• • Anti-violence
  • In My Opinion...

  Challenging Mansplaining and Shame

  April 5, 2013 • Meg Pirie

  Recently, I’ve been experiencing mansplaining. A lot of mansplaining. This phenomenon is one I define as explaining the world and all of its nuances in a supremely confident, woefully simplistic manner. Mansplanations rely on privilege—derived from whiteness, maleness, ability and/or straightness—not accuracy. It doesn’t matter if the mansplainer is misinformed, grossly inept, or just plain wrong.

  Worth pointing out as well is that mansplaining as a phenomenon doesn’t mean only self-identified cis men are guilty; whenever privilege is used as the foundation of purported omniscience, or as a tool to silence, or as a means to induce shame in someone for their perceived lack of “real” knowledge … yep, that’s some mansplaining at work.

  Mansplainers just know. They know it all. It’s equal parts network news anchor and folksy wisdom, with a dash of “father knows best.” The world, thanks to selfless mansplainers, has been categorized and defined, whether it’s through tried and true logical fallacies like circular logic or poisoning the well. Mansplaining is nothing if not versatile.

  Patriarchy is prevalent because it reduces non-conforming subjects into singular entities. It simplistic and it’s violent on literal and symbolic levels. You’re stripped of your you-ness and put into a category. Whatever non-conforming category you’re subjected to, one thing is certain, at least when it comes to mansplaining: in brief, you need to be told how things are and why you are wrong. You need to change.

  But patriarchy also functions because of shame. In this blog post, Dr. Brene Brown, a research professor at the University of Houston Graduate College of Social Work writes, “shame corrodes the very part of us that believes we are capable of change.”

  Shame, Brown continues, is “the intensely painful feeling or experience of believing we are flawed and therefore unworthy of love and belonging.” I would add to this that shame relies on the notion that at our core, we are broken. Which brings me to a core aspect of my own practice of anti-oppressive, intersectional feminism(s): none of us are broken. We are all whole.

  It sounds simple, but beginning with this radical foundation provides me with a toolkit to combat mansplaining, which I experience as rooted in, and emanating from, shame. So, in the interest of storytelling as healing and humour as resistance, I’m going to share my recent (mis)adventures with mansplainers and the lessons I took from these situations.

  Scenario 1: So, I’m tabling for Shameless at the Indie Media Fair in London, Ontario, my hometown. It’s a great event—there’s a lively crowd; people are engaged and asking questions; and of course, the public library venue was perfect. A middle-aged, self-identified man approaches the table and asks what Shameless is about. I share our mandate. His response? An exaggerated step back, so as not to be plagued by the scourge of intersectional feminism, followed by the quip, “Oh well, I’m a man, so I guess I better leave.”

  “Really?” I asked. “Why do you think that? What does feminism mean to you?”

  In all honesty, dialogue was the goal here. Did it happen? No, not so much, but an early, wonderful lesson in my own life was that feminism, as a political practice, is for everybody. Every. Body.

  Was I annoyed? Absolutely! That said, I can only hope that this attempt at dialogue and Shameless‘ inspiring mandate plant a seed that leads this person to more inclusive deeds and words in the future.

  Was I ashamed? No. There is no shame in working to build communities that dismantle systemic oppression. Ever.(more inside…)

• • On The Job

  Labour, Harm Reduction, and Allyship

  February 11, 2013 • Meg Pirie

  I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: labour doesn’t exist in a vacuum. And yet, we tend to think about this large part of our lives as somehow separate from “real life.” I’m not sure if this need to segment our labour is a product of Western education founded on arbitrary divisions or a way to detach from work lives that, for some, are filled with precarity, malaise, or just plain boredom. That’s another blog post.

  Nevertheless, segmenting labour and rigidly defining who does what, where, and how is also a way of ensuring that collective organizing is hampered.

  I mention this labour vacuum in the opening paragraph because I’ve noticed lately that the phrase “having it all” has been the focus of a lot of press, both mainstream and feminist. And while women still earn far less than men, this trendy topic is embedded with its own set of assumptions. For one, much of the focus on these issues is urban, heteronormative, cis-gendered, and white-collar. This “you can have it all/bust down that glass ceiling” is also founded on the in-no-way-universal desire to have a family/be a mother.

  But when we talk of ceilings, we tend to ignore the remainder of the structure, so to speak—especially the ‘basement,’ an issue Laurie Penny has written about extensively. In Sarah Jaffe’s recent article “Trickle-Down Feminism”, she highlights mainstream feminism’s willful omission of the labour experiences and issues faced by women of colour post-recession and women employed in low-wage service sector and domestic jobs.

  “While we debate the travails of some of the world’s most privileged women, most women are up against the wall,” Jaffe writes. “The brave new economy being rebuilt in the wake of the financial meltdown is being built on low-wage service work.” (I strongly encourage you to read the rest of this amazing feature.) Although these statistics are American, consider that women have regained only 12 percent of jobs lost during the recession that began in 2008, while men have regained 63 percent of jobs lost.

  To put it bluntly, our labour is interwoven with gender. Some labour is gendered and, in being gendered, devalued. If we look at current labour statistics, the bulk of these exploited positions are filled by women of colour. It’s intersectional, systemic violence. Which is precisely why collective responses should be equally intersectional. For this reason, the current emphasis on the having it all/glass ceiling debate does nothing but work within the boundaries of patriarchy. There is nothing radical about this.

  So where exactly does harm reduction fit in and what is harm reduction? (more inside…)

• • In My Opinion...
  • Media Savvy
  • Rape Culture

  Second Looks: A Sailor, A Nurse, and Sexual Assault

  October 6, 2012 • Meg Pirie

  Photos are funny, aren’t they? A look through an album or Instagram and you see moments in time, frozen with the click of a shutter. It is, as Susan Sontag observed in her book of essays On Photography, proof that you were somewhere. A photo is a pictorial declaration that you took up space, at some point, in some location.

  And then, there are those images that are, for many, instantly recognizable. We might know nothing of the subjects but we know the image. Devoid of context, this particular mix of shapes and shades is familiar. It’s a strange rupture to navigate. Like this image, for instance.

  

  Taken on August 14, 1945 by LIFE magazine photographer Alfred Eisenstaedt, we see, at first glance, a sailor, a woman, a kiss and what looks to be parade. It’s a celebration. World War II is over.

  But there’s more to this story. (more inside…)

• • In My Opinion...
  • On The Job
  • Sporting Goods

  What I learned while trying not to watch the Olympics

  August 17, 2012 • Meg Pirie

  Now that we’re no longer inundated with the minute-by-minute updates from London—newsflashes brought to you by Coke and McDonalds—it’s time to take part in Ye Olde Olympic retrospective and for me to confess the following: My name is Meg. I am a feminist. But I also love the Olympics. That said, I am highly, highly critical of the corporate ethos that governs not just the Games’ infrastructure, but also how the labour of amateur athletes is discussed and constructed.

  Really though, there is much to learn from the Olympics. In fact, the Olympics provides us with a perfect snapshot of hypercapitalism. Hypercapitalism is, in brief, extreme capitalism at the expense of traditional values. What exactly ‘traditional values’ implies is anyone’s guess.

  My personal interpretation of hypercapitalism as it relates to the Olympics is extreme capitalism projected as [fictitious] ‘unity’ and ‘oneness’ that is, in reality, founded on exploitation: of the environment; of labour (I’m including behind-the-scenes media workers, athletes, and low-wage service workers that make the Olympics hum along in host cities); and colonialism, since more often than not Olympics are held in settler states or nations that are directly benefiting from ongoing colonization.

  There’s tons to talk about and I’m only scratching the surface in this post. You could spend several posts dissecting sexist and racist media coverage, so I’m going to focus on a few instances that struck a chord with me.

  (more inside…)

• • Activist Report
  • On The Job

  Feminism is for everybody: Join the global boycott against Hyatt Hotels

  August 2, 2012 • Meg Pirie

  A little over a week ago, a worldwide boycott of Hyatt hotel chains was announced in the US, organized by UNITE HERE, the union that represents Hyatt hotel workers.

  Hyatt is guilty of labour abuses that are becoming more common in this age of austerity, including ever-increasing, oppressive workloads (cleaning thirty rooms in a shift, to start); limited time off; and of course, hiring contract workers to cut costs, to name a few. Additionally, there are experiences of on-the-job sexual harassment, racism, and union busting. For the largely female workforce that make up housekeeping staff—many of whom have immigrated to the United States—systemic racism and the threat of immigration keeps workers from coming forward against their employer.

  To put it bluntly, Hyatt’s “escalating patterns of worker abuse” is illegal. Moreover, this is immoral. We all have the right to safe, equitable working conditions. And we all have the right to unionize.

  (more inside…)

• • In My Opinion...

  On Valentine’s Day, Fall in Love with Your Friends

  February 14, 2012 • Meg Pirie

  On Valentine’s Day we are, quite literally, bombarded by a deluge of nonsensical language. For this reason, I hate this superficial, highly choreographed “holiday” that tells us how love should be expressed. Rather than emotional support and having (a) partner(s) who act(s) as (an) ally(ies), love is reduced to an economic transaction. I’m neither the first nor the last person to comment that Valentine’s Day does more harm than good: it polices who we love, how we love and what shape that love takes.

  Not only that, but these directives on love are inextricably intertwined with and reinforce established norms about sexuality and sex: i.e. sexuality and sex are legitimate and sanctioned when they happen between two people who will eventually reproduce and who are heterosexual, able bodied and white. We don’t hear anything about informed, enthusiastic consent. And we definitely don’t hear about reciprocal pleasure.

  Know what else gets silenced in this saccharine tsunami of chocolates and roses? Intimate bonds that aren’t sexual, but are nonetheless fulfilling and deep relationships for all parties involved.

  So, here’s what I wish I’d known when I was in high school as candy grams were passed out: there is no one way to express your sexuality. Shame, blame and guilt—what Jaclyn Friedman calls The Terrible Trio in her amazing book What You Really Really Want—are destructive emotions. Instead of searching for validation through rigid expressions of love and sexuality, first you should fall in love yourself. And then you should fall in love with your friends.

  We live in a culture that devalues friendships. Friendship functions as as a stepping stone between childhood and adulthood, before we meet our mates. From the time we’re children, we’re led to believe that unless we enter into a romantic bond, we have not really experienced intimacy.

  Well, that’s a bunch of crap.

  (more inside…)

• • On The Job

  Taking on the Union Busters

  February 6, 2012 • Meg Pirie

  We live in a time where our rights are on the job have been carved away, bit-by-bit, whether it’s hapless governments or multinationals who benefit from neo-liberal policies. For this reason, participatory mobilization alongside collective bargaining has never been more important. The following video helps illustrate this point.

  Precarious work in its many forms is open to myriad abuses and our experiences with labour intersects with ableism, racism, sexism, colonization, transphobia and homophobia. We need labour laws that continually evolve so as to reflect an inclusive, exemplary society. Dr. Stephanie Ross is right to point out that if current governments refuse to enforce existing labour laws, then they become empty rhetoric with no application.

  But surely, this sort of labour abuse couldn’t happen when you’re unionized, right? The ongoing erosion of collective bargaining rights at the hands of the existing federal government has demonstrated that unionized or not, Canada is open for business.

  (more inside…)

• • Activist Report
  • On The Job

  Tituba’s Revenge: organizing and advocacy for not-for-profit workers

  December 23, 2011 • Meg Pirie

  One of the greatest achievements of neoliberalism is the ways in which the state’s role shifted from caretaker to CFO. This ostensibly seamless transition saw the rise of the not-for-profit/non-profit sector (I use the terms interchangeably in this post), stepping in to provide necessary social services that were once the responsibility of our governments and elected officials. In other words, governments need not-for-profits, and not-for-profits, which might receive some funding form government agencies and need to comply with municipal by-laws, often prop-up governments without tackling the root causes of systemic marginalization. But perhaps the greatest achievement of all is a widespread perception and banal acceptance that this is a relationship between citizens and government that has always ‘been there’ and that no other alternative exists.

  This economic system founded on quantifiable outputs, results, and unfettered accumulation has seen the transformation of many not-for-profits from radical origins to mainstream models that mirror businesses. And while I’m not saying that all not-for-profits are bureaucratic houses of mirrors, they are workplaces and all workplaces are open to labour abuse.

  Moreover, not-for-profits do not exist in isolation; they’re part of a broader system of power and resistance. How these organizations elect to navigate said system varies. Some remain radical; others not so much. Regardless, labour abuses within this sector are relatively overlooked.

  With this in mind, the formation of Tituba’s Revenge earlier this year—a New York City collective comprised of anti-capitalist non-profit for workers who are predominantly queer women of colour—couldn’t be more timely. An ongoing working project, Tituba’s Revenge is dedicated to, in part,

  * dispelling myths about non-profits
  * redressing the current vacuum of analysis devoted to exploitative conditions within this feminized sector
  * highlighting the ways in which many non-profits help to reproduce capitalism
  * facilitating strategies for workplace organizing

  The collective is named after Tituba, a Black Caribbean woman brought to Salem, Massachusetts as a slave and later persecuted during the Salem Witch Trials for her use of African healing rituals. In this way, the act of naming is a powerful one: it gives voice to an individual lived experience and highlights shared histories of resistance.

  Their first pamphlet was just released (PDF link) and in short, it’s amazing. (more inside…)

• • Gender
  • On The Job

  Blurred optics: media visibility, wage discrepancy, and gender binaries

  December 13, 2011 • Meg Pirie

  This January, Shameless will publish its Labour Issue. We’re really excited about this but it’s also useful to think about the ways in which labour intersects with numerous issues. None of us exist in a vacuum—we are all works-in-progress that reflect specific communities and unique experiences—and labour is no different.
  
  Throughout 2011, a pet media issue was income disparity between men and women. The Washington Post, for instance, reported that in 2010 the average starting salary of a woman with a BA was $36,451. Compare that to the average male’s starting salary of $44,159 —17% more.

  This income disparity exists in Canada as well. According to the Canadian Labour Congress (CLC), women in this country earn 70.5 cents for every dollar men make. Moreover, this wage gap exists in retirement: 2008 findings showed that Canadian women 65 years and over, on average, received incomes that were 65% less than their male counterparts. The CLC goes on to say that “In 2004, 7.3% of retired women lived in poverty, more than double the rate of retired men. An astounding 45.6% of single, divorced or widowed elderly women lived in poverty, according to a 2004 study.”

  (more inside…)

• • Activist Report
  • On The Job
  • Shameless Behaviour

  The new must-have for Fall 2011? Unions.

  November 3, 2011 • Meg Pirie

  On October 31, The Toronto Star published a story detailing a successful union drive at H&M in Square One, a large shopping center in Mississauga. The process began in July, when Amy Tran, a member of the United Food and Commercial Union (UFCW), approached Sabrina Butt. Was she interested in a union, Tran inquired? Butt, an H&M employee since 2008, took time to gauge how receptive her full- and part-time colleagues were to this proposition.

  By mid-August, a union membership drive was in full swing. Union cards were signed and information was distributed. Reasons for organizing collectively varied from better training and scheduling, posting job opportunities internally first, clearly defined, fair wages (it was not unheard of for new hires to make more than colleagues with more seniority), and the hope that employees’ suggestions would be implemented.

  On October 6th, the labour board certification vote took place to ratify, or approve, Square One H&M’s decision to join the United Food and Commercial Workers’ union. Workers voted in favour of unionization, 25-13, a clear ‘yes’ mandate.

  (more inside…)

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