Setting the Tone

So here I am, working away at the SCSU, teaming up with the Athletics Department to offer women-only workout times at the Rec Centre. Over 65% of UTSC students are women, and among our diverse campus is a large Muslim population. There was student demand and so we did it, we're on our merry way. We got three hour and a half time slots per week in the Cardio Theatre. Blinds were installed for privacy and the timeslots were chosen by a group of students, who helped me get more input by sharing this with their friends and clubs. It has been advertised for a while now and launched this morning.

Of course, someone just has to try to fuck it up with racist, Islamophobic, misogynistic bullshit. I'm not naming names here, but if you check out this Facebook note, written in reaction to some of the things this person said, and check out this Facebook discussion in the group for feedback on the women-only hours, you'll see who it is and what they're saying. You'll also see valiant attempts by the VP Students & Equity and many other students to explain a) why this initiative is necessary and A Good Thing, and b) why her reasons against it and her attitude are inappropriate. And as you can see, this has been going on for a while.

I talked about this person this morning at the launch with a couple of friends and Aysan Sev'er, the Special Advisor to the Principal on Equity, and later forwarded the above rant to her. She was thoroughly disturbed. But I made it clear this morning that I was frustrated with having to deal with this person, that I've tried explaining and discussing so many ways, and now I feel like I'm just bashing them over the head with the same stick. I made up my mind then that I was done playing nice. If they can't get it through their head that their behaviour is unacceptable, well...

So this evening she writes her latest pièce de résistance on the discussion board, and, well, I wasn't nice. For your pleasure, I paste here The Part Where Jenna Stops Being Nice:

You know, *I* don't know what else to say, but I am thoroughly disappointed and disgusted. I have tried to explain, time and time again, that I disagree strongly with what you think the policy says about women. It's about offering women CHOICE, which is a HUGE part of equality, and you want to take that choice away.

Furthermore, your generalisations about Muslims, immigrants, people with self-esteem issues, and now feminists, are just that: generalisations. It's a small population of these groups that do the things you claim that they do. Where in here is an argument that we're better off without men? That would be an argument for complete segregation, here, we're offering women CHOICE.

It's wonderful that you have never felt oppressed or discriminated against, but guess what - the world doesn't revolve around you. Not everyone thinks like you, not everyone acts like you (as the responses to this thread and everything else you've said should indicate). Thanks to the battles fought by our FEMINIST predecessors here in Canada, YOU have the CHOICE to wear those short skirts, just like I have the CHOICE not to, and just like our Muslim peers have the CHOICE to wear a hijab. And because of this freedom of CHOICE, our freedom of expression, NONE OF US deserve to be discriminated against for our gender, how we choose to dress, what religion we practice, where we come from, ANYTHING. And a big part of choice is also RESPECTING those choices, and allowing people the opportunity to practice those choices - hence, women-only workout hours.

If they men you know are nice guys, awesome. We need more good people in this world, men and women, so all the more power to the kind, friendly, respectful, tolerant, nice, trusting, understanding, and so on, men and women that we all know. Those aren't the men we're concerned with. We're concerned with the ones that other people (gasp, not you!) know, that aren't so nice. You know that there are some out there who are not, I'm sure you read the news every day, and when we talk about criminals and rapists, we should all take heart that there are good men out there who do not fall into that category.

In fact, I'd argue that you, and me, and all the nice men in the world and everyone else, SHOULD be outraged that there are people out there giving men in general a bad name - but directing that anger at women is terribly misguided. It is blaming women for something they did not do, they did not ask for. If anyone is upset about men being tarred with the same brush, they should go after the ones who make it that way. We should definitely be outraged at the rapists. We should definitely be outraged at the criminals. You should definitely be outraged at the guy who grabbed my friend's ass in the UTSC gym a few months ago. We should definitely be outraged at the emotionally abusive ex-boyfriend who told one of our fellow peers she was fat and ugly every day.

Women-only hours are here because guess what: people aren't outraged enough at these assholes who get away with these terrible acts, because guess what - while we may have made enormous strides in the past, while men and women may be equal in theory, while men and women SHOULD be equal, we most definitely are NOT. Stephen Harper may say that women are equal, therefore we can abolish the Status of Women Office, but guess what - in Canada, we still earn 21 cents less per dollar than men do. Rapes are still committed every single day in this country. There are still men who think that a women dressed in a short skirt is a piece of meat to leer at. There are still men who think that they are entitled to ownership and control of women's bodies. The media continues to tell women that they can't be leaders if they want to be sexy, that they can't be sexy if they want to be leaders, and all sorts of other double-standards. Telling a boy he's being a "pussy," or that he "throws like a girl" is still one of the worst insults on the playground. Girls who play with trucks and boys who play with Barbies are still thought to be weird.

This is the world we live in, in Canada, in the 21st century. And if THAT is what you consider equality, then I don't know what to say other than I'm appalled and deeply saddened. And I'm disgusted that there are so many people here blaming women for these things when they could be out being proactive and STOPPING THEM FROM HAPPENING IN THE FIRST PLACE. Instead, all I see is blaming women, attacking feminism (which, might I remind you, is the entire reason women enjoy the freedoms and choices we DO have), selfishness and utter insensitivity. If you took half the energy you put into fighting an initiative meant to make women feel safe in this world, hell, if EVERYONE so opposed to this initiative did, and put it into fighting the very things that MAKE them feel that way in the first place, think of what kind of change could be made.

Start thinking of people other than yourself and please PLEASE stop judging women like this.

You're right. We ARE all entitled to the same things equally. But unfortunately for all of us, our society doesn't seem to believe the same thing.

Honestly, I'm dreading whatever this person writes in response to this, and I really really wish you could ban people from groups on Facebook, because they'd would be outta there in no time. Wonderfully enough, I feel like I'm back on the SCSU forum, which isn't too bad a comparison considering this person was a problem there, too, for similar reasons.

With this post I hope to set the tone. Most of what I will be writing here will NOT be nice - there are a lot of things about or from my job, politics, the world, and more, including people, that drive me nuts, and I plan to make it known.