By Julieta Rodriguez
What’s my biggest pet peeve? Women who claim they’re not feminists.
Once I had a friend ask me, “Do you identify as a feminist?” And without hesitating I replied, “Of course.” To me, that question seemed so strange—how can one be a woman and not be a feminist? Is there really a woman on this planet who doesn’t care about her own rights, freedoms, and about being considered an equal? I doubt it.
So what does it mean, then, when we hear women say they’re not feminists? I think the answer is simple: women don’t want to be seen as militant man-haters. People tend to think of feminism as a radical movement and decide it is best not to be associated with it. In thinking only about the possible extremes of feminism, though, we ignore the fact that the majority of feminists are not at all extremists or fanatics. They are, in fact, people like you and me.
According to dictionary.com feminism is nothing more than “the doctrine advocating social, political, and all other rights of women equal to those of men.” This seems like an innocent enough definition; one that doesn’t risk offending, and is not radical. In fact, it simply appeals to an inherent desire to be treated equally and with respect—and there is nothing extreme about that desire.
Here is what worries me, though: the best way to cripple the feminist movement is to evade it by being too scared to associate ourselves with the word. We shouldn’t be so afraid of the assigned meanings of ‘feminism’.
We should instead focus on what it is supposed to stand for—the equality, not only of women, but also, of anyone who is undervalued.
The only way to truly have equality is to put aside our anxieties about this big bad word and decide, instead, to take it back; to make it ours again.
Of course, it is also necessary for men to embrace this word and realize the importance of women’s equality, but I think it’s even more important for women to come to this conclusion. If we are the ones to tear down the very movement that is concerned with our rights and freedoms, how can we reasonably expect men not to? How can we ever, as women, expect to be seen as equals, if we are constantly and consistently dissociating ourselves from feminism?
And another question: why are we so afraid of a word, anyway? In the end, it’s just a word—nothing more. We assign arbitrary meanings to all words, so why should we be so frightened by one possible meaning of ‘feminism’? I think the fear is completely unwarranted. We must not fear a simple word.
We must own it. If we do so, we will no longer hear people scoff and ask, “You’re not one of those feminists, are you?” as if it were such a terrible thing. It can never be a bad thing to fight for the rights of marginalized groups.
I am a woman and I am a feminist. That word does not intimidate me. I am not afraid of the meanings people assign to it, because I know what it is supposed to stand for. I believe in the equality of all women, and all marginalized individuals.
If that makes me radical, so be it—but I think it simply makes me human.
By Edwardo Lovo
“Why are you a feminist?” I’m often asked, after revealing that I am one. The need to ask the question expresses that someone needs a justification to be a feminist; the onus is on the feminist to exonerate their feminism. The question that should be asked is, “Why aren’t you a feminist?”
Do you believe in sexism? Do you believe in discrimination based on gender, race, religion, ethnicity, sexual orientation, ability, age, and class? Do you believe in an inequality between people based on arbitrary characteristics? That is, do you believe they exist? Do you believe in promoting these things? These questions are intended to be rhetorical, and I ask you, dear reader, to consider more fully why you aren’t a feminist.
Feminism is a movement against the oppression of women, but it doesn’t merely take a stance against systematic sexism. Society has complicated human beings by structuring all its individuals into multiple categories; we don’t merely fall into a single category, such as men and women, but fall under a variety: social class, ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender identity, etc. So, women can fall under any of these categories, and for feminism to be a movement against the oppression of women, it must be a movement against all of the intersecting systems of oppression.
Feminists are stereotyped as man-haters, as being all women, as being lesbians, as being hairy. Well, I’m not a woman, for this reason I don’t think I can count myself as a lesbian, I’m too narcissistic to hate myself—and, hey, I shave sometimes.
I acknowledge that I am writing from a male perspective, and I do not intend to speak on behalf of women, but as a self-identified feminist. How, as a man, am I affected by systematic sexism? And, for the non-believers, is there systematic sexism?
Patriarchy is an oppressive system that imposes norms on men and women—promoting an imbalance of power relations that favour men. To serve you one example, women are given the contradictory expectations to be sexual and not sexual. On the one hand, women who don’t accept his advances anger a man. On the other, a woman is degraded for being promiscuous by being shamed by negative labels, whereas a promiscuous man is praised for his “success”.
In a workshop on racism held by the Human Rights and Equity Services, the speaker Dr. Gary Dumbrill reported on his experiences being raised in the ranks of the work force. He noted that as he raised the ranks he noticed fewer women as his colleagues and that this is cause for reflection. It reflects an imbalance of power between men and women, where men are placed in the higher echelons of the work force.
Clearly, something is wrong, and these are problems that cannot be dismissed offhandedly by claiming that there is no inequality between the sexes.
For men especially it is difficult to see the inequality, as we are the privileged in this oppressive relationship. But after removing the blindfold to the cited facts above (and countless other visible effects of varied forms of oppression) the question that faces each and every one of us is, “Why aren’t you a feminist?”
By Talia Kollek
A few years back I attended my first university Halloween party. I fully expected it to be just like the movies, with togas and a never-ending supply of beer. What I actually encountered was questionable attire.
My one friend had decided to dress up as an Indian. The tasseled costume was complete with lines of face paint, cleavage, a hand made headdress, and the occasional joke about alcoholism. At the time, I remembered being taken aback. My friend had never displayed any racist tendencies before, so what about that night had made her actions feel acceptable to her? Why had this particular costume crossed from “dress up” to discrimination?
Unfortunately, my friends’ costuming was nothing new. Non-Natives have been impersonating First Nations people since as far back as the 1830s. An image of the First Nation’s lifestyle was built up by Europeans and perpetuated through artwork, stories, and media. To be a real Indian included living in harmony with nature, tipis and wigwams. This concept of the Noble Savage painted all First Nations people with one brush, ignoring the immense diversity of tribes across North America. It reduced an entire continent’s culture to one incorrect image.
To take this offensive caricature and wear it on a day designated for silly dress up has deeper meanings and ramifications than just a costume.
When it comes to Halloween costumes, an important issue to address is inappropriate sexualization. As if mockingly representing a culture with a costume is not offensive enough, outfits will often exploit sexuality and simultaneously skew gender roles.
Similar to the image of the Noble Savage, the image of the Sexy Squaw (or any hyper-sexualized Native woman) is a terrible misrepresentation and fetishization of a demographic. To reduce First Nations women to sexual objectification ignores the fact that they are three times more likely to be victims of violence and sexual assault (according to Statistics Canada). There is also a prominent history of sex slavery and subjugation of Native women by European colonizers. Mockingly dressing up as an at-risk population should not be considered appropriate Halloween behavior.
However, an important distinction should be made between cultural appropriation and cultural sharing. A fantastic example of cultural sharing on Mac’s campus was the Powwow held in September.
The event was organized by the McMaster First Nations Student Association and was open to the public in the spirit of sharing and education. In contrast, cultural appropriation would be for a non-Native individual to take an item with significance (such as something resembling a headdress) and wear it in jest or as part of an ensemble. Dressing up as another culture does not necessarily relate to genuine appreciation.
Suppose you disagree with me. Suppose you think that dressing as Pocahontas, a “sexy gypsy” or painting your face to look more like Kanye West isn’t offensive. Even if you don’t think that it is doing anyone any harm, there are still other aspects to consider. Most importantly, you have to keep cultural identity in mind.
You have had your own unique experiences in your lifetime, and each of those experiences is somehow influenced (for better or for worse) by your age, gender, sexual orientation, location and culture. Halloween rolls around, and it all seems like fun and games.
You get to dress up and “play” as an “exotic” culture, and then at the end of the night you get to go back to whomever you were in the morning, without experiencing any of the oppression or discrimination faced by others. Before ignoring the experiences of other people and wearing their identity as a costume, please consider that you may cause someone to feel alienated or deeply insulted by your light-hearted or well-intending theatrics.
At this point, you may be wondering exactly what you can dress up as this year. The options are endless. If all else fails, cut your losses and buy some eyeliner to draw on whiskers and go as a cat.
If you are truly having trouble thinking of dressing as anything other than a Native American then it may be time to reassess your creative thinking process.
A good start is to avoid anything that reaffirms cultural stereotypes. Is your costume something specific? Or is it a generalization of someone else’s heritage? If you are dressing up as favorite cartoon character you are doing a great job, if you are dressed as a “sexy insert-culture-here” it is time to go back to the drawing board.
What I would like you to take away from this article is the idea that costumes have significance. Do yourself and everyone else a favor this Halloween and choose something respectful.
Dressing up as another culture isn’t appreciation, it isn’t just a pretty outfit, and it isn’t something to be taken lightly or as a joke.
When people dress as a stereotype they are perpetuating deeply rooted racism and the misrepresentation of a population that is still dealing with discrimination, partially as a result of actions such as Halloween dress up. This year, please dress respectfully.
Kacper Niburski
Assistant News Editor
While certain talent-bereft female pop monstrosities may make it seem like feminism is dead, Michele Landsberg, an eminent Canadian journalist and social justice activist, thinks otherwise.
On Feb. 24, Landsberg discussed the ongoing and immutable spirit of feminism at McMaster University in a lecture entitled “Feminism Forward,” which was sponsored through a partnership between the Hamilton branch of the Grandmothers to Grandmothers Campaign, McMaster University’s Faculty of Humanities and McMaster’s Gender Studies and Feminist Research department.
As an ardent feminist, champion of egalitarianism, chronicler of the feminist movement and an unquestionable inspiration, Landsberg may be one of the few Canadians alive who do not require an introduction. As a columnist at the Toronto Star for 20 odd years, her trademark wit and unbridled passion challenged an era where gender inequality and rigid stereotypes took centerfold.
To say that Landsberg spent the better part of her career turning heads is an understatement. After reading aloud a brief segment of one her past articles where she excoriated the 1980s abortion hypocrisies in Canada, she said in a laugh, “The things they let me get away with at the Star. Oh man.”
Not one to hold back her opinions, Landsberg was known nationally for her scathing insight into polemic matters. Her talk “Feminism Forward” was no different. Noting the evolution of the feminist movement through her eyes as both a mother and grandmother, Landsberg began her discussion highlighting the importance of fostering a nurturing relationship with one’s child.
“The lives of our grandchildren extend into a future from which we will be inevitably absent,” she said. “It focuses our reality of morality and the joy of here and now.”
There, in one’s formative years of infantile curiosity, is where feminism blossoms initially, stressed Landsberg. “We are told there are innate differences, but we learn to be male and female in every cell of our body. According to Landsberg, equality, and the lack thereof, are not inborn. They are defined. And for a better part of humanity’s existence, this definition has been defined as a gender prison.
Landsberg noted, however, there is still hope. Despite the sexual objectification that has been commonplace in Western culture, and the fact that people believe feminism has accomplished everything it needs to accomplish, “there is backlash. Feminism is coming back.” In Canada at least, she attributed the resurgence of feminism to an “oppressive government that has cut equality funding initiatives.”
Whether or not this is the case, Landsberg stated that this new-age feminism, one that is alive, well, and ever evolving, must be carefully developed. A failure to do so, or even an apathy toward it’s many forms, will result in a pervasive culture of gender backwardness. As it has always been, men will rule and women will be ruled.
To do nurture feminism correctly, Landsberg tied the talk back to her the child’s role in future movements.
“Swear to yourself you’ll tear your child away from the tyranny of the male gaze. Don’t inoculate her with narcissism. Do not tell a girl she is pretty. Praise her for a skill. Praise her for her talents.”
And if that happens, that’s when true feminism may be accomplished. For as far as Landsberg seemed to couch it, feminism is not just a philosophy where men and women are considered equal. It is something more than that.
In it’s fullest form, feminism is the optimistic hope for the day when talents and skills, not just aesthetic appeal, become beautiful.
There is a noticeable gap in the percentage of women that make up the McMaster Student Representative Assembly.
Only 34.3 percent of the SRA is female and none of the executives on the Board of Directors are women.
These results put McMaster eighth amongst nine major research universities in Ontario compared in terms of representation of men and women on student governing bodies.
In the last SRA election, almost all the female students who ran won their seats, so the absence seems to be from a lack of female students putting their name forward rather than students being unwilling to elect women.
The gender gap has led some to question whether targeted strategies to create a more diverse student government should be considered.
Although McMaster consistently ranks among Ontario’s best universities, McMaster is the second worst when it comes to gender equity in student government.
Of the 35 students and elected executives on the SRA, only 12 are women. Furthermore, of the six SRA standing committees elected by the SRA, only one has a female commissioner.
The Student Representative Assembly is the MSU’s legislative body and it plays an integral role in creating MSU policy and running services on campus. The MSU has a budget of over $13 million dollars.
The lack of female representatives is most apparent in the highest-ranking positions of student government. There are currently no women amongst the President and Vice Presidents.
This trend has been fairly consistent throughout McMaster’s history. The MSU President has always been male, with only four exceptions. One recent exception, Siobhan Stewart served as president from 2011-2012.
“It’s important to have the voices of many not just women, but different communities and different perspectives” said Stewart “It’s not just an issue within the MSU it’s an issue within society”
The Vice Presidents have also been predominantly male.
Of the 33 Vice-Presidents over the past 11 years, only ten have been women. Moreover, women have been significantly underrepresented in the VP-finance position (only one woman in 11 years) and VP-administration (only two women in eleven years).
Although the gender imbalance might have been a product of a predominantly male student body in the past, this is no longer a possible explanation, because at an undergraduate level, female students now outnumber men in most faculties, and overall at an undergraduate level at McMaster.
The majority of the women elected as vice-presidents have served under the education portfolio. However, even in this sub-field women have been underrepresented compared to men.
This trend is evidence of the way socialization affects people’s choices.
“You may choose an area where you think there will be less dissonance between who you are and what people think of that role, it may be that people think that people may be more likely to see me as suitable candidate for the education portfolio rather than the finance portfolio, so it may be that ‘rational’ choices about what’s the place where your profile will have less disassociation with the position you’re aiming for,” said Professor Caroline Andrew, the director of the Institute on Governance at the University of Ottawa, and an expert on women and inclusivity in local governance.
The gender gap at universities might not only be a product of social norms; it may also contribute to the lack of women in leadership positions in society more broadly.
High ranking governance positions can lead to other important opportunities. For instance, last year’s MSU president David Campbell now studies at Harvard’s school of government.
“Deciding to run even at a municipal level, or provincial or federal, takes an act of deciding that you would be better than other people at doing this,” said Andrew.
“And I think that’s still, in terms of socialization for a lot of women, that’s a hard leap to make.”
In total, 80 percent of the female candidates who ran for SRA in the last election received seats.
This seems to indicate the lack of female students is not due to students being unwilling to vote for female students, but rather, a lack of women being willing to put their name on the ballot due to systemic barriers.
One way to address these systemic barriers is by creating an ad-hoc group of SRA members.. And yet, currently the SRA doesn't have any.
“The SRA is elected by the students, for the students. By virtue of the election process, the SRA is representative of the student body. The creation of ad-hoc groups is completely governed by the will of the assembly,” said Mike Cheung, Speaker of the SRA.
Zaynab Al-waadh and Lindsay Robinson are McMaster student researchers involved in the recently published Women and Diversity EXCLerator Report.
They see McMaster’s underrepresentation of female student leaders in the most visible positions as symptomatic of a lack of women leaders in other sectors in Hamilton.
“When you constantly see the same kind of person, the same kind of people holding the top positions in clubs or student groups… you have the assumption that’s the kind of person that is a leader,” said Al-waadh, who is in her fourth year of her Bachelor of Social Work.
They say strategies to specifically engage women should be considered at McMaster.
“Gender quotas can be a good idea if representation is really low,” said Robinson, a fourth year Political Science and Labour Studies student. But she says these tools should be implemented cautiously.
“At the same time I don’t think we should have token females only representing female interest.”
Without a culture of inclusivity, gender quotas can be divisive.
“The SRA has discussed having seats for marginalized groups… and we always end up shooting [those ideas] down,” said Naomi Pullen, a former SRA member and the current Deputy Returning Officer of MSU Elections.
The elections department is interested in increased promotional strategies.
“We are working with the advocacy street team and looking at how we advertise our elections,” said Pullen. “We are really just starting to talk about it right now.”
She notes that women are fully represented among part-time managers, which are non-elected positions.
“It’s not the women aren’t interested in being part of student leadership positions, but there seems to be something about the election process that’s prohibitive,” she said.
Andrew said that peer-to-peer encouragement might be the best way to engage women.
“I think you could have some of the people who are part of the student representatives and some of the women who are on them to maybe directly try to seek out likely candidates, and to say ‘I think you’d be good at this, have you ever thought about it?’”
This strategy could be particularly effective for engaging diverse students from other underrepresented perspectives.
“I think the MSU should take a more proactive stance in perhaps holding information sessions, or reaching out to different groups... because no one really knows how to be on the SRA. It’s very ambiguous—you have to be really involved in the student union to know,” said Al-waadh.
“They can tell people, ‘by the way it’s important that if you’re a woman, or you’re this, or you’re that, we want you.’”
Given that this imbalance is not unique to McMaster, the Ontario University Student Alliance might be equally interested in systemic solutions.
“OUSA has to report to the SRA every so often, and I haven’t heard of them doing anything like this,” said Pullen. “Even OUSA leadership is male heavy.”
It is up to the current student leaders to take initiative not only at McMaster, but at all universities in Ontario to ensure the next generation of student government accurately reflects the student body.
