it again. (Yes, I realize that I am repeating the steps. That is the point. You must repeat it until it doesn’t need to be repeated.) Really, truly mean it. FYI: meaning it means that you have resolved NOT to do it again. Ever. Not only if it is convenient, if the stars and the planet and the moons and the green traffic lights align, and if you’re so inclined, and you hope said temptation will just go away, forever. If you’re sorry, wild dogs would have to be chasing you naked through a dark forest for you to fall in that same trap again. You’re only truly sorry if you never, ever want to do what you did again.
5. Offer reparations. Every child – and parent – knows that hugs and kisses and stroking of tear-stained cheeks are the most valuable compensation you can offer.
This is how not to apologize:
1. Shift the blame to the other person. Say “I’m sorry you feel that way.”
2. Apologize with an agenda to serve yourself. Apologize to save face. Apologize to accrue the social benefits of the apology, without really assuming the responsibilities and the humbling that apologies require. See either of Chris Brown’s roteapologies.
3. Talk around the offense you committed. Call it “it”, “what I did”, but don’t be explicit about the harm you caused. See Chris Brown’s apologies. [Definitely do NOT say "I'm so sorry I punched and slapped and bit and beat my girlfriend until she was bruised and bleeding while threatenting to kill her". No, say, "I wish I could have handled the situation better." Because that's authentic.]
4. Get frustrated when your apology isn’t yielding the reaction you demand. Say “I TOLD you I’m SORRY.” Preferably as loudly as possible. See Chris Brown’s apology: “I TOLD Rihanna, over and over again, that I’m sorry.”
5. Keep apologizing for the same thing. Meaning: keep doing what you want, and use “I’m sorry” as your get-out-of-jail-free card.
6. Be insincere. Say you’re sorry with your words and “hahahahaha sucker” with your actions. See Chris Brown’s new $300,000 necklace, below. OOPS.
A friend of a friend, who is a hairstylist, just called me to book an appointment for my children to come in.
That sounds terribly kind, efficient and proactive, but just between you, me and some frizzy hair, it is a trap. This appointment might seem like a harmless liaison to arrange some kiddie-curls, but I sense a more sinister, pressing and urgent motive. I’ve watched TLC. I know all about interventions.
Here’s what I know for sure: it all starts with Guy Kawasaki. Frickin’ Guy Kawasaki or, more accurately, an intern paid to tweet under Guy Kawasaki’s name, posted a link on Twitter last week to an interesting Salon piece.
Disclaimer: I think pretty much everything at Salon is interesting, so I clicked on it and in return for my unwavering devotion, Salon hasruined my life.
I’m not overstating this and there will be italics harmed in the making of this post. The Salon piece that ruined my life was about shampoo and how it is fucking killing you.
Guy Kawasaki, Twitter, Salon, and Bill Bunn have jointly and severally straight up conspired to ruin my life and all of them should be exceptionally thankful that I’m not litigious or that I am but I lack the funds for a lawyer or that I know that lawyers take these cases on a contigency basis but I’m just too plain lazy to pursue it.
I’m not too lazy to write about it, however, because writing is easy and doesn’t require leaving the house, and leaving the house is a problem because that requires showering, and now I can’t use shampoo, goddamn it, which means that since reading the piece at Salon about the evils of shampoo I am now housebound. And fasting. I’m housebound and fasting. This is going nowhere good, in a hurry. The refrigerator may need a lawyer, too.
I’m so distraught about the situation that I can’t even summarize the article. It is traumatizing and life-changing, so I insist you go read it yourself.
****this is you, reading the article. When you’re finished, we’ll talk****
***did you read it? omg isn’t it awful? aren’t you traumatized???*****
I KNOW! I am totally freaked out, too.
Bill Bunn makes a pretty terrifying argument that the chemicals in these shampoos are getting washed down the drain and causing male fish to grow ovaries and yes, that worries me, and I can connect the dots. This shit is at least mildy bad for you and possibly really, really bad for you. And we put it this stuff on our heads! Male fish are growing ovaries, dear readers! I don’t know about you, but I really don’t need my scalp to grow ovaries. I find the ones I’ve got to be well-sited and therefore deviations from the status quo would be unnecessary and unwelcome.
But Bill Bunn clearly is not invested in having a gleaming chestnut bob or smelling like yummy citrus sundae. He dismisses such concerns as ‘psychological’. I take issue with that. Shiny hair, and I know this for an imaginary fact, IS on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, and if it isn’t, it is just because Maslow was jealous of my Cleopatra-do. I suspect Bill Bunn, who is Canadian and therefore probably my neighbour, is also envious of my shiny hair. Now that’s psychological for ya, Bill.
Still, Bill does prescribe a solution. Thank goodness, because I thought the answer was going to be no shampoo at all, ever and mass suicide would result and heterosexual men would be very, very lonely.
The answer is Sunlight. The dish detergent. That is what is safe to use to wash your hair. Sunlight. The dish detergent.
I KNOW! I am totally freaked out, too.
Look, it’s not even about me and my vanity. I’m worried about the children. My children. My beautiful, biracial children with fine, soft, ringlets. They have gorgeous hair and everyone likes to touch it and talk about it. Black, white, brown, turtles, goats, demi-gods – it doesn’t matter who you are or where you come from, the interest in the texture of my children’s hair is unflagging and universal.
For women in general, hair is a big issue and I think for black women in particular, Hair Is A Great Big Giant Massive Issue of Epic Proportions.
When my former partner and I were first together, his teenage sister lived with us and gave me a crash course on Serious Hair, The Lifestyle. When she got her hair braided,it was an epic undertaking of endurance and joy, sort of like a music festival mixed with a marathon but with hair as the main event. It was a feat of endurance that took days. Three or four young women would camp out at our house for a weekend and braid each other’s hair. They’d talk to each other, cook for each other, run errands for each other (in hats and scarves), and braid each other’s hair until the wee hours of the morning, and then in the morning start all over again.
It was amazing. It took forever. It was an exercise in feminine community. It was touching. I sometimes ended up braided, too, because who could resist being touched and talked to and immersed in female bonding for three days?
Logically, then, the black women in my children’s father’s family are intensely interested in how I manage my girls’ hair. It goes like this:
“hi, how are you, a curse upon your house for leaving my brother/cousin/nephew/son you heartless hussy (usually they just say this part in their heads, but sometimes it slips out), so nice to see you, how are the girls, what are you using in their hair? Can you braid?”
Sometimes I suspect that the futures of my children are a function of my ability to make good straight plaits with fresh lines.
But after reading this Salon piece which made me fear the nuclear ingredients I was pouring over my own head, how can I, in good conscience, rub toxic, cancer-causing chemicals into the scalps of my babies?
And how can I not?
Do you know what happens when a white mama walks around with two black babies with bad hair? I do, or I think I do, and it strikes fear in my heart.
Every day, I send my children to school with freshly scraped pony-tails or braids or moussed ringlets and gleaming faces and every day when I return to fetch my children, I sigh. Their daycare is on acreage and because they play outside (hallelujah) and dig for bugs and pick blackberries and take mudbaths, my children are inevitably straight up filthy and whatever semblance of order I imposed on their hair has been challenged until it accepts the coup and seeks refuge in the domestic bermuda triangle that disappears hair-ties, barrettes, and single socks.
When I pick up my girls they are happy, exercised, energised, but filthy. And then we’ll need milk or bread or in the bad old days, shampoo, and I’ll have to stop at the grocery store, and I can see it. I can see people – black, white, brown, indeterminate – shaking their heads (even if only in their heads and in mine) at the oblivious white mama who lets her black babies run around with ashy knees and dirty faces and doesn’t know how to do hair.
In those moments, I’m pretty sure that my girls are pitied and their lack of culture and their futures as conflicted, self-hating Oreos are inscribed in wild lines of wayward curls.
And if you think I am being oversensitive and paranoid, I am.
But I worry about these things: I worry that I’m not giving my girls the tools they need to be strong black women, because how can I? And let’s be real: everyday, my little family is the subject of judgement.
Sometimes we make the cut, because oh mixed babies are just so cute. But the days when we are just being normal, and I’m tired and frazzled and snappy and they’ve got messy hair and dirty faces and are acting up in the grocery store, we’re not just being normal. We’re being judged.
With this ever constant-fear of being judged – by white people, for having black babies, by black people, for having black babies and not knowing how to do their hair or keep their skin shiny – I wondered: dare I wash their hair with Sunlight and risk the frizzies and the shame?
So I called a black girlfriend and asked her if Sunlight was okay. Her answer went like this. “What?” Pause. “Sunlight?” Pause. “ARE YOU KIDDING ME?????”
In the interests of diversity, I called a white girlfriend. Her answer went like this. “What?” Pause. “Sunlight?” Pause. “ARE YOU KIDDING ME?????”
Clearly the female vote was not shining on Sunlight. I decided to get really diverse, and ask a man, and a man who truly has a stake in the matter.
I called my girls’ dad. He was equally concerned about the evils being poured over our babies’ heads, until I got to the part where I proposed using dishsoap in their hair.
He shaves his head, which means he uses whatever soap is in the shower and shampoo does not occupy a prominent place in his domain of expertise. Being a good man, and an even better dad, he very helpfully offered to call one of his sisters or his mother to find out what pending aesthetic travesties Sunlight will inflict on black hair and whether he needed to seek custody.
He called one person and she called one person and she called one person and then a hairdresser called me to insist that I bring in the girls because I am a white mama run organically amok who doesn’t know about black hair and I’m pretty sure that child services will be waiting at this appointment or at least conducting discreet surveillance in an unmarked van across the street.
So when I said Salon ruined my life, I wasn’t kidding.
Jones is a fashion editor for the Daily Mail in the UK and that either means she is a big deal or she thinks she is a big deal. I’m not up on the taxonomy of pop doyennes in the UK so I plead ignorance. I also admit that I only discovered her a few weeks ago and was profoundly angered and saddened, all at the same time, when I read her essay about how gross it is to eat like a normal human being and how she can’t wait to return to her habit of starving herself to fashionable, morally superior emaciation and osteoporosis. (Lest you think I jest, go read it yourself.) Either way, for this stirring work of journalism, Jones was so “moved by the plight of Lubna Hussein, a Sudanese woman who faces 40 lashes for wearing trousers in public…” that she “decided to spend a week enveloped in what she [Hussein] should have been wearing.”
Jones then takes to the London Streets and her daily life in a burqa in the spirit of sympathy and openness with an open heart and mind, literally putting herself in the shoes (ok not really, she ends up risking purdah by wearing flipflops which show toe cleavage but you get my point) of women who wear burqas. It is not disengenuous at all. Not at all.
What’s our first clue that Jones is really, truly sincere and open to the experience? Oh my darlings, she writes about being “unaccountably afraid” to put on the burqa. Well, that’s not prejudicial language at all and it certainly doesn’t start the essay off with a good dose of hysteria. Nooooooo.
And come on. It is fabric – a lot of it, to be sure, but I’m not generally terrified by bits of black cotton, and as a fashion editor, I’m guessing that Jones is accustomed to dealing with – and even wearing! – textiles on a semi-regular basis, possibly even without hyperventilating.
Actually that’s not even the first overwrought bit. Let’s think about how she structures the piece. In the beginning, she’s moved by the plight of a Sudanese Muslim woman who will be whipped for not wearing a burqa. Liz is a clever chess player. In one move, she’s set herself up as a righteous liberal, liberated Western woman appropriately appalled at an evil, oppressive, southern, Muslim regime. Excellent. In the same move, she aligns herself with the poor, downtrodden, oppressed Muslim women. Most excellent. We’re not dealing in easy emotional archetypes about the West and the (scary, terrorist, Muslim) Rest, at all.
Hey. I will admit it. I’m an uber-liberal, white western feminist. I’m ideologically predisposed to worry about the burqa and what it represents. But I’m also worried that burqa-bashing is just another excuse to paint Muslims – specifically, Muslim men – as patriarchal fanatics, whom, if they can oppress their mothers and wives and daughters so tyranically, surely have no compunctions about flying planes into towers. All of them. They’re just like that.
So. The foreshadowing is there. This is not going to be a piece where she discovers anything or questions any of her assumptions. This results of this little experiment – ‘burqa tourism’ - were in far before Liz Jones got all dressed up and hit the streets.
And what exactly were her conclusions? Darling, I’m so glad you asked. Aside from dismissing the complaints of racism and poor treatment by actual Muslim women who wear burqas in London – she finds that in fact everyone is really kind and sympathetic to the clumsy and visibly oppressed except of course the token Arabic man who ‘shouts abuse’ at her – will those nasty brown immigrant Muslim men ever stop? – Jones discovers that she now understands marginalisationand objectification and it is so much worse for Muslim women than non-Muslim women. Non-Muslim women (including Jones, in an earlier piece called “What’s Really Oppressing Women Isn’t the Burka, It’s Their Breasts“) think they are oppressed because they are objectified on the basis of appearance (and breasts) and sexuality, but baby, that’s not the half of it.
Never mind that actual Muslim women who choose – and some women say that they do – to wear the burqa make the same argument.
Nope. Put all that aside, because the piece ends with Jones’ final pronouncement: “I find it disgusting that we allow British schoolgirls to be treated in this way.”
I’m skeptical. Methinks that the initially righteous sympathetic identification with Lubna Hussein was a front. Arguably, the real issue was always: should Muslims living in the UK be allowed to wear the burqa because hot damn it really irritates me? and isn’t it already enough that we’re allowing them to be brown?
It has been done to death, already and yet I just can’t resist: I have to comment on Miley Cyrus on the pole (admittedly, she was more near-ish the pole than ‘on’ it).
Here is the bandwagon that I am NOT on:
oh she’s sixteen, she’s too young, oh the loss of purity, let’s wail and gnash our teeth and mourn her corrupted innocence…
Nope. That’s not my issue. In fact, I think it is incredibly problematic that we structure women’s emerging sexuality and sexual power as a ‘loss’ – a loss of innocence, of virginity, of purity. My problem is not that Miley Cyrus is (apparently) embracing or flaunting her sexuality – my problem is that I doubt that she is. Instead, I think her team of handlers – including her father – have consciously plotted out the Britney Spears path to stardom and are marketing the hell out of her apparent burgeoning womanhood.
Someone else deciding that you are a woman and then proceeding to map and market your sexuality is the polar opposite of empowerment.
So that’s the wagon I want to fix: it isn’t Miley Cyrus’ growing sense of self and sexuality we’re seeing. Her newfound womanhood has – I suspect – been scripted for her. This makes me sad. I would just seriously, seriously love for there to be some mainstream images of women – including young women – truly inhabiting themselves and their sexual power – on or off the pole.
I know, I know. I’m not supposed to say that. Feminists are supposed to be aghast at the pole. It is the spectre that haunts parents: we must keep kids off pipes and poles. That’s the mission. The pole represents sex work. Sex work equals degradation. And nobody wants that for their daughters – me included.
But I think we could take that formulation apart. Maybe if we started at the beginning, and didn’t think that having sex represents a ‘loss’ for women then maybe we wouldn’t automatically permit ourselves to consider sex workers as degraded or ‘fallen’ women. And maybe if we didn’t stigmatize sex workers then a shadowy realm where violence against women is the norm would dissipate in the light of respect accorded to all women, not just the ‘pure’ ones.
Because, I ask you, really what is the difference between sixteen year old Miley Cyrus being pimped out by her Daddy in her booty shorts on the pole in front of the world, and the sixteen year old with fake ID on the pole in a club trying to make rent because her Daddy kicked her out?
The difference is money. And social support. And there are a lot of young woman out there who need both of those a whole lot more than Ms. Miley Cyrus, and stigmatizing them for marketing and profiting from their sexuality is heartless, wrong, and hypocritical. Because let’s be honest: it isn’t permissable in our society for women not to be sexy or attractive.
Most women I know are marketing their sexuality on a daily basis – in the office, at the gym, just walking through daily life. I know I am. I smile pretty. I flirt. I flat-iron my hair. And so do you.
And that is okay. I’m comfortable soliciting attention. I own the skin I’m in and I’m safe and sexy there and I wish all women could say the same.
Outrage. Shock. That’s what I’m willing to bet that tolerant white people are feeling at the news – and the sight – of the racist attack on Jay Phillips in Courtenay, BC on July 3rd. I doubt other people (not-tolerant or not-white) are so stunned at the newsflash that racism still exists in Canada.
I feel great tenderness for white people who are shocked by this attack. They’ve got good hearts. They truly, madly, deeply believe in equality – and the very fact of their whiteness insulates them from the everyday knowledge that racism exists. That’s why this assault is such a shock. When you’re white, you don’t notice racism, because you feel racially neutral and you think that this racially neutral experience is the norm. It is not.
Some dearly loved people in my life are uncomfortable with the fact that I identify my children as black. They’re biracial, after all. Calling them black erases their white mother, their white family members, and the acceptability and the privilege that comes from not being black. As one of my friends told me recently “It’s okay to be black as long as you don’t act black” (he’s black). That’s usually the case – except every once in a while, the very fact of your blackness, your otherness, your not-whiteness, will make you a target of physical violence. And nearly every single day, your blackness will be noted but it may be ignored so long as your behaviour and demeanour doesn’t coincide with stereotypes and assumptions about black people. In other words, in the words of my friend, so long as you act white.
This is why I identify my children as black. I’m choosing to identify with reality. I am preparing to be an ally for my black children as they make their way in this still very, very white world, our true north strong and free, our grand multicultural mosaic. I don’t want to be shocked when they come home from school, work, baseball, dancing, life and report the outrageous, covert or coded slings, arrows and slurs that have been hurled their way. I want to prepare them. I want to be prepared. I want to prepare the world. And yet I know that there is no way to truly prepare. I’m scared. The attack on Jay Phillips means that I am right to be scared. We all should be.
Still, I find hope in the shock and the outrage and the outcry. This is what I hope happens in the aftermath of this racist beating: I hope the community reaches out to Jay Phillips and offers him love and support and the space to speak and be heard. I hope that our communities rally and start dialogues and action about racism – and highlight the fact that racism isn’t always blatant and shocking; in fact, more often, it is coded in assumptions and preference for English-sounding names and all the miniscule snap judgments we make about strangers every few minutes of every day. I hope that the community reaches out to these three young men who acted out their ignorance and hatred and privilege in cowardice and violence and offers them ways to learn another mode of being. I hope that the parents, friends and families of these young men don’t minimize the attack and what it means. I hope for change. I hope for better.
And I hope that all the good-hearted, mosaic-referencing, tolerant Canadian white folk are willing to push beyond their own shock and outrage at this and examine the ways that racism is present in our daily lives – to acknowledge and challenge it.
Because when you’re blind to the small stuff it takes the big stuff to shock you. And in your well-meaning ignorance lies tacit assent to all the small stuff and thus your permission for the big stuff. These three young men did not just wake up racist one day: it took 19-25 years of their small acts of racism being tolerated by other oblivious white people for them to feel entitled to physically attack a black man.
Thank the gods and goddesses or the deity of your choice that Jay Phillips is big and strong and physically powerful and no stranger to the gym and could physically defend himself although he should not ever have had to. Imagine if he had been a frail, elderly man. Or a less physically-strong woman. Or my two beautiful little girls.
Imagine that. And now, white people, think back to every single time another white person said something ‘off’ that you didn’t challenge or educate with humour or love or just SOMETHING. Or a resume came across your desk with an ‘ethnic’ name and you didn’t call that person back. Or when you chose to rent your basement suite to a white family instead of a South Asian one because you thought the house would smell like curry. Or when you sigh over traffic in Richmond when you really mean Asian drivers. Start seeing those things; and see the connection, the continuum, the path from those things to three racist men in a McDonald’s parking lot threatening to lynch a black man. Start seeing that if being black, or Chinese, or South Asian can be a disadvantage, that by the same token, being white translates into advantage.
Someone I know once said to me that he didn’t want to live in X neighbourhood, because then his (white) daughter would go to X school; and the reason he worried about this was because he didn’t want her to be a minority.
Being privileged because you are white does not mean you are evil; it does not mean you are racist; it is just the fact of the matter and it means that you can choose whether or not you see racism. And if you choose to see it, and really, really want to confront and eradicate racism, start by examining – and acknowledging – the fact that there is an advantage to being white. Start seeing the privilege. Start articulating it. Stop being shocked. Continue being outraged.
You will not be able to stay home, brother.
You will not be able to plug in, turn on, or cop out…
Because the revolution will not be televised…
Green Acres, The Beverly Hillbillies, and Hooterville
Junction will no longer be so damned relevant, and
women will not care if Dick finally gets down with
Jane on Search for Tomorrow because Black People
will be in the street looking for a brighter day.
The revolution will not be televised.
Nations, states, and nation-states rely on a logic of these three things: land, people, and narratives.
In the beginning, a nation-state fences off a plot of land with borders and guns and the threat of using those guns, and says: this is my land. The people within this land are my people. This is we. We are this. This land, this people, and not those people over there. Definitely not them. They can’t have universal healthcare or human rights. That’s for us.
And so the nation-state and the people start telling creation stories; or maybe the stories came first to legitimize the borders and the guns. Maybe the stories explain how the land and the people are a community. Maybe these stories tell the story of how this land and people are becoming a community, and who is not part of the community, and who and what the community ought to be. Lots of these stories spin yarns about the fatherland, and protecting ‘our’ women, or the motherland and protecting it from rapacious outsiders. States are borders, guns, and sex. Nations are land, people, stories.
Governments know this. Groups of people pretending to be governments also know this. That’s why they buy barbed wire fences, border patrols, border guards, tanks, warplanes, sterile but impressive parliament buildings and public art, scientists, story-tellers, nuclear weapons programs, teachers and television stations.
That’s why the revolution will not be twitterized.
Technology is a tool. Twitter, facebook, cellphones are tools. Christopher Hitchens is a tool. At the most, at the absolute most, Twitter is an effective, quick, cheap, easy and viral storytelling platform: you can tell a story in tweets. And stories are one horse in the national trifecta. But now that we have twitter, will all the world spontaneously erupt into justice and democracy and good governance?
Still, go ahead, tint your avatar green. Change your location to Tehran. Use your computer as a server for a handful of Iranians trying to get their stories told. Retweet the mobile phone texts you receive from your Iranian friends. Bear witness. Hear the stories. Tell the stories. Wax lyrical about the lionesses of Iran.
But know this: the streets and the people are the revolution. That’s why the people take to the streets. That’s why the soldiers patrol the streets. That’s why the soldiers and the militia beat people, and shoot people, and kill people. Because the people are the story. The people are the locus of control. The people are it and when they are angry in the streets, they are a problem for those who would rule them. A very big problem.
And yes, that’s why Big Brother shuts down radio stations and TV stations and cell phone towers. But that’s the easy part. Controlling the people, when there are more of them than there are of you, in more space than you can physically control, all at once, is The End. Or The Beginning, depending on which side of the power struggle you’re on.
Here’s what the author did not wonder: what did you tweet three weeks ago? Because that is just the media/medium, and maybe the message too, if you understand what exactly Marshall McLuhan meant by that, and I don’t. But the story, the life, the blood and guts of power, the revolution, is the people when they take to the streets.
Viva la revolution. The revolution will not be twitterized.
“Every country is like a particular type of person. America is like a belligerent, adolescent boy, Canada is like an intelligent, 35 year old woman. Australia is like Jack Nicholson.” – Douglas Adams
The Canadian version of Julius Caesar’s memoirs? I came, I saw, I coped. – Clive James
Canadians often point out that while the American constitution promises “Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” the constitution of Canada–written in the 1860s in England–sets a more modest goal: “Peace, order, and good government.” This difference reaches into every corner of the two nations. My favourite example is a book of medical advice. It was written by a Canadian, Judylaine Fine, and published in Toronto under an extremely modest title, Your Guide to Coping with Back Pain. Later, American rights were acquired by New York publishers; they brought out precisely the same book under a new title, Conquering Back Pain. And there, in a grain of sand, to borrow from William Blake, we can see a world of differing attitudes. Our language reveals how we think, and what we are capable of thinking. Canadians cope. Americans conquer. Canadian readers of that book will assume that back pain will always be with them. Americans will assume that it can be destroyed, annihilated, abolished, conquered. Americans expect life, liberty, happiness, and total freedom from back pain. Canadians can only imagine peace, order, good government, and moderate back pain. – Robert Fulford
In the 1970s, CBC Radio‘s This Country in the Morningheld a competition whose goal was to compose the conclusion to the phrase: “As Canadian as…” The winning entry read: “… possible, under the circumstances.”
“Some countries you love. Some countries you hate. Canada is a country you worry about.” – Robertson Davies
A Canadian is someone who knows how to make love in a canoe without tipping it. – Pierre Berton
Canada is the essence of not being. Not English, not American, it is the mathematic of not being. And a subtle flavour – we’re more like celery as a flavour – Mike Meyers
If some countries have too much history, we have too much geography – William Lyon Mackenzie King
The state has no business in the bedrooms of the nation – Pierre Trudeau
Canada is not a country for the cold of heart or the cold of feet – Pierre Trudeau
Americans are benevolently ignorant about Canada, while Canadians are malevolently well informed about the United States – J. Bartlet Brebner
America’s attic. – Patrick Anderson
Canada has never been a melting-pot; more like a tossed salad. – Arnold Edinborough
Canada is a country so square that even the female impersonators are women. – Richard Benner
Canada is a country whose main exports are hockey players and cold fronts. Our main imports are baseball players and acid rain. – Pierre Trudeau
Canada is the only country in the world that knows how to live without an identity. – Herbert Marshall McLuhan
For some reason a glaze passes over people’s faces when you say “Canada”. Maybe we should invade South Dakota or something. – Sandra Gotlieb, wife of Canadian ambassador to US
I am rather inclined to believe that this is the land God gave to Cain. – Jacques Cartier
I don’t even know what street Canada is on. – Al Capone
In any world menu, Canada must be considered the vichyssoise of nations, it’s cold, half-French, and difficult to stir. – Stuart Keate
It’s going to be a great country when they finish unpacking it. – Andrew H. Malcolm
The beaver, which has come to represent Canada as the eagle does the United States and the lion Britain, is a flat-tailed, slow-witted, toothy rodent known to bite off its own testicles or to stand under its own falling trees. – June Callwood
Americans know as much about Canada as straight people do about gays. Americans arrive at the border with skis in July, and straight people think that being gay is just a phase. A very long phase. – Scott Thompson
Canada is like an old cow. The West feeds it. Ontario and Quebec milk it. And you can well imagine what it’s doing in the Maritimes – Tommy Douglas
Canada is the only country founded on the relentless pursuit of the rodent. – Preston Manning
Canada was built on dead beavers – Margaret Atwood
Coming from Canada, being a writer and Jewish as well, I have impeccable paranoia credentials. – Mordechai Richler
I’m kinda disappointed that Canada isn’t like the South Park movie said it was – Joel Madden
I’ve been to Canada, and I’ve always gotten the impression that I could take the country over in about two days. – Jon Stewart
If the national mental illness of the United States is megalomania, that of Canada is paranoid schizophrenia. – Margaret Atwood
In Pierre Elliott Trudeau, Canada has at last produced a political leader worthy of assassination. – Irving Layton
In Canada, nobody is ever overthrown because nobody gives a damn. – Mordechair Richler
The Canadian government continues to say they will not help us if we go to war with Iraq. However, the prime minister of Canada said he’d like to help, but he’s pretty sure that last time he checked, Canada had no army. – Conan O’Brien
The thing about Canada is, you’re not really considered a Canadian actor unless you do something with the CBC. – Lexa Doig
We are not imperialists. We don’t even try to take over Canada. It would be easy, although it might take a rear guard action to guard Anne Murray. – Evan Sayet
We don’t come to Canada for our health. We can think of other ways of enjoying ourselves. – Prince Philip
When I was crossing the border into Canada, they asked if I had any firearms with me. I said, “Well, what do you need?” – Steven Wright
I saw a notice that said “Drink Canada Dry” and I’ve just started – Brendan Behan
Americans like to make money: Canadians like to audit it. I know no country where accountants have a higher social and moral status. – Northrop Frye
Canada is a collection of provinces with strong governments loosely connected by fear. – Dave Broadfoot
My generation of Canadians grew up believing that, if we were very good or very smart, or both, we would some day graduate from Canada. – Robert Fulford
Never hear anything bad about Canada, that’s one thing – in fact, I guess it’s the only thing. – Walter Stewart
I want history to jump on Canada’s spine with sharp skates. – Leonard Cohen
We sing about the North, but live as far south as possible. – JB McGeachy
Canada’s climate is nine months winter and three months late in the fall. – Evan Esar
Canadians have been accustomed to define themselves by saying what they are not. – William Kilbourn
Historically, a Canadian is an American who rejects the Revolution. – Northrop Frye
was brought up in southwestern Ontario where we were taught that Canadian patriotism should not withstand anything more than a five-dollar-a-month wage differential. Anything more than that and you went to Detroit. – John Kenneth Galbraith
Just realized that my shirt is see-through. Happy Canada Day, Tim Hortons guy! – Catherine Connors
I guess Canada is a nice country. I’ve never thought much about it – Matthew Fisher
The US is our trading partner, our neighbour, our ally and our friend… and sometimes we’d like to give them such a smack! – Rick Mercer
Canadian nationalism is a subtle, easily misunderstood but powerful reality, expressed in a way that is not to state directed – something like a beer commercial or the death of a significant Canadian figure.- Paul Kopas
God Bless America, but God help Canada to put up with them! – Anonymous
We’ll explain the appeal of curling to you if you explain the appeal of the National Rifle Association to us. – Andy Barrie
Many Canadian nationalists harbour the bizarre fear that should we ever reject royalty, we would instantly mutate into Americans, as though the Canadian sense of self is so frail and delicate a bud, that the only thing stopping it from being swallowed whole by the US is an English lady in a funny hat.- Will Ferguson
Canada could have enjoyed: English government, French culture, And American know-how. Instead it ended up with: English know-how, French government, And American culture. – John Robert Colombo
The genius of Canada remains essentially a deflationary genius. – Jan Morris
I fear that I have not got much to sayabout Canada, not having seen much; what I got by going to Canada was a cold. – Henry David Thoreau
Ooh, Canada, exotic. – John Hughes
Canadians are arrogant about their own modesty – Christopher Molineaux
When the US sneezes, Canada says “gesundheit”. – Jules Carlysle
Canada is an interesting place; the rest of the world thinks so, even if Canadians don’t. – Terence Green
The huge advantage of Canada is its backwardness. – Marshall McLuhan
There are few, if any, Canadian men that have never spelled their name in a snow bank. – Douglas Coupland
A Canadian is merely an unarmed American with health care. – John Wing
The Canadian military is like Switzerland’s. Without the knife. – John Wing
Canada is like a loft apartment over a really great party. Like: “Keep it down, eh?”- Robin Williams
Canadian money is also called the loony. How can you take an economic crisis seriously? – Robin Williams
I don’t trust any country that looks around a continent and says, “Hey, I’ll take the frozen part.” – Jon Stewart
It is a peaceful, nice country with lots of empty space, a boring government that never faces serious crises, a minimal trade partner and the source of singers with strange accents. – – John Dickinson
Wherever you go in the world, you just have to say you’re Canadian and people laugh – John Candy
Britons put up with, Americans fix, Canadians cope – Margaret Mead
We have the Mounties, they have the FBI. Can you imagine the FBI doing the Musical Ride? – Dave Broadfoot
Canada and Mexico, as the saying goes, has a common problem between them. – J.C. Ogelsby
I believe the world needs more Canada – Bono
If the general attitude of Canadians toward their mighty neighbor to the south could be distilled into a single phrase, that phrase would probably be “Oh, shut up.” – Bruce McCall
Canadians are more polite when they are being rude than Americans are when they are being friendly. – Edgar Friedenberg
Canadians were the first anti-Americans, and the best. Canadian anti-Americanism, just as the country’s French-English duality, has for two centuries been the central buttress of our national identity. – Jack Granetstein
There isn’t any one Canada, any average Canadian, any average place, any type. – Miriam Chapin
Americans should never underestimate the constant pressure on Canada which the mere presence of the United States has produced. We’re different people from you and we’re different people because of you. Living next to you is in some ways like sleeping with an elephant. No matter how friendly and even-tempered is the beast, if I can call it that, one is effected by every twitch and grunt. It should not therefore be expected that this kind of nation, this Canada, should project itself as a mirror image of the United States. – Pierre Trudeau
There is a whole school of Canadian academics, media personalities, and politicians whose definition of a Canadian is a North American who fears or dislikes the United States. – Preston Manning
An optimist in Canada is someone who think things could be worse – Preston Manning
The Canadian people are more practical than imaginative. Romantic tales and poetry would meet with less favour in their eyes than a good political article from their newspapers. – Susanna Moodie
Take off eh! – The Mackenzie Brothers
I don’t have a moral plan. I’m a Canadian – David Cronenberg
The Canadian kid who wants to grow up to be Prime Minister isn’t thinking big, he is setting a limit to his ambitions rather early. – Mordechai Richler
Hockey captures the essence of Canadian experience in the New World. In a land so inescapably and inhospitably cold, hockey is the chance of life, and an affirmation that despite the deathly chill of winter we are alive. – Stephen Butler Leacock
The Canadian is not an American – at least, not entirely, not yet – Alistair Horne
Canada has world leaders sign their guest book?? Are you a country or a Bed and Breakfast?!” – Jon Stewart, on Obama’s first visit to Canada
Thinking that other people might be better than you is what makes you Canadian, not American. – Stephen Colbert
Canadians are always dreaming up a lotta ways to ruin our lives. The metric system, for the love of God! Celsius! Neil Young! – Gus, in Canadian Bacon
I just am a Canadian. It is not a thing which you can escape from. It is like having blue eyes- Robertson Davies
The beginning of Canadian cultural nationalism was not “Am I really that oppressed?” but “Am I really that boring?” – Margaret Atwood
Most Americans don’t understand Canadian political parties. Neither do most Canadians – Eric Nicol
I am the ultimate California girl, which is funny, being that I’m Canadian – Pamela Anderson
Canada is either an idea or it does not exist. It is either an intellectual undertaking or it is little more than a resource-rich vacuum lying in the buffer zone just north of a great empire – John Ralston Saul
A Canadian is someone who keeps asking the question, ‘What is a Canadian?” – Irving Layton
There are two miracles in Canadian history. The first is the survival of French Canada, and the second is the survival of Canada. – Frank R. Scott
Canadians are an ambivalent lot: One minute they’re peacekeepers, next minute they punch the hell out of each other on the ice rink. – Ken Wiwa
Ethnicity does not replace Canadian identity. Itis Canadian identity – Harold Troper
The Canadian Identity, it seems, is truly elusive only at home. Beyond the borders Canadians know exactly who they are, within they see themselves as part of a family, a street, a neighbourhood, a community, a province , a region, and on special occasions like Canada Day and Grey Cup weekend and, of course, during the Winter Olympics, a country called Canada. Beyond the borders, they pine; within the borders, they more often whine – Roy MacGregor
I accept now with equanimitythe questionso constantly addressed to me, ‘Are you an American’ and merely returnthe accurate answer, ‘Yes, I am a Canadian.’ – Lester Pearson
Blame Canada – South Park
Canadians are the people who learned to live without the bold accents of the natural ego-trippers of other lands. – Marshall McLuhan
Canadians have an abiding interest in surprising those Americans who have historically made little effort to learn about their neighbour to the North. – Peter Jennings
The great themes of Canadian history are as follows: Keeping the Americans out, keeping the French in, and trying to get the Natives to somehow disappear. – Will Ferguson
Canadians have been so busy explaining to the Americans that we aren’t British, and to the British that we aren’t Americans that we haven’t had time to become Canadians. – Helen Gordon McPherson
Canadians look down on the United States and consider it Hell. They are right to do so. Canada is to the United States what, in Dante’s scheme, Limbo is to Hell. – Irving Layton
This is Beth Ditto. She is the lead singer of The Gossip; a lesbian; and a fatty. Google “Beth Ditto” and “glamorizes unhealthy lifestyle”. Do it now. I dare you.
This is my question: is it possible that Beth Ditto is not glamorizing anything except herself?
Even if she is unhealthy – and sure, fat might be unhealthy, maybe – what should happen next? Should she lock herself in a room, turn down the free dresses Herve Leger is designing for her and refuse to play the Fendi party until she is thin enough to be presentable? And then, only then, she can rock on?
Beth Ditto is not glamorizing an unhealthy lifestyle. She is just living her life. And, as far as I can see, she’s not making any apologies for it.
And no, I won’t pose nude for you. But thank you for asking. xoxoxoxo
From the head of which goddess sprang the Involved Father? Who is this demi-god with his fancy jogging stroller, hanging out at Starbucks on Saturdays at 10am with the baby and the toddler so their mama can sleep the required two hours a day, leaving early on Tuesday afternoon because his wife has a meeting and the babysitter isn’t back from Hawaii yet, (awkwardly) braiding his daughter’s hair, working nights so his wife can work days, knowing where the immunization records are kept, insisting on a say in which school the child attends, arguing the finer points of parenting philosophy because he took Psych 100 and he is the daddy after all, changing diapers, cleaning up vomit, rubbing backs, taking the children to see Beverly Hills Chihauha and becoming irresistably attractive because of that, and warming baby bottles unprompted because he is in it to win it.
And they are EVERYWHERE.
I blame the feminists. What with all their/our/my incessant bitching about housework and child-rearing being undervalued; insisting that this work had value; and yet, at the same time, insisting on being able to work outside the home, even though most non-white, non-middle-class women were always there, anyways. I blame women like Madonna Kolbenschlag, who in the 70s wrote a letter from a newly feminist wife to her husband:
…I would like to free you of your compulsive workaholism, your “breadwinner” fixation. But I can’t share that load unless you relieve me of some of the burden of homemaking and child rearing. Can you learn to work less, earn less, spend more time with the kids — and be happy? If you can’t then I can’t be happy either. Can you stop measuring yourself by the size of your paycheck?
I also blame the dot com bubble/bust; overindulged, entitled knowledge workers; Tim Feriss and his four hour work week; and Gen X and Y who grew up in broken homes with broken hearts full of travel-lust, who backpacked and couch-surfed from country to country only to finally discover home in the eyes of their children. It’s all your fault, people. You raised hell and now you’re raising children and you’re spoiled enough to think the world, especially the world of work, ought to accomodate this fact of life.
This is a very good thing, because having children is what people do. Maybe not all – and I’m certainly not judging anyone who chooses to be childless, in fact, I salute you and know that you are deeply, deeply happy (there is actual research about this) and please know that if you ever need an afternoon fix of children, I’ve got two that I lend out enthusiastically – but I wish we would stop talking about having children as a choice or a privilege. Having babies is what animals do. We are animals. As a species, we reproduce. This is not a ‘choice’ made by the adequately financially and emotionally prepared; it is life.
[Side note: I am truly, truly worried about the child-as-privileged choice theme that is weaving through our culture: poor people don't deserve to have children? Really? Humans have been making baby humans since we've been human, but now poor humans ought not be able to participate in that human experience. Nice. Poor people used to have children to help the family survive. Now, children are a luxury like the next Louis Vuitton bag, and only the rich should be able to collect them, preferably from exotic, African locales. It is so Gattica meets Handmaid's Tale via Brangelina, and that is scary, frankly.]
I love the new fatherhood. I heart the Involved Father. My heart swells every time my boss’s boss sends an e-mail to the entire team telling us that he is working from home because his baby is sick. It swells because his baby is getting the care she needs; his wife is getting the partner she deserves; he is getting to be a real father, and maybe, just maybe he is part of the first generation of men in our culture who have truly claimed and embraced this honour.
It also means that no one says s-h-i-t when I miss work because my kids are sick, and this rocks because then I can stay home and rub their backs and feed them soup and watch their temperature and know that I still have a job the next day and so will be able to continue to feed and clothe them and keep them in a state of health and well-being that means they likely won’t ever be really, really sick. And this, people, is the way it ought to be.
So it is with a full heart and fist in the air that I wish a Happy Father’s Day to all of you amazing, involved fathers on the frontlines, and to all the feminists and slackers who put you there.
PS to Charles, my children’s father, thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you.
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