Sometimes I look back on all I’ve written here on this Daily Dose section and I wonder how the heck did I do it all. I’m not amazed by it, though. How could I be? With lifeless asyndetons, hasty word choices, and jokes that are almost as bad as a clown at a funeral, I often felt that my thoughts were unoriginal and trite. Topics cycled, my ideas were poor and misshapen, and whatever I was writing probably wasn’t worth the page that held it.

I could have been doing other things instead of sifting through sentences that ignited like a wet match. I could have not wasted the ink. The energy of typing could be put to better use. And I could have been outside, could have been laughing, and could have at least saved my eyes from the eventual myopia.

But despite such mass production of words that may be hardly worth mass-producing in the first place, I am still writing this – everything above and everything below.

This persistence against all other opposition is important. Though my determination may just be the sign of prolific-amateur who is hunting for the right words to describe a world that shifts as he pens it down and so he goes searching again, I like to believe that even if this is meaningless, it is worth something to me. Not because it inherently is, but because I can make it so by slugging on day by day by day.

Sure, it’s draining. Yes, it’s thankless.  And more often than not, I wonder why I’m still here, still looking into the screen, then the ceiling, then a boy in front of me with coiffed hair, a knitted sweater, and shoes that’ll leave his toes cold. Then I wiggle my own toes, feel the warmth in my socks. Then I write, erase, and write again.

Why?

Because in doing what I have to do, and in doing what I want to do, and in trying to find the line between the two, I have dulled my pen, tattered the pages of my journal, and ruined my fingers with uneven callous that now tickles my tips as I type. I’d rather have this – the weariness and exhaustion, the bluntness and the fumbling around with sentences like wine-corks in my mouth – than the alternative of a pen clothed, a paper unwrinkled, and a finger where even the slightest mark seems foreign. I’d rather do, act, and feel with vulgar inaccuracy than sit here, cross my arms, and wait for the world to wake up when I do.

That does not mean I should write, of course. But even if I shouldn’t and if I have worn down these words, diluted the strength of my pen's ink, and filled an entire page with nonsense, it is better to trudge and to struggle with what to say, knowing that you tried to say something in the first place, then to say nothing at all.

I have much to say still. Rested after Reading Week, I have stories to tell, opinions that should be voiced, and experiences that need to be highlighted, criticized, and laughed about. I don’t know what they are yet exactly, but I’ll write until I find them in between the infinite breathlessness between this word and the last.

Dear eighteen-year-old Kacper,

I hear you are in love, and know that this is just about the best feeling a person can be in. It’s your first, and it’s beautiful because she is.

Before her, you used to wonder what love was exactly. You didn’t have much of a definition when you first found yourself in her arms and she in yours, but you promised to at least to give her romantic poems and corny jokes until the morning came.

You waited six months to say you loved her and when you tried that first time, it came out choppy, roundabout, and borderline skeptical as though you were questioning yourself even then. You first started talking about the weather. Then the movie. Then you kissed her to stop blathering altogether, hoping that your lips smacking against one another was enough sound and fury for the time being.

At the time, she laid on top of you and you wondered if maybe Adam and Eve was a true story because you fit together so nicely, then you exhaled and she did too and you couldn’t tell if was your breath or hers that you were inhaling.

Then you said it. The words came and went suddenly and it was your three-worded masterpiece. It was all you needed to say, all you never could until right then, right there, no sooner, no later.

It was love.

Though the first utterance was guttural and nearly incoherent, I am writing to years after that very moment you sat on that couch with her, and I want you to know that love hasn’t changed much since that moment when you first gave it existence by finding the words for it. As far as I can tell, the best definition isn’t any different than a stuttering young eighteen year old can figure out.

For love is farting around a girl and then farting around with her after the smell abates. Sometimes she farts too, and that’s when you know it’s real. Because no matter what you produce or sounds you excrete, love is just hot gas that can eventually grow cold without the right fuel.

Everything you have done after that first invocation, Kacper, from these words to this letter to your entire existence, has been about creating this fuel for yourself and others. You want all to feel the luxury of love. But know that this feeling, overwhelming as it is now, will end. One day before you can notice it or find your voice or stop your hands from shaking, things will pass, they will change, and when it’s all over, all that is left in the aftermath is what you made of it.

So don’t rush to find the finish line, Kacper. Instead, cherish her. Laugh with her, talk with her, love her anyways.

I want you to grab her hand right at this moment, and I want you to feel it with all the sensation you can muster. Course your fingers along her palm learning the contours of her skin, then maze your way to her knuckles and feel if they have any callous and then move slowly towards her cuticles, soaking in all the tiny hairs grazing across her fingers, and stop there, at the beginning of her nail where there are small, red scars from her incessant picking and try to press your fingerprints into the wax of her skin so as to make sure she won’t forget you and you won’t forget her either. Then when you’re satisfied, when there’s a print of your uniqueness on her, do it all again. Do it until you have her memorized or until she says, “Kacper, we’ve spent all day in bed, don’t you think we should do something other than play with my hands?”

And if she doesn’t say that, then I want you to do whatever you want – fully, entirely, with the sum of everything you can give – because it is only you who knows what that is. For now, it’s her. It won’t always be, but it is now and don’t you damn well forget it. Don’t think about anything else except this moment, this second – the very limited centimetre of her life that she has given you and you have given her. Together, you have almost made an inch and that means something.

What? Only you will know, and maybe you already have figured it out. I mean look at how much you’re smiling. Look at how much she is.

Yet that smile will fade and the two of you will fade with it. During those times, I want you to persevere if not for yourself, then for her, and if that’s not enough, then for the both of you. That way, when you see her again, and when you see how different the two of you have become and yet how similar she has remained with those hands and those fingers and those cuticles – those scratchy-scratched cuticles – you’ll have stories to tell that are shown in your laughter and the tapping of your feet.

You’ll talk about life, and love, and how silly the two of you were back then, and there won’t be an awkward silence between the two of you. Talk. Talk. Talk. It’ll be a time-machine of words, and each one, hesitantly weighed and anxiously delivered, will be a ghost of love, a ghost of the two of you.
When it ends and the conversation wilts away, she’ll leave and the words will be all that remain. You’ll be left with your own and she with hers and the two of you will see if they still meant what they used to.

So, make sure that they will when that ending comes. Stay trusting with her because it’s better than anxiety, stay happy with her because it’s more fulfilling than sadness, and stay so hopefully in love with her because one day you won’t be. You deserve it, and she all the more.

Until we meet, warm regards - Kacper

Dear baby,

Welcome. This is the Earth. It’s a big, big place with little, little people. I’m on it. And now so are you.

None of this makes sense to you, of course. Right now you’re just a rubbery jumble of Jello wrapped up in human flesh. What else can I expect from you besides the occasional burp and belch and bumbling bellow?

Don’t think of that as an insult, baby. It isn’t. Most of the time, I can’t understand these words myself. Imagine that. I look back on these clunky sentences like tombstones and I wonder who the heck wrote all this because I definitely wouldn’t. I’d be more careful, more caring, and less self-indulgent. There would be flow. No fragments. Things wouldn’t run on and on and on and I’d ensure that in each sentence, from the first to the last to every awkward middle bit, I’d be less exhausting. And I wouldn’t bridge my thoughts with worn colloquialisms like and so on.

And so on.

One day you’ll have these thoughts of inadequacies too, baby. It’s inevitable. You see – this is a funny circle you have plopped yourself onto. We don’t know much about much despite waffling around for some thousand of years. Of course, we don’t admit this to anyone, ourselves included. Though we’re wrong more often than we’re right, and we’re probably wrong about that too, we live every day as though we were a godsend. The world is our oyster and goddammit if we aren’t the shining pearl at the center.

But this, baby, is wrong. Know this. Besides that some are allergic to shellfish, we’re all pretty much the same, no one person better than the other, and we’re all just sifting around trying to make sense of the world. Some of us are better than others. Some of us have opportunities to do so that others don’t have. And some of us forget that we have either.

That leads me to the one truth that I have learned, baby. It isn’t much, but it’s enough. In fact, it’s all we have after everything.

Try. Really – that’s it. Try, try, try in that order. Again and again and again, get up, do your best, and see what happens. Even if you fail. Especially if you do.

Because if you do else wise, you’re going to keep moving, doing, and wearing hats like you always do, and you’re life is going to clop, clop, clop away, and then you’re going to wake up and maybe you’re thirty which is eons away for you now, baby, and maybe you’re eating cereal and you’re wondering where time went and what did you do with it and you’re going to look back and see a place tickled by sunshine, a place where you used to be happy. You’ll ask yourself if that place is still like that, all rosy and beautiful, but then you’ll recall with a laugh that you aren’t like that anymore and the swing is too small and the jungle-gym is actually a man-made construction and you forgot how to fly a kite. The cereal will be soggy by the end of it.

But you still have a lifetime left to live, baby. Don’t get bogged down. Make mistakes. Have success. And do both as much or as little as you want to do. You, and only you, make your fate. It's yours after all.

And don’t listen to people telling you otherwise. Especially to people who give you advice. They know nothing.

Warm regards,

Kacper

When the Olympic Rings are lit over Sochi on Friday, they are going to be missing a few colours.

A friend told me that while this may be the case, and while it is nonsense to have to argue for the defense of LGBTQ issues in places such as Canada, Russia was different.

“It’s a distinctive culture”, she told me as the Bachelor was screeching in the background. “And we have to respect that. You don’t” - Do you accept this rose – “Look at a culture through your own lens.” – Yes. Of course. I’ve always wanted this – “If not, then we have the choice to turn off the tube.” A commercial about a burger roars on.

Though I did not say anything at the time – a man can only give out a rose some thirty odd times in the show, so everyone is especially special – this perception of sanctity for sanctity’s sake is inherently false.

Forget all the piffle about leaving politics out of the Games. The Olympics are not some depraved politically neutral organization, though they may be presented as such. They are a charged statement with political clout, the true emblem of praising equality in all its fronts. Anyone of any race, religion, and gender is praised for their ability to engage and succeed in a particular sport. We celebrate their achievement, as much as we commemorate our coming together to witness the feat.

Sport is inherently political because it brings out in us what politics so often forgets in its divide – the idea that all have individual skills, all can enhance their talents, and all can take part in the collective celebration of an athlete’s hard work.

In fact, the Olympic Charter says, "The practice of sport is a human right. Every individual must have the possibility of practicing sport, without discrimination of any kind and in the Olympic spirit, which requires mutual understanding with a spirit of friendship, solidarity and fair play."

Despite what my friend said then, it’s not enough to boycott Sochi. To do so would be a failure to understand this mutual interdependence between sports and politics. Worse yet is that such an omission is a subtle form of commission. While indirect, it says, “We allow some places to be intolerant by pretending these are not places at all. They are too different, too unlike our own.”

But this is wrong. What of the gays, lesbians, and bisexuals currently living in Russia? What of those who have already undertaken the onslaught of torture and human rights injustices? What of those who will undergo it in the future?

By boycotting, one is arguing that their struggles are their own in a culture that isn’t ours. It is not intentional; instead it is being just being plain bothered, and hoping that being plain bothered is enough.

Unfortunately it isn’t, and what needs to occur is a challenge to the Games themselves. One must watch the events, note the athletes, and cry for a higher standard of ethical treatment by supporting  LGBTQ activist organizations, emailing one's respective MPs, tweeting, writing, sharing, and participating in any medium where their voice can call out for a better world.

No one can be silent. In Russia, far too many are being silenced as it is.

So, do not boycott these games. Instead, disrupt. Contend. Call out that we can be better if we want to be.

And remember that as the snow melts and the sun shines in just the right way, a rainbow or two will form in the prism. It’s just the natural law of physics at work. All it takes is time and the right conditions, conditions we ourselves can help make.

At this moment, you are being followed. Don’t turn around. Don’t look up. They know that you will. You’ve told them as much.

It started with an email. “Dear Dr. InsertYourNameHere, it typically read from a person unsure of themselves and uncomfortable enough to say ‘Hey’, “I hope this email finds you well for at the other end, this is not the case. I’m sorry that I was late sending…” and on and on it droned.

It was a private moment of vulnerability, a rare occurrence where your cry for help was necessary. Sending it embarrassed you. You tried to balance the gravity and the gobbledygook. Hours were spent on the word choice. You clicked backspace more than you typed.

And yet moment you sent the email, this instance of uncertainty became public property. Your gift of gab was assessed, your words were analyzed, and you were constructed in a compartment of ones and zeros. From a complex person with insecurities and idiosyncrasies, who hated Tuesdays, who wondered if other people’s belly buttons hurt to touch as much as yours did, you were reduced to an electronic profile.

Online on Feb. 4, I showed that this personal exposure was an inevitability of the National Security Agency (NSA) current surveillance apparatus. At the same time, however, I criticized the policy, the legal framework and the mandate that have made it so. Though this seems naively lofty for a student newspaper to do – perhaps like trying to fart in an opposing wind – know that such conceptual complexity cannot be a scapegoat for the issue is not restricted only to greater minds. Not does it just concern the international climate. Instead this dragnet surveillance is a blanket over us here at McMaster most of all.

Because more than anything, we have become complacent gears in its well-oiled machine.

Check your email and you’ll find proof: a scatter shot of bureaucracy and the clumsy fingerprints of legality. Before signing in, we’re led through the labyrinth of law lingo. It starts, “McMaster is committed to respecting the privacy of its students’ personal information.”

But this ‘respect’, as it is loosely defined, fades away as the text rolls on. The “Ontario Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act” and the terms of Google Inc. are cited as our expectations of privacy, which is a nice way of saying there is none at all.

Listen: the former legal document states we have a right to privacy, but this fundamental allowance is at the institution’s discretion. And the latter term is where such full-blown helter-skelter madness precipitates. Forget the discussions of backdoor access to companies in the United States, the recent revelations of cloud collecting by the NSA, or the leaks that have pointed towards encryption breaking. Instead focus on the implications of providing our information to a third party. By allowing our email to become an electronic export, rather than handling it internally, we no longer have management of it. It veers off to another land. It escapes our reach. And as a result, our privacy becomes illusionary.

Richard Godsmark, the Senior Manager of Security, Technology and Risk at UTS, stated similarly, “Privacy should not be assumed with email as it cannot be considered a secure communication medium… When you send something by email, you lose direct control of it.”

This is surprising not because it is necessarily unexpected but because we have been led to believe otherwise. Our emails are secure under McMaster. We have the juggernauts of Google protecting us against the onslaught of cyber threats. Countless SRA stated that the highest standard of privacy was ensured in the Gmail service. And the conditions we agree to each time we sign in “use all reasonable efforts to provide the user with a safe and secure email system.”

But this language is just a wolf in sheep’s clothing. Our McMaster email is found in the hands of someone who sits behind a bigger desk. Our security is found only in knowing how insecure our email is against prying eyes. And our agreement is not a statement of privacy.

It is a statement that we have no privacy at all.

If the NSA fallout has suggested anything, no reassurance that we can be given is steadfast. This is true for McMaster and Google. Granted that Google often defends the privacy of its customers in court, there is no direct evidence that Google has acted outside the bounds of its terms, and this is exactly the problem; there is no guarantee of the protection of information. Instead as the Edward Snowden leaks have suggested, the reverse seems true.

Yet even if this is the case and even if we don’t have a reasonable expectation of privacy, isn’t our privacy a reasonable thing to ask for? Are we not right in assuming we agreeing to exactly what we believe we are agreeing to, without cause to worry else wise?

Though it seems like ancient times when days were scrawled away on tablets of stone, not Ipads, this was the standard three years ago. Back then McMaster was connected with the MUSS system, which was strictly McMaster run.

With warranted frustration due to unreliability and limited capacity, however, a previous MSU president, Matthew Dillon-Leitch along with Huzaifa Saeed, the then SRA Commissioner of External Affairs, pushed for a new email service.

Taking student input over different service providers, Gmail was chosen and later implemented.

Nowadays Gmail is the sole choice, not the alternative. There is no internal regulation, no other provider offered. Instead we come to McMaster, we use its email service, and yet it is not ours in the slightest. We may be private in it, but in it nothing is private.

Perhaps this is inevitable, and perhaps we cannot do anything about it. I’m not sure. But if our standard for privacy is to be so low that we have none at all, then I believe that venues of communication must be reinstated. We must understand that we do not have any expectation that our emails are our own. We must be told the limits of our model.

Otherwise, who knows? We might write to Dr. InsertYourNameHere that our computer blew up, our homework was lost as a result, and when we are trying to sleep in our bed feeling groggy from the electronic fubar, Black Ops might give us a little visit to ensure that everything is okay.

It sounds dramatic but then again, so does this: “respecting the privacy of its students’ personal information” when this is impossible. With no privacy to respect, at best this statement is useless handwaving; at worst, it is an outright lie.

 

When I walked into the MSU Charity Ball, I didn’t exactly hold my breath. Instead I staggered in, put my hands into my pant pockets, and whispered to no one at all, “Here we go again.”

Maybe it was the jumbling together of the decay and life of the city that branded me with a smug weariness. Right near Jackson Square with the wet-smog of a sewer filling my nostrils, I was asked for change by a homeless man. I, donned in my suit and tie, probably seemed insulting in my fumbling reply: don’t have any.

Or maybe it was because I felt the night would be like all others. Loud music would drum through my ears. I’d bounce. I’d teeter. I’d repeat in that order. I’d dance this way then that way then this way again, painfully aware of how bad I am at shuffling around. Photos would be taken. I’d smile, be told I blinked, I’d smile again, be told I wasn’t smiling, I’d smile one more time, and a grumble of forced satisfaction would answer how I looked. I’d talk to people who I don’t know for no other reason besides close proximity. I’d have dressed up myself in every way, laughing at jokes that I don’t find funny and doing things I probably wouldn’t do otherwise. Most of all, I’d probably be drunk – poisoned at any cost in order to have fun.

But unlike my brain-grinding first year formal events where being zonked was a requirement, not a necessity, the Charity Ball was different. I was surprised. For the first time a party’s mould wasn’t forced onto the attendants. Rather than everyone having to dance to music that a select number of people liked, there were videogame consoles, silent auctions, rooms playing alternate music like Motown, and rooms filled with various hor d'oeuvres, from vegetarian poutine to cotton candy, where one could just sit and socialize with friends.

This variety was enlivening. Though I have been critical of the MSU in the past – an inevitability that comes with power – I saw that this less like a ball and more of a gathering of many different people with many different interests. More than glitter on the dresses or the lasers that pulsed through the darkness, what shined through was the attempt to be inclusive for all those in the diverse McMaster community.

If you pardon the poor play-on words, this inclusivity was magical.

If pop culture has taught me anything, it’s that nothing screams wedding bells like Madonna dressed up as a kitsch cowboy and singing “Open Your Heart” with a voice that sounds like the voice of absolute death.

Two nights ago at the Grammys this nuptial call squawked loudly. After a performance of “Same Love” by Macklemore and Mary Lambert, Queen Latifah officiated the marriage of some 33 same sex and straight couples. With minimal lighting and the soft humming of a church choir accompanying her, she used the power vested in her “by the State of California… to celebrate love and harmony in every key and colour.”

I’m sure it was supposed to be a display of how marriage is supposed to work. I’m sure that it was supposed to be a call to incite change on conservative values. And I’m sure that the whole thing was supposed to be so damn beautiful.

But I felt an unsettling feeling gnaw at me as the camera panned from a same sex couple embracing to Macklemore signing to Taylor Swift nodding along to the same sex couple again. The whole shebang felt momentary and fleeting. What I saw was not a celebration; it was entertainment feeding off our animalistic sense of wanting to belong.

Let it be known that nothing takes away from the cherished moment of those couples. Nor can anyone reduce the magnificence of the marriages themselves. But what occurred was no less a pageantry. The performance was not beautiful for this was not its purpose and meaning. It was a stage, an act, a show. There was a curtain. There was a close. And people clapped during it all.

Everything was too superficial, too overdone. Whether it was the plastic-faced Madonna belting out some rickety tunes or Queen Latifah's over bearing excitement, throughout the entire closing act I did not see a sense of commemoration for the couples. They became ancillary to the show almost as though they were just basic props for a set – people who just stood around, waited for a queue, got married, and moved as instructed. I’m sure some even were told that crying looked good for the camera.

What the Grammys showed wasn’t so much a statement on politics as it was a product placement. Marriage became commoditized. It was bought and sold with advertisement time, celebrity status, and common gimmicks: a flash of one star crying, another, then the lights fade, the show is over, and we’re left there on our couches waiting for the next show to start. A commercial break hums a familiar tune in between.

I may be the dumbest person on the planet, and unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately) I’ll never know for that very reason. All I do know is that what follows below is a bumbling attempt to muster up a defence of the indefensible by understanding the Redsuit songbook – why it was made and how it fits into the larger picture.

Maybe I’m drawn to the total destruction and almost disbelief of the situation. Maybe I am just a masochist with a penchant to take on a harder stance than I can handle. Or perhaps I’m doing so because I like to imagine the students who produced the vulgar text were very much like myself with little, silly dreams, who participated in McMaster culture daily, who were educated in some of the same classes I was, and maybe I’m afraid that with these shared experiences, I might one day make the same mistakes they did. Maybe I’m afraid because I might be those same mistakes all the same.

Whatever the reason, let it be known that what happened is not a sudden resurfacing of antiquated chants long forgotten. There was no ancient map that led to a dusty shelf, no bygone translation of some eroding book found in Thode. Instead, the songs were the culmination of unchecked excess years in the making.

This fact seems to be forgotten in between the almost reactionary and certainly warranted repugnance. Though the lyrics seem to alienate, ostracize, and isolate members of its population, I don't think that was their intent. Like gladiators bellowing in the ring, they purposefully feed off the extreme, the disgusting, and the savage. The hooting and hollering is meant to strike fear and shock because in doing so, in sharing in the horror and revulsion of the text, the people singing those same songs have transcended the abhorrence together.

While this seems strange to admit, it must be remembered that the Redsuits work to facilitate the goal of Welcome Week: developing a collective experience that bridges the gap between students. These chants, though admittedly not all those copied down in the alleged songbook were known to all of the members, are the extreme perversion of such an aspiration. At the very fringe, they are insulting with a purpose. For that reason there is no apology offered. The ultimate goal is not comfort but to move beyond comfort in some contorted collective camaraderie.

This does not condone the hymns in any way, but it may point to a larger problem of Welcome Week: we are to come together at whatever the cost. More often or not, the cost is decided by those in charge, not by those participating. They do not define what is good or right; it is the others - the apparently wise, mature students - who do, and we, fickle louts at the bottom, are meant to follow their lead.

This divide between one's perception of what is tolerable and what is not is where the harm results. Part of such a divide is the consequence of Welcome Week being situated in the broader sphere of society. With its perverse notions, its over-sexualized tones, its blatant misogyny, its tendencies to idolize the foolish and inane, Welcome Week usually reflects the worst of our gluttony. Pop monstrosities such as Pitbull's "As Se Eu Tu Pego" or LMFAO's "Party Rock" croon about sex this and sex on every corner. People yell as a way to instill a forced, artificial excitement. Parties are rampant. Alcohol flows easily. And with these brute force methods where the younger of us are told that Welcome Week planners know better and isn't socializing good for you and come on, come on, have a little fun, the cost is a blubbering, messy, and insensitive cheer, if those in the book can even be called that.

Such a discrepancy between individuals is not good or bad necessarily. Part of me feels as though a person’s comfort zone should be challenged and poked at if only to grow in some ways. Of course this is coming from a person who welcomed the Welcome. Yet I can see the discomfort and creeping complications of enjoyment for the sake of it as it is defined by someone else. This gap is further muddled by coexisting under a larger social bubble: McMaster’s Welcome Week is sucked into the vacuum of unmitigated and arguably disrespectful cultural mores. Ultimately this is the cause of Welcome Week's unease, not the result of it, and the consequence is continually growing, unfiltered chaos. Point and proof: the alleged songbook.

Is there a solution? I don’t know; it's hard to imagine a social event without being social and without the problems that accompany such an identity. How to draw the line between acceptability becomes blurred too: one person's minimum is another person's excess.

Still, acquiescing to the complications is too easy. While we all can voice our disgust and incredulity, this is not enough. Neither is saying that it is one faculty's responsibility. It isn't. If anything, such isolationism is what led to the problem in the first place and it is contrary to what Welcome Week suggests - we are all connected to this place if only for a little while.

If we do not think this way, and if we alienate ourselves to our own trite faculty concerns, nothing will be different in a few years and the Engineering fubar will be the first of many. Instead all of us need to be conscious of the environment around us. We need to be aware of not only our limits, but those of others. And we need to start today.

Unfortunately (or fortunately) I began the article admitting my stupidity, which might be reaffirmed by the article itself. But I like to believe, perhaps in the naivety of not knowing and ignorance and damn fool heartedness, that this is possible. We can be better, this fiasco can sober us up in every sense of the word, and we can work on strengthening a week, a faculty, an entire University that is weakened by its unrestrained mirror to society and its failings.

When I applied to McMaster, I was told to dress myself up as a leader. “It was what the admissions committees would want in an application,” a guidance counselor stressed to me with a breath held captive by coffee beans and cigarettes.

I was confused at first – I mean, I was a twin who spent much of his life following the footsteps of his brother. Everything I did, I did together. We ranted, discussed, cried, and laughed in tandem. One day, I started the chuckles; another day he did.

Yet that day as the door closed and another student shuffled in and the raspy, smoke riddled voice croaked again, I heard the same advice repeated. “Be a leader.”

So like everyone else, I followed the leader ideal. Alongside a flurry of overinflated academic successes, ego-boosting extracirculars, and a padded resume where I became anything and everything with the click-clack of a keyboard, I was Kacper Niburski the Revolutionary, the Great, and somehow, the Humble.

To those reading my application, I’m sure that they thought that I was divinity in the flesh. I bet one person nudged another and said, “St. Peter just complained that God was acting like Kacper again.”

Over four years, though, that falsified, motivated teenager charade crumbled under the weight of self-discovery and inevitability of adulthood. No longer did I want to lead if I wasn’t right to lead. Nor did I felt compelled to at every corner. Without the stress of responsibility, I could sit at the back, doodle away, and allow my thoughts to travel in places I'd never expect them to.

What I became in this wake was something more important: a follower. Though undersold by universities and employment places, they make the foundation upon which a leader stands. Without them, and without the constant support, enthusiasm, and dialogue they offer, there is no leader for there is no one to lead.

In light of the MSU elections, we must remember our power. For though we are sometimes reduced to a talking board for candidates’ wild pitches, know that we are the reason for the election, not the result of it; we are the ones in control, not the other way around; and we are the change we want to be, not the change forced upon us.

In reply to “Hey girl, let’s smash the patriarchy” by Kacper Niburski, published Jan. 16, 2014 on A8 (Posted as “Daily Dose: Feminism without women” on thesil.ca)

Ana Qarri
The Silhouette

Gentlemen, hold on to your boxers.
The idea that feminism is for everyone isn’t new. It’s not revolutionary, it did not grace the world for the first time on page A9 of the Silhouette. It’s an idea that feminists have been repeating over and over for decades. If I had a dime for every time I’ve said it, I would still be drowning in student debt, but at least I’d have enough money for a beer.

We know feminism should be for everyone. We know feminism isn’t a movement only for women. It’s because we know this that we can’t stop talking about it.

So, yes, Kacper is right. Men are and should be part of the solution. Men are important to the movement. Men should be feminists, they should be involved, they should care, because feminism is for them too.

Feminism isn’t isolated to “one gender, one lifestyle.” It’s not isolated to one way of interacting with the world. Feminism is diverse, it’s multi-dimensional and complex. Feminism takes into account so many things that a claim like that is hardly justifiable. Feminism has never attempted to alienate men. I’m not saying that there haven’t been feminists who have happened to hate men. I’m not denying that there are people – feminist or not - who will hate a group solely based on their gender. Those people exist, but they’re not really who we’re talking about when we refer to feminists. The perception of feminists as men-hating, men-blaming women is hopefully one that, as reasonable and educated individuals, we’ve all put behind us.

The first feminist that I met was my high school friend Micah. He was challenging our friends, our teachers, and our gender norms before I even knew what feminism was. He was and continues to be a supportive ally, and I love him for it. He was the reason why I felt safe calling people out on their blatant sexism, on their homophobic and slut-shaming slurs, on the idiotic teenage jokes that undoubtedly included the words “kitchen” and “sandwich” somewhere in them.

As a feminist, I’m aware how important men can be to the movement. I’m aware that men will listen more if other men are telling them that feminism isn’t just a bunch of men-hating lesbians whose mission in life is to kill off anyone who gets in their way.

Men can make great allies. They can create safe spaces for women. They can start discussions. They can reflect with their peers about how they might be perpetuating sexism. They can talk about how the current societal norms are affecting them too, how it might be affecting what’s expected of them, what their role in society is, how it’s impacting their mental health. Women should do all this too. Women can also perpetuate sexism. Everyone can. But unlike men, women don’t get the same privileges that men are born with in a patriarchal system.

Since men already have all this privilege, wouldn’t it be easier then, you might be wondering, to just let a few of these men who “get it” be in charge? Wouldn’t that solve all of our problems? Let men “lead the whole damn thing.”

After all, as Kacper put it, “If men are in charge, it often takes them to cause and want the shift in paradigms.”

But why is it that men need to be in charge to want to cause a paradigm shift? Why do we need to perpetuate just what we’re trying to tear apart? Do we really think so little of men? Do we think that they can’t appreciate a cause that they’re not leading, that they can’t make any connections and lack the critical thinking skills to understand why feminism is important even if they don’t see themselves represented in the leadership?

I do want men to walk alongside me and this “flurry of hollering and hooting women.” I don’t, however, want men to lead a movement that’s trying to empower women, trying to challenge male privilege and gender expectations. I don’t want men to be our saviours. I want them to be our allies. The male perspective is present everywhere in our society. It’s present in our literature, in our music, in our politics. So we don’t need men who will try to take over the movement. We need men who will let us speak. We need men who recognize that there are stories to share, that there are voices that have been silenced and need to be heard.

I don’t think I’ve ever met or will ever meet someone who hasn’t perpetuated sexism at some point in their life. Sexist behaviour isn’t a male-isolated phenomenon, but male privilege is.

There are a myriad of ways in which men can use their privilege to bring forth, alongside women and people of all genders, great strides of feminist development. Leading the whole damn thing, however, is not one of them.