When Your Story Is Abused By History

History is an important thing. I have spent all my adult life studying history in the academy (I was a double major; Gender Studies was my other concetration I did). In school, I learned the most fascinating and dangerous aspect of history is how people can manipulate it to shape the present to be something ugly. History is used to justify some pretty terrible things, one of which happens to be the oppression of Muslim women in Turkey today.

What inspired this post is that the Globe and Mail just did this feature on the status of the traditional Muslim headscarf in Today's Turkey. Turkish secularism is, in my opinion, EXTREME. It goes far beyond not having an official state religion and becomes what I call "fundamentalist secularism" where Turkish university students aren't even ALLOWED to wear hijabs to school. Don't get me wrong, I think it's great no one HAS to wear one, but the majority of Turkish women DO veil, and so having these laws effectively just prevents many women from going to university and becoming educated at all. That's not good for Turkish women, and it's also not good for the Turkish economy (think of all the wasted talent!).

While the Globe's article is not bad, the comments from readers can get stupid and offensive. Take this as an example:

Betsie Weiss from Halifax, writes: I think this news article is taking only one side into consideration. Poor Black Turks trying to wear what they want and live their religion freely. This is how it is presented. In order to understand the deeper reasons behind "secularists" resistance, one has to know the Turkish history. Who can forget the behaeded young soldier Kubilay and his head was shown all around Menemen to threaten so called "secularists" of the time - year 1930. These fundamentalists burned 35 people alive in Madimak Hotel in Sivas - year 1993. It is not just simple "human rights" issue. It is deeper than this.

Okay, Betsie. Because some people got out of hand in the examples you site from years ago and committed terrible crimes, no one ever gets to wear the hijab again? That's proportionate. Anyway, there are other safe-guards you can have that create a society between fundamentalist Islam and Fundamentalist secularism. How about not having an official state religion AND allowing anyone to wear WHATEVER they want, instead of forcing women to break with religious practices they believe in or sentence them to a lifetime of economic and educational disadvantage?

Also Betsie, accusing people who don't get Turkish extremist secularism of being ignorant of Turkey's history? That's not a cool trick. While I don't want to play the "ethnic card," no one knows better than the Armenian community how pre-secularism, Muslim extremism got out of hand. While Betsie does not refer specifically to events that took place at the beginning of the twentieth century through World War One in Anatolia, the type of Turkish Muslim extremism from the early twentieth century to which Betsie refers is the reason I am Canadian. Muslim extremism is shitty and hurts people, yes, but it doesn't justify secular extremism, because that hurts people too. So, please don't invoke Turkish history as a way of justifying oppressing millions of Turkish women today. From an identity politics perspective, I DON'T appreciate it. I don't want anything to do with the fact that millions of women live under dispicable policies in Turkey.

Is this type of propaganda what history was really meant to be?

The Case for Home Ec

I was not good at home ec. I hated it. I would have failed it had I not smuggled my sewing home to my mom to do so I was able to scrape up a C. My peers were not that much better. OUr two sewing projects took us so long that they ended up dominating the enter semester-long course and we didn't even have time to start the cooking unit. It didn't mattter. The next year my independent girls' school cancelled the program all together and I never had to take home ec again. My school cancelled the class because they wanted us to focus on more "educational" classes. Our bother school, however, kept their home ec class and still have it to this day. It is mandatory. Other boys' schools in my city have popular clubs that teach "life lessons (eg, how to make scrambled eggs and hem your pant legs). The message to boys is clear: one day you will have to take care of yourself. You CANNOT just rely on other people. The messsage to girls is: progress means relying on others to feed and clothe yourself.
Now, at the age of 21, I cannot sew. I can cook only because I would starve while living on my own at university without that ability, but it took me a long time to get there. When I moved out on my own at 19, I didn't even know how to boil an egg. Today, my cooking is a bit more advanced. Indeed, I have boiled eggs every day! I can also make spaghetti, chicken, brownies, oatmeal chocolate chip cookies, and anything that can be prepared using a George Foreman grill. I can sort of (not well) feed myself, but if a button were to fall off my shirt, I'd be screwed.
I'm part of a new generation of women who were told not to learn how to cook or clean or sew (or do anything useful, for that matter), because we'd all be CEO's, important UN officials and fashion magazine editors running the world. Why did we need to know how to take care of ourselves? NO, all we needed to know was how to take care of the 1st quarter profits of a Fortune 500 company or solve an ethnic dispute involving oil in some Middle Eastern country.
Meanwhile, my male counterparts seem to be ever more domestic. I have never dated a guy who was not a better cook than I am. Most men I have dated also own sewing kits and know how to use them should they need to patch or reattach something. I don't even know where one would go to BUY a sewing kit. These men have learned how to do the traditionally domestic things necessary to sustain one's life because their mothers and schools taught them. Why? Because I guess they thought their domestically incompetent but financially gifted CEO wives wouldn't have time to do the traditionally girlie things; however, this proficiency in the kitchen does not render these men useless in traditionally masculine areas. Their dads are still teaching them to DIY and stuff like that, while I have no clue how to put my IKEA furniture together. These are supermen capable of doing anything necessary to survive. If they were lost on a desert island, they could hunt for the food, cook it and build you a shelter to eat it in. If I were lost on a desert island, I'd have to hope my fellow cast-aways thought I was cute and kept me around because of that, because my knowledge of post-modern feminist theory and current events wouldn't make up for the fact that I couldn't boil the boar we'd just taken down.
While women are showing up at universities in greater and greater numbers, young men are acquiring far more useful skills than sociology degrees.; they are learning how to take care of themselves. Just walking around the Queen's Student ghetto, it is evident that the stereotype of "messy" boys' houses and "clean and pretty girls' houses that smell of baked goods" are no longer true. The boys I know care far more about keeping their rooms tidy, making sure they're nicely decorated, and cutting up at least three vegetables to go into the salad, than I do. This does not mean, however, that they don't like to go out to a keg party after enjoying their salads to play beer pong and refuse to drink cocktails because they're too "girlie." There are still loads of gender stereotypes to be found on my university campus, but they no longer cripple men's abilities to develop basic survivor skills. Unfortunately, "empowering girls" means robbing them of the ability to take care of themselves. There is no reason I can't be top of my class and aspire to a great career AS WELL AS knowing how to cook and sew. Really, would an extra semester of home ec or my mom making me cook with her a couple of nights a week crippled my ability to earn good grades or taken too much time away from learning how to take over the world? Would it have told me all I was supposed to do with my life was commit myself to domestic drudgery while my husband relaxed and drank a martini after work? No! No! No!
Our society is perfectly capable of developing a way to teach girls house-keeping without making them think it is their only purpose in life. After all, if the boys develop a monopoly on cooking skills, soon they'll be able to hold hot chicken dinners for ransome to get their jobs as CEO's back from the generation of girls trying to usurp them. Girls are multi-talented. We can cook AND arrange corporate-takeovers.

What I Want...

I have dreams about having babies. I have dreams about nannying for babies. I have dreams about kidnapping babies. Something I never thought would happen at 21 is happening - I can hear the deafening tick tock of my biological clock.

You must understand that I don't want to HAVE a baby. Not now. I have no permanent job. I'm still in school. I have no life partner. I have no real home besides rented student digs I share with other 20-somethings who would resent their pre-drinks and study sessions being interrupted by an unwed mother's baby's cries. I can't have a baby. If I got pregnant today, I surely WOULDN'T have the baby, but I want to hold a baby in my arms. I want to caress a chubby, soft, gorgeously flawed cheek. I want to have a baby; I just don't want to HAVE a baby, and how does one reconcile that?

I have recently started having baby themes in my dreams. I hold a baby in my arms (it doesn't have to be mine) and I suddenly can't let it go. People try to take it away from me, and in response, I sob and I run away. I do anything to keep holding the little blob of life in my arms. I cling to it so fiercely it scares me, and when I wake up and realize there's no baby (I'm holding the air), I feel like crying for hours after it is revealed the baby I loved so dearly and wanted to die for was only a dream.

I walk around the streets, and I hate mothers with babies. I see them and resent them. They make me sad. I want one so badly and I can't have one right now and who says I'll ever be able to? Who says the time will ever be right? Who says a baby will ever be mine? But these lucky women with their infants in snugglies or toddlers in $20 grocery store strollers have had the joy of holding a baby in their arms. They needn't doubt whether they'll ever have a baby in their lives, and I hate them for their joy and my uncertainty, my absolute, crippling insecurity. What if I never find a partner who wants me and a child? What if I can't conceive and adoption fails? What if, as a single woman, I find it too hard to adopt and can't reconcile myself to the mysery sperm at donar clinics? What if, what if? What if I never have a baby to love, is what it all comes down to....
I am not really that great with kids. They don't all automatically love me, and I could never have the patience to be a teacher, dealing with 30 shouting children at a time. And yet, I need to nurture. I need something to protect. I wonder if this need makes my desire for children selfish, and whether that means I am disqualified from ever being a truly good mother and should not attempt to have children? I fear my reasons for wanting children as much as I fear the possibility that I will never have them. I fear screwing up new life and I fear the idea that I may never participate in shaping it. I fear so much, and yet, there are so many people in this world. I wonder, must every parent have the same fears? Or is parenting meant to be done on instinct. Is over-analysing one's motivation ill-advised? Although, the irony is, no one over-analyses more than the girl who wonders if she's over-analysing something.

For the sake of simplicity, I'll say what I need to say because I need to let myself hear it: I want children. Plain and simple. That's me. I hope I'm worthy of wanting somethign so big and special.

In defense of the new Femme Fatale

What do we really want our daughters to be? This is an important question. The war between Team Jolie and Team Anistan is as violent as ever, more than two years after Brad Pitt chose to spend his life as Jolie's partner and father to her children. He made that personal choice. Only someone in a marriage can walk out on a marriage, and yet Angelina is still villified on blogs and in magazine polls. Yes, if one listens to the readers of US weekly, Jen is the better friend and person. THe girl we'd rather hang out with, but why? This is the question I keep asking myself. Why don't we want our daughters to be like Angelina over Aniston?
What on earth makes Jennifer Aniston anything other than totally useless? Why is she a role-model and icon, and why can why sexual decision on the part of Angelina (the one she made regarding excepting the love of a man who'd already left his wife) does that negate Angelina's many talents and contributtions to the world? Angelina has won an oscar. She has won more than one Golden Globe. She is very talented. Aniston is famous for being on a citcom where the show's greatest asset was its hilarious, easily delivered writing, not its actors. In the talent department, Angelina wins. She's in movies that matter about women who make us think. Aniston is in Rob Reiner flops like Rumour Has It.
Angelina gives one third of her multi-million dollar salary to charity each year. Does Aniston give? Well, if she does at all, not this much. Angelina donates countless hours of her time to her work as a UN good will ambassador and discussing international law in interviews. Does Aniston even know what international law is? If so, she seems to prefer talking about herself in interviews rather than the plight of developing nations.
Finally, Angelina is a good and devoted mother. What more could we want for our daughters than for them to be good to their daughters, as well?
In everything we should value in a woman - talent, generosity, maternal aptitude - Angelina wins. So why do we hate her? Is it because she's beautiful? Perhaps. Is it because we secretly blame the other woman every time when she's not the moral agent? Yes. It's because when men are jerks and leave us, walking out on all we have, we don't want to believe we devoted our lives to assholes or that they've just callously fallen out of love with us, we want to believe the other woman is a witch who cast a spell and tricked him. We want to blame her to save ourselves from the ugly truth. Angelina has come to represent the other woman in our sexist society, where all the good one does is erased the moment one sleeps with someone society arbitrarily decides one shouldn't touch. Our society is so sexist. Brad Pitt left Jennifer because he fell in love with a spectacular woman. HOw is that Angelina's fault? I will never understand.

Conversation Starters

Summer is full of socializing and parties. Some times you know lots of people at parties, and sometimes you don't, so it's important to have a repertoire of sassy, sexy, witty questions and comments to whip out at a moment's notice just in case the conversation goes dry. After all, there is nothing more awkward than an awkward silence.

1. How much money would it take for your to prostitute yourself? Come on, everyone has a prostitution price. It might take up to a billion dollars, but everyone would do it! Even if you don't want the money for yourself, if someone gave you a billion dollars, think how you could help OTHER people. My minimum prositution price would be $250,000 for one night. I'm fairly confident no one will ever offer me this, as there are fairly hot and classy pros who'll do it for $400, but still, if offered, I'd take it.

2. If you had to give up one, which would you give up, food or sex? It's fun to watch people mull this over. Women usually have a pretty decided answer pretty quickly, but most men have a huge amount of difficulty deciding. Sometimes, they even try to trick you by asking, "If I give up sex for food, can I still masturbate?" My answer is usually no, because allowing that caveat would make their decision just too easy.

3. Would you rather have 5 kids or none at all? It's just interesting to watch people navigate these two extremes.

4. Which movie do you like better, Wedding Crashers or the 40 Year Old Virgin? This is a VERY controversial question. There are two firmly divided camps that WILL fight each other and might get violent, so ask this question before everyone gets drunk and aggressive.

5. Do you think Lindsay Lohan's breasts are real? Watch out, this debate can last for hours! I mean, are they too perky? Do they really jiggle the way real boobs do? I can't even decide. If they're real, though, they are some of the best breasts ever.

Well, these are my five classics. I use them often, and they aren't copy-written or anything, so other people are free to use them too!

Why do the Rich and Famous Drink and drive?

Why do celebrities drink and drive? They don't do their own laundry. They don't cook their own food. They don't pick out their own clothes. They don't negotiate their own contracts and they certainly don't raise their own children. So, why, why, when they don't do even the most basic things for themselves while sober, do celebrities get drunk or high and then decide it would be a grand old idea to drive THEMSELVES home.
Yes, why DO they do drink or do coke and drive? Why do they drive with suspended licenses? After all, they can afford to hire someone else to drive! Call a cab, or if you don't like that, rent a limo when you go to the clubs (hey, Paris gets paid $300,000 every time she just shows up at a club, so she can spring the couple hundred for a limo rental for the night), or just force your assistant to go with you and make her your designated driver in return for giving her some of the free goodies Versace and Marc Jacobs sent you this week. I mean, what is so great about driving drunk that you WANT to do it repeatedly, even when it almost ruined your career the first time you did it (Calling Lindsay Lohan).

My friends and I are Lindsay's age. We are not movie stars and do not make movie star salaries, but we somehow manage to budget for cabs home when drunk or find a sober friend to drive us. Yes, it's because we don't want to hurt anyone by doing something as dangerous as driving while intoxicated, but it's also a certain amount of selfish common sense that motivates us too: we don't want to go to jail! Movie stars can get sent to jail too. Sean Penn went, and so did Paris. You'd think they'd get the message and just stop doing it, because unlike the luxury rehab facilities these starlets can afford, jail does not let you use your cell phone or wear designer clothes or get facials whenever you feel like that. If you're so addicted that you can't think straight and can't stop yourself from driving drunk, go to rehab! Celebrity rehab actually looks like fun, if you don't count the withdrawal (from drugs, alcohol AND publicity).

Addiction is a terrible illness. When your parents are classless and whore you out from the age of ten like Lindsay's, you do't have much of a chance of escaping drugs when your crazy mom allows you to move to LA by yourself at 17. But the main problem for her is, while people might be forgiving, the insurance industry isn't. Try getting insurance for a movie starring a girl who goes to rehab once a month. It doesn't matter if you believe in her or feel sorry for her, as a Hollywood producer dealing with OTHER people's money, Lindsay's a risk you just can't take. Maybe she'll eventually become like Drew Berrymore - get her crazy mother out of her life, clean herself up, start producing her own projects and finally make a comeback after a few years of laying low. Maybe...

A Generation of babies or just one that really wants babies?

My generation appears not to be into the extended adolesence thing at first glance. We want families and station wagons and we want them now. We've witnessed Gen X decide it was all about them and put off having babies for so long in order to get their fill or martini-swilling and Manolos that the entire generation now seems to be suffering from the infertility blues. We've seen it. We've babysat for their spoiled, neglected, ritalin-fuelled kids in their stainless steel homes full of kiddie smudges (for those of them who were lucky enough to realize fertility IS finite), and we don't want that. But is what WE want really any better?

My friend A. wants babies around 26. She is certain of this. This is a hard date, not an estimate that could change depending on where she finds herself at 26. She told me this recently over dinner. I replied the standard answer of my generation, which is, "Me too! I want to have my babies in my twenties too!" But then I added a caveat that isn't usually added to this dream, "If I can afford to have them and am in a healthy relationship." A. questioned this. "Define afford them," she challenged. "You know, I need a decent place to house them and money to feed and clothe them and save for their educations," I said simply. As though it were obvious, which I thought it was. A., who, like me, grew up with her own room and a private school education in a three-child family with professional baby boomer parents, feels we can basically have kids whenever, because we don't need to give our kids any of the stuff we had. IIn our upper-middle class social mileu (I am aware my observations are VERY Class dependant in this piece) We were raised in between the post-war period of well-disciplined kids who did chores for paltry allowances and the nanny-raised Gen X brats whose parents don't really love or want them and never spend time with them. We were the first generation to be spoiled, but I really do believe we were not just sleek fashion accessories to be dressed up in baby Burberry like so many last-minute Gen X babies out there. Our parents waited longer to have us than theirs did, but not as long as Gen X did. Typically til their late twenties for women and early thirties for men to have the first one. Why? Because they decided we needed our own rooms and big back yards and stylish clothes from the Gap in addition to parental love and all that jazz. Did we NEED this stuff? No. Did we like having it, yes. Do I think that maybe our desire to have kids before we can give them this stuff is just laziness, or a genuine, thought-out backlash against materialism? I think it's both. AFter all, no, kids don't NEED the the large room I occupied by myself in an exclusive Toronto neighbourhood or the private education I had, but there are lots of things kids DO need.
The Gen X babies' dreadful behaviour we all endured as their camp counsellors has become an excuse to be the products of a semi-spoiled upbrining without feeling we ever need to work as hard as our parents did to provide our children with the same trips to Disney world and Laura Ashley party dresses. Kids will increase our cool quotient, we know, and the way we plan to raise them won't cost us very much. The coolest Gen Y actors are all having or have had babies right now. Michelle WIlliams and Heath Ledger have baby Matilda, Bryce Dallas Howard just had her little one and even 21 year old Charlotte Church is in on the action. IS it because we want to prove we're so alternative we're having them younger than Gen Xers? We're not about stuff, we're about love and peace, dude. Well, the movie stars don't have to worry about stuff and babies. They can have both. But we can't, and kids are expensive and you DO have to save for them. No, not all kids need math tutors and braces, but some do, and if we just have kids with this laissez fair attitude that they can get by with less attitude, we might not be prepared for that. We don't need to spoil our kids, but maybe we should wait to have them until we have a little money saved, or are in the position to start saving, for their futures. You don't have a God-given right to a healthy, learning-disability free child. That stuff happens. The kids can still be great and almost always are, but sometimes they need help and you have to pay for it. Take autism treatments or even ballet lessons and soccer league! They're not free and they can be neccessary.
A. told me when I brought up all these concerns, that all parents need to do is to spend more time with their kids. I agree that Time is invaluable, but kids need a lot of things too that have an exacty monetary value that we have to pay for. It sucks that a lot of this stuff isn't free, which is what A. said. Yeah, I agree, and that affects how I vote, but if the changes don't come in time for the babies I want to have in 5 years (they probably won't with the conservatives in power) and I don't have much money, I think I'll wait just a bit longer. Being a parent is about responsibility. Part of being responsible is being patient. This makes me wonder if my generation's desire to have kids younger is a sign that we are maturing faster and are ready to nurture as nature intended, or if we're just like kids who don't want to wait until after dinner to have dissert? Sure, our grandparents did it young, but the cost of living was lower, the post-war economy was crazy and most women didn't work, so child-care was free. As much as I hate to admit it, maybe our parents did get it fairly right with how they had kids.
So, I'll have kids at 26, if I can, but if I can't, I'll be patient. That's what being a grown up is all about.