Lisa Rundle
Sugar and spice: Are women nice?
Women and niceness have a long history full of toiland trouble. Today women are still expected, andfrequently expect themselves, to be nice: soft, gentle,empathetic, selfless caretakers.
And if there's beensome understanding gained in the last quarter centurythat women are human and may occasionallydeserve some “me time,” we are still expected to benicer, softer, gentler and more empathetic than men.
While the forms and degrees of these expectationsvary enormously across cultures, they seem equallypersistent.
The feminots
A few weeks ago I was in the middle of a number of unfortunate situations with women, in these cases women older than I am, who identify as feminists but seemed to blithely treat other women like poop. I thought to myself: Ageism! I thought: Sexism! I thought: Iâe(TM)m going to write about theseâe¦ these, theseâe¦ feminots!
That was a few weeks ago. I tried the idea on a number of other women, older and younger, and everyone got pretty charged by it. âeoeYes, yes!âe theyâe(TM)d say. âeoeIâe(TM)ve experienced that.
Foul-weather friends
As I write, there's a whomping, scary, glorious summer-afternoon thunderstorm going on around me.The light seeping into the house is dim and eerie, theneighbourhood cats are hiding wherever there'sshelter, plant life is being pummelled with water,filling the view from my window with quivering,dancing, writhing green.
Whether a storm like this strikes you as awesome,as it did me today, or whether you just find yourselfwondering if your bike's inside or the basement willbe flooded, you can't help but take notice when thesky puts on this kind of a show, allowing us a smallpeek into its potenti
The politics of hope
The world can be a very bad place. Or, to attribute culpability where culpability is due, the people in the world can be. From scales too large to comprehend, to those so tiny they're able to pierce the most vulnerable reaches of the heart, there is callousness, violence and deprivation; there are failures of humanity.
To some extent, we all suffer these and we all perpetrate them.
Apocalypse now and then
I have a recurring worry involving the end of the world as weknow it. You might think the worry is about the world endingas we know it — cause for some concern, no doubt. But whatkeeps bothering me is what happens next, how well could Icarry my weight were I to end up, fortunately orunfortunately, among the straggling survivors?
Sure, I've got gravel in my gut and spit in my eye; it's not my capacity forfortitude in the face of utter disaster that bothers me.
Shticking it to 'em
A word of warning for next winter: When it's cold outside, and you're getting up when it's still dark, and, Stephen Harper is your country's prime minister, do not re-watch Manufacturing Consent, the NFB film about Noam Chomsky.
Oh, I know it's tempting — intellectual stimulation and cultural insight proffered like candy.
The feminots
A few weeks ago I was in the middle of a number of unfortunate situations with women, in these cases women older than I am, who identify as feminists but seemed to blithely treat other women like poop. I thought to myself: Ageism! I thought: Sexism! I thought: Iâe(TM)m going to write about theseâe¦ these, theseâe¦ feminots!
That was a few weeks ago. I tried the idea on a number of other women, older and younger, and everyone got pretty charged by it. âeoeYes, yes!âe theyâe(TM)d say. âeoeIâe(TM)ve experienced that.
Voice like liquid fire
Spoken-word artist, writer and professor emeritus of No-Knowledge College, Naila Keleta Mae is a woman to watch. Or, rather, to listen to. For national poetry month, Mae has squared off against her peers at the 2007 CBC Poetry Face Off. She will be featured in the upcoming Mayworks Festival in Toronto. Here, Mae discusses her art, activism and perspectives on spoken word, dub poetry and education, and reads some of her work.
PART 1 Listen now.
PART 2 Listen now.