An excerpt of my presentation The Constructed Vulva, which highlights social constructions of female genitalia.
Quebec Judge Denys Dionne observed during a trial in 1989 in Longeuil that: “Rules are like a woman, they are made to be violated.”
In the 1999 decision of the Alberta Court of Appeal, for the rape committed by Steve Ewanchuck against a 17 year old girl, Justice John McClung commented that “it must be pointed out that the complainant did not present herself to Ewanchuk or enter his trailer in a bonnet and crinolines” and that Ewanchuk’s conduct was “less criminal than hormonal”. Ewanchuck was acquitted.
Mr. Justice Jean Bienvenue of the Quebec Superior Court berated a Trois-Rivières jury in 1995 for being “idiotic and incompetent” for finding a woman guilty of only second-degree murder after she had killed her husband by slashing his throat with a razor. Then he delivered full-bore invective against the defendant in pronouncing sentence: “When women ascend the scale of virtues, they reach higher than men, and I have always believed this. But it is also said, and this, too, I believe, that when they decide to degrade themselves, they sink to depths to which even the vilest man could not sink.” He continued: “Alas, you are indeed the image of these women so famous in history: the Delilahs, the Salomes, Charlotte Corday, Mata Hari and how many others who have been a sad part of our history and have debased the profile of women. You are one of them, and you are the clearest living example of them that I have seen.” But he didn’t stop there: “At the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp in Poland, which I once visited, horror-stricken, even the Nazis did not eliminate millions of Jews in a painful or bloody manner… . They died in the gas chambers, without suffering.” Judge Bienvenue also commented on the short skirt worn by a reporter covering the trial and asked the bailiff for a bottle of vodka while the jury was deliberating.
Judge Monique Dubreuil sentenced two men, whom she said were “immature” and not a threat to society, to an 18-month suspended sentence for sexual assault. She explained her leniency by saying that the victim was not a juvenile and that the men, who were of Haitian origin, came from a culture where rape is accepted. “The absence of regret of the two accused seems to be related more to the cultural context, particularly with regard to relations with women than a veritable problem of a sexual nature,” she said in her ruling.
In 1996, Mr. Justice Allyre Sirois of the Saskatchewan Court of Queen’s Bench observed during a bail hearing for a man who beat his former girlfriend unconscious after she asked him to turn down the television set that “it takes two to tango.” In 1993, at a dangerous-offender hearing, Judge Sirois referred to a prostitute who had been assaulted at knifepoint as belonging to “a different caste”; the year before, he told a woman who had been assaulted at the age of 12 that she had to accept some responsibility for the event.
Quebec Judge Raymonde Verreault cited “extenuating circumstances” when she handed down a 23-month sentence in 1994 to a man who had repeatedly sodomized his stepdaughter from the time she was 9 until 11. The victim did not have any “permanent scars” from the sexual assaults, according to Judge Verreault, because the attacker had respected the values of her Muslim faith and had “spared her virginity” by not engaging in vaginal intercourse. Besides, the girl may have encouraged the accused because she “harboured hatred” against her mother.
Quebec Judge René Crochetière ruled in 1993 that there was not enough evidence to bring a man to trial for threatening to kill his live-in lover. On leaving the crowded courtroom, the alleged victim said to the judge: “If I get killed, it will be your fault.” To which he replied: “I would like to tell everyone here that, if ever this man kills this woman, it won’t stop me from sleeping and I won’t die — don’t worry, I won’t get depressed, either. It isn’t my responsibility.”
Manitoba Judge Frank Allen offered the following advice in 1989 to a 19-year-old man accused of beating a female acquaintance: “There isn’t any woman worth the trouble you got yourself into.” In a 1984 sexual-assault trial, the same judge observed: “You would have to be living in a vacuum, totally without wordly experience at all, not to know in many cases women are first to resist and later give in to persuasion and sometimes their own instinct.”
Queen’s Bench Justice Robert Dewar described rapist Kenneth Rhodes as a “clumsy Don Juan” at his 2011 sentencing. He further stated that “sex was in the air” and that “This is a case of misunderstanding signals and inconsiderate behaviour.” Though the Crown wanted at least three years behind bars for his actions, Rhodes was given a two year conditional sentence which allows him to remain free in the community.
Want a raise? Wash your genitals! Thanks, Summer’s Eve.
There’s a story not often told about sex work. It’s a story that most of society would scoff at, write off as a deluded fantasy. Many of us won’t allow it to be true.
I am a sex worker, and even I felt that it was too tall a tale to tell.
It’s the story of the empowered sex worker who finds healing through her work, the sex worker who has become a more whole person because of what she does. But it is a story that rings true for many of the incredible women and men I have had the pleasure of knowing, women and men who work as strippers, escorts, tantric practitioners, porn actors, and erotic masseurs.
I have been stripping for half of my life—since just days after my 18th birthday. Almost immediately, I became aware of the judgment that would come my way from my partner, friends, parents, and siblings. They all expressed their disappointment in me for having chosen to make money by taking my clothes off for strangers. When I explained to people that I was doing it to save money for university, they eased off a bit, conceding that it was, indeed, a good way to put oneself through school.
Eighteen years later, I’m still stripping. It’s gotten harder in the past few years to explain this. For most of my years in the industry, I have been a university student. When I was younger, it was a very plausible story: the stripper working her way through college. I finished one degree, entered my mid-twenties, decided I was enjoying life too much as it was, so I continued stripping and headed back to school for another degree.
I travelled a lot, earned the envy of others while at the same time accumulating greater disdain. It was celebrated that I was so committed to my education, so well travelled and free-spirited, but there was a growing sense of impatience among my loved ones about when I would exit the sex industry. I internalized the knowledge that I was letting my parents down. I was the first in the family to get a university education (financed by my stripping career, mind you), but I wasn’t doing anything that my parents could share with their friends. They were getting bored of telling people that I was a student. That story was getting old. Partners asked me when I planned to quit. Clients asked me when I would quit.
Apparently, when you are in the sex industry, the only way to keep it remotely respectable is to have a clearly mapped-out plan for your escape. It doesn’t matter if you are happy, healthy, satisfied. You must have an exit plan.
I really bought into this. I held my degrees up in defence of my career. See? I have a plan! I’m educating myself! The older I got, the less believable was my story. I even started to doubt it myself. My partner demanded that I set an exit date. I understood. It was cool to be a stripper while you were young, but in your thirties? Time to grow up and get a real job. I began to see how I used my education to legitimize myself, my trade, but that wasn’t going to last forever.
Clients always ask me what else I do, and I try so hard to be okay with telling them that I’m just a stripper. Why can’t I be just a stripper, when a waitress can be just a waitress, a construction worker just a construction worker? Why should it matter one iota that I have a university education? I don’t plan on using it to get a job one day. You might tell me that my education was still a very valuable experience, that I have gained so much from it. Why can’t my 18 years as a stripper have value? The much greater lessons I’ve learned in life have come from a strip bar rather than from a place of supposed “higher learning”.
Yet it is difficult to really let go of the societal stigma, to release this idea of sex work as inherently unhealthy, and to allow myself to really see value in what I have done, what I continue to do. To allow myself to continue in this industry without the weight of shame and disappointment tugging at me, tempting me to stay at home. But I have started the process of recognizing the many things I have gained as a stripper.
What I value most in this world is connection. I’ve had the incredible opportunity to work with hundreds, maybe thousands of women from diverse backgrounds. I’ve learned to really listen to them, to share with them, to bond with them. I now understand why we talk so much about work when we’re together: it’s not for lack of other things to say but because there are so few people in the world we can share our stories with. There is such an obvious longing to share, to connect, that it has become very easy for me to do so and to recognize that very same longing for connection among others in our society. I’ve been amazed at the conversations that have emerged in the change room and beyond.
Some of the most basic things that trouble people—rejection, criticism, competition—are the things strippers deal with on a daily basis. Many people think this manifests as an environment of cattiness, and I have seen that element. But I’ve also seen women use that environment as a place to learn and grow.
I’ve learned to be unafraid of rejection, to not take it personally, even if I am rejected in a very personal way. I’ve had the experience of being criticized and having to immediately move on, smile on my face. I’ve learned to remain centred. I’ve found my source of confidence, and it’s so deep inside that it is neither bolstered nor beaten by the whims of the crowd.
I’ve worked in a highly competitive environment yet learned that my coworkers are not my competition.
I’ve learned that what has damaged me the most is the disdain I have felt from so many others regarding what I do, allowing myself to feel somehow less for continuing to strip when I have what it takes to get a “real” job.
I’ve learned that kindness does not dress a particular way. That generosity doesn’t always wear a suit. That love can pass between strangers.
I’ve learned that I am okay—no, so much more than okay—just as I am. Strip me of my degrees; strip me of my clothes. Let me stand before you, with no excuses. I am more than okay, exactly how I am.
“Warrior Within” by Jim Dault and Shala Dobson. Installed at Wasilla High School January 29, and under cover since the 1st of February due to concerns that it resembles female genitalia. Such a terrible message being sent here - that any work of art shaped like female genitalia needs to be censored.
Perhaps the name is too much for some to deal with as well - linking strength with femininity is almost taboo in our society. If this piece is too vulgar, what about such phallic structures as the Washington Monument?
The message I’m getting here is strength and power + male = good,
strength and power + female = bad. What are people so afraid of?
Read the story here: http://www.frontiersman.com/schools/under-wraps-wasilla-high-school-sculpture-covered-after-concerns-voiced/article_855dcbd2-5924-11e1-a773-0019bb2963f4.html
Queer is not merely another identity that can be tacked onto a list of neat social categories, nor the quantitative sum of our identities. Rather, it is the qualitative position of opposition to presentations of stability - an identity that problematizes the manageable limits of identity.
Queer is a territory of tension, defined against the dominant narrative of white-hetero-monogamous-patriarchy, but also an affinity with all those who are marginalized, otherized and oppressed.
Queer is the abnormal, the strange, the dangerous. Queer involves our sexuality and our gender, but so much more. It is our desire and fantasies and more still. Queer is the cohesion of everything in conflict with the heterosexual capitalist world.
Queer is a total rejection of the regime of the Normal.
Sometimes it seems Superman has an easier time pulling off a quick change in a phone booth than a girl who’s looking to change her tampon in the middle of a school day. If it’s not the fear of the telltale crinkle, it’s the paranoia that someone will see you palm a product on your way to the stall. Well, have no fear; we’re here to help. With the right products and some good sound advice, using tampons can be silent and discreet.
First off, you don’t need to fake cough every time you open a tampon in the bathroom stall. Or give an extra flush. Or stomp your feet and yell to cover the crinkling noise. Also, with all the other stuff going on in the girls’ room, the noise of a tampon or pad wrapper is pretty hard to hear unless the school gossip queen is listening at the stall door. And if she gets caught doing that, well, how sad for her?
Second, everyone in the girls’ room is a girl. And that means they’ll all have to deal with a period someday (if they don’t already) so they’re just as nervous and curious as you are. Bottom line is, it’s no biggie. But if you are concerned about being overheard in the stall, try these tips.
Tampon Do’s:
• Practice with using tampons at home. See how quiet you can be when making a quick change.
• Experiment with different brands and types of protection. It’s true, some wrappers seem kinda’ crinkly, but others are made to be extra quiet and easy to open. Tampax Pearl tampons have quiet wrappers that open with tabs, and you can place the applicator back in the wrapper to throw it away.
• Be discreet when you’re bringing a tampon into the girls’ room with you but have fun with it, too. Challenge your friends to come up with the best hiding places. Anyone can bring a purse to the restroom (a classic hiding spot) but try tucking it in your waistband, bra, sock, or cell phone case. No one needs to suspect a thing.
• Understand your menstrual cycle and always use the lowest absorbency tampon for your flow.
• For better hiding potential, try compact tampons, like the Tampax Compak Pearl. They’re full-size tampons, but the applicator is tucked in so it fits in the palm of your hand. Once you pull the tabs to open the wrapper, extend the back of the applicator until it clicks into place, and you’re good to go.
• When opening a tampon or pad wrapper that doesn’t have an easy-open tab or string, tear carefully and slowly across the top. If you rip down the middle, the product could go flying!
• If you use pads all the time, try switching to using tampons during sports or exercise. No special type necessary. Use the brand that works the best for you. Tampax tampons are discreet, easy to insert and remove, comfortable to wear and are unnoticeable under any sports uniform, even a leotard.
The average woman spends about 2400 days, or SIX consecutive years of her life menstruating.
That is six years spent by most Western women feeling ashamed, embarrassed, at war with their own bodies. Six years at war with their beautiful, wild femininity.
