Kink or crime—loss of hope and trust is the result

Last week I heard some stunning news break over the airwaves; CBC had broken off their relationship with long-time radio host Jian Ghomeshi. I had been a fan of Ghomeshi's since he started his flagship morning radio show Q and I could not believe what my ears were hearing.

As the day went on more news broke on the story and then there was the famous/infamous Facebook post that Ghomeshi published in order to get the jump on the upcoming media storm.

My first thought when I read Ghomeshi's post was, 'Well at least he is straight-- all be it with a few kinks.' Because with a voice that a girlfriend of mine described as 'chocolatey' I doubt I am the only woman who thought it would be nice if he was available in the heterosexual supermarket. A visceral if not enlightened reaction.

After that it was disbelief. This man, who I had gone to bed with night after night via the radio waves, could not possibly be a sexual predator. A criminal.

I did not want to believe that I had once again put my trust in some one only to find it blasted to pieces like some kind of pumpkin drop on Late Night with David Letterman-- another case in point for disappointment.

How could it be that a man that I had heard arbitrate a discussion on rape culture had suddenly become the poster boy for the topic?

And then there is the other thing, a very unfair thing but nonetheless a truism-- Ghomeshi is Iranian and he personified what it means to be Iranian to most Canadians. It is a very heavy burden that he certainly should not be weighted with but through his openness we learned about Iran and the wonders that are hidden behind the country's not-so-loveable leaders. Through him we have been given a glimpse of a culture that we otherwise would not have had and no doubt would not have gone in search of. He's done more to make Canadians see Iran and its people for what they really are; people, than any other person or cultural outreach effort I can think of. How much of that progress will now be lost? I hope not much.

At this point I have stopped reading the Ghomeshi media coverage. There have too often been people in the public eye that we looked up to only later to find out that they were secret monsters.

Constantly misjudging people in the public eye has left me feeling jaded. I know that as listeners to radio we feel an intimacy with the voices that enter our lives and this is part of the beauty of the medium. But I also know that this feeling of knowing the voice that comes out of the box is misplaced. We don't know them any more than they know us; the listener.

No matter what happens now with lawsuits and accusations, the cultural life of Canada has been dealt a serious blow and once again the publics' trust has been waylaid.

Fat Ass

Last week someone called me a fat ass. I will clarify that and say 'he' called me a fat ass because I find that this sort of comment often comes from men. Of course I am a woman and am more likely to be ridiculed by a man but I doubt that a noticeably slender man would ever be called a fat ass by a woman.

The other thing I want to say is that I hope my daughter heard this comment.

And why would I wish for such hateful words directed at me to be heard by my daughter and every other woman and girl-- so that they will know when someone directs these words at them, and it will happen if it has not happened already, that these words have nothing to do with physical appearance. These words directed at women or girls are meant to sting and shame. They play on our insecurities and make us hate our bodies no matter how they look.

And I wish my daughter had heard them – heard them directed at me – all 115 pounds of me.

A few months ago I found my daughter standing in front of a full length mirror and she told me she didn't like how she looked. She said she was fat and what is more a male friend of hers had called her fat several months before that.

I remember that incident well; we had talked about it at the time. They had been playing and the boy wanted her to move off the slide and when she didn't he called her fat. She was visibly hurt by the comment and I told her that people say these things not because they are true but because they know those words are hurtful and mean. I told her that people had called me fat and asked her if she thought I was fat. She quickly said that I was not fat and was astonished that anyone would have ever called me that. I wanted her to understand that when someone calls a woman or girl fat it is not about their actual appearance it is about trying to hurt the woman or girl's sense of self worth.

So last week when this ignorant man told me to get off my fat ass I was hoping my daughter heard him so she could fully understand the explanation I had given about the senselessness of these words when they were directed at her or any one else. They do not reflect reality. They only highlight the ignorance and baseness of the person who chooses to hurl them like Molotov cocktails.

Do not let others create the image you have of yourself. It's a tall order. As the mother of two girls it will be a battle I will be fighting for years to come but I hope discussing such thoughtless words will help pave the way for them towards a body positive future.

Wrecking ball

Ok-- I am well behind the cultural zeitgeist but two days ago I heard the song Wrecking Ball for the first time. And I liked it. Mainly I liked the chorus and the way Cyrus cuts it up on “You wreck me”.

Currently listening to it on full volume now that the kids have gone to school.

So watching this vdo, and having heard much of the brouhaha about it when it first came out, but not having seen it—I have to say the part that disturbs me most about the vdo is the sexualization of a sledge hammer.

I know there was a lot of talk about Cyrus being highly sexualized in this vdo but the part that is most gratuitous, most meant for the male gaze, is where she licks the sledge hammer. This is purely a male fantasy. No woman wants to lick a sledge hammer. And this is what bothers me the most. I don't mind if she performs acts that satisfy her own sexuality but to pander to male sexual fantasies is why I will not let my daughters watch this vdo.

Being naked and swinging on a wrecking ball may be stimulating –I have no problem with that. The air on your skin, the internal spike that swinging sensation causes—could be a good thing for a woman. Not that I am going to test out my theory-- but I can imagine it.

And I find her clothes in the vdo much more disturbing than her nudity. Her clothes are skimpy, highly sexualized while the shots of her when she is naked are somewhat tasteful. Nice angles, good positioning to hide the obvious, more risky, bits. The human body is a work of art-- it was her clothes that reduced her to the lowest sexual denomination.

I dislike most pop vdos-- its all women slapping their scantily clad asses and pushing their augmented breasts into your face—this is far from the worst offender in terms of the sexualization of modern day pop divas. Cyrus got called out for what I think is the least offensive part of the vdo-- her naked body.

Undecided

Does celebrity erase past crimes? Does time served efface the evil done?

An acquaintance of mine met Mike Tyson today. She posted her encounter with Iron Mike on Facebook noting that he had a strong handshake and that the person who offered to take her photo with Tyson was shaking so badly that all the photos were blurry.

My first reaction was-- cool, she met a celebrity.

My next reaction was-- Hey, what's up with the photo op with a convicted rapist.

If you were walking down the street and saw a man walk by who you knew was a convicted rapist would you ask him if you could have your picture taken with him? Most likely the answer is no. I predict that not one person would, when given this scenario, answer yes.

Of course when you throw the fact that the rapist is a celebrity in the mix the answer to this question seems to change-- at least for some people.

I have to think that, like me, her first reaction was –cool, a famous person just entered my orbit. Maybe her impulse to snap a selfie with a celebrity was as far as her mind worked through the situation.

I also have to consider that she is younger than me and from a different country and may not even be aware of Tyson's stint in jail or his conviction for rape. Maybe she just knows he's the guy in the Hangover movies.

And even if she did know about his conviction maybe she believes in rehabilitation. This leaves me questioning if I do. If you do the time for your crime should you forever be painted as your former self; a sort of Dorian Gray, never finding release from your past? Or are some crimes so heinous that a person should never be accepted in society after they have been convicted of committing them?

Following this line is making me question whether it is acceptable or not to take a selfie with Mike Tyson. For me—celebrity, redemption, debt paid to society with time served—I'd still walk away. What about you?

Hope

This morning I was prepared to write about climate change. There were protest marches across the globe yesterday to focus attention on the issue as the UN is set to meet in New York this week and climate change on the agenda.

I love a good rally but there were none scheduled close to where I live; the nearest was 1 1/2 hours away and I could not bear the hypocrisy of driving that far to protest the fossil fuel economy.

The course I am currently in, Health and the Environment, deals a lot with climate change and the effect it will have on us all-- from increased adverse weather events to the spread of disease. I would love to use less petroleum based energy but right now the best green technology is out of my economic reach.

So instead of driving to a rally in Cape Breton or Halifax I went to my local beach and picked garbage from the shoreline. It's a little thing, and next week there will be just as much, but it is the least I can do at the moment.

This and more is what I planned to write about but then I got sidetracked by Facebook. And not by the thousand useless, inane updates: post if you love your mother, think cousins are the best or believe it's always wine-o'clock somewhere. I was distracted by the great suffering of a little girl. A little girl whose mom was a childhood friend of mine. Reading her post about how her eldest daughter has been suffering these past months and how, at this moment, she is in hospital, struggling with an unknown illness, is so heart wrenching. I, and everyone else except her medical team, are helpless.

This morning I thought about sharing her most recent post which detailed the horrible night they had just been through-- but then I didn't really know why I wanted to share that update. I guess I wanted to share it because a shared pain is easier to survive than a hidden one. I guess I wanted people to know why I was distracted today. I guess I wanted to share it just in case the energy of our thoughts could help this child and her family.

There's nothing else I can write at the moment. I can't think beyond the word hope. That's what I will be doing today.

The second act

Life begins at 40. That's a well-worn phrase typically meant to make that momentous birthday pass a little less painfully for those that are age adverse.

Last year, at this time, I turned 40. And at that time I found nothing to write in honour of that significant event. What did it matter, it was just a number, just another year. I did give it some thought though. 40-- it is the half way point in life—if you are lucky. The first half of my life was full of accomplishments, adventures and a little mayhem. What was going to happen in the second act? Was I just going to coast along in the life I had created—the house, the kids the job?

One thing I know about myself is that I am never content without goals, without something I am working towards. I had been sinking into a deep ennui for several years, all my goals fulfilled: I had my family, worked in my aspired to field, bought my house. I didn't know what I wanted next but I knew there had to be a next.

For many years I had debated applying for a MA in Adult Education. It was offered at a nearby university as a distance education program with only a short period required on campus. But after thinking about it for years, and looking at it seriously last winter, I decided it was not the program for me. The thought of it did not make my heart beat faster. If I was going to return to school for fun and excitement, I have never pursued education for practical reasons, this clearly was not going to provide that experience I was craving. I wanted to go back to school—I love being in university and learning new things—but the thought of this course of study left me cold.

But I knew university was the thing missing from my life.

I looked at the sciences. I have always been interested in Biology but the thought of slogging through another undergraduate degree was daunting—especially at my age. I looked into applying for a Msc but whereas my other degrees were in the Arts the likelihood of acceptance was not great.

This summer I took the advice that I had given others who were reluctant about going to university due to the time it would take to finish a degree; time passes no matter what you do but if you are in school –when the years roll on you have the degree, the experience, you were wanting.

I put time considerations aside and applied for my Bsc with a ball of excited anxiety pulling at my stomach. I looked at the course catalogue and knew it was the right decision. The thrill I got from the things I could be studying—it was like academic porn.

Going back to school for me feels like reuniting with an old lover; I'm a little nervous and a lot excited. I run scenarios in my head of the coming days, months and years. I'll caress my new text books and breathe in their heady scent. I'll stumble bleary eyed through the day, after a night of elicit learning, fuelled by the excitement of what I might discover at the next lecture or lab.

I'll enter exam rooms with the confidence of a seasoned vaudeville performer. It is my place, my home, my love.

I can't wait for the second act.

All that-- and I want the ring.

Dissonance

I am a time traveller,

shape shifter,

life jumper.

Past lives intersect in my nightmares and day dreams

They crash into each other at odd angles

Small town signs on big city streets

Asian smells in country kitchens

Beds unfamiliar and lives unfinished

Evolution and reincarnation with every rotation of the earth.

Where I am is where I am not.

Body and mind disconnected,

One constantly pulling the other into alternate realities.

The wheel always turns,

But time folds in on me.

That once straight arrow

Is bent and creased like discarded origami