Coach Roz reprimands the girls after hearing their comment about Bieste’s black eye.

By: Shannon Clarke

Feature image via Glee Fan Site

Glee, like any good cultural phenomenon, is a polarizing program. The same music theatre comedy that was nominated for award after award halfway through its first season is now battling serious backlash following another half-hearted “PSA style” episode. This time, the topic was domestic violence.

Almost immediately after “Choke” aired on May 1 (both a reference to chickening out at an important moment and a chilly reference to assault) critics took to their blogs to ask if the show had gone too far.

After football coach, Shannon Bieste (Dot-Marie Jones) walks through the hallway with a black eye, sharp-tongued cheerleader Santana (Naya Rivera) makes a joke about her, saying “looks like Mr. Bieste went all Chris Brown on Mrs. Bieste.”

Cheerleading coach, Roz Washington (NeNe Leakes) overhears and chastises the group for laughing about domestic violence. It’s fair criticism. Using Brown’s assault on Rihanna (an artist who has been covered on the show, by the way) as a “joke” is distasteful and disrespectful but it happens. It didn’t take long, for people to forget that her story wasn’t just an isolated, tabloid story about celebrities — it’s a real issue and will continue to be no matter how many Grammys Brown receives or how often the two collaborate.

Coach Roz refuses to let the flippant comment about violence against women go, and teams up with Sue Sylvester (Jane Lynch) and Coach Bieste to teach the Glee girls about the gravity of violence against women. They also give them their assignment for the week: to perform songs about female empowerment.

This in and of itself isn’t the problem —though, I wonder if it wouldn’t be more effective to relate the issue back to high school and dating violence. The problem is this storyline, in all its seriousness, was given the usual Glee treatment. That is, hardly any.

Bieste’s story, a story about domestic violence, is thrown in with storylines about Puck (Mark Salling) who may not graduate and whose friends must help him cram for a test and Rachel (Lea Michele) and Kurt (Chris Colfer) preparing for their college auditions.  This, says television blogger and Huffington Post writer Joey DeAngelis, is where Glee’s good intentions often fail.

“When such a serious storyline is told adjacent to, say, Rachel and Finn trying to get married and complaining about getting married, then it seems almost offensive. It makes it seem like they are of equal caliber, which they most certainly are not.”

At its core, Glee is a comedy. It’s how it manages to get away with blatantly stereotyping its cast and the more ridiculous storylines. But it has also prided itself on the central theme of acceptance, and, has charted its characters for three seasons as they navigate high school on the fringes. This often includes more “serious” storylines.

But Glee has an awful habit of dropping these “real issues” in and yanking them out, hardly ever returning to them again. Entire issues are introduced and abandoned in a single episode, thus minimizing their importance.

“Choke” certainly left an open ending to Bieste’s story but if past storylines are any indication, it seems unlikely. Not four episodes ago a recurring character attempted suicide — and the trauma of that lasted until the end of the episode. The following episode, “Prom-asaurus “ was about impending graduation. Coach Bieste didn’t make an appearance, and it included an almost physical altercation between Finn (Cory Monteith) and ex-girlfriend Quinn (Dianna Agron).

The show’s writers and editors also make unusual editorial decisions when dealing with these issues, as was the case with this episode. Coach Roz, whose disgust with Santana’s joke inspires that week’s assignment, asks Coach Bieste why she “didn’t just hit him back.”

It seems odd that the same person, who explained that she has some experience with domestic violence and has witnessed how hard it is to leave abusive relationships, would say something so classically insensitive. Survivors of domestic violence are often asked why they didn’t fight back, or leave.

The episode also seems conflicted over its treatment of women. While Coach Roz is encouraging female empowerment, Puck sexually harassing his geography teacher for a passing grade is treated for laughs. Bieste’s final scene (arguably the most emotional of the episode), is immediately followed by Kurt calling the college judge (guest-star Whoopi Goldberg) a bitch.

But this likely won’t be the end of Glee or their attempt at “serious” issues. Kurt’s experience with gay bashing was developed over several episodes and seasons. Santana’s outing was shorter and had more holes but was also a multi-episode storyline.

Hopefully this wasn’t another flash in the pan plotline. The topic deserves more respect and attention than the twenty minutes it received.

Jane Doe (in keeping with a publication ban, her name cannot be published) spoke to journalism students and professors about reporting sexual assault. She is an author, teacher, activist, public speaker and survivor.

“Journalists are uniquely poised to affect social justice and change,” she said.

That change includes respectfully, responsibly, and independently covering assault victims’ stories and being wary of warnings and statements from police that do more to hurt women than help them. When Paul Carrow (better known as the Balcony Rapist) broke into the homes of four Toronto women and sexually assaulted them in 1986, Toronto police opted not to warn the public. They didn’t want to make women “hysterical”, and Jane Doe became the fifth reported woman attacked. She was able to secure her own legal representation and so became the first raped woman in Ontario to sit in on Carrow’s hearing, making her privy to details of the investigation.

 A year later she sued the Metro Toronto Police for using her and other women as bait. The landmark suit was successful and she was awarded $220, 000 in 1998. In her ruling Madame Justice Jean MacFarland wrote:

 “[They made the] very serious decision not to warn these women of the risk they faced. This they did in the face of the almost certain knowledge that the rapist would attack again and cause irreparable harm to his victim. In my view, their decision in this respect was irresponsible and grossly negligent.”

 Though the Supreme Court ruled the police’s action unconstitutional, little (if anything) has changed. Rape culture and myths still dominate our coverage of sexual assault. Cases on television shows such as Criminal Minds, and the CSI and Law and Order franchises write out the beautiful, young, white victims after their opening scenes, glorifying police work instead. Police warnings tell women to be use “extra” caution and includes a litany of “don’ts” that they already know, Survivors of rape are subjected to invasive medical examinations, grilled on their sexual history, shunned, shamed and chastised for putting themselves in harm’s way. And yet they are still encouraged to come forward.

“Becoming Jane Doe was the only thing I didn’t have to fight the legal system for,” she said of the pseudonym she shares with too many other women. Though she encouraged the audience to use her real name when speaking to her, she is grateful for the alias and says she isn’t going to give it up any time soon.

Jane Doe urged journalists to seek out the voices of other survivors, women who work with them, or understand rape and sexual assault. But, with the media’s compliance with the “police rape-story narrative”, finding women willing to speak to the press is near impossible.

“Why would we choose to report, especially when we know of the low prosecution rate?”

Reporters who do speak to survivors cling to the standard victim story: she mustn’t be too loud, or confident, or happy, or strong. Anything other than a picture of passivity and helplessness is left out of the story. Jane Doe makes specific mention to the article featured on the cover of her book The Jane Doe Story. Published by the Toronto Sun, the headline read: “Balcony Rapist’s Victim Wins $220 G’s”.

“Even after I’d won, I was still a victim.”

The lecture was especially poignant this year. After a woman was abducted and gang-raped minutes away from Ryerson in January, many wondered why campus security took so long to notify students. Jane Doe has been asked about the story and says it’s not the first (and definitely won’t be the last) time a university cringes at the word “rape”.  Similar allegations were made by York University last year after two women were raped in the dorm rooms. Sexual assaults are bad for business – and universities are businesses as much as they are pillars of education. We celebrate schools with small class sizes, famous alumni and innovative programs that lead to employment.  Where, Jane Doe asked, are the mentions of women’s centres and sexual assault support programs? Considering 1 in 4 women in North America are sexually assaulted in their lifetime, and (despite what current rape myths will have us believe) likely by someone they know, support for women on campus seems like an important thing to mention.

The institutions that turn out our country’s future lawyers, judges, doctors, nurses, politicians, police officers and journalists, do so while perpetuating skewed representations of crimes against women. Not only sexist, they are often misogynistic, racist, hetero-normative and fixated on the idea that rapists live in dark alleys and parks. Schools, journalism schools in particular, said Jane Doe, need to educate students on rape before the face tight deadlines and tightlipped sources.

“As future journalists, you’ve got to operate as windows to the world.”

If you are interested, we encourage you to apply.

The two editors-in-chief are the organizers of the whole operation. Your responsibilities include:

-hire individuals for the masthead
-coordinate both editorial and art meetings
-creating, managing and balancing the budget
-oversee editorial and art direction of the magazine
-being able to play multiple roles in case things fall through

The ideal candidate has excellent time-management and organization skills, the desire to mentor fellow students, a keen eye for detail and design, excellent writing and editing abilities.  While it is helpful to have taken magazine courses, it is definitely not a requirement.

Please email us a resume, cover letter and a few digital clippings (optional) at mcclungs@ryerson.ca detailing why you think you’re the perfect candidate for the position and any ideas you have for next year’s issues (including content, management, circulation and fundraising ideas). Please put “EIC application” in the subject line.

The deadline is March 30, 2012.   Feel free to contact us if you have any additional questions.

Please note this is an unpaid position.

Thanks,

Sam and Niki
Editors-in-Chief
McClung’s Magazine
www.mcclungs.ca

Today marks the 101st anniversary of International Women’s Day, a day that recognizes the progress and hurdles that women around the world still face.

The first International Women’s Day was held on March 19, 1911 in Austria, Denmark, Germany and Switzerland. It continued to be celebrated by other countries and in 1977 the United Nations designated March 8 to be International Women’s Day.

In Canada, the theme for International Women’s Day this year is: “Strong Women, Strong Canada –Women in Rural, Remote and Northern Communities: Key to Canada’s Economic Prosperity”

According to the Status of Women in Canada, Canada is home to 17.4 million women and girls and contains more than 5,400 communities — approximately 5,200 of which are rural, remote or Northern.

Take a look at how women celebrated around Toronto and around the world.

Rush Limbaugh, the unofficial spokesman for the worst caricature of Republicans in the United States isn’t known for mincing words. And while the talk show host’s litany of homophobic, racist, and sexist views is well established, his comments about Georgetown law student, Sandra Fluke, angered even his supporters. Fluke was initially denied a chance to speak at an exclusively male Congressional hearing on religious liberty and contraception. A second, informal committee was held at the request of House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, which is where Fluke testified.

Limbaugh responded on his Feb. 29 show, but not to Fluke’s comments by calling her a “slut”.

“What does it say about the college coed Susan [sic] Fluke, who goes before a congressional committee and essentially says that she must be paid to have sex?” he said, adding: “What does that make her? It makes her a slut, right? It makes her a prostitute. She wants to be paid to have sex.”

Never mind that Limbaugh doesn’t seem to understand how birth control works, nor does he care that safe, affordable contraception actually saves taxpayers money. The idea that women, all women, would be in control of their sexual health was
obviously the bigger issue, hence the slut shaming.For good measure, he decided to go after feminists as well, or, as he’s fond of calling them, “femi-nazis”.

“Here’s the deal. If we are going to pay for your contraceptives, and thus pay for you to have sex, we want something for it. We want you to post the videos online so we can all watch.”

News outlets picked up the story, generating thousands of comments online. Soon, “Rush Limbaugh” was trending on Twitter (#BoycottRush), as people demanded his sponsors pull their ads from his show. Several did. By Saturday night, seven companies, Sleep Train, Sleep Number, Legal Zoom, Citrix, Quicken Loans and Carbonite announced they were suspending their ads. Carbonite posted a letter on their blog announcing their distaste for Limbaugh’s comments.

“No one with daughters the age of Sandra Fluke, and I have two, could possibly abide the insult and abuse heaped upon this courageous and well-intentioned young lady.”

When the firestorm started, Limbaugh stood behind his comments, likening affordable birth control to a “new welfare program” and continued to insist that Fluke was demanding the government supplement her sex life. He also accused the Democratic party of vilifying Republicans as a threat to women.

“If abortion were still the winning issue that the Democrats think that it used to be, Sandra Fluke would be testifying about that,” said Limbaugh.

“’Contraception’ ” is the replacement plank for ” ‘abortion’ ” in the Democrat Party platform.”

But on Sunday, Limbaugh delivered the classic non-apology apology. He acknowledged his choice of words (but not the meaning behind them) was wrong, and that his comments were intended to be humourous. However, he doesn’t believe the government should be paying for “sexual recreational activities”. Despite Limbaugh’s “apology” ProFlowers, an online flower company, announced they were pulling their ads a few hours later, the seventh sponsor, at the time of writing, to do so. The Republican Party is also taking pains to distance themselves from Limbaugh’s comments, reports the National Post.

The United States congress has been embroiled in debate the last couple of months over birth control coverage. It began when the Obama administration announced a proposal that would have faith-based institutions provide free coverage for birth control. Catholic-affiliated companies including several universities were not pleased with the decision and some, like, Fordham University in New York, flat out refused to comply. Obama ultimately scrapped the plan. Representative Carolyn Maloney was one of four house democrats who walked out of the hearing last week in protest of lack of women speakers. She pointed to Limbaugh’s comments as a “wake up call” to the women’s movement.

Limbaugh’s argues the government shouldn’t be paying for sexual recreation, suggesting sex is only for heterosexual married couples that want to have children. He says the government has no business in its citizens’ bedrooms, but is staunchly against gay rights. He says women should be “responsible and accountable”. Access to affordable birth control allows women to be responsible and accountable for own their bodies and their sex lives.

The Republican Party may not be at war with women, but, if Limbaugh’s arguments are at all representative of their views (and he certainly believes they are), the GOP is at war with women’s reproductive freedom.

Countless pages could be written on gender.  Where to even begin?   Gender roles are something most of us constantly have to deal with whether we realize it or not, from childhood onward. It’s something that I have experienced my entire life and chances are that if you are female, you have as well. So what is this “something”? It is the fact that we face many limitations in our daily lives because of our gender.

Women have indeed made progress, yet don’t notice how in our daily lives we are  doing things to protect ourselves from potential dangers. It’s as if we are living in a bubble of fear, which we get trapped into at a young age, with society instilling fear and suspicion. For example, a woman walking to her car in a parking lot would have to exercise a lot more caution than a man would.

This is what Jessica Valenti, author and founder of Feministing.com, calls the “rape schedule” in her book “Full Frontal Feminism.” She writes:

“Because of their constant fear of rape (conscious or not), women do things throughout the day
to protect themselves. Whether it’s carrying our keys in our hands as we walk home, locking
our car doors as soon as we get in, or not walking down certain streets, we take precautions.
While taking precautions is certainly not a bad idea, the fact that certain things women do are
so ingrained into our daily routines is truly disturbing.”

A problem with this “rape schedule” is that it ties in with victim blaming. If something were to happen to a woman walking alone down the street on the way from the bus stop to her home, she would most certainly be blamed.  So many people say she should have “known better.” But, what if she had no other way of getting home? What if she couldn’t afford a car or had nobody to pick her up from school or work? What then? She would have had no other way of getting from point A to point B without getting out at the stop and walking for five to ten minutes to get to her house.

Blaming the woman is simply giving in not only to victim blaming, but also to this bubble of fear and “rape schedule” because it unconsciously makes everyone think that we should legitimately abide by these rules. People should be cautious of certain locations, take precautions at certain times, and be suspicious of certain individuals. We should be careful because there are things that could happen to anyone -whether male or female, young or old -not because of gender.

And ultimately, we should all realize that something is truly wrong in our society when a) as Valenti points out, certain things we do to protect ourselves, are so entrenched in our daily lives and b) victim blaming, especially when it comes to blaming women for things that are clearly not their fault is so rampant. We simply get used to these things, and  believe that is just how life is and think nothing of it, until someone mentions it and you realize that you too have been living in this bubble.

Feature image via Vanity Fair.

If 2012 really is the end of civilization as we know it, and our questions about world peace or global warming are never answered, we can at least be sure of one thing — Vanity Fair really doesn’t care what you think of its annual Hollywood cover.

Last year, readers noted the spread featured only two people of colour (Rashida Jones and Anthony Mackie), both tucked away in the folds of the extended cover.

The front page was reserved for four of the 11 white actors in the 13-person shoot.

In 2010, readers complained that the “Young Hollywood” cover depicted exclusively thin, white actresses. Where, they asked, was Gabourey Sidibie, who earned an Oscar nomination for her first lead role in Precious? Kristen Stewart made the list, as did Amanda Seyfried, both of who were on the “New Wave” cover in 2008. That was the year Slumdog Millionaire cleaned up during awards season and Frieda Pinto was everywhere but Vanity Fair.

The magazine unveiled its 2012 cover this week and still, nothing has changed. There are eight actresses photographed, two are black, neither one made the newsstand cover.

The dissent, however, is less passionate than years past, maybe even a little submissive. Like the awkward relative who shows up to every family function, Vanity Fair’s blatant indifference to non-white, non-thin, non-young Hollywood is a given. After nearly a decade, the defences are as worn out as the critiques.

“But wait,” a VF devotee will say. “These actresses were huge successes too!”

No one is denying cover girl Rooney Mara’s Girl With the Dragon Tattoo was an enormous critical and commercial hit. But so was Bridesmaids and Melissa McCarthy is nowhere in sight.

“Okay, but Melissa McCarthy is over 40, and these women are in their 20s and 30s.”

Mindy Kaling, star, co-producer and writer for The Office for eight seasons is only 32.

She’s been active on both the big and small screens for seven years and never once has been part of the coveted shoot.

And Hollywood certainly loves its starlets, “precocious beauties” as the magazine calls. Roles for men over 40 are plenty. Roles for women are not.

In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, best actor nominee George Clooney decried the treatment of older women in Hollywood.

“When a man hits 40 is when roles just begin to happen. And for women it doesn’t happen. I find that to be a very concerning issue.”

“But what has Gabourey Sidibe done lately?”

Admittedly, not much, probably because Hollywood doesn’t know what to do with actresses they consider “plus-sized” other than hand them stereotypical roles.

Jennifer Hudson — whose weight loss has now far eclipsed her musical and acting achievements — recently wrote that she turned down the lead in Precious because she didn’t want to be typecast, having just won an Oscar for playing Effie in Dreamgirls.

“Well, those actors are on the cover because they’re interviewed inside.”

So, not only does the magazine sideline the few actors of colour featured, they silence them as well.

“There are just more white actors in Hollywood.”

This year’s roster of Oscar nominees is being called “the whitest” in the last decade, despite the buzz around Octavia Spencer and Viola Davis’ performances as disgruntled maids in The Help (co-star Jessica Chastin made this year’s newsstand cover.)

Davis is taking advantage of her time on the award circuit this year to talk about the scarce roles for black actresses. She appears in the same issue of Entertainment Weekly as Clooney.

“Only one black actress in history has been back [at the Oscars] more than once, and that’s Whoopi Goldberg. But that’s only because there aren’t a lot of roles out there that are going to bring you back.”

Writer Allison Samuels addressed this pretty thoroughly last December in the Daily Beast.

Movies featuring exclusively or predominately white casts are often big budget films, sent into wide release while movies featuring all-black casts (Pariah, For Colored Girls, Red Tails) are marketing mysteries. Anything beyond the black-white American dichotomy is “foreign.” Roles for South Asian, Asian and Latina actors and actresses are so slim they are virtually non-existent.

With every excuse exhausted, it’s hard to believe Vanity Fair has no clue what it’s doing. Or maybe it does, and is just touting out this tired cover controversy every year to remind the industry and its consumers that Hollywood is not nearly as diverse as its audience.

No? I didn’t think so either.

What’s the ‘Female Weezy’ doing for women? Absolutely nothing, says McClung's blogger Lisa Coxon. Image courtesy of PyroMag.com.

By: Lisa Coxon

When she first hit the rap scene, it was easy to believe she might be on women’s side, but female hip-hop artist Nicki Minaj has injected far too much pro-male lexicon and attitude into her songs to make that possible anymore.

Minaj began as an underground rapper and in 2009, she signed with Lil Wayne’s record label Young Money,notorious for producing songs that focus on drugs, money, and women. Three years later, we’re seeing the effects of a capitalist patriarchy as she lyrically assaults women.

Her latest single Stupid Hoe, which broke a viewing record on Vevo with 4.8 million views within 24 hours of its premiere, expresses explicit female hatred with lyrics like “I piss on bitches,” and “stupid hoes is my enemy.” (The video for the first track off her sophomore album, Pink Friday: Roman Reloaded, apparently got the axe from BET for being too explicit.)

Conveyed here is the same message women have been getting from most male hip-hop artists for years: you are less valuable of a human being because you are a woman.

The danger in assuming that when Minaj uses “bitches” and “hoes,” she’s referring to “those other women,” not us and the women we know, is that we too become perpetrators of this misogyny.

It doesn’t make it any less anti-female because a woman is saying it. This pits women against other women, also evident in her ongoing feud with Lil’ Kim, where sisterhood is completely absent.

Her latest slogan, “I am the female Weezy,” referring to Lil Wayne, first appeared in the song Y.U. Mad with Birdman and Lil Wayne, and shows up again at the end of Stupid Hoe.

Talk about apologizing for being (a talented) female. She won’t even call herself a female rapper; she refers to herself as the female version of a (sexist) male rapper. Her use of “king” to describe herself and “sons” to describe women doesn’t exactly scream proud female either.

Her main gimmick, the Barbie persona, clings to a very narrow concept of female beauty and femininity. The Barbie diamond necklace, her Pink Friday album, and the media’s obsession with the size of her rear, are all symptoms of a threatening woman who has been neutralized.

The Barbie persona, the little-girl voice, the obsession with pink, and the “Nicki blink” where she bats her eyelashes rapidly, all part of Minaj’s gimmick, promote a stereotypical image of female childhood. Minaj presents herself as being in a state of perpetual girlhood, but dresses up this damaging concept in colourful wigs and makeup, and sells it back to us as adult female empowerment.

If you look closely though, Minaj is merely a product of the backlash against feminism. She could have changed the landscape for aspiring female hip-hop artists and fans, and instead she is a stark reminder of how powerful the patriarchy is when motivated by capitalism.