Prior to attending university I had bounced around from factory job to factory job. In reality I was going nowhere fast. The job market in my home town was shrinking and there really was no future in what I was doing. I had a three year college diploma under my belt in electronic engineering, but there was no work outside of Toronto.
It was at this point that I was looking at getting married and I decided that if that was what I wanted to do, get married and eventually start a family, I would need something far more stable in order to provide for them. After a lot of hemming and hawing I finally decided to take the plunge and pursue a desire of mine to be a teacher.
So it was on September 8th 2001 that I got married, and on September 10th I began my classes. We all remember what happened on September 11th. University was a shock to the system, to be sure. I had been out of school for several years and I was unused to and unfamiliar with the rigors of university life. Add to that a one hour, one way commute and a new wife; I was feeling the pressure.
In December we moved closer to the university I was attending. I had chosen that particular university because my wife had family in that city. While this was good for my studies it proved to be detrimental for my marriage which ended less than a year after it began.
So I began my second year once again on my own, living in a place I hated and having switched my major from math to history. Luckily for me I met a person who would prove to be a very good friend. It was through our friendship that much of my personal growth would occur.
I can remember being happy that George W. Bush had won the 2000 election through the interference of the US supreme court. I can remember talking with my friend and displaying a gross sense of naivety when I argued that they wouldn't lie about their reasons for going to war in Iraq. Luckily for me my friend was patient and over the years I was able to more thoroughly wrestle with different ideologies and their meaning for society.
I found myself transforming from a relatively hardcore conservative (I was once a member of Canada's Reform Party) to a social liberal and a political socialist. While I couldn't bring myself to accept or even contemplate the label of communist. I once again was lucky to meet another good friend through work. He identified as a libertarian and we would have numerous discussions concerning the practical effects of both socialism and libertarianism. This was good for me as it challenged my growing status quo.
I find that being challenged is important, as it is easy to fall into the trap of intellectual laziness. I like having to think through my ideas and having to refine my opinions. The same is perhaps surprisingly true of my religious convictions as well. In all the ways that my faith has been challenged or questioned, in the end they have all strengthened my religious convictions. Prior to attending university I was a fairly unthinking person, willing to accept what was being said with little or no critical thought. Now, I find it hard not to question anything on some level.
As such my progression from unthinking conservative to socialist has once again been refined toward anarchy. It was after taking a utopian fiction course that I began to think about what utopia would look like to me. In the end it was an amalgam of conservative and liberal ideologies.
Recently Stephen Colbert interviewed conservative commentator George Will. In this interview Will commented that the difference between conservatism and liberalism was that conservatism had as its goal liberty, while liberalism had as its goal equality. Conservatives willing to allow for inequality if it meant that liberty was established, while liberals are willing to allow for a loss of certain liberties if equality was established.
I found this to be an interesting definition of the two positions. However I found that I could not support either side. As such I don't believe that either ideology is the answer. While I agree that liberty is something that should be sought after and protected, in my opinion, it should not be done in such a way as to neglect or hurt others. Equality too, is something to strive for, but not if it means that we are all equally oppressed.
When I began to write my utopian vision, I came up against the inherent problem of all utopias: humanity. We as human beings are some really fucked up creatures. We are known for great acts of charity and valour as well as great acts of greed and cruelty. The unfortunate thing is that despite our growth in knowledge and understanding, both in the natural world but of ourselves, we have not changed in any significant way. While my utopia was anarchic in construct it was placed within the millennial reign of Christ so that the inherent and constant failings of humanity could be done away with. I found an anarchic construct to be the easiest way to blend the two competing theories of liberty and equality.
As my political journey has continued I have found myself coming to the conclusion that, while I would prefer socialism to libertarianism, there is no meaningful or benign way of instituting socialist ideas within the current nation state make up of the world. We inherently see people divesting themselves of personal liberty and responsibility and placing it in the hands of increasingly faceless governments. Gigantic bureaucracies that are becoming less and less accountable to the people who they supposedly represent.
Recently a friend of mine joined a group called 'I believe in Socialism because I believe in Humanity'. Nice title, but I find it to be rather contradictory. I understand that they are striving for equality but socialism naturally strips humanity of its responsibilities and by extension its agency, and forces people to become dependent upon government. If people believed in humanity so much, wouldn't they want to enable greater agency in people?
Of course the reverse is to place no limits on personal agency and that would merely leave us with a society of haves and have-nots (not too unlike our current one unfortunately). While the haves enjoyed life, liberty and luxury; the have-nots would be left in squalor preying on one another for survival. There have been more than a few books that have spoken about this particular outcome and its not one that I want to see come about.
Another way that I have changed over the course of my journey is in my view of women. There was a time that I considered myself a feminist. Then there was a time when I questioned this when I saw what too many women seen as feminism and wondered if I was actually a misogynist. Today I wouldn't say that I am a tried and true feminist but I would say that I have feminist leanings. However I feel that I must further clarify my position in that my leanings would be more towards the older feminist schools.
Recently the movie Sex and the City came out and, while I never really understood the tv show, I truly don't understand the success of the movie. I'm told that SatC is a positive representation of women for the modern world and a step forward for the feminist movement. What I see unfortunately is a group of women who have no joy in their lives, who try to fill that void through meaningless sex and base materialism. Traditional relationships are ridiculed and those who pursue marriage and family are to be insulted, while those who place such things over and above such things as employment are to be shunned. I am left wondering what these women have to say to the world that isn't about shallow vanity and personal aggrandizement.
I tried to discuss this with a friend of mine who is much more of a new wave feminist and they feel that SatC is a positive representation of and for women. She supports forms of pornography such as Playboy and Suicide Girls, arguing that they empower women to present themselves to the world as they see fit. While such things as the Suicide Girls may help to break away from the narrow construction of beauty that far too many women feel that they need to conform to (often in drastic and detrimental ways) I don't see how it doesn't contribute to the continued over sexualization of women and their subsequent objectification.
When I see such things as Playboy or Suicide Girls I can't help but think that of all the ways that these women had to present themselves to the world they chose to do it through the objectification of their bodies. For that is in essence what is occurring. Some, perhaps many, would argue that that is not the problem of the women but of a misogynistic society that can't get past their base views of women. That it is through representations of women that society will get past this Neanderthal-like view and be able to see past the T&A of a woman and see the for the unique person that they are. While this may be argued, I find that it isn't working all that well.
I seen one documentary that talked about how people were using their nakedness to speak out about various issues. One segment in particular focused on two sisters who, in protesting the war in Iraq, chose to do so naked. In talking with the people viewing the demonstration many didn't know that Iraq was even the issue of concern but rather focused solely on the naked women.
Another documentary I seen was talking about about the oversexualization of 'tweeners', those kids between the ages of 10 and 12. It followed three young girls aged 10, 11, and 12 and talked to them about such things as advertising and female representations in the media. At one point they showed the girls an ad for Candie's shoes. The girls talked about how sexy Ashley looked, how confident and impressive she was. The ad showed Ashley dressed in panties, shoes, knee high socks and a faux fur jacket opened enough to show her cleavage. The film makers then crossed the playground and showed three young boys aged 10, 12, and 12 the same ad and asked them what they thought. The boys all talked about how good her ass and tits looked. In neither group was there a comment concerning the commodity supposedly being marketed: shoes.
Young girls are being fed a steady diet of over-sexualized representations of women and are told to see it as confidence, empowerment and a positive step for women. Young boys are seeing the same representations of over-sexualized women and are instead seeing women as bits and pieces to be separated, objectified and commodified. So we get to the SatC women who perpetuate this representation of 'modern' women and fill out with meaninglessness, shallowness and emptiness. In fact they are more in line with misogynistic representations of women, women who are in it for nothing more than a quick conjugal visit with no meaning and no connection. This is the modern, positive feminism?
Shouldn't feminism look to advance the position of women in society? Shouldn't look at the actions of both men and women and identify those things that are positive and work to change those things that are negative? In the past a misogynistic and paternalistic society sexualized women so that they were mostly objectified. Today women choose to do this of their own accord and call it progress. Is this what their mothers and grandmothers fought for? The right to objectify one's self?
Alecia Beth Moore once asked "what happened to the dream of a girl president?" Her unfortunate response was that she was "dancing in the video next to 50 Cent." What we can see today is that it truly isn't time for a female president, as Hillary Clinton lost out to Barack Obama for the nomination of the Democratic Party. Despite being heralded as a shoe in for the White House less than a year ago, Senator Clinton is now on the outside looking in.
A recent BBC article stated: "Just take a look at polls over the past year and a half. In December 2006, only a little more than half - 55% - of registered voters said that America was ready to elect a woman as president in a Newsweek poll.In the wake of Mrs Clinton's candidacy, in another poll conducted by Newsweek in April, almost three-quarters of American voters - 70% - say the country is ready for a woman commander-in-chief."
What I found interesting in the article is that while women over the age of 50 heavily supported Senator Clinton and are now disappointed by losing out on this opportunity to show that women can be president, women under 50 more heavily supported Senator Obama. "One thing is clear from their lack of support for the woman candidate: younger women do not feel the same urgency to elect women that their mothers and grandmothers do."
Former producer and writer for Sex and the City Elisa Zuritsky stated: "To think that we'd vote for someone because they are a woman is too simplistic," she says.
"Maybe women of our generation have been spoiled by all the hard work that all the feminists did before us. But they were successful, and whatever gripes we have are fairly muted.
"[Gender] has taken a back seat and I think it has been a show of progress that we can focus on other things.."The unfortunate thing is that far too many women are focusing not on the feminism of their mothers and grandmothers, the feminism that made it possible for Hillary Clinton to run for president. Rather they are focusing on the vacuous, shallow, self-destructive and empty role models of modern feminism that are typified in Sex and the City.
The one thing that I kind of worry about is, after having not worried about having a relationship for so long (figured that there was no real point given that I was committed to traveling overseas when I graduated) is whether or not I can tone down my opinions about such things enough to have a meaningful relationship. I know one thing for sure, the women that I do involve myself with in the future will be different than my former wife.
In some ways, I haven't grown much at all. I still want to be a husband. I want to be loved and to love someone else. I want to be able to be romantic. I want to be a father, to be part of a family. All the things I wanted to be a decade ago. I think it will be interesting to see how my growth in other areas of my life affect this area of life.
