What is Rob Ford REALLY saying about Karen Stintz?

Rob Ford's recent comments about Karen Stintz made me think about heterosexuality.

“I'd like to fucking jam her, but she don't want...(laughter)....”

What Ford is saying here is not simply that he is sexually attracted to Karen Stintz and would gladly have sex with her if she consented. In itself, this would be disrespectful and unprofessional. But I’m pretty sure that Ford is not so much expressing his attraction for Karen Stintz, as he is expressing his anger against her. After all, Karen Stintz is a Toronto city councilor and former chair of the Toronto Transit Commission who is now running for Mayor against him. She has fiercely opposed Ford’s views on public transportation. She has verbally attacked him in public. Ford is angry with Stintz, and he expresses that anger by saying that he would like to ‘jam’ her, i.e., have sexual intercourse with her.

Many have objected to Ford’s comments. Some have gone so far as to label his remarks ‘misogynistic.’

I think we can go much further than that.

I must admit that I approach heterosexuality from an odd perspective. I was ostensibly a heterosexual until I was thirty -- that is I had sex exclusively with women even though I wished I was having sex with men. As a kind of ‘lapsed heterosexual,’ I tend to look on heterosexuality the way some people look at homosexuality. In other words, to me, heterosexuality is a cultural oddity, a freakish and contradictory bundle of customs and attitudes. Heterosexuality is something that I constantly turn over and over in my head, examining it in different lights, with the (perhaps) doomed hope of someday figuring it all out.

In this case, I am shocked and appalled by Rob Ford’s remarks because they seem to find their origins in the very heart of rape culture.

Like Rob Ford, I am a privileged, somewhat overweight, middle-aged white male, who is often attacked (verbally and in print) by others. And in my case, those people are sometimes men -- men who I may, or may not, be sexually attracted to. But never in my wildest dream would it occur to me to express my anger at those men by ‘jamming’ them. 

Now I am certainly no saint. In fact I am not one of those who necessarily connects the act of sex with love, or even with affection. For me, sex is primarily about physical desire. Nevertheless the idea of using sex as a way to do violence against another human being is, to me, completely alien.

I’m not saying I don’t understand ‘s/m’ or the various violent aspects of consensual sex (bite me on the ear, honey!).  Sex is, I think quite naturally related to violence. What I’m talking about is one person doing unwanted, unexpected violence to another through the act of sex (i.e., rape).

I don’t think that Ford’s comments are isolated, unusual, or simply vaguely misogynistic.

Notice that after the remarks in the transcript there is one word:  ‘laughter.’ It seems that some of the other men in the room with Ford found his quip humourous. Indeed, I would suggest that there are some men who -- seeing the Ford quotation on the news -- might have gotten a good laugh out of it too.

Why does this happen? Why does the idea of using sex to hurt a woman something that many heterosexual men respond to with a chuckle of recognition? Why do some straight men think that the way to get back at a woman is to ‘jam’ her – and that ‘jamming’ is something like ‘hitting’? Is this sentiment hard wired into male bodies, or is it something learned culturally? And how can we stop it?

It strikes me that humans are quite naturally not the calm sensible rational beings Enlightenment philosophers imagined us to be, but unthinking passionate animals. Thus, the urge that many men have to use sex to hurt women is simply a manifestation of ancient  ‘survival of the fittest’ hardwiring, i.e., the notion that those who are physically bigger and stronger are better and have the right to kill, maim and devour the weak.

If my theory is correct and human beings are hardwired like this, it might make sense to think about how we could re-educate heterosexual men so that they might learn that sex should not be used as a way to hurt someone.

And we might start with Rob Ford.

Last Night I Saw ‘Cock’

Last night I saw ‘Cock’ and it made me think.

True, that’s what often happens to me on Friday nights.

 Only this time ‘Cock’ was a play at The Theatre Centre.

It was funny as hell.

But the play made me think about identity politics and of course what is wrong with the world and why we are all going to hell in a hand-basket.

            The play ‘Cock’ sends the message that sexual identity politics are (is?) not important. It doesn’t matter whether people are gay or straight. People fall in love with a human being, not a gender, and everyone is truly multi-(or omni) sexual.

            I have lots of problems with this; basically because it’s not true.

            But more important -- the ideas in ‘Cock’ are part of a new trend that presently flowers fiercely both inside and outside of academia:  the ‘Anti Identity Politics Movement’. These days it’s very hip to be against identity politics -- and very old fashioned to speak about straight vs. gay, or male vs. female. The trans movement and the bisexual movement send the same ultra-universal, ultra-inclusive message. If you identify as male or female, straight or gay, you are simply boxing yourself into an oppressive corner. Labels punish people. So why not live in a world without labels? In an ideal world, there would be no need for such exclusive categories such as gender, and there would be no sexual categories. We would be free to love whomever we pleased.

            This new anti-identity trend has put the feminist and queer communities in a unique dilemma. I know women today who still speak proudly of the special experience of being born into a woman’s body in a patriarchal culture. These women are now being told by some trans-activists that for women to talk of themselves proudly as Cisgender women (i.e. women born with vaginas and assigned as female at birth) is oppressive.

Hm. What ever happened to women’s lib? To feminism?  I guess that’s over.

            And Gay Liberation is, of course, necessarily over too.  

            But what’s ironic about this new ‘Anti Identity Politics Movement’ is that it promulgates the same mistaken ideas that were the foundation for Gay Liberation. You see the founders of Gay Liberation did not predict that the happy result of their policies would be a totally ‘gay world’ (all right-wing hate literature to the contrary). What early gay-libbers desired was a world without sexual identity categories where everyone loved whom they wished and sexual identity did not matter.

            Suffice it to say, that after nearly forty-five years of gay liberation and nearly fifty years of feminism in North America, we do not live in a genderless world, or a world without sexuality categories.

            But my big question is this: was this utopia ever possible? And is it even desirable?

            For all these future fantasies are based on a very human delusion – that people everywhere are all, basically the same.

            In our global, tolerant world, (which is of course also rife with hate and religious fundamentalism) we like to pretend that everyone is the same. But this deluded utopian vision simply helps us avoid the very thing we are all afraid of, that deep down we are all fundamentally different.

            It is this human ‘difference’ that is one of the most frightening things about being alive. Yes we might all be very shocked with how our neighbours -- and even some of our friends -- think, feel and act, deep down in their ‘private lives’  (to quote Noel Coward). But the challenge for humanity is to somehow not only be tolerant, but to learn -- from the vast differences that threaten to separate us on a daily basis.

            I do not wish to deny that there is much hate directed at trans people and bisexuals,  and that the hate is unfair and it should stop. But the answer isn’t to yearn for a genderless, ‘sexuality-less’ world.

            The answer is not that we are all the same, but that we must somehow come to terms with how we are all so frighteningly different.

            

WOMEN-HATING WOMEN

Susan Cole and and Margaret Wente have one thing in common. They’re both in heavy denial about what they really believe.

 It’s a wily tactic. These days everybody wants to appear hip, and most women want to appear as ‘post-feminist cool’ (whatever that means). And yet certain women are able to get away with supremely anti-feminist views without being branded as social conservatives. Margaret and Susan aren’t quite as bad as those niqab-wearing women who insist that by swathing their bodies from head to toe in black fabric they achieve a special kind of sexual equality and gender freedom -- but they’re basically up to the same thing.

Wente is an interesting case. Recently accused of plagiarism (but by no means exonerated) she claims not to be right wing. Yet her columns betray a fundamental, – well – fundamentalism, when it comes to issues of sexuality and gender.

            In a recent Globe and Mail article Wente attacked women pornographers. Her hate filled diatribe suggests that the some feminists find porn empowering “especially if it’s produced by lesbians.” This is patently not true. By allying lesbians with porn, she seems to thing she is taking a cheap jab at lesbians, who Wente obviously dislikes. Wente also has something against large women. She says that female pornographer Courtney Trouble’s films “feature a lot of fat women with nipple piercings and appliances.” And what, may I ask, is wrong with that?

            But the essence of Wente’s argument is also dangerous nonsense. She objects to students studying pornography at the university level, and specifically targets feminist pornographers recently visiting the University of Toronto. Obviously, for Wente, ignorance is bliss. We live in a porn-saturated, sexism-saturated culture. We are bombarded daily with explicit sexist images of women via the internet. These images are accessible to everyone, even children. Does it make sense for universities NOT to teach students how to cast a critical/ political eye on this cultural phenomenon?

            Susan Cole and Margaret Wente may sound like a strange bedfellows, however Cole shares the same anti-sex stance. I have tried to confront Susan in person and in print, about her anti-male, anti-porn position. It’s something she always denies. However in her latest pan of Lars Von Trier’s fascinating and important film Nymphomaniac, she prefers to falsely label Von Trier a misogynist instead of thoughtfully analyzing the thoughtful pro-feminist, pro-women stance the film presents.

            Susan Cole and Margaret Wente are unfortunately not stupid.  Cole knows that if she were to attack Von Trier’s film for defending women’s rights to their bodies, their sexuality, their promiscuity, and their ‘kink’ – she would be ‘outed’ as the sex-hater she really is.

            I’m not a fan of the pompous Von Trier, but this somewhat preachy film, is evidently on the side of women, down to the end (spoiler alert!) when the female protagonist shoots her so-called male friend for attempting to rape her.

            It’s not our fault that Margaret Wente and Susan Cole are a tad dusty and rusty below the belt. And it’s time for them to stop taking their own sexual frustrations out on their fellow women, ranting against pornography, promiscuity and women who like sex.

            And it’s time someone exposed them for what they really are. Old-fashioned women-haters masquerading as modern culture critics.

What’s Happening to our Universities?

            Recently, the former president of the University of Guelph (Alastair Summerlee) -- delivered a speech in which he urged students and faculty alike to embrace the future: ‘We're part of a legacy system that goes back to the days of monks. In the days since books were written one at a time, society embraced the printing press and now the internet. And yet we still teach by standing up and talking to people” The answer, Summerlee said  is to ‘create more online courses.’

            I disagree.

            It’s important to note that Alastair Summerlee is not alone in his views. George Mehaffey --Vice President of the American Association of State Colleges and Universities -- shares Summerlee’s ideas, stating that ‘technology can reduce the costs of post-secondary education by reducing reliance on faculty members.’ The University of Guelph is not singular; it seems that, increasingly, Canadian universities are looking to Americans like Mehaffey who offer a business/corporate approach to learning, one that is focused on getting more of a ‘bang for the student buck’ by jettisoning teachers and increasing reliance on technology.

            Let me state two things right away.

First, I am not worried about losing my teaching job. I’m terribly old and will retire soon, and after all I’ve spent most of my life in the theatre world, not the academic world. But this essay is not a desperate attempt to save my living. What I am trying to do is save education.

 And yes, save the children.

            I don’t hate technology. I think, however, that it’s foolish and short sighted to imagine that technology is the answer to every problem. Technology makes our lives easier – sometimes, but not all the time. And it’s important to remember that the internet is no longer a disinterested source of information. As Google begins to collect data for its massive world library it becomes more and more evident that various profit-making search engines and operating systems are competing for control of the lucrative digital world and the ‘information’ it supplies.

            To suggest that a professor standing up in front of a room full of students is a medieval concept, makes as much sense as to suggest that love and sex will someday have nothing to do with producing babies. Certainly we have technology to replace both traditional procreation and traditional teaching methods – but is a world without love and a world without interactive pedagogy one in which you wish to live?

            Not me.

            I will go far as to say that a world without university professors is in some ways equivalent to a world without love. Teaching and learning involves human beings, interaction, opinions, facial expressions, emotion, and yes even a touch of the hand or a warm, sweaty handshake. The dialectal method involves asking questions and getting answers, and this means living people sitting in a room together and spontaneously interacting (remember that?) experiencing all the excitement and disappointment, the frustration and fury, of involved discussion.

            This idea is neither antiquated nor old-fashioned; it is simply true. We don’t learn unless we can interact with others, unless we have real conversations and real experiences.        

            Online education is valuable for many reasons – for those who are disabled or who live far from a university for instance. But should technological pedagogy be universally and unequivocally embraced? Universities should be places where the effects of technology on human beings and human interaction are studied. They should not be simply places where the social, political and economic ramifications of technology are accepted without critical thought.

            There must be some better way to ‘cut costs’ than to destroy the very essence of analytical understanding that is the machine of our learning. Because when it comes to musing and thinking, creating and debating –  the teacher/student dialectic is the virtual machine of our intellectual love.

Sure -- march against Russia: but what about Canada?

Does anyone remember Dr. Richard Schabas?

In 1990 Aids Action Now staged a protest against Dr. Richard Schabas, Ontario’s Chief Medical Officer.  Five hundred demonstrators marched on Queens Park (in February!) demanding Schabas’ resignation. And Ontario’s AIDS service organizations were outraged. Schabas believed that AIDS should be described as a ‘virulent’ disease  -- which would have empowered public health officers to quarantine carriers who were ‘knowingly exposing others’ to HIV. Dr. Schabas felt that any HIV positive person who engaged in sexual intercourse -- condom or not – should suffer the threat of quarantine.

Does anything sound familiar about this?

It should.

Just a few years later (in 1998) a Canada Supreme Court decision required individuals who are HIV-positive to disclose their HIV status to sexual partners before engaging in activities that pose a risk of transmission. Up to now, 98 people have been charged with crimes involved non-disclosure — almost half of them in Ontario.

Well hey -- I don’t see anybody marching.

In other words, Canada’s laws against what Dr. Schabas (in 1990) called ‘knowingly exposing others to HIV,’ have gone a little farther than the threat of quarantine. Now, HIV positive people – whether they use condoms or not – can be jailed on charges of assault for non-disclosure. Or (like Johnson Aziga of Hamilton) they may even serve a life sentence for murder.

So why doesn’t anybody seem to care?

Is it perhaps because gay men are racist and sexist? You see, in fact, not all who are jailed on the new HIV non-disclosure charges are gay. Some are heterosexual women, and a sizeable portion of high profile cases involve heterosexual men of colour. Could it be that gay men are only concerned about ‘rights’ when it only involves their own?

I think the real reason is this: 24 years ago gay men were much more concerned with the notion of justice than they are today. Now it’s all about gaining the approval of the straight community. These days if you ask a gay man if people should be put in jail for spreading HIV, he will answer -- robot-like -- as most straights do: “But aren’t people who knowingly spread HIV evil?”

Yes, those who do not disclose are sometimes (not always) very bad people. But should they go to jail? Firstly, remember that AIDS is no longer a death sentence – in fact it is now a chronically manageable disease. Secondly, incarceration for non-disclosure actually discourages people from getting tested, and thus encourages the spread of AIDS. Thirdly – and most importantly – jailing  people for non-disclosure is not a disinterested legal action: it’s all entwined with racism, sexism, and homophobia.

Back in 1990 we instinctively knew that Dr, Schabas and his ilk were homophobic and anti-sexual -- and assumed they were probably religious fundamentalists. Nowadays we seem fine with newspapers running photos of HIV positive women labeled promiscuous by scandal-mongering journalists, or of black men deemed to be hypersexual ‘dangerous offenders.’ In our eagerness to show straights how much we are willing to condemn promiscuity -- we have tossed some of the most vulnerable in our community directly under the bus. Queers would do well to remember pastor Martin Niemöller’s famous poem:

“First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out-- Because I was not a Socialist/Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out-- Because I was not a Trade Unionist/ Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out-- Because I was not a Jew /Then they came for me--and there was no one left to speak for me.”

Or is this -- like our outrage over Dr. Schabas – something gay people would rather forget?

The death of Philip Seymour Hoffman made me think......

            The death of Philip Seymour Hoffman made me think I’d better write this because who knows I might be dead soon.

            I mean we all might be.

            Anyway I was listening to a recording of the The Producers and it suddenly struck me how hard it is to run a gay theatre, anywhere.

            As you know I started a gay theatre many years ago called Buddies in Bad Times Theatre.

            Anyway, I was just listening to The Producers, you know, trying to be nice, I really was trying to like it (I was!) and some of the songs are fun I guess, and then I realized that the whole of The Producers is about two things. It’s about a pair of loser producers who decide to put on the worst surefire piece of crap play ever -- one that will be a flop on Broadway for sure. And the two things they decide it should be, in order for it to be a real failure, are:

a)   about Hitler

and

b)  gay 

And all I could think of was – wow! So here I was, all these years, trying to run a gay theatre but to no avail. Because it is, unfortunately, the most impossible thing to do in the world. Because everyone thinks that ‘gay theatre’ is pretty much as awful as fascism.

            Indeed, when I started the theatre many years ago, I wondered why so many gay musical theatre types hated me. Now I know why. It’s because the theatre has traditionally been a gigantic closet. It’s a place where men can be gay without being gay. Before Buddies in Bad times Theatre came along, an effeminate man could be an actor -- and his mannerisms would just mean that he was ‘flamboyant,’ or ‘expressive.’ But after Buddies in Bad Times opened in Toronto suddenly all the closeted gay actors were threatened because maybe the theatre wasn’t a place to hide anymore. Maybe the theatre was (god forbid!) actually a gay place.

            Well I happen to think the theatre is a gay place. Because it is a place for lies. (Don’t let the avant-garde-ists tell you that theatre should be like real life; theatre has been claiming to be ‘real’ since the dawn time, but no one has ever succeeded in putting on a play that was real, or even doing real life in front of other people. As soon as the play starts, it’s fake, we know it’s fake, and that’s why we love it and can get lost in it.)

            We learn how to lie from the theatre, and there’s nothing that gay men need to know more than how to lie. In the past, they used to lie about being gay. Now -- though they often admit to the man-kissing part --  they like to pretend we all want to be married, go to church, and adopt babies. (This is supposed to make being gay okay.)

Lesbians, of course, lie too. But the fact of the matter is that our culture is so sexist that when women lie about their sexuality it doesn’t matter as much as when men do. What if all the men were gay (the religious right really worries about this a lot) and there was no one to impregnate women anymore?

No more begetting.

And what if men weren’t strong and didn’t carry swords so they could kill lots of people -- sorry, I mean, so they could protect us all from evil?

Plato was right to be afraid of art, and artists, and theatre, and song.

And I do have to apologize to all those musical theatre fags for making it tough to stay in the closet.

I just wanted people to know how gay theatre really is.

But if Mel Brooks is right (and for sure he is!): people don’t really want to know.

So, what can I say?

 I screwed up.