So in an effort to increase tourism to one of China’s less well-known districts, local officials have announced that in “two years, a ‘female-dominated town’ will be built up here to promote ‘feminine culture.’”

What sort of “feminine culture” will the town be promoting, you ask?

“Love whip” will be a feature of the scenic spot according to the program. In this area, a “Female Court” composed of “judges” and “captains” will be set up. Male tourists visiting here will be “whipped” by female tourists if, for example, they can’t remember their sweethearts’ eating habits quickly or the brand of her cosmetics.

The “Female Court” will sentence the man to suffer from the “whip.” The female tourist will then discipline the man with a specially made long whip. The theory is that man can only feel soft power through this kind of tender punishment.

According to the program, cautions like “Women are never wrong, men must not refuse women’s requests” will be clearly written on the door lintel of the “female-dominated town.” If male tourists break the rules, the “bailiff” will read them out loud and make them kneel on washing boards or wash dishes for the restaurants in the form of playing games.

Tong Jiuying, Party branch secretary of Xinmin Village, is also the future bailiff. “We just want tourists to enjoy this ‘feminism game’ after visiting Dazu Rock Carvings which is on the world heritage list,” she said on April 3.

Being whipped for not remembering what kind of make-up your girlfriend wears, or being forced to wash dishes (how emasculating!), are “feminism games?” My word. I think, however, that the use of the word “feminism” in this case was just a matter of poor translation, because earlier in the press release you find this statement:

“The essence of the ‘female-dominated town’ is entertainment showing ‘feminine culture,’ and it has no relationship with the feminism in real life.”

No kidding, this has nothing to do with “feminism in real life.” Feminism is about one thing: equality. Let’s just hope naive tourists don’t walk away thinking otherwise - although, let’s face it: some will.

Okay, so popular music isn’t exactly the last bastion of feminism, but I can’t help but be a little saddened by some of the lyrics on the radio these days.

Take Avril Lavigne for example. Her new song “Girlfriend” is a sonic catfight, where she calls her crush’s girlfriend stupid and, like, so whatever. The video involves Avril attacking said girlfriend with a golf ball and laughing as she falls into a pond. Isn’t there already enough violence in high schools without Avril helping out?

Carrie Underwood’s song “Before He Cheats” manages to embrace not only girl-hating but classism, as she refers to her bf’s other gf as a white trash tramp who can’t shoot whiskey (ooo! burn!).

I guess the reason why these two songs make me take to the liquor cabinet more than, say the Pussycat Dolls, is that both Avril and Carrie have been held up as good role models for young women. Avril has been applauded for eschewing raunchiness and being proudly individual where other pop tarts don’t (Sidebar: I strongly disagree with that, and think that Avril is an individual in the most sheep-like way, but hey, that’s what the critics are saying) and Carrie, as a Christian rock goddess and supporter of the troops is seen to be a good alternative to, well, fallen blonde American Christians such as Britney Spears and Jessica Simpson.

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So the US might be slowly eroding the reproductive rights of women, but across the fence, Mexico City lawmakers have legalized abortion during the first 12 weeks of pregnancy.

No doubt the story won’t end here - I’m sure the city’s abortion clinics will find themselves besieged by irate protesters, and no doubt the law will be challenged in court.

But it’s a start, and an important one. Now women will have access to safe and legal treatment, no questions asked, with none of that “only in cases of rape or where the life of the mother is threatened” ballyhoo.

Do people know about the Women’s Future Fund? This is their mandate:

The Women’s Future Fund (WFF) is the first and only national women’s fundraising federation in Canada.

We are a collaboration of women’s organizations pooling our resources to ensure that all women and girls can enjoy the equality rights that Canada offers.

It’s a really interesting idea, and I’m not sure how much success it is having. One of the things they’ve done to promote the Fund is a new series of public service announcements called “A Day in the Life of Canadian Women”. Basically, that’s their first mistake right there. I’m going to link to the ads in a second but I want to disclaim first that I do not think they are in any way representative of what an average Canadian women struggles with every day. A better title would have been “A Day in the Life of the Sort of Canadian Woman who we Think Could Probably Afford to Donate Money to us.” That’s not a complete dismissal of the ad, but it really needs to be said!

Okay! Here is the link to the site with the ads. The other excellent choice that has been made is to have ALL FIVE (or whatever) ads there as ONE LONG MOVIE so you can’t view/share specific ones. The first one is the best, I think. I feel like they should have actually just built the campaign around that ad, and then maybe done some different ones down the road that were more representative a spectrum of Canadian women’s lives.

I can really relate to the first ad. I’ve been the woman that everyone ignores at the meeting. I remember my roommate pointing out at a meeting of the Nova Scotia NDP Youth Wing “Young women never get to finish a sentence at these meetings” and the president (who was my boyfriend at the time) saying “Penelope is saying things that aren’t true again” and walking out of the room. Awesome.

Back to you! What do you think of the ads?

p.s. I finally found the email where our darling Wesley sent me my blogging password! Hi!

I guess I should be used to it by now, but it still breaks my heart when I hear the music of bands I love being used to sell things. Like today, when I caught the last couple seconds of a Nivea commercial - not too long, but just long enough for me to recognize Le Tigre‘s Deceptacon, which, by the way, was first used by Telus in one of those abhorrent sickeningly-cute-dancing-animal spots. Oh ladies. Why must you hurt me so?

Now, in no way am I against artists making money. You don’t have to be living in a box, eating macaroni and cheese, and trying to get a third cup out of that single teabag to earn my respect. And I (mostly) stood by Le Tigre when they moved from Mr. Lady to a major label, because they believed it would help them reach a broader audience, and who am I to tell them that’s not what they want? But seriously, how can a band that’s so critical of consumer culture and the way it preys on women think it’s okay to contribute to the “coolness” factor of the latest marketing trend, instead of trying to deconstruct it?

I remember an interview with Kathleen Hanna, the band’s frontwoman, that was published in Punk Planet many moons ago, where she talked about how Biore (remember those blackhead-removal strips that would end up taking off half your nose?) used Lillith Fair as a test-market for its product, and she was disgusted by how the festival suddenly seemed to be all about “group Biore bonding”. Well, Hanna, how many young ladies are now going to be humming “Who took the bomp from the bomp-a-lomp-a-lomp… dum de dum… clear skin is sexy skin!”?

Maybe as far as companies go Nivea isn’t as bad as, say, Unilever, but gosh, I’m beginning to feel like a hopeless ideologue for believing you can make art without having to embrace, if nothing else, the lesser of many evils. And the worst thing is, I still love this song and this album and think it’s among one of the most revolutionary musical objects of the last ten years. Does that make me a tool? (Well, okay, I know it doesn’t. But I feel pretty conflicted and hella betrayed. Again.)

What do you think?

Myself, I’m giving the last word to Mr. David Lynch.

June Callwood was not a part of my world before she died. She was mixed in amongst the ranks of notable Canadians whose names are familiar but not especially meaningful to me personally. I had a sense that she was a socially active writer, but I could not have told you what it was she wrote.

So when my fiancé and I were out for brunch on Saturday, April 14th, and the TV screen behind his head was flashing up CityPulse newsclips, I took more notice of how repetitive the cycle of “news stories” were, than I did of the story that June had passed away.

Then just after midnight that Sunday, I was having trouble sleeping, and turned on CBC. Right at the start of an Ideas program. Not their regularly scheduled slot, but CBC is doing all kinds of reorganizing madness at the moment.

Ideas was airing their tape of the 2002 Dalton Camp Lecture in Journalism, delivered that year by June Callwood.

I was planning on just listening to a few minutes before my partner came to bed. But when he came through about 10 minutes later, there was no way I could have turned the radio off. So we listened to the complete hour-long broadcast.

Do you know what it’s like when you are at a speech or a lecture and it feels like magic? All you want is for everyone else to be able to be there, because you’re in this bubble of surreality where the words of the speaker are so poignant, so perfectly timed, so essential that you feel like they’re poking right through to the inside of you.

The last time I remember that happening was when I went to see David Suzuki speak at Convocation Hall. Part of the magic is the rapt audible silence of the engaged audience. Everyone in the room feels the same way as you, and all you all want is to keep that feeling from fading.

It can hit you two or three times as hard when what you’re hearing, reading, or seeing seems to have been delivered to you by fate. When it is not only perfect eloquence and inspiration, but perfect eloquence and inspiration for exactly where you are in your life right now.

June’s speech is one of the best things I have ever heard. It makes me feel galvanized. It makes me want to do better. It makes me wish I could have thanked her.

It is currently available on the Best of Ideas Podcast.

Not to be coy, but, um, is it just me, or does there seem to be a uterus missing from this picture?

Okay, so Ive been a tad miserable lately given the anti-choice developments that are happening south of the border. Ive wanted to write about them, but everytime I sit down to rant I just feel frustrated and dumbfounded. The undermining of Roe v. Wade by the Supreme Court has, as Naral Pro-Choice America puts it, the power to interfere even more in our personal, private medical decisions. The Court has given anti-choice state lawmakers the green light to open the flood gates and launch additional attacks on safe, legal abortion, without any regard for womens health.

And so in the spirit of good news, Ive decided to focus on the ground-breaking in a very different respect. I just read a great story about what is believed to be the first transgendered prom king nominee in the United States.

Although 17 year old Cinthia Covarrubias (who occasionally identifies as Tony) did not capture the crown at Fresno High Scool on Saturday night, he was able to reverse a previous school district protocol that allowed only males to run for king and females to run for queen. Tony has no current plans to surgically alter his sex, but stated that he felt more comfortable running for king: I would never have run for anything if I had to wear a dress, Covarrubias said.

The best part of the story is that fellow students nominated Tony for King, and when the officails refused, the districts lawyers recommended adding Covarrubias name to the ballot to comply with a state law protecting students ability to express their gender identity on campus. At least somewhere choice is being maintained.

Student reactions? Its not like the stereotype where the king has to be a jock and hes there with the cheerleaders anymore, said Leanne Reyes, age 16, a senior Fresno High. We live in a generation now where dudes are chicks and chicks are dudes.

Hell ya.

I haven’t noticed much mention of the topic in the Canadian media - but over here in England you see news stories on eating disorders and the fashion industry almost daily. There is a movement afoot here to ban size zero models from catwalks (that’s US size zero, equivalent to a size four in the UK system).

Not simply because the glorification of excessive thinness no doubt contributes to the prevalence of eating disorders among young women. But also because in the past year several size zero models actually died as a result of their low weight (and not because of a drug overdose or any of the other afflictions of the fashionable), most notably Ana Carolina Reston.

I think we can all agree that a size zero ban would be in order (especially considering that models are usually about 5 foot 7 inches or taller). But one recent development in the public debate sure had me scratching my head: British MPs are considering a bill that would give 16 and 17 year old anorexics the right to refuse treatment. Currently their parents have the legal authority to force them into hospitalization and (if necessary) forced feeding.

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