Illustration by Marne Grahlman

You wake up ready for some self care. You stretch, scrape your tongue. Sit still tracking your breath. You’ve been working hard. You need a dose of freshness. What you need is a haircut, and today’s the day you booked one. How timely. As you sip the froth off your oat milk latte, you imagine yourself feeling cute, flashing your new trim to a passerby. There will be just enough wind to fluff it out. It will tumble gently over your shoulders and back. This is because your hair is long. So long that it’s usually the first thing people notice. It reaches your butt. It conceals your boobs. The colour is nondescript, but the length is remarkable.

It’s grown with you and the truth is, you’d feel exposed without it.

That being said, you’ve been spotting people with good hair and they have one thing in common: They have cuts. You could become irrelevant with your long, flat hair.

A couple weeks ago, your friend recommended someone. When you clicked on their profile, you gasped.

“You let a dude cut your hair?”

“He’s been doing this for decades,” she shrugged. “Plus, he’s cheap.”

You’re somewhat reassured, although, how could you be? Give a man full access to your hair? But you trust your friend. You book an appointment.

*

His salon is at the back of a skate shop that smells like weed. You hate weed, although you notice his hair is the same length as yours. He notices too and says “that’s dope,” which is a phrase you haven’t heard in a long time. Maybe he’s a gamer. You feel ill at ease.

“It’s sort of an identity,” you say, referring to your hair. He assures you he can totally relate and you appreciate this. You breathe easier. You tell him you want shaggy bangs framing your face. You tell him not to compromise the length – apart from dead ends, of course.

“Make me look like Stevie Nicks,” you say. “Just longer.”

He winks at you. It’s a gentle wink. You tell yourself you must be in good hands.

He fastens a drape around you and stashes your glasses. He begins to maneuver the scissors quickly. You wonder how he can be snipping so fast—it has to be a mark of experience.

You get to talking about softball and snowboarding, which are the sports he likes. He tells you about his accident, how he tumbled down a black-diamond slope and landed with the board on his teeth. They had to extract him by helicopter, he says, and after that, he got flashbacks. Vertigo, white specks all around, the thwack, a searing pain in his jaw—it wouldn’t stop. You listen as he shares that, one day, he did LSD and dissolved into nothingness and came to terms with the idea of death and the flashbacks went away. This is when you know you have made him feel safe. It’s one of your strengths.

“We’re done,” he says, undoing the drape.

You fumble for cash as he hands you your glasses—could the haircut be over so soon? Then it hits you that you were too nervous coming in, and you forgot to pay for the parking meter. You rush to your car—no ticket! This day has your name written all over it. Your head feels lighter. You set off to the YMCA. The last stop on your wellness train.

At the gym, you change into leggings and tie up your hair and—and that’s when you realize something’s wrong. Your ponytail. It’s too short. Way too short.

*

You enter a state of shock. You leave the Y. At home, you can’t believe what you’re seeing. Your hair has lost a foot. A full foot. It barely falls past your shoulder blades. You burst into tears. You take down the mirrors. You put on a hoodie and tighten the strings until you can only see a tiny patch of light, until you’re almost gone.

You text your friends. They say they are sorry for you. They say it will grow back. They send you links to hair accessories. But you are not ready for this. Your head is full of his hands lifting your hair away, pulling down your pyjamas, groping inside you. You’d been sleeping. That’s why you hadn’t heard him come in. You didn’t even know his name, actually—he was your roommate’s date. Supposed to be.

“Shh,” he said, something wet and warm spreading over your bare butt.

You are losing ground. You tuck yourself under a blanket and cry. You know you are blowing this out of proportion, but this haircut is too short, it doesn’t cover anything.

Your apartment’s gone cold. You want a drink. You want to be surrounded. You want to be left alone. You want to be rocked and told that you’re beautiful anyways. You yank the blanket over your head and wedge it under your body. You wonder how long it will take.

As Zuker says, “Rape in the case of Maya Angelou is used to reflect the suffering of her race and to Maya Angelou a bird struggling to escape its cage trying to understand and respect both her body and her words.” Many of us like to think this title is also a nod to Gray’s tattoo, which she got last September after the rape. Zuker said he cannot accept Ururyar’s evidence and that the defence’s version of events—painting Ururyar as a clean cut nice guy whose cold would have made him too weak to rape—did not happen.

Not only did the judge—an old, white man, in a place of authority—use the term “rape,” a word that is dismissed in so many spaces for being too threatening, he called Gray’s experience a nightmare. The judge used terms that are so often dismissed as feminist jargon. He discredited rape myths surrounding what constitutes a “good” and “credible” rape victim, as well as saying there is no time limit on pain—a comment made in response to the defence’s argument that it took Gray too long to report the assault. (In fact, she went to the hospital to be tested 48 hours after the rape, and then reported it another 24 hours after that.)

“No other crime is looked upon with the degree of blameworthiness, suspicion, and doubt as a rape victim,” said Zuker. “Victim blaming is unfortunately common and is one of the most significant barriers to justice and offender accountability.”

After the verdict was read, supporters and reporters, gathered outside of the courtroom. Celebratory feelings were abundant and palpable. Gray did not attend court that day, but she did release a media statement 15 minutes before the 10 a.m. decision was read.  “I am tired of people talking to me like I won some sort of rape lottery because the legal system did what it is supposed to do,” she said in her statement. Gray acknowledges that both the judge and crown did their jobs well, but rightly adds: “However, I will not congratulate the legal system, or the various courtroom actors for doing what they are supposed to do.”

Gray knows that her intersecting privileges are significant factors—she is a white, heterosexual woman in her late 20s with an in-depth knowledge of the legal system and a graduate level education. “But what can be drawn from my experience is that if I am drowning in these systems, what does that mean for those who are not university-educated, white women who are sexually assaulted?”

In court the defence lawyer acted both appallingly and wrongly. Lisa Bristow ignored Canada’s rape shield law when asking Gray questions directly pertaining to her sexual history. Bristow also read Gray’s phone number out loud in court and compared sex with Gray to sex with a dead fish. I feel sick when remembering Bristow tell Gray, “You were satisfied that you got the hot sex that you wanted.”

In her statement, Gray spoke about how the court process dehumanized her and, as she has said from the start, no matter the verdict, she would not be un-raped.

“My experience has demonstrated that Toronto Police Services do not care about sexual assault. It has been thirty years since Jane Doe first challenged the TPS for their discriminatory treatment of sexual assault complainants. The TPS have had enough time to ‘reform’, ‘diversify’ and ‘train’ but it simply does not work. It is time to imagine alternatives outside of the institution of policing for sexual assault. TPS make it clear that they do not care about sexual assault, so why continue the public façade that they take issues of sexualized and gender based violence seriously?”

Ururyar was found guilty that early afternoon. As Zuker said, “Rape it surely was.” Ururyar was released on bail until Monday July 25 when it was revoked. Gray released a public statement via Facebook sharing her thoughts on the revocation and Ururyar’s application to appeal the verdict. She explains that for over a year she has not been able to feel safe and receives daily messages telling her that she deserves to be raped again, and even die. The same day as the verdict Gray received an anonymous Facebook message calling her a misbehaving whore for having tattoos, drinking, and having sex before marriage. The writer said she deserves to be raped. Messages like these are a sobering reality that there is still a lot of work to be done.

“This is an individual with no remorse for the pain he has caused me, or the others around him. No verdict or sentence will ever reverse the pain imposed upon me by this person. With that being said, jail is not capable of curing his hatred of women,” Gray wrote. “The only reason I am somewhat relieved he is in custody is that because at least I know his likelihood of sexually assaulting another individual is substantially reduced. I don’t think it is a solution. I will never feel joy or happiness about being responsible for putting someone in jail. This is an individual with no remorse for the pain he has caused me, or the others around him. No verdict or sentence will ever reverse the pain imposed upon me by this person. With that being said, jail is not capable of curing his hatred of women.”

Gray’s work is still not done: she is currently bringing forward an Ontario Human Rights Complaint against the university and has switched her Ph.D. focus from women in prison to sexual assault.

Initially, Zuker revoked Ururyar’s bail ahead of sentencing on September 14. However on Wednesday August 3 Ontario Superior Court Justice Michael Quigley overturned the decision and Ururyar has since been released on bail.

Since the verdict Men’s Rights Activist (MRA) groups have criticized the decision, targeting Gray, and she has also been the subject of hateful YouTube videos, as well as a pro-Ururyar documentary. Her article published in NOW Magazine received so many hateful comments that the thread had to be shut down.

The Ghomeshi trial sparked a media circus. People mused on air, in print, on social media, and in coffee shops about where the blame should lay, if at all: institutional failures, failed morals, bad choices. Law degrees were replaced by snappy headlines and witty social media memes. While it’s since settled down, the verdict against Gray’s assaulter has initiated another circus. There are angry, misogynists who—no matter what a judge decides—will fight hard against women who have experienced violence. In the case of Ghomeshi, these groups preached the respect for the judge’s decision. In Ururyar’s case, it’s the opposite: we are told the judge is wrong, and I’ve heard many anti-Semitic slurs. These responses are hateful and scary, but they are not unexpected.

The people who may prove to shake the foundations of those whose lives have been affected by sexual violence are those who we see as friends, family, and peers. These are the people we seek comfort from, or whom we at least feel safe with.

Gender-based violence may seem like something that’s too scary to think about happening frequently, or it can appear like it is something that only happens to other people—bad people—on the news. It may seem like an issue that is safe to theorize about with anyone. However, for some of us these issues are part of our lives, lives that are policed by the threat of this violence. Some of us only have the privilege to say why we think these things happen because we can be pretty sure it won’t happen to us. Meanwhile, while he say whatever comes to mind without much thought, we may be telling someone we love what we think about the violence that happened to them. We may ask why some of the women in the Ghomeshi case kept in touch with the man, and unwittingly be telling our sister that she deserved what happened to her. We may say Gray made a bad choice to go to Ururyar’s apartment, and unknowingly be telling our daughter that she could have prevented her own rape, if only she were smarter.

For some of us the Ghomeshi verdict sparked water cooler conversation. For some of us the Ghomeshi verdicts lead to tears and being scared to leave our homes. It lead to women calling each other all day checking in asking if they were OK; it lead to cancelled plans, and missed work. It is progress seeing mainstream media report on these cases and it can be empowering seeing social movements tackling this issue. However, these events do not mean those of us safe from violence have full license to share whatever theory of the day they believe in—potentially at the cost of another’s well being.

Gray, Kirchmeier, and another woman referred to as “Jane Doe”, who has been through a similar experience, are raising money for when they go to court. The Silence is Violence Legal Defense Fund is meant to even the playing field when it comes to court fees. As the group’s Indiegogo campaign page reads, “Our universities are multi-million dollar corporations. UBC recently announced raising more than 1.6 BILLION dollars.  Our universities have a team of lawyers employed to challenge our claims.” In the case of Jane Doe, the alleged abuser is a university professor, which means he is entitled to legal representation from a faculty association.

Since all women are students with precarious employment they cannot afford the same legal protection as their accused or their schools. In addition to the financial strain they continue to be re-victimized in the court system. All this knowing the odds are not in their favour. In the episode Gray’s lawyer says that out of an estimated 1,000 sexual assaults, only three are convicted. A lot of this has to do with victim blaming and the collective denial society has when it comes to the placating binary that bad things only happen to “bad”people.

On a positive note, since last week’s post, Dmitry Mordvinov was expelled, after several reports of sexual harassment and assault.

Donations to the Silence is Violence Legal Defense Fund can be made here.

A former This intern, Hillary Di Menna is in her second year of the gender and women’s studies program at York University. She also maintains an online feminist resource directory, FIRE- Feminist Internet Resource Exchange. 

“The list exists as way to warn women that these are men to watch out for,” writes Toronto comedian Nick Flanagan. “Men living in Toronto, eating nice food, partying and enjoying life with their friends (maybe with you), living it up while having created awful feelings and memories in others with their actions. The only reason this became more than hearsay is because a photo of it was taken and shared on Facebook. You can say ‘where is the evidence?’ or ‘innocent until proven guilty’, but a community is different than a court. People can be acquitted from crimes for a variety of reasons, even if they committed the act in question. If bad behavior goes unchecked, it continues. And this goes way beyond ‘bad behavior’. Don’t excuse predators because they’re your friends. You have no need for a code of silence. You are not in the mafia. You are a barista.”

I think it is safe to say most people agree rape and other forms of sexual assault are wrong. Yet, this socially accepted fact seems to go out the window when the offender is someone we like.

June’s North by Northeast (NXNE) lineup for the Yonge-Dundas Square performance in Toronto did not include misogynistic rapper Action Bronson as originally planned.  NXNE was less than graceful in their statement, “We are not moving the Action show because we believe in censoring him or any other artists. In fact, we find the limiting of artistic expression distasteful.” The Change.org petition describes some of this expression in one of Bronson’s videos: “The artist cooks a meal over a woman’s dead body, rolls her up in a carpet, throws her in his trunk, and proceeds to violently stab her when he discovers she’s still alive.” Too bad for NXNE’s good time, community members were not OK with hearing rapey messaging.

The Casualties

We’re now approaching the end of summer and punk band The Casualties had an unsuccessful Canadian tour. Many in the punk community know the lead singer, and only member of the band’s original line up, Jorge Herrera, as someone who’s been accused of sexually assaulting teenage girls. After one woman, Beth, came forward publicly via blog post, many others have shared their stories. “Incidents like this involving this dude have been sadly talked about since the late ’90s,” wrote one person.

Many venues cancelled their scheduled shows with The Casualties after communities stepped forward in protest. At least two venues continued with the show, but took The Casualties off the bill and donated proceeds to women’s charities. Such moves have prompted complaints from fans who believe they have a right to see the band play. See, for instance: “That’s your opinion, let me see my favourite band play”—as if human rights and rape being wrong is a matter of opinion.

In her post “I Won’t Apologize For Being Assaulted,” Beth writes:

“I totally bum people out because I happened to have been sexually assaulted by the singer of a band they like .. I know, I know. I should have tried harder for a band just begging to be rejected and ridiculed so it wouldn’t ruin your iPod rotation but hey, then again, it really wasn’t my choice. But man, what a total inconvenience to poor you to know something bad about a band you love. Just ignore the facts, I mean it WAS a long time ago. It’s not like I can still remember I was wearing cargo camo shorts and a v-neck white Hanes t-shirt… an outfit TOTALLY putting off do-me vibes with my freshly shaved head and not shaved legs.”

This story has also sadly resurrected the “But why didn’t she go to the police?” narrative. Yet, let’s remember that, asa YWCA fact sheet about violence against women reminds us, cases of sexual assault are among the most under-reported crimes—in fact, the majority of such cases go unreported. One of the reasons for this is because of the type of victim blaming that is currently happening. Another is the trauma victims are forced to relive throughout the court process. And while not every venue welcomed The Casualties, some continue to firmly support the band, like Toronto’s Virgin Mobile Mod Club. The show’s promoter, Inertia Entertainment, cancelled the show, but only after continued public pressure. The Facebook cover photo for the cancelled event was changed to a picture of a witch hunt. Inertia’s response on the matter continues to blame Beth, the victim, and calls her supporters illogical.

Sexual assault—rape—is still a disgusting and violent act even if someone popular and “cool” does it.

Beth, is celebrating her birthday by raising money for the Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network. You can donate here.

A former This intern, Hillary Di Menna is in her second year of the gender and women’s studies program at York University. She also maintains an online feminist resource directory, FIRE- Feminist Internet Resource Exchange.

While writing my reading piece “She Asked For It” I was thinking about all the bystanders who watch their friends/sisters/peers get physically and verbally abused by their partner, or the adults who don’t stand up for abused children. I was thinking, too, about the public backlash women receive when coming forward about abuse, especially publicly like in the cases of Jian Gomeshi and Bill Cosby. There is this strange obsession to defend the most popular and charming, and this terrifies me. Almost as much as public speaking.

Here is the written piece read that evening:

She Asked For It

It seems so obvious to the outsider, get hurt, you go.

And that’s what makes them outsiders: the dichotomy of you and them.

So when that person makes those fists – just like dad used to make – and they tell you it isn’t just you and them, it is the two of you against the world, that’s all you got.

White trash can’t get hurt.

As Other, they can not feel.

The beatings and mockery vye for what hurts most, but don’t dare take first place from isolation.

Teachers ignore signs of quiet and retraction amongst bouncy, vibrant peers.

The church keeps secrets hushed behind decorated doors.

The police don’t write up, they write off.

Nurses say, “We don’t use the word rape here.”

A distance is created.

Friends don’t want to believe it.

She asked for it.

They watch and do nothing.

Drinking buddies before hoes dominates so-called progressive punk rock mantras.

Left alone, seeing your valueless and disposability, even you can’t stand being by yourself.

Prosecutions doled by class bracket dictations.

So, you have this guy – who makes fists just like dad used to make – who makes it both of you against the world that doesn’t want you.

You latch.

It’s all you got.

A former This intern, Hillary Di Menna is in her first year of the gender and women’s studies program at York University. She also maintains an online feminist resource directory, FIRE- Feminist Internet Resource Exchange.

For a long time, many Canadians never wanted to talk about rape. Some still don’t. When the nation finally started talking about it, people believed rape was only executed by strange, unknown men to an unsuspecting women. Some still do. Now we’ve moved on to knowing rape can happen to men, to trans women, to trans men, and to women who know their attacker. But maybe hearing the cases and “knowing” is not the same as understanding.

Thirty years ago, This Magazine discussed the ever controversial meaning of rape. Much has changed, but sometimes I have to squint to spot the difference. From our August 1984 issue by Anne Innis Dagg, “Rape’s Progress”:

Spoiler alert for all Game of Thrones fans who have not seen the episode “Breaker of Chains,” and a trigger warning. The word “rape” is used often.

On Sunday’s episode of Game of Thrones (GOT), fans watched the Lannisters deal with the death of their son, grandson, nephew, and brother king Joffrey. Basically, Cersei is the only crier. When mother and father, Jaime, are left alone with the corpse, the Kingslayer sees an opportunity to force sex on his sister. In plain words, he raped her. In front of their dead son.

Here’s where things get tricky.

After the episode aired, GOT director Alex Graves spoke to writer Alan Sepinwall of HitFix and claimed it was not rape. I demand to differ.

Let’s breakdown the scene. Brace yourself. In this clip, Cersei is still crying over the reprehensible Joffrey and turns into her brother’s arms for comfort. They embrace and begin to kiss, but Cersei pushes Jaime away with clear distaste. Jaime calls her a “hateful woman,” forces her to look at him, and then into another kiss.

The first protest we verbally hear from Cersei is “Jaime, not here. Please, please.” Then while she tells him to stop it, as he is ripping off her gown, Jaime growls, “No!”

True to his word, he never stops and she never stops telling him to stop. At one point she says, “It isn’t right,” to which Jaime ends the clip by repeating, “I don’t care.”

It was not only disturbing, but unnecessary.

Episode director Graves and GOT creators D.B. Weiss and David Benioff altered this scene from the version by writer George R.R. Martin. In the book, the sex was consensual. It’s worse that Graves first admitted to the Hollywood Reporter that it was rape. Then he told Sepinwall it became consensual by the end.

I watched to the end. No consent was ever given. Why deny that?

It is known that GOT is HBO’s second most watched show since The Sopranos. It is safe to assume that in that viewers’ demographic are women and men between the ages of 18-24. This age group makes up a large portion of Canada’s post-secondary campuses. This age group is also when most Canadian women “experience the highest rates of sexual violence“.

This is a problem.

A 2013 fact sheet by the Canadian Federation of Students Ontario explains how rape culture remains prominent our nation today. “Many on-campus sexual assaults occur during the first eight weeks of classes,” the report states. And more than 80 percent of rapes that occur on a post-secondary campus are committed by someone the victim knows. This is literally what happened in this week’s episode. Jaime returned from captivity, his lover denied his sexual advances repeatedly, so he forced her.

Granted, this isn’t the first violent or sickening scene GOT lovers have seen. It’s a common trend on the show. An argument can even be made that Jaime’s assault happened because his true nature is a constant battle between kindhearted and antagonistic. Like all the characters, the Kingslayer is conflicted.

But on his blog Martin, the character’s creator, admitted he originally had the siblings mutually lust after each other in the scene.

If the episode’s writers saw the need to tarnish Jaime’s new-found goodness, so be it. But there is no excuse the writers could make about filming a rape scene, and then denying what it is. Look at the statistics. That’s a risk we really can’t afford to be taking.

The SlutWalks are challenging that vocabulary of oppression. On April 3, hundreds of women took pride in their pleasure and walked through the streets of Toronto (note that they walked for all kinds of different reasons). Inspired by them, a march followed in Boston on May 7. Now self-proclaimed “sluts” and their allies are taking to the streets all over the world in response to the falsehood that sexual assault is linked with promiscuous attire.

It’s an old idea, and one we should be long rid of. There may be other definitions involving a woman’s barely-there clothing or willingness to cheat, but “slut” in its most powerful and oppressive form is inextricably linked with rape.

Patricia Douglas

Patricia Douglas made headlines after she was raped by an MGM director.

Who exactly is Patricia Douglas?

In 1937, she was a 19-year-old dancer for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer – you know, the film company with the iconic roaring lion. On May 5 of that year, she answered a call to a “film set” at an isolated ranch outside of Los Angeles. She and 119 other girls were required to wear cowgirl outfits. Patricia didn’t notice there were no movie cameras at the ranch. Present at what turned out to be an MGM sales convention party were nearly 300 salesmen, directors and producers. Throughout the night a film director pursued her, as they often did, asking her to teach him a popular dance. The director, David Ross, offered her champagne and whiskey, but Patricia had never tasted liquor so she refused. He and another patron forced the alcohol down her throat. When she ran outside to vomit, Ross followed her. He then violently raped her in a field near the barn.

Today we would hope such an act would be condemned and such a man would be brought to justice. But the 1930s were different. The word “rape” was rarely used. Instead the newspapers printed the word “ravished.” Women who were sexually assaulted didn’t often press charges. If they did, it was likely they would be publicly shamed. Only “sluts” had sex before marriage, whether or not they willed it.

As former MGM extra Peggy Montgomery said in a documentary I just watched about Patricia:

“I remember two words that I learned — one was ‘rape,’ which was an extreme disaster, and the other one that usually was in the same conversation was ‘tart’ – ‘well she’s a tart.’ … The whole vocabulary of ‘ bad woman’ – slut, tart, tramp – came up immediately if anybody mentioned, ‘she was raped.’”

It’s still a pervasive idea. If a girl sleeps around, she must have wanted it. If a girl is wearing suggestive clothes or makeup, as a Manitoba judge recently said, she must be asking for it. If on the other hand she doesn’t dress like a slut, as a Toronto police officer recently recommended, then she will prevent rape.

Patricia pressed charges against Ross. It was a brave move. Even today, attacking the credibility of a rape survivor is a valid means of undermining his or her testimony. Patricia was up against a financially powerful spin-machine. If MGM could show she had questionable morals – if she had casual sex, for example – the movie giant stood a better chance of winning the case. The movie studio circulated a form asking about the girl’s morals and whether she had been drinking on the night of the party. It aimed to establish that Patricia was a slut. If she was a slut, she couldn’t have been raped. But Douglas had been a virgin at the time, so MGM used another defense. “Look at her,” the prosecutor commanded: “who would want her?”

Rape was and still is linked with desire according to folk psychology. But this is an oppressive idea. Rape is all about power. Rapists perceive their “victims” as weak, which is why many sexual assault centres have shifted to calling them “survivors.” In a linguistic sense, this new word takes some semantic power away from rapists.

And what would happen if the word “slut” lost its power too? What if it bestowed strength rather than shame upon its subjects? Thanks in part to the SlutWalks and the debate they have launched, we may at last find out.

Last spring, Dockers launched its stupefying ad campaign based around the core message of “Wear The Pants.” (In a move that nicely reinforced the tone-deaf idiocy of the campaign, it premiered on International Women’s Day, March 8. Classy.) The whole series, which is still running in a slightly diluted form, rests on the premise that there is a crisis of modern masculinity: men are being devalued; technology has usurped men’s evolutionary and industrial roles; masculine traits are slowly dissolving in an increasingly androgynous society; men must take steps to reassert their waning influence. Watch out—we’ve hit Peak Masculinity! It’s all downhill from here as we tumble headlong into a genderless mire of murses, manicures, and manorexia. The only way to save yourself, you little sissy, is by buying these boxy dad-pants.

This gender panic is an inexplicably popular trope among big media outlets: you see it in the Dockers campaign; the popularity of the drinkin’, smokin’, and pinchin’ ad executives on Mad Men; the ludicrous kook science of the “Caveman Diet“; the National Post‘s weird fixation on university gender studies. There’s the hideous neologism of the “mancession.” And more recently, we’ve had the Maclean’s cover story on why boys are growing up to be such a bunch of unemployable doofuses. Most recently, the Globe and Mail is flogging the notion with its “Failing Boys” series of articles, part of its pompous “Our Time To Lead” rebranding.

Enough. This is all—if I can plausibly use such a Marlboro-man expression—horseshit.

My hackles go up when those who are obviously powerful claim they are powerless. It’s a disingenuous rhetorical stance designed to reinforce the status quo. When the leaders of the United States claim that their nation’s existence is threatened by a handful of religious fanatics hiding out in Afghan caves, we know, rationally, that isn’t true. But by inverting our perception of the power dynamic (Al Qaeda strong, USA weak) those leaders justify the exceptional measures that will reinforce and extend the actual power dynamic (USA strong, Al Qaeda weak). The myth of American weakness is the lie the War on Terror was built upon. Yes, there have been thousands of individual American victims, from the civilians who died on 9/11 to the troops killed in action since. But the notion of the United States itself being a victim—instead of the economic, military, and diplomatic colossus it truly is—has no basis in reality. The put-on feebleness allows the same exercise of the same power, only now with the fig leaf of “self-defence.”

Similarly, when men—who demonstrably retain a firm grip on the levers of power in nearly every sector of society—plead that it’s they who are the victims, beaten down by a modern world that hates and fears maleness, tell them to shove it. Take it from me: I’m a middle-class, able-bodied, English-literate, university-educated, white, cisgendered male, and I’m doing just fine, trust me. I consider myself one of the most privileged creatures the planet has ever coughed up. Save your tears, ladies.

The fact that, gosh, there are more female doctors than there used to be, or that some of the educational metrics indicate that boys’ classroom achievements are not as high as we’d like, is not, in any rational universe, a sign of the waning of the economic, political, and cultural dominance of men. Are there lots of boys who find school boring, irrelevant, meaningless, and get poor grades as a result? Yes, and that’s a real concern. But does it indicate that they’re growing up in a world where all the scales are tipped in the girls’ favour? No.

The fact that literally millions of years of male supremacy is even slightly considered to be starting to be maybe, haltingly, partially alleviated is not an indication that men are suddenly marginalized. To say they are is wrong. Statistically, anecdotally, factually. Period.

Child miners are forced to work the mines by the warring groups in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Photo courtesy: ENOUGH Project, Flickr Creative Commons.

As I type this, I am complicit in the funding of rape and war.  You probably are too–sitting on your laptop, listening to your mp3 player, texting on your smartphone–even if you don’t know it.

But that could all change with the passing of Barack Obama’s sweeping financial reform legislation by Congress in July. While the story made headlines across the United States and pundits and politicians debated its potential ability to clean up Wall Street, largely lost in the 2,300 page document was a landmark piece of U.S. legislation that is geared towards transforming a place as far removed from Wall Street as possible—the Democratic Republic of Congo, the rape capital of the world.

Tucked into the “Miscellaneous Provisions” section of the bill, the new U.S. law will require all publicly-traded and electronics companies to disclose the source of the minerals contained in their products and the steps they are taking to ensure that they are “conflict free.”

The DRC is a resource-rich nation with large deposits of tantalum, tin, tungsten, and gold, all of which can be found in every cell phone, laptop, iPod, digital camera and most other pieces of modern technology in the world. If it stores a charge, vibrates, or has gold-coated wiring, chances are it’s got these four minerals in it.  The provision, then, will affect thousands of U.S. companies, including technology giants Apple, Hewlett Packard and Dell.

Activists, U.N. experts and non-governmental organizations have become increasingly vocal about concern that armed Congolese groups—including the Congolese army, rebel militias, and groups from Uganda and Rwanda—are financing themselves with minerals from eastern Congo.  In what’s been called Africa’s World War, the DRC has been mired in violence for more then a decade.  The war began following the 1994 genocide in neighbouring Rwanda and has claimed the lives of roughly 5 million Congolese, displacing another 2 million from their homes. Hundreds of thousands of women and young girls have been raped, as soldiers on all sides of the conflict have utilized systematic sexual violence as a weapon.

As with conflict diamonds, the legislation recognizes the direct correlation between our consumer appetites and the violence plaguing the Congo. While it stops short of placing an embargo on the purchase and use of the minerals, American manufacturers must now be forthright if they do so, essentially saying: “this cell phone helped fund rape and war.”

One U.K.-based advocacy group is taking the initiative to distance our consumer goods from conflict minerals one step further. Global Witness filed suit against the British government last week for failing to recommend that U.K. companies face United Nations sanctions for purchasing conflict minerals from the DRC. UN Security Council Resolution 1857, passed in 2008, calls for a travel ban and asset freeze on all individuals and entities supporting illegal armed groups in the DRC through illicit trade in natural resources. Resolution 1896 strengthened this by calling on UN member states to bring individuals and corporations forward for sanctions.

While the British government has refused to recommend the companies accused by advocacy groups for sanctions and has disputed the evidence brought against them, it has affirmed their countries commitment to the UN resolutions and to ethical mining.

The U.S. and U.K.’s support for due diligence and ethical mining relations with the DRC—lip-service though it may turn out to be—is more then we can say for our country. Canada has not only opposed valuable mining reform but has worked to undermine the DRC itself.

Canada delayed the World Bank and International Monetary Fund’s proposed $12.3 billion debt relief for the DRC, intended to mark the country’s jubilee anniversary of its independence. The decision was delayed following a request from Canada due to a legal dispute between Kinshasa and Vancouver-based mining company First Quantum Minerals Ltd. over mining rights. The proposed debt relief eventually went through, despite Canada’s tacit opposition as the lone abstaining vote.

While Harper claims that the DRC’s transfer of operating licenses violated international law and he used the podium of the G20 to frame the blocking of debt forgiveness as his stand for good governance, the actions of Canadian mining companies in the DRC has largely gone unquestioned by our government.  A UN Security Council report on the illegal exploitation of natural resources of the DRC found that First Quantum, along with several other Canadian corporations, were in violation of OECD guidelines of ethics and that their actions had led to an “economy of war”. That the Canadian government would stand alone on the world stage and hold Congo’s debt relief in limbo in defence of the mining rights of a company found to be acting illegally to pillage the natural wealth of the DRC makes it clear that our government is closer aligned with the mining sector then the international community.

Our government’s opposition to accountability within the mining sector is not without its own calculus—we are, more so then most other nations, particularly invested in global mining projects. The world’s largest source of equity capital for mining companies undertaking exploration and development can be found in the financial markets in Toronto and Vancouver; in 2008, exploration and mining companies based in Canada accounted for 43 percent of global exploration expenditures and 75 percent of the world’s mining companies were headquartered in Canada.

Canadian policy therefore has a vested interest in the mining sector, since Canadian companies play a major role in it globally.

But that doesn’t mean that Canada can’t follow the suit of our neighbours to the south and legislate for more ethical mining practices. When our MPs return to the House of Commons for the fall session, among the first bills on the agenda will be Private Member’s Bill C-300, the “Responsible Mining Bill.” Introduced by Liberal MP John McKay in 2009, the bill seeks to implement stricter guidelines for corporate social responsibility, to ensure that mining companies receiving funding from the federal government comply with internationally agreed-upon standards of human rights and environmental protection.

It comes down to responsibility: holding companies responsible for the goods they produce and the way they produce them. Of course, this is simply one small step to end the violence in the DRC—the war did not begin over minerals and this will not bring about its end. Every dollar in our society is a vote, though, and the the idea behind initiatives like Bill C-300 and the legislation in the U.S. is that civilian purchasing power, combined with government pressure, can enforce corporate accountability to stop funding the militarization of the region. This action is merely one in the arsenal that is required to stabilize the DRC. But it is an important one.