I started going to hardcore shows when I was 15 or 16, probably getting out to one a week during my high school and university days. Ten years on, I’m lucky if I have time to make it to one or two in a year — that distance (and time) has given me space to reflect on the space for young women in what was then, and even more so now is, a male-dominated, hyper-masculine subculture. So obviously, obviously, I bought Sara Marcus’ much-anticipated book about the riot grrrl scene. Punk music, check. Feminism, check.

When I started going to shows, riot grrrl was a punchline, reduced to a fashion footnote for corny photo spreads in the YM and Seventeen magazines my older sister bought — plastic hair barrettes, Doc Martens, pigtails, DIY shirts with shit scrawled on them. It was no longer an actual genre — I’d missed the boat by quite a few years, and it seemed as though hardcore punk (from which riot grrrl was an off-shoot) had settled into a state of true, unshakeable apathy. The punk of the ’70s was about the youth voice; class struggle in the ’80s; consciousness-raising (veganism, grassroots activism, zines about all kinds of political/personal struggles, Hare Krishna) in the early-mid ’90s. But hardcore punk in the late ’90s/early 2000s was about moshing, violence, wearing North Face and Nike Dunks, posturing about ‘honour’ and ‘friendship’ — really, a euphemism for being catty to people who weren’t in your crew. The personal had obliterated the political. It’s still like this, in 2011, except now people wear less streetwear and more black/skinny jeans/plaid. I still love the music but then, as it is now, there were just a few ways for girls to find their way into the community, which boiled down to two main approaches:

1. You could be one of the boys: take photos (that was me!), make zines, mosh, maaaaaybe start a band if you were really brave and liked people talking shit about you, or…
2. You could be the slut: the girlfriend to some dude in some band or the coat-rack in the back.

Anyway, my own experiences really informed the way I read her book, drawing parallels between our ten-year difference in punkhood. You know, plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose…

One of the big themes was about how riot grrrls (all teenaged girls, really) had no agency or voice when the national discourse turned hand-wringing over their sexualities, their morals, and just about everything else in their lives. It was the ’90s, and there was the March on Washington, the emergence of the Christian right. These days it’s mostly the same — pre-teens slut-shamed in the New York Times after being gang-raped, ridiculous abortion legislation, crisis pregnancy centres, SlutWalks, still about the Christian right and their purity balls and virginity vows (you should read Jessica Valenti’s “The Purity Myth” for more on that).

The most beautiful thing I learned about riot grrrl was that it took the feminist rhetoric of “creating safe spaces” for women and made it real; not just that, but they made it the backbone of their community. It’s easy to be a feminist, hard to be a feminist activist. They went to shows and forced boys to make room in the pit by linking arms in a circle, right up front by the bands, creating a space where women could be part of shows without being moshed over. They started meetings and chapters, where issues of rape, harassment, incest and body image were freely discussed. They lived together, started bands together.

Still, feminism, even a punk version of it, wasn’t without flaws. Most kids who can afford to go to shows, buy records and merch and go on roadtrips aren’t scrabbling in the dirt and feeling oppression firsthand; like pretty much every musical scene since MTV has been an exercise in suburban angst and the odyssey to find belonging with other middle-class misfits. Plus, they are 17, and who can blame them for not being cognizant of post-secondary academics such as Germaine Greer, Andrea Dworkin, Judith Butler, Naomi Wolf, etc., etc., and their concepts on class, race, oppression, privilege, and blah blah blah big feminist words. So yeah, of course riot grrrls were a little oblivious to the dynamics of race and class in their scene.

In any case, what eventually happened is riot grrrls who were feminist (without knowing exactly that they were) became shamed, sort of, for not being up to snuff on said ideas. Anyone’s who’s ever read the comments section on a feminist blog is saving themselves $50,000 in gender studies tuition — pretty much a roomful of edumacated, enlightened gals trying to out-academicese each other. THE PERFECT term for this is “Oppression Olympics.” I can’t remember now whether this phrase was attributed to riot grrrl Erika Reinstein in the book or if I’m borrowing it from an awesome riot grrrl’s blog, but it’s a problem that has not gone away. It can be discouraging trying to remain energized about feminism when it’s become OK for feminists to harp on other feminists for not “owning up to their privilege” or being a white girl and not understanding race relations, or dimensions of class/sexuality/so forth, or shaming people for things they could not have controlled (i.e. having a penis, being white, taking ballet lessons when they were 6 years old), rather than saying, “Hey, women who are feminist and also grew up with privilege can immensely helpful as allies and partners in dismantling all kinds of privilege.”

So, lots of tendrils that still resonate, 15 or 20 years on. More than anything, I mourn the loss of riot grrrl not for its music, but because young women are marginalized in punk unless they are brave enough, have the wherewithal to. I don’t believe it’s a conscious decision for guys in the hardcore scene to exclude women, it’s just a natural extension of the bravado and machoism that exudes from the music. There’s an important lesson here — not just for some now-obscure musical/political scene that came and went within the span of oh, eight years — but for all feminist activists who give a damn and want to do something useful. So to borrow from hardcore vernacular, stop being so fucking negi.

If you’re familiar with basic feminist theories, or possess any amount of media criticism or literacy, you’ll see right through these ads: they transform people into objects by focusing singularly on mere body parts; portray feminine passivity as normative behaviour for women; convince you that Product X will get you the man; shame women into believing their bodies are inferior (and that the product can fix that); sell the notion that you CAN remake yourself into the perfect woman if only you buy this.

Partway through her speech (regretfully I didn’t take down the timestamp, but if I watch it again I’ll amend this post), Kilbourne shows an ad for flavoured douches that she remembers from her youth in the ’70s. The utter ridiculousness and garishness of the ad, seen today, seems more appropriate for The Onion than a teen mag, but I felt comfortable knowing that an ad like this wouldn’t fly in the year 2010 — that we had created a safe distance from the insanity of 1970.

That must have been a premature thought, however, since today I see Women’s Day magazine has run an ad for douche-hawker Summer’s Eve. In the year 2010.

(Click to enlarge.)

Maybe I shouldn’t expect so much — that really, advertisers will continue to use the same, 40-year-old messages to coerce women into accepting these harmful products, under the pretense that they’re healthy, and can have a transformative effect on one’s self-esteem or professional/personal life. They’re the same tropes, again and again and again.

Even women who should know better still perpetuate these ideas. Last year, an ayurvedic spa opened up inside my hot yoga studio. The spa owner set up a display case selling various facial creams, cleansers and cosmetics — and a line of vaginal washes and wipes for $20 a pop.

Now, yoga to me is interesting, because as much as yoga as an industry commercializes the female form (Lululemon selling stretchy pants to transform one’s ass into a globular marvel is another post altogether), yoga as a practice encourages people to accept their body and its limitations. You learn to be and accept how far you can stretch and for how long you can hold poses, but in an indirect way, yoga also teaches you to love your body. You stare at yourself in a mirror for 90 minutes, after all. And though yoga is dismissed as a pansy’s activity, I’ve seen hockey players (as in, Toronto Maple Leafs) and MMA fighters crumble in warrior pose long before I even began to trembled. So you learn you body has strength, more than you know. It’s quite empowering.

When a yoga studio teaches its students to love their bodies, but its spa partner sells douches, people like me get mad. After a few weeks of staring at the glass case, I finally brought it up with one of the studio’s employees. I explained the incongruity of selling self-acceptance and vaginal insecurity under the same roof, and that vaginas are actually self-cleaning, and that in the relatively uncommon event that one’s vagina needed an intervention, its owner is better off consulting a doctor, not an ayurvedic spa technician. She got quite offended, and huffed, “Well, if women want to buy them, they can. You don’t have to.” Of course! Because it’s a free market, baby!

The studio has since done away with the display case (though presumably the spa still sells them from behind closed doors), but the point is, even women who should and do know better sometimes fall into these traps. Which is why women’s magazines and hawkers of beauty (e.g. spas) have a responsibility not to encourage these myths, and yet they do.

Hat tip to dailykos.com and to @repo_mandy for this.

Writing a feminist column, I got the occasional irate reader. Most of them are nitpicky and miss the point, while others are straight up incomprehensible. Up until this point, my favourite one was a rambling, angsty Facebook message from a first-year male, white, university student from Calgary, who said there should be men’s studies if there are to be women’s studies, and then argued that feminism was actually a deep conspiracy to overthrow men because some feminists “would like more equality [than men], which is by no means equal.” Equality ≠ equal? Then, oblivious to the fact that humanism has already been invented (maybe that doesn’t come until second year philosophy?), he suggested we call feminism “humanism” and focus on men AND women. Brills!

Anyway, it was my favourite letter, until I received this one from Brett Lovett — or rather, from his email but penned by his “daughter” who wishes to shame me for my sinning ways. All bold-face emphasis is mine:

Subject: Feminist relationships

Your column is full of bad choices and bad advice. [Ed's note: I really liked this column.]

1. You’re living with your boyfriend outside of marriage is a sin against God and the Bible.
2. You’re a liar when you say Canadian society has left behind housewives and made breadwinner. This is a Bible Directed and God given pattern for society.
3. Your assertion that finding cuts to Pride Toronto is not a good thing. On the contrary homosexuality is evil according to my Bible and we’re instructed not even to think about what these people might practice.
4. Being pro-choice is evil, i mean killing unborn Canadian boys and girls. According to the Bible it is God who gives life. Abortionists will one day have to stand before God and give an account.
5. Over coming gender role is against God, and the Bible. He made male and female and commanded in the Bible not to mix up these roles.
6. Commitment and marriage are not ideas, but Commandments in the Holy Scripture.
7. You disagree with March for Life Protesters: Pro-life versus your pro-death policy—again evil and sin in God’s Bible.
8. A woman’s right over her body does not include killing her unborn child who is a distinct person separate from the mother not apart [sic] of the mother.

Your opinions are against God and God’s Word. Your battle is against Truth, the Bible, and the Lord. Jesus came that we may have life, Satan comes to kill, steal, and to destroy. Your need to repent from your sin and turn to Christ for salvation!

Esther Rose Lovett
Grade 6 student

Touche, Esther. In response, here is a list of things I believed in when I, too, was a 12-year-old girl in an evangelical Christian church, but no longer do:

1. That morality is dictated, not self-determined. The thing about religious folk is that they rely on someone else to give them a moral compass. It’s a difficult task, having to rationalize why you believe in the things you do, isn’t it?
2. That the Christian church can still function as a moral compass for society. Y’know, not just a group of shrill hand-wringers seeking to involve themselves in people’s lives despite Biblical teachings that tolerance and leading by example is how to teach the gospel, not shaming practices. Does the term moral relativism mean nothing anymore?
3. The circular logic of Christian morality: Because Christianity happens to espouse some moral concepts (don’t lie, cheat, steal), the church claims ownership of these, and uses it to stoke the argument that because society already uses these concepts, it must therefore continue to be that way. I should call this ‘theocratic creep.’ Oh, and no other religion (Islam, Judaism) or prevailing common sense can haz credit for telling people to be decent human beings. You’re either with us, or are totally anti-moral, abortionist savages.
4. Same thing as above, but replace “lie, cheat, steal” with “gender division of labour/domestic roles.” Oh, and other religions (Islam, namely) are evil for repressing women! But it’s cool if we do it, right?
5. That Christians are immune to Canadian legal definitions! Which is to say, by golly, it doesn’t matter if fetuses are not people under Canadian law, Christians are going to keep calling them distinct people! You can’t kill something that, until it’s about 7 or 8 months, can’t survive on its own, OK? Go make your own micro-nation in Alberta, already.

Canice Leung
Grade 6 feminist

P.S. I don’t feel bad mocking a 12-year-old girl because, as is probably not even necessary to point out, it’s her dad who wrote half of this (or maybe she’s one of these Jesus Camp types?).

You should watch this uncut, two-hour Q&A on showstudio.com with Lady Gaga.

At the 21:30 mark, Mario Testino asks: “Your looks are so extreme. Is this a reaction to something? Are you questioning or altering the status quo of women’s style?”

Yes, yes I am. I am a feminist.

I reject wholeheartedly the way we are taught to perceive women — the beauty of women, how a woman should act or behave. Women are strong and fragile; women are beautiful and ugly; we are soft spoken and loud — all at once. There is something mind-controlling about the way we’re taught to view women, and my work is both visually and musically a rejection of all of those things, but more importantly, a quest. And it’s exciting because all of the avant garde clothing and the lyric and the musical style, which was a certain time at once weird or odd or unattractive, uncomfortable, shocking… it’s now trendy. So perhaps we can make women’s rights trendy; make women’s rights, feminism, strength and security, and the power of the wisdom of the woman, let’s make that trendy.

… Mario always wants me to be naked in our photoshoots. We have a room of couture and I always end up naked.

‘Cause I’m beating this horse good and dead before I move onto another topic to rage about, I wrote about hockey again, this time for my Metro column:

Both our hockey teams struck Olympic gold in Vancouver. The next day, hockey fever raged on for the NHL. But whither the women after the podium is packed away? Is there support for women’s hockey beyond the Games?

I polled a few hockey-obsessed friends: The answer was no. For one, there’s no high-profile league; even if there were, the game lacks speed and finesse, one said. Another said women don’t excite the way pugilistic NHLers do. Wait, where did that fuzzy feeling go? I thought we were proud of our golden girls.

Despite limited interest in the game itself, I love women’s hockey. The players push the envelope of what’s seen as acceptable for “the fairer sex.” Look no further than the constant chortling about lesbian players and coaches, and about Team Canada’s cigar-and-beer-fuelled celebration (which I maintain was a tongue-in-cheek jab at how male players celebrate) to understand its place in our social fabric.

Female hockey players have always been a bit subversive. The sport began with men, and as a result, fans have come to see the boys’ version as the way it ought to be played. Now, women are adopting it, but with a style that’s all their own. I must be among a minority of those who would welcome that kind of play — if this wasn’t the case, a North American league like the NHL would exist by now.

There are some examples of women in men’s hockey: Hayley Wickenheiser in European leagues; Manon Rheaume in NHL exhibition games — but one league said Wickenheiser shouldn’t play with men, while Rheaume was dismissed as a publicity stunt. Still, everyone rubbernecked — eager to see if these gals could overcome that unspoken notion that men always outclass women, and actually beat a guy.

It’s a difficult pill to swallow, acknowledging that some spectators will never be inspired by women for their sheer athleticism; that she will always be good … but only for a girl.

Add to that the talk that women’s hockey ought to be removed from the Olympics. Supporters cried foul, citing limited opportunities and underfunding, maintaining that it will just take time to establish the sport and develop a deep talent pool. I hope that’s the case. That would be golden.

What I didn’t have room to add was an observation that when it comes to women’s sports — not just hockey — we tend to love it with our minds, in a cerebral, affirmative sort of way that says, ‘Yes! We support your right to play any game you please (but I don’t have to watch it, right?)’ while we will always love men’s sports more intensely, elementally, and we will feel that love with our hearts — from the very core to the tips of our raggedy-ass, blue and white Maple Leafs clown wigs. No one ever sits on the edge of their couch in double overtime, hands locked in prayer and brow furrowed, fervently in prayer to the hockey gods, waiting and hoping their bunch of breathless and exuberant women to hoist a silver-plated cup, y’know?

I suppose you can’t force anyone to feel a pure sense of joy and passion for something if it doesn’t strike you that way, but I wonder how much of it is manufactured by a celebrity-driven, money-soaked, extremely powerful league and sponsor system, and how much is rooted in the athletes themselves and their willful determination. I don’t believe female players feel their love for their sport any less than male players do, nor that they are limited in passing on that sentiment to their audience. If you do, you should read Roy McGregor’s first hand account of the cigar-and-booze celebration, which made me love the women’s team all that much more.

So, have you seen this?

Well, this, 8x.

Love Magazine (y’know, the one that put the outsized, in girth and personality, Beth Ditto on its cover for its first-ever issue) is putting eight naked supermodels on its “Fashion Icons” issue, due Feb. 8.

On its own, it’s not much of a crime. Fashion editorials in which clothes are out of frame are pretty par for the course, so there’s not much to be offended by at this point. (Though I still contend there should be — replacing fashion’s primary concerns with aesthetics, form, art with that of the human body, etc. etc.)

But then Katie Grand had to open her big fat yap and try to explain what was a mostly innocuous, kinda cool cover concept:

“For this issue of LOVE, we took eight women who are generally acknowledged as the most beautiful in the world, got them to show off their bodies — widely regarded as the most perfect in the world — and photographed them all in exactly the same position for the cover,” LOVE’s editor-in-chief Katie Grand told VOGUE.COM. “We did this to show how much they differed physically from one another, which is why we also printed their measurements.” (via The Cut)

Oh, okay. So you’re taking the eight most beautiful, genetically blessed women in the world, whose jobs are to fit sample size clothing (and thus, more or less have identical bodies), and comparing the minutiae of their forms? Yeah man, Kate Moss’s legs are stumps (or is that only because she’s a mere 5′ 6″ compared to her giantess peers?). Or maybe that youth is so fleeting that Moss — who was discovered TWENTY-TWO years ago — scarcely looks like a decade has passed, or that Naomi Campbell — who was discovered 25 years ago — looks better than my not-yet-24-year-old self. If you want to bring out the sociological hand-wringing, yeah, it’s problematic because readers could see this as some distorted signal that average resides somewhere between the two-inch difference in Moss’s and Lara Stone’s hip measurements.

Mostly, though, it’s just proof that PR spin has either reached a new low, more proof that journalists can’t do PR, or both.

Ah, Wikipedia. It always seems to be the night I’m scrambling to finish some other writing that I come across a subject that grips me, sending me down a rabbit hole of Googling and complete focus derailment.

Which is how I came to learn about Anna May Wong, a second-generation Chinese-American actress with Taishan roots. She started in silents but transitioned into talkies, but was forgotten for many a year as many a Hollywood star ends up. She was friends with Marlene Dietrich, her co-star in Shanghai Express (still below), and Leni Riefenstahl (isn’t that some terrible irony?) and for a while seemed to be headed for superstardom.

But Wong’s career hit an intersection of bad politics and yellow peril. It forced her into insulting stereotypical roles as evil dragon ladies, temptresses, or China dolls, which Wong was critical of. California’s anti-miscegenation laws (repealed in 1948) prevented fraternization, on or offscreen, between Asians and whites. It prevented her from landing lead roles, where she would have had to star opposite white men. In a famous case of yellowface, she was passed over for the heroine role in Pearl Buck’s “The Good Earth,” which is about Chinese peasants, in favour of Luise Rainer.

Oh, and then because she chose the dishonourable career of acting, the Chinese people hated her for being a lascivious embarrassment to her people. Even so, she left for China, hoping to to discover a troupe of fellow Chinese actors that would enable them all to create their own opportunities. She also sent diary newsreels back to Hollywood, allowing theatergoers to explore China in a non-racist way. (I joke a lot about how Taishan people speak in the “hick” Chinese dialect, but in all seriousness, Wong sounds like a very smart, resourceful woman.)

The anti-miscegenation laws probably had some part in her never marrying, too. The above clip of jazz staple “These Foolish Things (Remind Me of You),” here performed by Ella Fitzgerald in 1957, was co-written by Eric Maschwitz, a Brit with whom Wong had a lasting but obviously impossible romantic connection. A true torch song.

I always get obsessed with these injustices done toward women (and the Chinese, for obvious reasons… Rape of Nanjing, anyone?) — but this one runs a little deeper, since Wong seemed to be boxed in despite her best efforts. This one gets my feminist gas face.

Women are just so reckless — college gals like Geisy Arruda should learn to cover up, knowing that her male counterparts transform from mild-mannered men into beastly rapists-in-waiting when they get a sniff of a curvy blonde.

On Oct. 22, classmates of the 20-year-old tourism student at Sao Paulo’s Bandeirante University harassed, jeered and threatened her with rape when she showed up for class in a hot pink mini-dress.

According to Brazzil Magazine, about 20 female students followed her to the bathroom and attempted to force pants on her. Men trailed, trying to stick cellphone cameras up her skirt. Police officers finally showed up to subdue the ever-growing mob with pepper spray and extract a crying Arruda from a barricaded classroom, while the approximately 700-strong crowd shouted, “Puta! Puta! (Whore! Whore!)”

Then, the poor gal was informed she’d been expelled after the school took out a newspaper ad saying so. (She was reinstated Monday after a media and government uproar.) In contrast, several hecklers were suspended.

In case today’s lesson wasn’t clear, here it is from the university’s lawyer: “She always liked to provoke boys. The problem was not with her clothes, but the way she acts, talks, crosses her legs, and walks.”

I’ve heard that line directed at rape victims: What were you wearing? Why were you walking home alone? How much did you drink? Here’s a question: Does excessive thigh fill men with so much puritanical hysteria that mass rape seems like a reasonable response?

Brazil, like North America, is a hyper-sexualized culture. Though the media makes mention that Brazilian students dress modestly in jeans and tees, Brazil is still the land of Carnaval and G-strings, and skimpy dress is encouraged — that is, apparently, until someone actually does so; then she’s a “puta.”

Women can only take so much objectification before they become just things to ridicule, or — as was the case with a 15-year-old girl in Richmond, Calif., last month — just bodies to gang-rape in a school yard.

Arruda’s harrowing experience is a lesson: Men are not responsible for their actions, therefore women are.

So maybe it’s true what everyone says about university — the most worthwhile lessons are extra-curricular. No textbooks required; just a hot pink mini-dress.

There been times that I thought I couldn’t last for long
But now I think I’m able to carry on
It’s been a long, a long time coming
But I know a change is gonna come

The third season of TV series Mad Men premiered this Sunday; in it, the staff at ad agency Sterling Cooper is jettisoned into 1963.

Oh, what a year it turns out to be: Housewives awaken from domestic stupor when The Feminine Mystique is published; Camelot tumbles; Beatles fans let out hormonal squeals; singer Sam Cooke writes his iconic song “A Change is Gonna Come,” about simmering racial tension in the South.

Mad Men, a show its creator Matthew Weiner has said is feminist, signals the third season’s tone in the opening minutes, when Sterling Cooper’s lone male secretary mutters, “This place is a gynocracy.”

Though Manhattan was a man’s world, the woman’s life is well-explored: they’re passed over for jobs; pre-marital sex makes them “strumpets”; men rape them; they consider abortions.

Consider Christina Hendricks’ account of how viewers reacted to her character Joan’s rape: “People say things like, ‘Well, you know that episode where Joan sort of got raped?’ Or they say rape and use quotation marks with their fingers … It illustrates how similar people are today, because we’re still questioning whether it’s a rape.”

I’ve heard viewers, male and female, fawn about the secretive Don Draper, but even the intelligent ones are in awe of this lying, cheating ass. Truly, inexplicably, women are drawn to his misogyny, and men want to be that.

I chuckled when Joan shows the new-girl secretary Peggy to her typewriter. “It looks complicated, but the men who designed it made it simple enough for a woman to use,” she assures her.

Mad Men was set in a world on the cusp of change, edging its way to free love, desegregation and violent war — but they clung, and still we cling, to antiquated notions.

Every generation has its revolution, and ours is now. I know a change is gonna come, oh yes it is. It’s Afghanistan, where a law was passed that allows men to starve their wives for denying them sex. It’s Carleton University allegedly accusing one of its female students of “asking for” a sex assault by working late at night in a secluded lab. It’s women being interrogated before receiving birth control, the morning-after pill or an abortion.

Mad Men is a mirror, and if we look into it, we will see that our turmoil is as it always has been.

“I don’t like you like that.”