Masking Gendered Slavery in Late Modern Canada

Note: In this paper I will use the terms male/man and female/women to reference perceived sex/gender congruency within the aspects of historical and current common and academic subscription to binary language that otherwise fails to acknowledge gender variance, intersex persons, and sex/gender diversity in their discourses.

Neo-liberal political and economic ideologies regulate industries, increase economic integration and have become increasingly transnational, which has contributed to Western cultural diffusion. Relaxed regulations and reduced state participation has increased the expansion of businesses across borders as well as exploited and created inequalities among people based on ethnicity, gender, and race. As poverty has increased migrations have increased. Capitalism shifts the responsibility of wealth and well being to the individual, which distracts capitalist western societies from recognizing the often violent and destructive processes of a system that relies on inequalities and human suffering. Human populations are categorized geographically and ethnically, across gender, race, and class. The United Nations and other Global organizations have helped nations in building policies that, at least on paper, foster equitable treatment of migrating bodies between nations. Often however these policies fail to become practice or they are circumvented by complex legal instruments and agreements between nations. The abolishment of slavery in the Western world only happened on paper, it has and still is in common practice today, it is simply covert or disguised as necessary and valuable labour practices that are of benefit to its participants.

Canada has over its history as a nation employed slave labour in various forms in Canada building efforts and to fulfill market needs. Migration patterns and immigration practices are deeply gendered. Post World War II women nurses from the Caribbean migrated to Canada under temporary conditions to provide cheap nursing, Mexican men have been coming to Canada for more than two decades as temporary farm labour, these are examples of the systemic exploitation of people that the Canadian Immigration system will never allow to have access to citizenship, or the same rights extended to persons legally living here in permanence. This paper will explore the history of migrant labour in Canada, and the Temporary Foreign Worker Program as being late modern slavery of migrant labour across gender and race that represents social problems. The social problem is not the migration of labour rather Canada’s continuing colonial attitudes exploiting gendered migrants.

Historically Canada has used migrants as cheap labour in the enterprise of colonialism and the establishment of the territories that geographically represent Canada today. The era of the steam engine saw the development of rail systems across North America. These rail systems were more than just methods of transport for people and goods, they were used to establish claim to lands and territories, to bridge communities, stimulate economic growth, and as political tools. The Canadian Pacific Railway would not have been possible if not for the thousands of Chinese migrants that performed the dangerous and back-breaking labour necessary to run across the plains and traverse mountains and valleys.

The high demand for cheap Chinese labour in the latter half of the 19^th century coincided with the invasion of Western powers into China resulting in diaspora of impoverished Chinese peoples. Canada exploited the migration of Chinese peoples, but only male/men. Canada’s racist ideologies supported the exploitation of the inferior Chinese male/men but needed to prevent their availability to reproduce while in Canada because Canada did not want to pollute the population with racial impurities. Therefore immigration policies severely limited the entrance of Asian female/women into Canada. There were also strict anti-miscegenation laws as well to prevent exogamous relationships between racialized peoples.

The wives and children of the Chinese male/men who came to Canada to improve the lives of their families often never made it back to their homes. The female/women left behind in China due to sex/gender discrimination laws in Canada, and other countries, created great hardships as China went through economic instability and social change in the late 19^th century. Female/women in China were faced with supporting themselves and their children, however this was a difficult task as female/women suffered crushing oppression that severely limited their ability to cope without their husbands. The ethnically Chinese female/women who did enter Canada during the mid to late 19^th century suffered as well. In part they were fetishized as ultra-feminine in their decorative clothing, small feet, and were viewed by Western male/men as extremely submissive. These women were heavily discriminated against as the white settlers who also viewed these female/women as the bodies that could produce more generations of inferior Chinese peoples whom “the Prime Minister of Canada [John A. MacDonald] is quoted as referring to the Chinese as ‘an alien race in every sense that would not and could not be expected to assimilate with our Arian population’(Berton. 1971: 195)”(Baureiss. 1987).

The male/men who migrated to Canada seeking to improve their lives and the lives of their families were no better off. The Chinese workers were given the most dangerous jobs, were paid the lowest wages comparatively to white labourers, and were faced with constant discrimination, racial slurs, and harassment as well as segregation from non-Chinese residences and businesses. It is estimated that for every mile of track one Chinese labourer died. The irony is that the Chinese labourers were performing the most dangerous and arduous tasks that are generally associated with hyper-masculinity not reflected in the Canadian stereo-type of the small, inadequate, desexualized Chinese male/man. The exploitation of Chinese male/men extended beyond their physical labourer as “they were forced to pay numerous expenses, including clothing, room rent, tools, fares, revenue and road taxes, religious fees, doctors’ bills and the cost of drugs”(Lee 1994) leaving them very little to send home to their families. The low pay and expenses also left these workers unable to afford the return trip back to China and were left stranded in a racist country where they lived the remainder of their lives alone and often in poverty.

Immediately after the completion of the Canadian Pacific Railway the need for Chinese male/men labourers declined and the immigration laws adapted to quell the migration of Chinese workers. Initially the Canadian government installed a head tax that did not seem to prevent Chinese male/men wanting access to Canada and in 1923 the government responded with more strict measures, the Chinese Exclusion Act, which barred entry into Canada to all ethnic Chinese persons.

“In 1947, 95% of [Chinese persons]were older males”(Gunter 1987). Statistics show that the immigration devices that discriminated sex and gender in Chinese migration to Canada in the 19^th and early 20^th century along with the ‘Chinese Exclusion Act’ had the desired affect of preventing the growth of the ethnic Chinese population in white settler Canada. The disproportionate male/man Chinese population of the mid-20^th century was aged and isolated. In the 1960′s the immigration laws changed and “by 1981, the sex-ratio equalized”(Baureiss1987). Although female/women and families had now entered Canada and families had been partially reunited there were still cleavages along gender coupled with the persisting racialization of Chinese, who would never be considered Canadian by the white population.

Female/women perceived or legitimately Chinese in the post 1967 introduction of the point system of immigration in Canada were heavily oppressed in Canada and within their own ethnic communities. Female/women migrating from China who were highly educated often entered Canada not as skilled workers but rather as dependants to their husbands or under the immigration family class status. “Hence the immigration processes reproduce and structure inequality within in the family by rendering one spouse (typically the wife) legally dependent on the other”(Ng, 1993). The institutionalized racist and sexist practices female/women from China, and women of colour as well, experienced migrating to Canada in the late 20^th century were devalued and diverted into unstable wage labour positions and forced to be dependent upon men or family members.

The history of Chinese immigration and labour market patterns in Canada in considering gendered immigration policies serves as an example of institutionalized sexism and racism as well as a template of the current practices of the Temporary Foreign Worker Program. The Temporary Foreign Worker Program fluctuates based on employer needs, and race, gender, and nationalities are determining factors in who is able to apply and participate in the program. There are clear gendered divisions in the work performed by imported labourers as well. Male/men are primarily engaged in agricultural and mining labour wheres female/women are typically streamed into live-in care giving positions and domestic work. “Intersections of three key axes of labour market division: gender, race and immigrant status”(Fuller, S., & Vosko, L. F. 2008). The ways in which gender is divided in the migrant labour markets shows that gendered markets are still functioning despite assurances from various sectors of Western society that equity has diminished gender barriers.

The Temporary Foreign Worker Program is importing cheap exploitable labour for industries that can not be relocated abroad to take advantage of workers within their indigenous communities. For example, a mine in Northern British Columbia lacks the mobility to gain from global labour markets, and Canada, despite its multicultural world image, historically and presently buffers the Canadian citizenship in the interests of the hegemony of whiteness thusly creating precarious labour markets intended for immigrants and people of colour who will work cheaply without the workplace safety policies, unions, and labour rights. The Temporary Foreign Worker Program has no limits and it is at the discretion of Immigration Canada. Since the year 2000 Canada has seen large intakes of temporary workers “from 110,476 in 2003, to reach 201,057 in 2007”(Byl. 2010) contrasted to the 131,248 people who entered under the Economic Class for permanent residence in 2007. The relaxed rules and procedures for admitting temporary workers is also cause for concern as the promise of possible permanent residence, money, contractual completion bonuses, or immediate termination with subsequent deportation often prevents immigrants from reporting unsafe conditions, exploitation, extortion, sexual assault, abuse, and conflicts with employers, supervisors, managers, Canadian co-workers, and immigrant or other temporary workers coupled with the lack of resources made available to temporary workers causes gender differences and suffering.

When considering the gendering of imported labour female/women have been typically employed in domestic work and as live-in caregivers. Live-in caregivers are told that they will be able to apply for permanent residence after 24 months of employment occurring within the last 48 months. The policies are in favour of employers and exposes workers to precarious work, and living, environments and “a gendered analysis of the program shows that the women who come to Canada as caregivers continue to face vulnerability and exploitation because of key structures of the program, most importantly the live-in requirement”(Brickner, R. K., & Straehle, C. 2010). The live-in requirement gives the employer 24-hour access to their employees and allows employers to potentially exploit employees, having them work extra unpaid hours or perform unrelated tasks such as pet care and other duties, “This is exacerbated when living-in blurs the caregivers’ status, leading some employers to think of them as family who want to work, rather than employees with set hours (Pratt, 2004 , pp. 99–100)”(Brickner, R. K., & Straehle, C. 2010). As well there is no governing body that examines the living conditions that the employers provide, meaning the employees live-in conditions may be sub-standard in Canadian contexts. There is also no option to live apart from the employer and place of work. The visa for the employee is tied directly to the employer, not the caregiver, and according to Human Resources and Skills Development Canada the employer may also charge for meal and rent. For instance, in British Columbia the employer may collect up to, but “no more than $325/month for room and board”(Government of Canada. 2013).

However, there is an advantage to the Live-in Caregiver Program comparatively to agricultural, mining, and other Temporary Foreign Worker Programs that are mostly dominated by male/men because “the LCP is the only federal and one of the few international programs for ‘‘low -skilled’’ TFWs that offers an explicit path to permanent residency and citizenship”(Brickner, R. K., & Straehle, C. 2010). There are many who take advantage of this feature in the program, however, it is a feature that puts the employees in more vulnerable positions due to their willingness to complete their work periods to fulfill permanent resident application requirements without incident.

The other low-skilled temporary labour field is agricultural and it is disproportionately minority male/men who occupy these positions in Canada(figure 1). Similar to the Live-in Caregiver Program the employees “face significant impediments to labour market and social integration, including work permits that are tied to employers, weak enforcement of contracts, language barriers and social isolation, especially for the large share of these workers who live in employer-provided housing”(Hennebry. 2012). The need for workers in Canada’s agricultural sector has risen in the last decade with increased production of feed for food-animal crops and intensive agriculture.

As with the other Temporary Foreign Worker programs workers enter Canada and work the duration of their contract without their families isolating people from their support networks. Since most of the agricultural labour migrants are male/men this not only deprives families of their fathers and husbands but also stresses families. The stress put on families is due to the absence of the male/men who, in a patriarchal society, are instrumental in the functional capabilities of the family. As shown with the migrant Chinese workers of the late 19^th century, the women and children left behind generally suffer. The female/women who are wives and mothers to migrant male/men live like single mothers for the duration of their husband’s contracts disrupting the family unit.

The agricultural workers also have additional expenses, sometimes before coming to Canada to work such as paying recruiters, purchasing appropriate work gear, and more.Although these expenses are not endorsed by Human Resources and Development Canada, they are not strictly monitored either, especially in foreign lands. As Byl explains,

They were often promised that they would be able to immigrate to Canada. As well, these people typically paid for all of their own expenses. In many cases, they came to Canada only to find that there were no jobs and absolutely no support system for them, resulting in some TFWs being caught in the nightmare of having to work illegally simply to survive. Some were deported as a result. People often spent their life savings to get to Canada. Some borrowed money to pay the recruiters and needed to repay those recruiters and lending institutions money, even in cases where they were laid off upon arrival in Canada. It should be pointed out that in some countries, people can still go to jail for civil debts, and the Government of Canada failed to do anything to assist these people and to eliminate the abuse(Byl. 2010).

The regulations that could be implemented to monitor TFWP are at the discretion of the province, Manitoba is the only province to monitor employers of temporary foreign workers. This is interesting as Manitoba only had 65 temporary foreign workers in 2009, contrasted to the 16,785 temporary workers employed in Ontario in the same year(HRSDC 2009; Byl. 2010).

Canada has an increased dependency on temporary foreign labour that relies on gendered migration funnelling male/men disproportionately into hazardous and labourious positions and female/women into feminized domestic work, and a majority of all temporary foreign workers are also visible minorities increasing their social jeopardy as well as decreasing the likelihood of their approval to enter Canada as a future permanent residents in Canada where the hegemony is white. Despite multicultural programs and policies Canada still seems to protect Canadian culture as being anglo and white and to a lesser degree French and white.

Most of the discourses on migrant labour reflect upon the employment capacities and recruitment of Canadian citizens. It is not that Canadians are incapable of performing the work that migrant labour performs, neither is it an issue of training as most migrant labour positions do not require high-skill, nor is it a lack of available Canadian labourers; the fact is that positions awarded to migrant labourers are paid poorly and hide in the shadows of employment standards and safety. However, many of the studies discuss Canadian labour as a homogenous group and fails to make distinctions about the diverse social groups in Canada, especially Aboriginal peoples. Canada has systemically racialized and marginalized aboriginals and the labour practices in Canada, informed by stereo-types, has devalued the availability of aboriginal labour across all genders.

Canada’s labour markets are heavily gendered and racialized. Male/men of various minority and immigration statuses are directed, through covert mechanisms, devalued educational credentials, and discrimination into positions that are often hazardous, low paying, and prevent vertical mobility. While female/women are diverted into feminized sectors such as nursing and caregiving. Canada fails to approach immigration policy and programs with a gendered lens thereby increasing the vulnerability of male/men and female/women entering Canada as temporary workers who are obviously divided along gender. Canada is complicit in practices contrary to constitutional ideologies that historically and presently exploit people based on race, gender, and class.

References

Baureiss, G. (1987). Chinese immigration, chinese stereotypes, and chinese labour. Canadian Ethnic Studies, 19(3), 15.

Brickner, R. K., & Straehle, C. (2010). The missing link: Gender, immigration policy and the live-in caregiver program in canada. Policy and Society, 29(4), 309-320. doi:10.1016/j.polsoc.2010.09.004 

Calliste, A. (1993). Women of “exceptional merit”: Immigration of caribbean nurses to canada (1950-1962). Canadian Journal of Women and the Law, 6(1), 85.   

Edmunds, K., Berman, H., Basok, T., Ford-Gilboe, M., & Forchuk, C. (2011). The health of women temporary agricultural workers in canada: A critical review of the literature. The Canadian Journal of Nursing Research = Revue Canadienne De Recherche En Sciences Infirmières, 43(4), 68. 

Fuller, S., & Vosko, L. F. (2008). Temporary employment and social inequality in canada: Exploring intersections of gender, race and immigration status. Social Indicators Research, 88(1), 31-50. doi:10.1007/s11205-007-9201-8 

Guida Man, Gender, work and migration: Deskilling Chinese immigrant women in Canada, Women’s Studies International Forum, Volume 27, Issue 2, June–July 2004, Pages 135-148, ISSN 0277-5395, http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.wsif.2004.06.004 (http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277539504000172)

“Hiring Live-in Caregivers and Nannies.” Government of Canada, Human Resources and Skills Development Canada. N.p., n.d. Web. 16 June 2013.

Jenna Hennebry. (2012). Permanently temporary? agricultural migrant workers and their integration in canada. IRPP Study, (26), 0_1. 

Lee, M. (1994, May 21). CPR built on corpses of chinese laborers. The Vancouver Sun. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com.ezproxy.library.uvic.ca/docview/243186900?accountid=14846

Yessy Byl. (2010). Temporary foreign workers in canada: A disposable workforce? Canadian Issues, , 96.  

Gender Enforcement

Does literacy contribute to gender enforcement?

Gender: The Pedagogy of Normative Conformity

Gender: The Pedagogy of Normative Conformity

Daphne Shaed

University of Victoria

Sociology 281

In Western society there exists a primary elemental epistemology that is programmed in to every child. This programming begins even before the child is born, in fact, it begins even before conception. Gender. This seemingly simple and highly misunderstood concept divides, diverts, cleaves, and hacks western society and culture into two very visible branches and ignores diversity and difference. It can also be said that many other cultures and societies apart from the West have similar institutions and processes due to the emulative effects of colonialism and transnationalism as well as their own historical institutions. The practices and processes that are experienced in society both macro and micro are informed by gender. Human beings are categorically fragmented into opposites, regulated and policed in their categories, and manufactured to serve as subjects of their gendered otherness throughout their lives. This dichotomy is far from equal, it is not a side by side division but a vertical division with feminine under the masculine. Children are firstly gendered and spend early childhood learning their function in society as dictated by their gendered genitals. Gender is so powerful that it informs the parents of the child’s life path with transcendental authority.

Gender is a socially constructed identity based on genital presentation at birth that children are inculcated with to serve as a pedagogical tool to temper them to normative conformity in all other aspects of society. Social cohesion and viability is propelled by the ability to conform to collective norms and avert deviance that may collapse cultural capital. In every social position there exists standards of behaviour, compliance with those standards is conformity and normative, while departure from the model is deviant and punishable by the dynamics within the group. Violations of normative standards do not always result in deviance labelling or loss of status, there are degrees of social repercussions depended upon the act of deviance, its continuation or arrest, and who is committing the violation of norms. “Behaviour that violates social constructed reality may produce a variety of responses that help to maintain the sense of order”(Deutschmann 2007; Scott 1972). Gender is the basis for adjunct identities that are taught to children in various ways, particularly through technology.

GENDER ADJUNCTS

The exposure to gender informs the child of their ability, dress, actions, mannerisms, body, physical play, imaginative play, family roles, future employment, sexuality, status, and most importantly a lesson in natural kind. The teaching of acceptance of identity based on accident of birth is a deciding factor for a child’s life chances in western society intersecting with class, ethnicity, perceived race, religion, socio-economic status, and more, all of which are constructed on gender and each having varying rules and guidelines regarding gender.

 

Some children will undergo varied gender training, especially if they not native to Canada or their families have strong ethnic bonds. Within families perpetuating culture departing from the Canadian hegemony the ethnic household environments represent roles for women, and roles for men along with clothing, symbols, behaviour, household chores and responsibilities that are all relative to the gender of the child in these cultural institutions. There are also similar roles and rules relative to the social expectations of children in a Canadian context. These institutions are sometimes existing in parallel and dependent on various factors such as the parents ethnicity and place. If the parents are from two separate cultures, neither of which is the hegemonic culture of their residence(Canada), then a child may be exposed to three different, and possibly conflicting or agreeing aspects of gender and their responsibilities in performance of their gender. Messages of importance respective to their parental ethnic roots versus their cultural training from social interactions may be ultimately confusing and cause multiple and varying gender ideologies that are situationally dependant or blended across social boundaries. This is similar to religious aspects as well. As many religions have clear roles and rules for men and women. In some households the enforcement of gendered religious ideologies coupled with the child’s piety can lead to very strict ideas regarding gender.

Gender seems to be the identifying factor in determining various other identities in life. A child that accepts gender without question as natural, immutable, and unchanging will likely accept further programming that is adjunct to gender without question. Gender informs on all other identities and traits and is constructed with appeal to gender due to the authoritative ability of gender. So, a young person gendered as a girl and accepting of this identity as natural becomes educated about her responsibilities, matures into a young woman, and according to hegemony gets married to a man, has children, pursues a career while pulling double duty at home, and imparts all her knowledge onto her children and it continues. Gender is still the most authoritative aspect our lives, and also, at times, the most invisible.

The authoritative aspects of gender informs young women that their bodies are not meant for risky personal sport for instance. This is exemplified with the lack of mixed or women’s football leagues, or by the ban on women participants in olympic ski jumping, or women banned from combat roles in the military. Men however are encouraged to engage in risk such as competitive contact sports and combat in military service and avoid activities associated with the feminine. But the rules sometimes conflict with each other, and no one is normative all the time in every situation. One way in which the rules conflict is the gendered practice of driving. There are many jokes about women’s poor driving habits, and yet when cars are for sale it is a positive attribute of the vehicle if the previous owner was a ‘lady.’ This is very interesting and curious given the stereo-type of women’s hazardous driving habits.

To further investigate the power of gender influence the domestic sphere must be included as it is the environment in which we learn gendered behaviour that translates to our own future home life. The authority of gender to inform and enforce is present currently and historically and a good example is the vacuum cleaner. It is a staple appliance in every household across Canada despite class or other social status sets. The vacuum replaced the excruciatingly physical, and time consuming, household chore of hanging and beating rugs performed by women. The vacuum was not marketed to everyone, it was heavily marketed to women in a very gendered way. The vacuum is advertised as strong, powerful, rigid, tough, hard working, efficient, and always available. These words contain all the elements of the hegemonic masculinity present in our society. While simultaneously being advertised as kind on the women’s frame and musculature, with ease of use, and being light weight. Couple the gendering of the vacuum with the learned incompetence of men to perform household tasks and contradictions rise to the surface. The feminine gendered vacuum’s operation mystifies the masculine user, until that is the vacuum fails in its mechanical performance, and then it becomes an adjunct of masculinity to repair it. The operation of the vacuum in keeping a clean and tidy home is feminine and the purchase and maintenance is the domain of the masculine. Look at household cleaning supplies and advertisement and you will see that women dominate the handle of the mop and vacuum.

LEARNING GENDER THROUGH TECHNOLOGY

Social protocols are now reinforced more than ever with the developments of personal computing and the ages at which children are now being exposed to devices that are connected to the vastness of the internet with little or no protection. This is problematic because “children assume the postures and trappings of culturally presented, and commercially driven, adult male and female identities”(Siltanen and Doucet 2008). Not only are children exposed to, and taking on adult gender and sex identities earlier than in previous generations they are also increasingly individualized. The departure from group relations leads to lack of reciprocity and an inflation of the inauthentic social self through the virtualization of self, and a more rigid identity formation.

The loss of vernacular realities(Franklin, [1990] 1999) and the abundance of constructed realities(Franklin, [1990] 1999) is less flexible in nature because the information is incomplete. Franklin describes the vernacular realities as our everyday life, the private and the personal. Whereas the constructed realities “come to us through the works of fiction to the daily barrage of advertizing and propaganda… descriptions and interpretations of those situations that are considered archetypal rather than representative”(Franklin, [1990] 1999). These constructed realities become individually reconstructed through subjective processes and can become intertwined with vernacular realities. The mingling of these realities can create a sense of experience that has only occurred in the abstract processes of the mind. Nonetheless the learned realities can become manufactured experiences as if the viewer was actually there. Learning identities from the truncated glimpses of information depositories, such as the internet and internalizing them into vernacular realities leads to incomplete identities in children that are guarded and rigid due to lack of information. The incompleteness does not inform on how to transition or how to cultivate and evolve in identity through time.

The vastness and exposure to technological devices and information however is only one part of gender training in late modernity. At present it is very difficult to theorize about the impact of more recent technologies on human kind because we can not divorce ourselves from the present experience. In time others may be able to develop an idea of the impact of fast paced progression of the last fifty years, but it is hard to write history when we are living it. Maybe the answer to late modern gender training in children and gender in general can be explored through other events in history that may have had profound social impact on social organization and cultures.

A good place to start may be the invention of the Gutenberg printing press followed by the industrial revolution, the spread of capitalism, and common literacy we have seen a strengthening in dichotomous gender and gendered oppression. It is possible that the root of masculine centric gender conformity, inequalities, division of the sexes, and gender development lay in something that is so seemingly innate to us that it has, for the most part, been unexamined as a mechanism in socialization. That part of us that seems historically imaginable through time is language. We pride ourselves on our abilities to communicate and we are taught that there was a great leap forward in human development when ideas that were just sounds in the air were contextualized in a form that could travel through time and space without the speaker; the written word is perhaps the most important invention in our collective history. Through time the ability to write also became the benchmark of a societies intellectual and cultural development. Colonizers used the absence of writing as a sign of inferiority and language has often been used as a tool of oppression.

What does writing have to do with how children are taught gender? Interestingly, and within the scope of this paper, Leonard Shlain, an American surgeon, wrote a book called “The Alphabet Versus the Goddess”(1999). Shlain postulates that gender difference, and more surprisingly patriarchy, has developed from the invention of writing systems and common literacy. The way in which we interpret the world in our minds becomes left brain, right brain, or conjunctive between hemispheres. The left brain is the centre of logic, reason, order, structure, difference, and hierarchical. While the right brain is creative, imaginative, and heuristic. When we talk and listen we are using the entire brain in a conjunctive way that enables cooperation between hemispheres. When we draw and paint or look at our environment we are right and conjunct brain function. Viewing our environment and interpreting patterns and colours uses the rod and cones of our eyes and employs multiple brain functions in both hemispheres. However, when we read and write words we are only using the cones in our eyes which are theorized to be interpreted in the left brain, as well we are using our left brain to produce the words and write. Not all persons are right handed, but maybe the high rates of right handedness may be explained in the theory of left brain dominance.

Shlain suggests that “a culture adopting an alphabet would denigrate right hemispheric values because the alphabet is a left hemispheric mode of reception”(Shlain, 1999). Then the early childhood ambiguity to gender performance might be explained by the lack of literacy. As children become literate they develop into stricter categorization and compliance partly through written language skills such as reading and writing.

CONCLUSION

We are slowly departing from the ideas of binary gender, from that oppressive and unimaginative dichotomy that bound previous generations. I have kept my mother in mind while writing this essay. She was a nurse for most of her life. She provided a nurturing caring hand to others in their time of need. Nurturing after all comes naturally to women, or at least that is still the pervasive idea. I once asked my mother why she became and nurse, her answer surprised me. She told me she became a nurse because she did not want to be a teacher or a secretary. My mother is not that old, meaning this was not long ago in some distant past, it is and still is within the living memory of many generations. There has been subtle changes and advancements in gender practices and processes over the last few decades, but I have found that the dichotomy has divided further than ever before. This is not a negative, rather the expansion has created a larger middle ground between genders, which is where most people are in the spectrum of gender.

Referring back to Shlain’s work it may be that literacy has had the latent effect of solidifying gender and gendered hierarchies, but he also notes that viewing artwork and images is a right brain activity, and so, with the portable computing ubiquity in the West and the nature of social media which a great number of us use daily, hourly, constantly, we are exposed to more and more imagery than previously. Maybe there will be a rebalancing between the hemispheres of our brains as the ways in which we communicate with one another develop through technology.

References

Connell, R. W. Gender. Cambridge, UK: Polity, 2002. Print.

Deutschmann, Linda Bell. Deviance & Social Control. Toronto: ITP Nelson, 1998. Print.

“Dr. Leonard Shlain Discusses His Book Alphabet versus the Goddess.” Bodhi Tree Bookstore. N.p., n.d. Web. 09 May 2013.

Lorber, Judith, and Lisa Jean Moore. Gendered Bodies: Feminist Perspectives. Los Angeles, CA: Roxbury Pub., 2007. Print.

Siltanen, Janet, and Andrea Doucet. Gender Relations in Canada: Intersectionality and beyond. Don Mills, Ont.: Oxford UP, 2008. Print.

 

Why we need feminism rap!

I cannot sing, but I still have something to say.

Heterosexual Lesbians!

Hi Everyone,

In this video I answer a common question about my sexuality. I deconstruct the language elements and explain my sexual identity.

Disclaimer: The views expressed here are my own and I do not speak on behalf of anyone but myself.

Continuous Breaching Experiment

An update about my thoughts on breaching and ethnomethodology(Harold Garfinkel). Continuous breaching promotes change in the social order.

Robert Frost meets Wendy Cope in Love is Loneliness

 

 Love is Loneliness

 

Love and loneliness should not be treated as respective antonyms, they are in fact subordinate to one another in many ways. One can be well loved and simultaneously lonely. The fear of loneliness is often found in love, leaking from love’s vessel as anxiety and jealously. This essay will examine the two poems; one poem from the well known Robert Frost, the other from the lesser acclaimed Wendy Cope. Frost’s “The Silken Tent” and Cope’s “Lonely Hearts” may seem too different to compare, one is serious and heartfelt while the other is almost satirical and comical. Nonetheless, these two poems share more in common that can be gleamed in a single reading. Both poems feature a theme of seeking perfection while diverging in time and space.

 

 

In contrast to one another Frost’s “Silken Tent” could be a very erotic poem sculpted in the polite vernacular of the day, whereas Cope’s “Lonely Hearts” is much more open and sexualized with direct language. To adequately argue this contrasting point Frost’s poem must first be deconstructed and the eroticism illuminated.

 

 

“She is as in a field a silken tent”(Frost) may be the illusion of silk lingerie, which is a thin and light material that will gently puff when moved through even still air. If the women were atop her lover her movements could create the metaphor of the tent. Her arms to her sides for balance as “guys… gently sways at ease”(Frost). Of course her lover is indicated to be male and presumes his penis to be the centre of the act, “… its supporting central cedar pole… its pinnacle to heavenward”(Frost). Frost is also implying that it is sex between people who are not necessarily attached in the traditional sense of the time, “seems to owe naught to any single cord”(Frost). Maybe the woman here is dating and pursuing others suitors, or perhaps she is a carefree spirit who desires to remain so as she may be the “capriciousness of summer air”(Frost) that fears the restraints of love and “of the slightest bondage is made aware”(Frost) confirms the woman’s aversion from the ties of a relationship.

 

 

Cope’s poem is overtly sexual and therefore easier to outline. Lines such as “Male biker seeks female for touring fun”(Cope) are easily considered innuendo, fun being sex, touring meaning travel and possibly out of doors sexual acts. “Gay vegetarian whose friends are few”(Cope) is in itself sexualized as the identity “gay” is a sexual identity and leads the reader to think of sex, and more specifically same sex intercourse. The third stanza is the height of modern eroticism with the first line, “Perhaps bisexual woman, arty, young”(Cope), implying a women up for sexual adventures. More than just a woman, a young woman, youth being a eroticized component in Western culture. Artsy suggests liberal and open minded, and the use of “perhaps” implies the further eroticism of inexperience and possible virginity. The poem reads from social sexual neutrality, the bikers and the gay man, to the extreme liberal and highly eroticized experimenting bisexual, to the fringes of conservatism. The fourth and fifth stanzas feature the more conservative elements of sexuality and sex in the broad social sense, “Successful, straight and solvent… attractive Jewish lady with a son”(Cope), is a complicated set of identities that imply the more orthodox view of sex as a copulative device secondary to other considerations. Then the extreme of constraint, possibly asexual, being the “Libran, inexperienced and blue” who is in need of a “slim, non-smoker, under twenty-one”(Cope).

 

 

Speaking to the writing style Frost’s poem is a sonnet, consisting of 14 lines of iambic pentameter, whereas Cope uses the villanelle based on the repeating rhyme of “Can someone make my simple wish come true?
Do you live in North London? Is it you?”(Cope). Both poems adhere to the rules of their stylings and therefore there is really nothing of interest in that the poems are not breaking new poetic ground or fusing forms. Frost uses some literary devices such as alliteration as exemplified with the line “signifies the sureness of the soul”(Frost), Cope does not employ such tools.

 

 

Comparatively both poems speak of sex and contrast in the linguistic tools to illuminate their subject matter. Frost uses covert language, a code, to illustrate the erotic that was so desired in his time while simultaneously any allusion to sex was considered vulgar and disgusting. Cope has a little linguistic freedom in her writing a couple of decades later. Cope is writing in a time of sexual exploration and new found sexual freedom of women, and to a limited extent non-heterosexual identities. Maybe Frost was writing about two men but conformed his language to hetero dynamics, doubtful as if this was the intention the poem could have been crafted with sex ambiguity. These poems are temporally contiguous and yet very different and these poems really reflect the drastic change between the adjacent periods and the culture of sex and sexuality, one is the sexual appetite of a woman who is culturally cautious and bound by politeness and respect making discretion a burdensome necessity and the other is a glimpse of the people’s sexual desires being unbound by discretion, allowing the playful nature of mutual pleasuring to come forth in a whimsical way.

 

Daphne Shaed <3

A Time of Malevolence: The Khmer Rouge

Not to long ago the people of Cambodia, a small nation in mainland asia, experienced a brutal genocide that was orchestrated by one man, his name is Pol Pot¹, leader of the Khmer Rouge. The brutality of this short lived regime from 1975 to 1979 is still within the living memory of citizens today, who lives has been forever scarred by sheer cruelty. Pol Pot had a dream of a Cambodia that would be self-sufficient, agrarian, and classless. When the Khmer Rouge came to power in 1975 Pol Pot reset the cultural calendar to year zero, a political ideology that required the complete destruction of society, so that the new revolutionary order could begin. The leading ideology of the Khmer Rouge and their path to power was Nationalism and an independent Cambodia free from colonial forces and interference from other nations. The mechanisms that propelled the Khmer Rouge into power was the Cambodian Coup of 1970 that removed elected King Sihanouk from power, a pledge of support from King Sihanouk to the Khmer Rouge in the early 1970′s, and the American war in Vietnam and their military movements against Cambodia.

At the young age of 18 years old Norodom Sihanouk was crowned King of Cambodia on 25^th April 1941 under French colonial rule. King Sihanouk, like many other monarchs in colonial states were powerless figureheads that served as aids in subduing or pacifying the people of the countries the colonists occupied. Sihanouk surprised many in negotiating the return of Cambodia to the monarch from the French. This was in part due to good timing as the French were attempting to reclaim many colonies after the end of World War Iim but French rule in Indochina was crumbling as communism gain a solid foothold. Sihanouk was living in exile in Thailand under threat from the French in the early post-war years, but in 1953 Cambodia was granted independence from France and Sihanouk returned to command his kingdom. It should be noted that Cambodia’s new found independence was not won solely by Sihanouk, others such as Son Ngoc Thanh² and the Viet Minh were important contributors.

Son Ngoc Thanh was one of the few in Cambodia to receive an education under French rule. The French made no efforts to educate the native Cambodians, and only a select few were chosen to attend the French established schools. Illiteracy among Cambodians, maintained by the French, prevented nationalism from taking hold in Cambodia juxtaposed to other South East Asian countries at the time. Son Ngoc Thanh used his education in co-operation with other intellectuals to try and develop a nationalist attitude in their fellow Cambodian by publishing, in 1936, the first Khmer language newspaper. The editorial was called Nagaravatta (Angkor Wat) and discussed the trending ideologies of the Khmer intellectual elite. Discourses on the affects of French colonial rule on Cambodians, economic exploitation, and Vietnamese dominance in public service positions highlighted the need for Cambodians to adopt a nationalist attitude in the interest of their future. either that or slowly forfeit their Khmer identity to oppressive forces.

On March 9^th, 1945 the Japanese, having invaded Cambodia during the 2^nd World War, dissolved the French Colonial administration that had been allowed to remain in the beginning; Japan encouraged Cambodia to claim independence. Son Ngoc Thanh, who had been fled Cambodia in 1942 to escape French prosecution for published editorials in the Nagaravatta, returned to Cambodia in August, 1945 and was appointed Prime Minister under King Sahanouk. Unfortunately this was not to last long as the French regained control of the region months later and promptly arrested Son Ngoc Thanh as a Japanese collaborator and exiled to France under house arrest.

Post-decolinization in 1953 many Cambodians called for King Sihanouk to abdicate the throne and open the country to democratic elections. Less than two years after negotiating independence King Sihanouk made another surprising move and abdicated his throne in favour of democratic elections. However, it should be noted that although King Sihanouk may have abdicated his throne he did not release power, he abdicated the throne in favour of his father Norodom Suramarit, probably to give credit to his run in the first elections in Cambodia.

Upon abdication the now Prince Sihanouk set up his own political party called the Sangkum Reastr Niyum or the Popular Socialist Community. In 1955 the first elections were held and Sangkum suspiciously won all 91 seats in government against seven other parties and several independents. Two years later Prince Sihanouk would become the Head of State after the death of his father in 1960. Sinhanouk was also the permanent representative for Cambodia at the United Nations. While much of Asia was embroiled in violent conflicts and war Cambodia took a neutral position in their foreign affairs and as much as possible tried to stay out of international affairs.

Sihanouk was careful to protect Cambodia from being drawn into conflict. Unfortunately Sihanouk made poor choices in his quest to remain neutral and painted Cambodia as a threat and a target for the Americans fighting in neighbouring Vietnam in the 1960′s. Sihanouk allied with China and North Vietnam and made concessions that allowed the North Vietnamese to set up bases in Eastern Cambodia, rejected U.S. Aid³, and sold Cambodian rice crop at inflated price to China. Cambodia also opened ports to allow the movement of Chinese weapons and supplies that then were expedited to the North Vietnamese camps in Eastern Cambodia essentially becoming a supply line.

During this time Saloth Sar, later to take the name Pol Pot, was living in the jungles of Eastern Cambodia. Prior to this Saloth Sar was in Paris where he was failing in higher education. Paris was not a loss for Saloth Sar however, because it was Paris where he was introduced to communism. Sar was a member of the Khmer Students Association at the école française d’électronique et d’informatique⁴ where he was on scholarship studying radio electronics. The Khmer Students Association was also a front for a communist cell operating as Cercle Marxist⁵ and part of the the greater movement, le parti communiste français⁶. Sar returned to Cambodia in 1953 under instruction from the Cercle Marxist to contact the Khmer Viet Minh in the Eastern border region between Cambodia and North Vietnam.

Sar worked with a recently founded group going under the name Khmer People’s Revolutionary Party (KPRP). Sar was under the impression that he would be learning guerrilla warfare tactics but the cadre leaders had him and other Cambodians working in jungle gardens and providing labour to the camp. Sar realized soon after that the KPRP was heavily dominated by the North Vietnamese and the party line would not lead to a communist Cambodia without the leadership of a Khmer.

Cambodia was stagnating under the passive repression of Sohanouk and Sar worked to use his party connections to set up base camps for a self-reliant Cambodian communist party that would soon emerge as the Khmer Rouge. The ideology of the Khmer Rouge believed that the rural uneducated peasants were the true proletariat that would be the foundation of the revolution. Sar changed his name to Pol Pot to protect his family and disguise his origins. Pol Pot operated in Phnom Penh as a member of a legitimate political group known as the Pracheachon and taught French literature at a new college, a good front that provided validity as he worked between the official and underground communist parties in Cambodia.

Word was spreading quickly of the KPRP and in 1965 Pol Pot believed that the party had the strength to overthrow Sihanouk and requested assistance from the North Vietnamese but was refused as the North Vietnamese had already established an accord with Sihanouk to use Cambodia border regions in the fight with South Vietnam.

Sihanouk’s policies and practices eventually lead to political dissent and fed the mechanisms that led to conflict between the KPRP and peasants not yet connected to the party. Teachers and professionals had left urban centres to join Pol Pot’s movement, and it was his movement by the mid 1960′s. Peasant uprisings were becoming more and more frequent, usually over the government’s rice prices. By the end of 1968 half of Cambodia was rising against Sihanouk’s government. Pol Pot took full advantage of the discontent in the people and formed an army, but he was unprepared to mount a campaign at this stage due the continuing reluctance of the North Vietnamese who did not want to jeopardize their relationship with Sihanouk.

It would not be Pol Pot who would overthrow Sihanouk’s government however, it would be one of Sihanouk’s own generals. On March 18^th, 1970 while Sihanouk was out of the country General Lon Nol deposed Sihanouk as Head of State use his emergency powers as Prime Minister. Lon Nol then made Sihanouk’s cousin Prince Sirik Matak⁷ Deputy Prime Minister. The coup resulted in the declaration of the Khmer Republic and was supported by most Cambodians, except for peasant farmers who remained overwhelmingly pro-Sihanouk.

Just prior to the coup Prince Matak had travelled to North Vietnam to request the retreat of North Vietnamese forces from the Eastern Cambodian border regions. The North Vietnamese refused and produced documents signed by Sihanouk allowing the North Vietnamese to operate in Cambodia. After the coup Lon Nol and Matak gave the North Vietnamese just days to pull out of Cambodia, after the deadline the new Khmer Republic responded by initiating a purge of all Vietnamese in Cambodia, subsequently thousands of ethnic Vietnamese were murdered.

Soon after Lon Nol and his government took over the Americans began flying sorties over Cambodia to destroy NorthVietnamese bases and supply lines. Innocent Cambodians were being killed in the massive scale of American carpet bombing⁸; the fear of being killed by Amaerican bombs drove the rural population into the Capital, Phnom Penh. In 1972 the bombings by Americans in Cambodia had reached an all-time high in an operation known as Arclight; by the end of 1972 approximately 500,000 tonnes of high explosive ordnance had been dropped in Cambodia. The bombing runs into Cambodia ceased on January 27^th, 1973 after NorthVietnam and the United States of America had signed the Paris Peace Accord ending direct American military involvement in the region. It is difficult to know the exact number of Cambodians killed in American bombing raids, but most reports indicate that approximately 150,000 Cambodians were killed, keep in mind that this number is about 1/8 of those said to be killed by Pol Pot’s Khmer Regime, which should implicate the Americans as mass murders alongside Pol Pot, however International conventions of warfare seem to sanction the Americans murderous actions.

The actions of the Lon Nol government, the still high public opinion and support for Sihanouk from the majority peasant population of Cambodia, and the American’s assault on Cambodia were all factors that drove the people of this torn and terrorized nation into the arms of the Khmer Rouge. The appeal to the Khmer Rouge was furthered by Sihanouk himself when he publicly endorsed the party, this was to be the beginnings of the real terror.

On January 1^st, 1975 the Khmer Rouge began their winter offensive that began by taking the capital, Phnom Penh. Citizens were alerted by radio that Americans were on their way to bomb the city and to evacuate. The city quickly emptied as 2.5 million people, 1 million or more who had fled to city to escape the American bombing campaign, fled into the countryside surrounding the city. When the Khmer Rouge drove into the quiet city Pol Pot’s army was dispatched to clear out anyone who remained, even the hospitals were cleared out. Other cities were cleared out in similar fashion in the following months.

President Lon Nol, who resigned his position in government, fled upon being informed that his name was on the top of the Khmer Rouge’s hit list, a list of the names of seven traitors. Fearing for his life Lon Nol left the country, the other six remaining government officials stayed and faced their aggressors, the six who stayed were promptly executed without trial or procedure. In the months to follow Cambodia dissented into terror under the rule of Pol Pot who set to cleansing the nation of everyone that was not of pure Khmer blood.

The people from the cities were formed into forced labour battalions and made to adopt an agrarian lifestyle. Scholars and intellectuals were imprisoned, interrogated, and murdered without trial. The Khmer Republic military personnel were told to assemble for orders and to meet King Sihanouk, but were instead driven into the countryside and executed along with their wives and children, this was to cleanse those who might still have allegiances for the former government. More than 2 million people were murdered under the regime of Pol Pot between 1975 and 1979. The regime came to an end when the Japanese invaded in 1979 and seized power from the murderous Khmer Rouge.

The circumstances that allowed for the rise of the Khmer Rouge and their reign of terror are deeply complex. Many of the mechanisms that allowed for this atrocity to occur have been discussed or highlighted in this discussion. Ultimately the Cambodian people were a homogenous society in many ways, but French colonial rule and a society that praised individualism led to ideologies that did not include any sense of nationalism. Cambodians seem to have truly appealed to monarchy and had little political interest that really set the stage for corruption and abuse of power in post-colonial Cambodia. It seems their was a faith in their government that is historically rare and it lent the nation to men such as Sihanouk, Lon Nol, and Pol Pot with ambitions of power to seize control over Cambodia. Cambodia is still recovering today from the atrocities under the Khmer Rouge. A Khmer Rouge tribunal has been formed to seek justice for the Khmer genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity. Unfortunately many who suffered under Pol Pot will never know justice as Pol Pot died under house arrest in 1998. However, the healing process for Cambodians continues, and currently live with freely elected democratic government under close scrutiny of the international community.

Bibliography

“A Brief History of the Khmer Rouge.” time.com. Last modified Tuesday, Feb. 17, 2009. http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1879785,00.html.

“History of Cambodia.” fsmitha.com. Last updated unkown. http://www.fsmitha.com/h2/ch23phu.htm.

“Norodom Sihinouk.” britannica.com. Last updated 2012.

http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/418437/Norodom-Sihanouk.

“Pol Pot.” wikipedia.com. last modified on 22 November 2012 at 11:53. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pol_Pot.

“Pol Pot – Inside Evil.” youtube.com https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QxJZS05Md0Y&feature=endscreen.

Ross, Russel, R.. “Cambodia: A Country Study.” Library of Congress U.S.A., 1987. http://countrystudies.us/cambodia/.

Simone, Vera. The Asian Pacific. New York: Longman Publishing, 2001.

1Pol Pot was born Saloth Sar, the eight son of nine children, to a middle class farming family.

2A staunch Cambodian Nationalist and advocate to end French occupation of Cambodia.

3Sihanouk rejected U.S. foreign aid because the U.S. supported Thailand and South Vietnam, which were both considered, by Sihanouk, to be enemies of Cambodia.

4French School of Electronics and Computer Science.

5The Marxist Circle, a small group pushing the principles of Marxism.

6French Communist Party that advocated the communist ideology.

7Prince Sihanouk was chosen by the French to be King over Prince Matak who also had claim to the throne after the death of King Sisowath Monivong.

8Carpet bombing is a term used to describe the effect of the bombing run as being like a carpet of fire and destruction across a target region, this is not a surgical strike method, but rather a method of hit and miss usually employed when an enemy is known to be in an area but their exact position or positions are unknown.

A Woman with a penis; Questions from a psych class 1/3

I answer two of the many questions that were asked during a panel discussion for a psychology class on human sexuality. I will be continuing to answer these questions in the next few videos.

Nicomachean Ethics Book I

Hi there,

This is a summary of Book I. It is incomplete, as I have not yet finished writing on the last part, part V. I will as soon as possible finish this and the remaining books.

Nicomachean Ethics Book I

Subject of Our Inquiry

Part I

Aristotle makes inquiry into the ethical nature and pursuit of ‘good’ in Book I. Consideration is given to the differences of activities and products arising from activities, in so far as the product of activity is of more value than the activity itself isolated from the thing that is produced. Thus “All human activities aim at some good” define by then ends of the activity. Examples of activities are given such as, medical activities aim at good health, shipbuilding aims at creating a sturdy vessel, and military activities aim at victory. There are as many ends as activities, and ends vary dependent to study.

“Some goods are subordinate to others,” essentially means that the elements of the practice or product are motivating factors and means of achieving the more superior goal, “the ends of the master arts to be preferred to all the subordinate ends….”

Part II

Happiness is desired for its own sake and all other endeavours are to satisfy happiness, the highest good. If happiness is the highest good and pursued for its own sake then we have an ultimate goal in mind in all that we do. Aristotle then desires to categorize the pursuit of the highest good, happiness, into a science. Aristotle thinks that since political science has the same goals, the most happiness for the greatest number of people, then the pursuit of the highest good can be individually examined and attained through this master art. Knowledge of good, through the practice of science, will lead to the ends, the highest good.

A subordinate of political science is ethics, and in pursuit of the highest good, with ethics in mind, the community good must be superior to the individual good, although the community and individual good may be identical it is “finer and more god-like to attain” good for community, of which the individual benefits directly as well. This essentially remarks that one ought to try and achieve happiness for the greatest number of people in their own pursuit for happiness.

 

Nature of Science

Part III

Precision is relative to the subject of inquiry, and therefore exactness is not universal but subordinate to the subject of study. In the study of political science and ethics precision is a generalized conclusion and an outline of the truth, which for the educated person will be exact. It would be foolish however to expect the same precision and certainty from tools and measurement brought from mathematics to assess the subjects of political science, as it would be to expect mathematics to yield correct results using the faculties of political science.

Also, the young, without life experience, and the immature, whom are easily affected by their emotion or naive in nature, are not considered to be good students of political science or ethics. A good judge of a subject is specialized in that field of study, and a good judge of common place is one with experiences to reflect upon. In conclusion those best suited for the study, and specialization, of political science and ethics will be those who directed by reason.

 

What Is the Good for Man?

Part IV

Happiness, the greatest good, is subjective and relative to time and place. A person’s definition and motivation of happiness is dependent upon the situation, a person in ill health sees goodness in treatment, and a poor person sees goodness in acquisition of wealth. The average person sees happiness in material, pleasure, and social status. The pursuit of happiness in pleasure is to prefer “a life suitable to beasts,” and to social status those of “superior refinement and of active disposition identify happiness with honour.”

Examining the infinite opinions regarding the constitution of happiness would be useless and impossible, however, we can examine common opinion. Within the process of examination there is a difference in the arguments proceeding from the first principles, Aristotle quotes Plato, “Are we on our way from or to the first principles?” We must proceed with examination using inductive reasoning, rather than deductive reasoning, as the former generalizes what is specifically evident to our own selves whereby we can then develop a generalization about what is good(the fundamental principle), the former does not accomplish this task. Although none of this will be evident unless one has had the proper moral upbringing. It will be sufficiently illuminated to the person of good habit and intelligence that ethics, what is right and just, just is, and will be accepted without conflict.

Part V… Coming Soon.

 

<3 Daphne Shaed