14
May

A Special Delivery: Having a Caesarean Section

By Emilia Liz Closed
Categories: family

When I was six months pregnant, I stepped out of the shower one day and caught a glimpse of myself in a full-length mirror. Looking at my bulbous belly, I realized then and there that the only way my daughter – I already knew the baby was female – could be born was by caesarean section. I went into labour naturally three months later. After 36 hours of futile pushing, however, I found myself strapped to an operating table as a team of doctors cut my little girl out of my abdomen. (I was conscious during the surgery.)

My caesarean was necessary. The baby was too big; I was too small; and without medical intervention, both she and I would likely have died. That knowledge didn’t necessarily make recovery any easier: I distinctly remember my bandaged belly aching whenever I laughed and my stitches moved. Three days afterwards when a nurse took off my bandages and stitches, an angry red mark greeted me where I’d literally been sliced and diced.

The next few weeks were a blur of breastfeeding, diaper changing, setting up my computer so that I could work at home, and touching base once again with friends and colleagues. I didn’t reflect in any great depth on how my daughter was born. But then one morning in July (about two months after the birth), it seemed to all come back to me, almost out of the blue. On one hand, I wasn’t particularly surprised at having had to give birth abdominally. I was almost 39 when my daughter was born, and older first-time mothers are at greater risk of delivery complications. My three sisters all had their children by caesarean for the same reason I did: baby too large, mother too small (in medical terms, cephalopelvic disproportion). Add the fact that I’m fairly narrow in the pelvis, and I knew even before seeing my bulging belly in the mirror that my chances of being sectioned were fairly high. Nonetheless, it was a bit disconcerting to contemplate the fact that without modern medical technology, I would most likely be dead now. In a sense, my body had failed me.

Since that July morning, I’ve read a great deal about other women’s reactions to having a caesarean section. At one end of the spectrum, some mothers feel cheated of a ‘real’ birth experience by not being able to deliver vaginally. Other women in contrast specifically request a caesarean even without medical indication because they do not want to go through what they view as the pain of a so-called normal birth (famous example: Britney Spears). I admit that during the last weeks of my pregnancy, I briefly toyed with the idea of asking my obstetrician to give me a c-section because I didn’t exactly relish the thought of suffering through labour. Then I had the fantasy of labouring without a hitch and triumphantly expelling the baby in one or two big pushes. I did indeed go through labour – and ended up with major surgery and a cut belly nonetheless.

This May 8, that will be six years ago. The angry red mark that awaited me when my bandages were removed is now a small white line along my abdomen. It’s fairly inconspicuous, but it is visible. As one of my nieces said, ‘Aunt Emilia had a crack on her tummy.’ It’s really the only tangible bodily sign that I actually gave birth: I don’t have stretch marks; my breasts haven’t changed at all despite nursing my daughter for over two years; and all my pregnancy weight was gone in two months.

As with the operation itself, women’s feelings about their caesarean scars vary from person to person. One woman interviewed in a 1980s book on pregnancy and childbirth felt inconvenienced by her scar because she, in her own words, had a thing for ‘bikinis and such.’ On the other hand, a second woman who had undergone a c-section said she looked on her scar as a badge. My own feelings about my scar are more like those of the latter woman. I remember a discussion with an ex-boyfriend (not my daughter’s father; rather, the Spanish-Filipino man I mentioned in my essay ‘Who’s White?’) where he told me that if I had a caesarean, I’d always have to wear a one-piece bathing suit because otherwise everyone would see the mark on my belly. ‘Oh, but you’d probably be proud of your scar,’ he added immediately afterwards.

I am proud of my scar. I don’t feel I have to hide it if I go to the beach, for example. And any sense of failure I might have at not being able to give birth ‘normally’ has long dissipated. I am also aware that if I ever get pregnant again (a very unlikely occurrence, for lack of both desire and – at 44 – ability), I will in all probability need another caesarean. A VBAC (vaginal birth after caesarean) would not likely be in the cards for me if I ever found myself ‘with child’ now.

Six years later, my caesarean section seems less of a ‘major surgery’ than simply the way that my daughter came into the world. So in that way, my scar and the operation that led to my daughter’s birth seem worth celebrating.

09
Apr

Trayvon and George, a Year Later

By Emilia Liz Closed
Categories: American Politics, Politics and Society
It’s been over a year now since the shooting death of Trayvon Martin by George Zimmerman in Sanford, Florida. In many ways, it appears we are no closer to a definite answer as to what really happened than we were at the time of the event. The ability to get a clearer picture is hampered by among other things the lack of reliable witnesses and, more importantly, the absence of one of the key parties, Trayvon Martin himself. Was Martin a victim of racism as well as overzealous vigilantism, a young Black male killed for being, well, a young Black male? Or was Zimmerman a victim of a violent counterattack by Martin and thus guilty of nothing other than self-defence?
Immediately after the fact, public opinion seemingly divided itself into two camps: those who would say ‘yes’ to the first question in the previous paragraph and those who would respond in the affirmative to the second. I myself take an agnostic approach to the Martin-Zimmerman affair. Until we have more and better information on what truly occurred that fateful night in Florida, everybody might do well to look before they leap to any particular conclusion. Unfortunately, many partisans on both sides of the issue lack credibility. For example, PZ Myers of the left-wing blog Pharyngula, who in an entry titled ‘Racist goddamned Florida’ railed against the ‘puffed-up coward Zimmerman,’ had five years earlier sarcastically referred to three male Duke University students falsely accused of sexually assaulting a stripper as ‘those nice boys at Duke’ – long after it became evident that the rape charge was a hoax.
Where those on either side of the fence went wrong at first was to label the Martin-Zimmerman case a Black versus White issue. It was soon discovered that George Zimmerman might more appropriately be classified as Hispanic rather than White. While his father is White, of German descent (some people mistakenly thought George Zimmerman was Jewish, probably with the famous Robert Zimmerman – aka Bob Dylan – in mind), his mother is Peruvian. And, irony of ironies, Mrs. Zimmerman is believed to possess African ancestry: Peru has a history of slavery from colonial times and a sizable Black population today. Some say that far from being a ‘White vigilante,’ as one left-wing website called him, Zimmerman looks more like a ‘cross between Barack Obama and Hugo Chavez’1 (personally, I see some resemblance between Zimmerman and Chavez but not much with Obama).
The difficulty with labelling the Zimmerman-Martin incident a Black-White affair lies precisely in the difficulty with labelling Hispanics at all in a racial sense. US government surveys state that Hispanics can be ‘of any race.’ In terms of actual ancestry, the majority of Hispanics in and outside the United States tend to be European plus something or some things else, the ‘things’ in question being African and/or Native American. On the other hand, some so-called Hispanics have no non-White ancestry. For instance, my ex-fiancé was born in Lima, Peru, to a German father and Northern Italian mother. He had no problem, though, defining himself as a ‘Spanish-speaking minority’ when seeking work in the States. There are also Hispanics like my more recent boyfriend, who obviously has some non-European (in his case, Amerindian) forbears but who identifies as White.
The ‘outing’ of George Zimmerman as Hispanic challenges another widely held view: that different ‘peoples of colour’ will bond together or, in the White Supremacist paradigm, conspire against the White race. Here again, both Left and Right are guilty of promoting a false belief. One example: the White Supremacist website Stormfront talks in sinister tones about how ‘the Jew, the Asian, the Black, and the Latino’ have it in for the White man. This poster might be surprised by a recent poll from Great Britain showing that South Asians in that country were more likely to approve of a family member marrying a White than marrying a Black. This was true even among South Asian Christians (yes, they do exist), the category most accepting of interracial marriage. At the other end of the political spectrum, the Left also embraces the idea of people of colour engaging in some great interracial love-in. We saw this, for instance, in their support for ‘Writing Thru Race,’ a conference in Vancouver in 1994 which limited participation to non-White writers so as to ‘ensure a milieu in which writers directly affected by racism [could] engage in candid and personal discussions.’ But outside of the leftist – or for that matter rightist – fringe, it is far from clear whether different minority groups actually like each other any more than they like Whites.
We are still awaiting the final word on Trayvon Martin’s death, if the final word indeed comes. What is obvious at this point, however, is that the event cannot be boiled down to a simple Black versus White or, in the eyes of Martin supporters, White versus Black issue. Going beyond what happened in Sanford, Florida, it is equally clear that race, whether in the United States or elsewhere, is literally not a matter of black and white.
1 Sailer, Steve. George Zimmerman, Wrecker. http://isteve.blogspot.ca/2012/07/george-zimmerman-wrecker.html
28
Feb

Safe or unsafe: Designated Countries of Origin

By Emilia Liz Closed
Categories: Canadian Politics

“It don’t really matter to me, baby,
Everybody’s had to fight to be free.
You see you don’t have to live like a refugee
(Don’t have to live like a refugee)
No, you don’t have to live like a refugee
(Don’t have to live like a refugee)
Now you don’t have to live like a refugee
(Don’t have to live like a refugee)

This song, by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, always struck a chord with me (pardon the pun). Petty’s work isn’t the type of music I tend to listen to: give me bouncy British Invasion tunes like Bob Marley’s ‘Buffalo Soldier’ or the Rolling Stones’ ‘Get off of my cloud’ instead. But somehow, Petty’s ‘Refugee’ has stuck with me.

Perhaps it’s because refugees are, and have always been, a burning issue in Canada. Just last December, Citizenship and Immigration Minister Jason Kenney compiled a list of so-called ‘safe’ countries, or in bureaucratic lingo, Designated Countries of Origin. Citizens from such nations can apply for asylum in Canada, but they will only have between 30 and 45 days to prepare their refugee claims rather than the usual 60. If their claim is rejected, they can appeal the decision to the Federal Court of Canada but not to the Immigration and Refugee Board. Finally, those whose quest to obtain refugee status in Canada ultimately fails will be removed from the country.

The purpose of this list, according to Kenney, is to make Canada’s refugee system fairer and more flexible. People who truly need this country’s protection, he says, will receive it more quickly, while those whose applications are refused will be expelled faster. Unofficially, the DCO list aims to pare down the number of individuals seeking refugee status in this country in the first place. In the two months since the plan was implemented, it appears to have borne fruit: refugee applications to Canada have declined by approximately 70% compared to similar periods in the last six years. Jason Kenney himself has pointed out the dramatic drop in applications from nations that have traditionally had a high number of unfounded claims.

The list originally contained 27 countries: 25 from the European Union plus the United States and Croatia. More recently, it was expanded to include eight more, such as Japan, Australia, Israel (excluding Gaza and the West Bank), and Mexico. There seems to be a certain method in the madness of the government’s designation of countries as secure or not. Practically all nations in the industrialized West fall in the ‘safe’ category, as do two industrialized but not Western countries (Israel and Japan) and a Western but still developing one (Mexico). The second largest group of nations on the safe list consists of the ambiguously Occidental nations of Eastern Europe: in other words, the traditionally Catholic or Protestant countries like Slovenia or Estonia as opposed to the Orthodox and less westernized ones like Russia or Romania. Off the list are the entire continent of Africa, practically all of Asia (save Japan and Israel), and every Latin American nation except one.

In many ways, the list makes sense. It may surprise some people, for instance, that in the last while, the largest source of asylum claims to Canada has not been some poor war-torn nation in Africa but Hungary, which most people associate with goulash, not gunfire. The idea of Hungary as a major refugee generator makes me want to scream out à la Michael Corleone in The Godfather, ‘Don’t insult my intelligence!’ The federal government has also wisely left off the list the Caribbean countries, which may appear tranquil and harmonious to most Canadians but whose citizens in some cases face social discrimination, such as homosexuals (I know; a former lover of mine from one of the islands had a gay male cousin whose life there was hell on account of his sexual orientation). It is clear that Kenney and his minions have put considerable thought into their placement of countries on the safe or unsafe list.

On the other hand, I’m a bit more sceptical about calling Mexico ‘safe.’ That is not to say that there are no bogus refugee claimants from that country, or from other turbulent parts of Latin America like Colombia, for that matter. However, to compare Mexico with my previous example of Hungary, Mexico’s murder rate in 2008 was 11.59 per 100,000 inhabitants as opposed to the latter country’s 1.47. Of course, many of Mexico’s homicide victims may be criminals killed by other criminals, but the data strongly suggest that the Mexican government is failing to provide at least some of its citizens the protection they need. The wisest course of action on Canada’s part, in my view, would be to keep a close eye on Mexicans seeking refugee status but not to throw the baby out with the bathwater, so to speak, and dismiss asylum claimants from that country altogether.

Finally, what will the end results of the DCO list be? One hopes that regardless of what countries are included in it or not, it will achieve Kenney’s stated objective of making our refugee system fairer and more flexible. As a major refugee destination, Canada walks a fine line between on one hand welcoming the world’s oppressed and on the other not allowing ourselves to become the ‘chumps of the world,’ in the words of a conservative friend of mine. Let us hope that our powers-that-be will guide us along that delicate path well.

02
Jan

Laci Peterson and the Left: Ten years later

By Emilia Liz Closed
Categories: Uncategorized

A recent headline said it all: ‘For Laci Peterson’s mother, the holidays mark a time of sorrow.’ Laci Peterson, if you’ll remember, was the pregnant woman in Modesto, California, who went missing exactly a decade ago. Her body and that of her seven-and-a-half-month-old fetus were found the next April on the shores of the San Francisco Bay. Later, her husband Scott Peterson was charged with her murder and that of their son, who was to be named Conner, and sentenced to death in March 2005.

As in other high-profile murders, such as the death of Jane Creba here in Toronto on Boxing Day 2005, special interest groups zoomed in on the Peterson case like vultures on a corpse. Not surprisingly, the self-described pro-life movement jumped on the Peterson story to pontificate on the evils of abortion. They avoided mentioning, of course, that Laci Peterson actually wanted her pregnancy and that at almost ‘eight months gone,’ she was far beyond the point at which virtually all abortions take place. One couldn’t help but sense a bit of opportunism in the anti-abortion movement’s use of the tragedy to further their own agenda.

However, the reaction of the pro-choice movement and the left wing in general to Laci Peterson’s killing bothered me even more. Some showed a disregard for and even outright hostility to Peterson which made me question so-called progressives’ supposed concern for women. Such an attitude was nowhere more apparent than on the American online forum Democratic Underground. Many commentators there gave the impression that they considered Peterson’s death no great tragedy. One poster, ‘SweetZombieJesus,’ said they ‘couldn’t possibly give a shit about Laci Peterson.’ He or she lamented the fact that ‘Miss Perfect White Soccer Mom Laci Peterson’ was receiving far more attention than a non-White victim of domestic violence would (never mind that Peterson was Portuguese, an ethnic group considered separate from Whites in places like Hawaii or colonial Guyana). Others were openly antagonistic towards Laci Peterson. One poster with the online name Quill Pen said she wasn’t disturbed by Peterson’s death because Laci wasn’t the ‘brightest bulb in the pack’ for getting pregnant in the first place.

To be fair, other Democratic Underground members attempted to counter the anti-Peterson rhetoric. One poster describing themselves as a ‘pro-choice atheist’ voiced satisfaction that the murder of Laci Peterson was being punished and openly rued the ‘Scott Peterson apologists coming out of the woodwork’ on Democratic Underground. Another stated that ‘we are the pro-choice movement, and we will stand up for the fact that Laci Peterson should have had a choice.’ On the other hand, the ‘pro-Laci’ faction was for the most part drowned out by those who saw Ms. Peterson’s death as nothing to really cry about and scorned or chastised those who did.

Beyond Democratic Underground, the mainstream pro-choice movement’s attitude wasn’t much more heartening. Many pro-choice leaders opposed the Unborn Victims of Violence Act (otherwise known as ‘Laci and Conner’s Law’), a statute that would make the murder of a pregnant women equivalent to two crimes rather than just one, on the grounds that it would affect women’s right to abortion, even though the legislation specifically exempted legal abortions. Here again, there were dissidents: according to former National Organization for Women President Patricia Ireland, Laci Peterson’s death was indeed a double homicide.

Still, the Left’s reaction to Laci Peterson’s demise makes one wonder about their much-trumpeted commitment to women’s well-being. At times, the lives of real women seem to take a back seat to abstract principles like the ‘right to choose [an abortion]‘ – which, by the way, I view as an important right. This is not the first time this has happened. For example, when Aqsa Parvez, a young South Asian woman in Ontario, was murdered by her father and brother for refusing to wear a veil, the left-wing Toronto Star’s columnist Jim Coyle expressed sympathy for her killers. In this instance, the need to avoid appearing racist (by condemning so-called honour killings) took precedence over an actual woman’s right to life itself.

The fact that a large majority of Americans – a majority that includes women – supported ‘Laci and Conner’s Law’ suggests that women aren’t falling for the fear-mongering by some leftists that this type of legislation will suddenly eliminate their right to terminate an unwanted pregnancy. I also believe that by vociferously opposing laws penalizing violence against expectant mothers, the pro-choice movement and the Left as a whole risk losing relevance in the lives of the women they purport to defend.

29
Nov

Obama and us: What Obama means to Canada

By Emilia Liz Closed
Categories: American Politics

Obama won. Those were the words I was waiting to hear on Tuesday, November 6 and, sure enough, I did. Obama was re-elected President of the United States of America. The electoral race was a close one: the old adage that the only real poll is the one on Election Day was never more true than in the 2012 US presidential elections. One day, Mitt Romney was ahead; the next day, the papers trumpeted Obama’s upcoming return to the White House. Tensions finally came to a head when Obama ultimately emerged victorious.

Barack Obama’s re-election spawned quite a bit of commentary. A number of observers pointed out that minority – Blacks, Hispanics, Asians and Jews – and one (slight) majority – women – groups tended to vote for Obama. What struck me most, however, is that although foreign votes did not count, Obama would have won ‘hands down’ in many countries outside the United States. One poll, for instance, showed that 70% of Italians supported Obama and only 7% backed Romney (presumably the other 23% or so were undecided or refused to answer the question). A survey in Canada conducted by Forum Research Inc. for the National Post produced similar figures: 78% of respondents favoured an Obama victory, with a mere 12% standing behind Mitt Romney. Interestingly, even among Canadians who described themselves as Conservative Party supporters, 58% said they would choose Barack Obama as the next president, while only 29% would cast their ballot for the Republican candidate.

These figures appear to confirm that Mitt Romney and the Republican Party, at least in their present form, would not ‘fly’ in any Western country outside the United States, including among people who consider themselves conservative. To cite some anecdotal evidence, even though I’ve generally veered between the Liberals and Conservatives when I have actually shown up at the ballot box, I would never have voted for Mitt Romney (or for George W. Bush, for that matter; I’m not sure about George Bush Senior or Ronald Reagan). Likewise, a friend of mine who sees himself as pro-life basically scoffed at Republican Senatorial candidate Todd Akin’s statement that women could not get pregnant through a ‘legitimate rape.’

The support for Obama among Canadians of all political persuasions may stem from the fact that Canada’s capital-c Conservatives may not really be any more to the right than the Democrats in the US. Take the example of ‘workfare:’ the notion that able-bodied welfare recipients should work for their benefits. This idea was put into practice by Ontario Conservative Premier Mike Harris in the 1990s and early 2000s. Not surprisingly, Ontario Works, as it was called, was reviled by the left, who viewed it as ‘mean-spirited.’ In the US, ‘progressive’ factions went on the warpath against a similar plan to ‘end welfare as we know it’ − which was enacted by Democratic President Bill Clinton. I am therefore not so sure that Barack Obama is that much more small-l liberal than Stephen Harper.

Perhaps the Republicans still manage to hold sway over some portions of the population because the US is on average a more conservative country than practically any other place in the Western world, including Canada. For example, a 1997 Gallup poll found that a higher proportion of Americans (47%) considered it immoral for a couple to have a baby without being married than did people in the other Western nations surveyed. Therefore the Republicans might have more chances in a country with a more conservative voting base.

Curiously, in the past the Republicans were not necessarily the party of social conservatism. For instance, Jessie Bernard’s 1975 book The Future of Motherhood noted that more Republicans than Democrats supported legal abortion – a finding Bernard attributed to the greater percentage of Catholics in the latter party. In contrast, at this point in history there is concern even among some Republicans themselves that their party has become, in the words of self-described conservative journalist Cathy Young, ‘the mere political arm of the religious right.’ As American society inevitably becomes more liberal (as witnessed, for instance, in the passage of same-sex marriage laws in states like Maine), the Republican Party must decide whether or not it wants to carry what might be the liability of being seen as the doyen of Victorian values.

Will the Democratic Party retain its primacy four years from now when Obama must, by law, step down as President? It is difficult to say at this point. How the American political system evolves, how the Republican and Democratic Parties evolve, and how Americans themselves evolve may help determine the answer to that question.

22
Oct

J. Philippe Rushton: Who Was He Really?

By Emilia Liz Closed
Categories: Canadian Politics and Politics

I remember 1988 as the year of the ‘Rushes.’ The first ‘Rush’ was Anglo-Indian author Salman Rushdie. Although known in Britain for some time, in 1988 he burst onto the international scene with his novel The Satanic Verses. His work earned him a ‘fatwa’ from the late Ayatollah Khomeini of Iran for allegedly insulting the Prophet Mohammed, praise from leftist crowds (this was before criticizing Islam became politically incorrect), and a spoof in the University of Toronto engineering students’ newspaper called ‘The Satiric Verses,’ which featured the Ayatollah offering Mediterranean and Baltic Avenues to anyone who did away with Rushdie.

The second ‘Rush’ (now deceased, as of October 2 this year) was University of Western Ontario psychology professor J. Philippe Rushton. Like Rushdie, Rushton came into the limelight in 1988, not because of a work of fiction but of what he purported to be a work of science: a paper in the journal Personality and Individual Differences titled ‘Race differences in behaviour: A review and evolutionary analysis.’ The paper stated that Blacks were less intelligent, less law-abiding, and less stable in terms of family formation and dissolution than Whites were. Whites in turn exhibited less intelligence, more rule-breaking, and less family stability than did East Asians, whom Rushton termed ‘Orientals.’ On the other hand, Blacks were more sexually precocious and active than Whites, who for their part were less sexually restrained than Asians.

Not surprisingly, Rushton’s work generated an uproar. He was immediately denounced as a racist. He was even investigated by the Toronto Police and Ontario Provincial Police following numerous complaints of ‘promoting hatred against an identifiable group.’ Ultimately, no charges were laid against him, with Ontario’s then-Attorney General Ian Scott describing Rushton’s theories as ‘loony but not criminal.’ Rushton also appeared in a TV debate with environmental activist David Suzuki.

Philippe Rushton’s theories were full of holes and unanswered questions. His ‘Law of Three’ left out many ethnic groups like South Asians, Pacific Islanders and American Indians (never mind culturally unified but racially diverse groups such as Hispanics!) who could not be easily slotted into his Black-White-East Asian paradigm. As well, many of Rushton’s statements were patently false. One was his claim that ‘Orientals’ were slower to physically mature than Whites (who were for their part slower to mature than Blacks). Scientific studies, though, show that Asian girls experience their first menstrual periods at the same time or even a bit earlier than White European girls: for instance, Japanese women start menstruating at a younger age than those from Scandinavia.

I will let others debate the scientific merits or non-merits of Rushton’s work. I want to address another question: was J. Philippe Rushton really a racist? In common parlance, racism generally refers to the belief that Whites (or White Christians) are superior to all other people: in other words, to White supremacy. Did Rushton actually subscribe to such a philosophy? In ‘Race differences in behaviour,’ he implied that Asians possessed more of what we might view as ‘virtues’ – intelligence, emotional stability, and obedience to the law – than Whites did. In terms of sexual prowess, however, Blacks came out on top, pardon the pun. Whites, far from being a master race, seemed doomed to perpetual mediocrity in Rushton’s mind. He did not openly state whom or what he considered a superior race, but it did not appear to be his own (Rushton was White, born in Great Britain to an English father and French mother).

By extolling the supposed moral superiority of Asians, Rushton veered from many traditional White Supremacists. It is true that, as one commentator stated, ‘even White Supremacists are saying nice things about Asians now.’ Nonetheless, this is hardly a universal phenomenon among racist Whites. Some of them, for example, latched onto the Virginia Tech massacre of 2007 by a young Korean-American man as well as violent Korean movies as reasons for bringing back the Chinese Exclusion Act to the US. On the other hand, Rushton shared many ideas with the old-fashioned ‘White is right’ crowd, like the denigration of Muslims. He stated at a conference in 2009 in Baltimore that Muslims were not only culturally but genetically inferior: they had an ‘aggressive personality with relatively closed, simple minds and were less amenable to reason.’ The notion of Muslims as a ‘race’ might strike one as ludicrous. Just as there are Black, White, South Asian, East Asian and other Christians, the Muslim faith includes a large number of sub-Saharan Africans, inhabitants of the former Yugoslavia, Middle Eastern peoples as well as the majority of the population in Asian countries like Malaysia and Indonesia.

Perhaps J. (the ‘J,’ by the way, standing for either ‘John’ or its French equivalent ‘Jean’) Philippe Rushton should best be remembered as a paradox. Although he stirred fierce debate, he was described by many as a soft-spoken and mild-mannered individual. He was a White man who was beloved by White Supremacists but who, in the words of the website AmIAnnoying, did not ‘put his fellow whites at the top of the hierarchy.’ I will declare straight out that I do not, and never have, adhered to Rushton’s theories. I also found it hard sometimes to determine whether he was an attention-seeker, a lunatic or maybe both. Like Shakespeare’s Hamlet, was Rushton mad or simply pretending to be mad? The answer to that question obviously died with Rushton himself. In the end, Rushton was a man who, like the races he failed to include in his three-pronged system, escaped easy classification.

31
Aug

Diana, 15 Years Later

By Emilia Liz Closed
Categories: History
I remember exactly what I was doing on the morning of August 31, 1997. I was lying in my bed, in that half-state between sleep and wakefulness, when a phone call suddenly jolted me out of my semi-slumber. Looking at the tracer, I noticed my mother’s number on it. I was surprised, as my mom usually never called so early in the day. Had a family member died, I wondered.
Indeed somebody had died, but it wasn’t a family member. ‘Princess Diana was killed in a car accident,’ my mother said. ‘She was going through a tunnel, and the driver was trying to get away from some paparazzi that were chasing them.’ The conversation veered towards Diana’s ex-husband, Prince Charles. ‘He should never have married her if he didn’t love her,’ my mother continued. ‘She could have just settled down and been a wife and mother.’
Further details came out later that day. Not only Diana but her then-boyfriend, Egyptian-born Dodi al-Fayed, perished in the crash, as did the car’s driver. Diana’s bodyguard, Trevor Rees-Jones, was the sole survivor. The revelations also put some of my mother’s (and others’) allegations into clearer perspective. As my boyfriend at the time noted, Charles really had nothing to do with Diana’s death, being long out of her life when the accident occurred. Nor could the paparazzi shoulder all the blame for the tragedy: Diana’s driver, a Frenchman named Henri Paul, was found to have a blood alcohol level twice the legal limit.
Tributes to the late Princess began pouring in shortly afterwards. A rose with the words ‘Good-bye, Diana’ underneath it was drawn on a wall on the corner of St. George and Bloor Streets in downtown Toronto, while an Indian restaurant on nearby Yonge Street put up a large photograph of Diana in its dining area. Adulatory articles appeared in magazines and newspapers. A Colombian commentator on the Internet described Diana as the ‘most Christian person the world has ever known.’ Pop star Elton John sang ‘Good-bye, England’s rose’ to the tune of ‘Candle in the wind’ (originally dedicated to Marilyn Monroe).
Soon enough, not-so-complimentary pieces about Diana cropped up. The Toronto Portuguese-language weekly Voice featured an article by an old doctor who portrayed Diana as essentially a vapid character wandering aimlessly through life going from man to man. He could barely contain his outrage at the fact that, as he saw it, Diana was being celebrated in the same way as those who, he said, had truly dedicated themselves to humanity, such as Mother Teresa or Frederick Banting, the discoverer of insulin. Similarly, Toronto Sun columnist Michael Coren, who is British himself, penned a commentary dripping with contempt at worst and pity at best towards Diana. The Princess, according to Coren, died an ‘ostensible martyr’s death… with a drunk driver and a playboy lover’ − though he showed a glimmer of compassion for her when he stated that she was ‘cheated on by a cruel clown of a husband.’
Fifteen years after her death, Diana remains an enigma. Was she a saint-in-the making, a wronged wife, a playgirl princess, or, as Michael Coren wrote sarcastically, a pop goddess? To answer these questions, my mind goes back to when Diana first appeared on the public scene: during her engagement to Prince Charles. She had been chosen as future Queen based on a variety of criteria. For one, she was tall, and it was considered necessary to ‘breed some height into the House of Windsor’ (my father sneered that for being allegedly so superior to us common mortals, the royal family were essentially ‘bred like dogs’). Diana was also of noble blood, thereby ensuring that the Crown Prince was not marrying a so-called commoner. Third, she was purportedly a virgin. Diana’s virginity, or lack of it, was the source of much speculation. One of her uncles, for instance, affirmed a few years after the royal wedding that his niece was indeed a virgin upon marriage (I had to wonder whether this whole conversation was about a woman in modern-day Europe or in Saudi Arabia).
Following a few supposedly blissful years of marriage, cracks began to emerge. Prince Charles was rumoured to have a ‘flame.’ Similar stories surfaced about Diana, who angrily attempted to deflect them with the statement, ‘Pretty soon they’ll be saying I have a lover who’s Black and Catholic.’ By the early 1990s, though, the facade had crumbled. Charles was caught talking on a cell phone with a lover, a married woman named Camilla Parker-Bowles (now the Duchess of Cornwall), with whom he had apparently been involved before, during and after his marriage. Diana was discovered to have had lovers of her own. One of them, army officer James Hewitt, was said by some to be the biological father of her younger son Harry. Charles and Diana separated in 1992 and officially divorced four years later.
To the first question, was Princess Diana the ‘most Christian person the world has ever known,’ as the Colombian commentator said? I am convinced that Diana was a genuinely good person. For example, as the late journalist and philanthropist June Callwood wrote, Diana’s embrace of a man with AIDS in the 1980s did a great deal to dispel the stigma and fear surrounding the disease at a time when it was widely believed that even being in the same room with a person with AIDS could spread the infection. And lest anyone conclude cynically that this and other gestures were simply a show on her part, it was revealed after her death that she had engaged in a number of charitable activities that were never publicized.
Second, was Diane really ‘cheated on by a cruel clown of a husband’ (Charles)? She stated in an interview after her divorce that ‘there were three people in this marriage,’ that is, herself, Charles and Camilla. It was clear, though, that Diana knew about Camilla all along but decided to go ahead with the wedding anyway. Perhaps Diana thought she could ‘win Charles over’ and turn him away from Camilla once and for all. More likely, however, she wanted the position of Princess of Wales and was willing to tolerate Camilla in order to obtain that role. At my most cynical, I’m tempted to think that neither Diana nor Charles ever truly loved one another but only married for their own self-interests: Diana to be Princess of Wales and Charles because his family expected it of him.
To many people, the most fascinating aspect of Princess Diana was her wild love life. Her first two notable romantic interests were the aforementioned James Hewitt and a rugby player named Will Carling, of whom she said she liked her men ‘hunky and chunky.’ There were even rumours she had an affair with Canadian singer Bryan Adams (which Adams himself denied). Although Diana’s comment that ‘Pretty soon they’ll be saying I have a lover who’s Black and Catholic’ was criticized for its supposed racism, not all of her lovers were white (and there was talk of Diana converting to Catholicism). For example, she was reportedly very much in love with a Pakistani heart surgeon named Hasnat Khan. This led to rumours that she planned to convert (or, as some Muslims said, ‘revert’) to Islam. After the romance with Khan ended, she embarked on a relationship with Dodi al-Fayed. There was always speculation as to whether Diana’s affair with al-Fayed was simply a summer fling or a step towards a longer-term union. That’s impossible to say with any certainty: the two died before the relationship could either evolve or devolve.
While, as I mentioned above, I believe that Diana was a good person, she had her inner demons. She apparently struggled with bulimia. I can sympathize: I know first-hand how easy it is for young women to fall prey to eating disorders with all the pressure they face to be thin and ‘look good.’ I also think that Diana suffered a great deal from her parents’ acrimonious divorce in childhood. Throughout her life, Diana seemed, as the Portuguese doctor suggested, unsure of what she wanted in terms of a man, a public role, and possibly even a religion. She had many lovers, but the one great love appeared to have eluded her. Her dream of becoming the Queen of England collapsed too. As she declared in an interview, she would have to resign herself to being the ‘Queen of people’s hearts.’ Maybe, as my mom said, Diana would have been better off just being a wife and mother. But whether Diana Frances Spencer Windsor would have been content in such a role remains an open question.
02
Aug

Jenna Talackova: Beauty Contestant, Drag Queen, or Fearless Pioneer?

By Emilia Liz 0 Comments
Categories: Society

Beauty contests are no stranger to controversy. In 2002, in an episode The Economist magazine called ‘Beauty and the Beastliness,’ some Nigerian Muslims rioted after a local newspaper suggested that the Prophet Mohammed would have taken one of the participants in a Miss World pageant in that country as wife. Nearly two decades earlier, pandemonium broke loose when the first Black Miss America, Vanessa Williams, was discovered to have previously posed in the nude. Interestingly, within the African-American community itself, a lesser-publicized debate emerged over whether Williams won her title simply because she was light-skinned.

This year in Canada, another controversy raged over the participation of 23-year-old Jenna Talackova in the Miss Universe Canada pageant. The reason: she was not a ‘naturally born woman.’ Ms. Talackova was born a male with the name of Walter and underwent sex reassignment surgery at the age of 19. Despite that, and despite the fact that Talackova reported having felt female from a young age and started taking feminizing hormones at 14, she was initially booted from the contest. However, she was reinstated by none other than ‘The Donald,’ Donald Trump. She did not end up winning the contest but did come away with the title of Miss Congeniality.

Even outside pageant decision-making circles, Jenna Talackova’s case spurred endless debate. One commentator described Ms. Talackova as ‘everything that’s wrong with Canada.’ A letter to the editor saw in Talackova the decline of the Canadian male, going from ‘Mounties, farmers, and hunters’ to ‘drag queens primping on the stage.’ (I would add that the real country of contrasts is the Czech Republic, from which Jenna Talackova traces her ancestry, which boasts on one hand a genetic male – Talackova – sashaying across the beauty pageant floor to the world-renowned ‘butch’ Martina Navratilova.) Defending Talackova’s femaleness and right to take part in Miss Universe Canada was feminist lawyer Gloria Allred – a somewhat curious picture in that many earlier feminists condemned beauty contests for objectifying women and, once in a mock ceremony, crowned a sheep Miss America.

So question number one: is Jenna Talackova a real woman or not? Her driver’s licence, passport and birth certificate say yes. Many people, however, would answer in the negative. A conservative male friend of mine said, ‘She can get surgery and whatever to look like a woman, but a woman she is not.’ He found the whole Talackova affair uncomfortable to discuss. I therefore didn’t venture to ask him my next question: if he were looking for a mate, would he consider Ms. Talackova a potential love interest? In contrast, a male acquaintance responded in the affirmative to both questions. ‘She’s beautiful,’ this man – who as far as I know is heterosexual; he has a daughter – gushed. ‘I would marry her.’ In response to the second inquiry, an ex-boyfriend of mine told me straight (pardon the pun) out, ‘No, I’m not gay.’

Now as for myself: do I consider Jenna Talackova a member of my own sex? That’s a complicated question. I have no problem with her identifying as a woman in her personal life, for government purposes, or on her passport or driver’s licence – although I admit being a bit uneasy with the ‘legal fiction’ that she was actually born female. I wouldn’t even mind her using the same changing room as me. Her lack of menstruation and inability to bear children in my mind don’t diminish her femaleness; if they did, one could argue that my own status as a woman is less than that of Michelle Duggar since Mrs. Duggar’s had 19 children and I’ve, by choice, only borne one – even if in terms of number of menstrual periods over a lifetime, I probably beat Michelle Duggar by a long shot. In some ways, Jenna Talackova’s even more ‘feminine’ than I am. For instance, she described putting on her mother’s high heels as a child, whereas I can’t even remember the last time I wore high-heeled shoes.

On the other hand, nothing can take away from the fact that however feminine Jenna Talackova appears now and however much she has identified as female since childhood, she was born and spent most of her life as a male. The earliest point at which she could possibly be considered female was at the age of 14 when she started taking the hormones (a picture at this age shows an individual of seemingly indeterminate gender). That leaves the greater part of her formative years in the male sex. I use the analogy of my Filipino-Spanish ex-boyfriend: although he looks white and to a certain degree views himself as such, because he grew up and spent a good chunk of his adulthood in a non-Western country (the Philippines), I can’t completely accept him as white.

Now for the second question: would I consider a relationship with a man who used to be a woman? I’ve never had to face that dilemma in real life, so I can’t say anything with 100% certainty, but most likely not. I also don’t find the female-to-male transsexuals I know of, Chaz (formerly Chastity) Bono and Thomas ‘The Pregnant Man’ Beatie, particularly attractive from an aesthetic point of view. On a related note, I wouldn’t follow the example of Heather Gabel, wife of Against Me! singer Tom/Laura Jane Grace Gabel, and stay with a spouse who’s decided to change sex. No hard feelings on my part, and I would wish him/her well, but I’d be clear that their romantic future wouldn’t include me.

So with some caveats, I would view Jenna Talackova as a woman and would want the laws of Canada to do so the same. I even jestingly referred to her to a Czech male friend as his ‘countrywoman,’ with an emphasis on the ‘woman’ part. In some respects, I find the whole Talackova affair more amusing than anything else, but I recognize that it has a serious side in how we view gender in our society. If we’re now accepting premarital sex, no-fault divorce, and same-sex marriage, certainly there should be a place for the acceptance of transsexuals.

12
Jun

Celtic Languages Past, Present and Future

By Emilia Liz 0 Comments
Categories: History and Language

Lately, it seems, we are witnessing an interest in all things Celtic. Artists like Canadian singer Lorena McKennitt take up careers in Celtic music. Followers of neo-pagan religions such as Wicca revive pre-Christian Celtic rituals. The French speak proudly of “our ancestors the Gauls” (the Celts who inhabited modern-day France before the Roman conquest) and proclaim Gaulish chieftain Vercingetorix their national hero.

All this interest, however, has not translated into a rush to learn Celtic languages. In a way such lack of enthusiasm is understandable. At this point in history Celtic speakers number a few million at most. Two Celtic tongues – Cornish in the English county of Cornwall and Manx in the Isle of Man off the British west coast – have died out as spoken mediums, though literary revivals of both have occurred in recent years. The survival of Scottish and Irish Gaelic also appears uncertain. Only Welsh and Breton (spoken in the region of Brittany, France) are used on a daily basis by large numbers of people, and even these are under pressure from English and French respectively.

This was not always the case. At one time Celtic languages were spoken over a wide-ranging area encompassing the British Isles, France, northern Italy and Spain, Central Europe and even Asia Minor, where a group of Celts known as the Galatians – to whom St. Paul dedicated an Epistle – resided. Though the Celts never possessed a unified state, they gained a reputation as fierce fighters and were feared by the Greeks and Romans.

The Celts’ fortunes began to turn with the expansion of the Roman Empire. Latin supplanted the Celtic tongues of France and northern Spain and Italy, while those in what is now England survived the Roman invasion but not that of the Angles and Saxons, the two Germanic tribes who gave England her present-day language. Celtic speakers found themselves confined to Ireland, Scotland, Wales, the Isle of Man, Cornwall and Brittany (the Bretons, by the way, are not descendents of the Gauls but of Welsh who settled in France in the fifth and sixth centuries).

Nonetheless, the Celts left their linguistic mark on the areas they inhabited. Just as Amerindian place names abound throughout the Western Hemisphere even in locations where native languages ceased to be spoken long ago, Europe is full of Celtic toponyms (place names). They occur most frequently in Scotland, Ireland, and Wales. But traces of the ancient Celts turn up as well in places no longer considered Celtic territory. For instance, the Avon takes its name from a Celtic word meaning precisely “river.” Even faraway Vienna is a contraction of “Vindobona” (white field), originally a Celtic settlement.

Relatively little intermixing took place between Old English and the Celtic languages existing at the time of the Anglo-Saxon invasion. Words that did cross the Celtic-Germanic barrier include “bin,” “crag,” “lead” (the metal), and “brock,” a term for badger which is still used today in some parts of Britain and which survives as a last name, as in General Brock of the War of 1812. As well, in later times English borrowed a few words from the modern Celtic languages. While some have a clear Celtic cultural connection, such as “banshee” and “bard,” others have made their way into day-to-day English vocabulary. “Hubbub,” for example, stems from the Old Irish battle-cry abu, itself derived from the Celtic word buide for “victory.”

Interestingly, though Celtic languages were spoken in England long after they disappeared from France, modern French contains more words of Celtic origin than does English. Several examples can be cited: chêne (oak tree); bijou (jewel) from the Gaulish term biz for finger; and alouette (lark). In other cases words passed from Celtic to Latin and from there to French and the other Romance languages. The Latin word for “nag,” caballus, was originally a Gaulish term. Replacing the classical equus, its meaning eventually expanded to designate “horse” in general (good horses too, not just nags) and as such became cheval, cavallo and caballo in French, Italian and Spanish respectively (the English word “cavalry” hails from this source).

Many personal names also bear traces of a Celtic past. My surname “Murphy,” for instance, comes from an Old Irish word Murchadha meaning “sea warrior.” The Celts are in addition the source of numerous first names. While some, such as “Kieran” (“black”), remain largely confined to modern-day Celtic descendents, others like “Brian” (“strong”), “Kevin” (“comely”), and “Douglas” (“dark water”) have found their way into the Anglophone mainstream among individuals with no Celtic ancestry whatsoever. “Kevin” has even started to appear in Quebec and in some Spanish-speaking countries south of the US border. I admit to a certain amusement at the fact that families who choose this name in the hope of “Anglicizing” would probably be surprised to learn it is not really Anglo at all!

As a Celt (Irish) myself, it’s difficult for me to prognosticate the future of my ancestral language family. Though the number of Celtic speakers has diminished dramatically even within the last few centuries, a future revival of one or more of these languages should not be ruled out. I must confess I personally have never had any burning desire to learn Gaelic, the native tongue of Ireland; while it was offered as a course at my university, I preferred to take the more useful Spanish and French. Yet part of me feels sad at the fading of what was once an illustrious and widespread branch of the Indo-European language family tree. Perhaps to keep the flame alive I’ll adopt an Irish, Scottish or Welsh breed of dog and give him or her a Celtic name.

27
May

Who’s White?

By Emilia Liz 0 Comments
Categories: Society

The George Zimmerman-Trayvon Martin case has put the subject of race front and centre in the American public mind. The shooter, George Zimmerman, was originally referred to in the media as ‘White,’ making the case seem like a White-on-Black issue. Then it came out that his mother was Peruvian, which led to Zimmerman being described as a ‘Hispanic’ or ‘White Hispanic.’ Now it has been revealed that Zimmerman may have African roots on his maternal grandmother’s side. (Peru has a history of Black slavery from colonial times and a sizable African-descended population today.) One article on the right-wing website Coach Is Right asked sarcastically whether Zimmerman should be called an ‘Afro-Peruvian White Hispanic.’ Sarcasm aside, the Zimmerman-Martin drama raises a question that begs to be addressed: Who is White?

Even before the Zimmerman-Martin affair, who was regarded as ‘White’ or not varied across time and place. Politician J.D. Goss, a candidate in Alabama in the 1920s, thundered against ‘the Jew, the Greek, and the Syrian,’ insisting he wanted to be elected by ‘the White man.’ While Greeks have since been welcomed into the White fold, the status of Jews is still somewhat precarious. (Syrians, on the other hand, seem stuck in the separate category of ‘Middle Eastern,’ even if many of them are physically indistinguishable from Greeks or Southern Italians.) For example, when Dr. Henry Morgentaler first opened an abortion clinic in Toronto, the phrase ‘The Jew kills White babies’ was scribbled on the front of his building. For the most part, though, Jews are seen as White by people at all points of the political spectrum other than White Supremacists.

What has not changed, however, is the reality that at least in the Anglo-Saxon world, anyone with known African ancestry is not viewed as White. This is the case for my two nephews, whose mother – my sister – is White and whose father is Black. My nephews can at most aspire to the label ‘biracial,’ even though they have spent much more time with our side of the family than their father’s and though most people in their immediate environment have been White. I must admit it bothers me that my nephews and I are not considered part of the same race, regardless of our family bonds. I remember a humorous incident when I was staying at a school dorm for a summer course and had a picture of my nephews on the dresser. A cleaning lady later told me that she looked at all my family photos on my bulletin board to try to figure out who ‘Emilia’s Black family’ was: not mulatto family or biracial family, but Black family.

In contrast, individuals of White mixed with anything other than Black descent tend to be taken as White. Commenting on the Trayvon Martin incident, National Review columnist John Derbyshire, a White Briton married to a Chinese woman, writes a letter to his sons telling them that while they are of Northern European and Northeast Asian background, they will be seen as White. Cris Judd (the second Mr. Jennifer Lopez) was similarly described on an online forum as ‘the only White guy that looks cool with a shaved head’ – even if Judd’s mother is Filipina (his father is Portuguese). Another site claimed that transsexual beauty contestant Jenna Talackova, who has an Aboriginal Canadian mother and Czechoslovakian father, received the public support she did to re-enter the Miss Universe Canada pageant (from which she had been temporarily barred on account of not being a ‘natural born female’) because she was an ‘attractive White woman;’ ironically, Talackova seems to be more easily accepted as White than as female. The ‘one-drop rule’ that still affects my nephews does not appear to apply to people like Judd or Talackova.

I have been romantically involved with two men whom British geneticist Steve Jones might term ‘ambiguous Aryans,’ in reference to a group of self-described ‘White’ Brazilians who nonetheless possessed significant amounts of non-European ancestry. The first, whom I’ll call ‘Boyfriend A,’ was a Filipino with enough Spanish background to let him ‘pass’ as a Southern Italian in the eyes of a barber in Toronto’s Little Italy. This despite the fact that my ex spoke a native Filipino language with his family, had spent his childhood and half his adulthood in the Philippines, and had never been to a Western country besides Canada. Yet he insisted he was ‘White’ and – unlike the White liberals frequently accused of being ashamed of their race – proud of it.

A few years later comes Boyfriend B, who is from Nicaragua. Like many other Latin Americans, he considers himself White and denies any Native American ancestry. His certainty about his allegedly pure European ancestry came into doubt, though, when our daughter was born. When I called him to say that I’d given birth to a girl, his first question was ‘Is she White?,’ and it wasn’t because he thought I’d ‘cheated’ with someone of another race. Rather, he feared his daughter might have inherited Indian features from him.

His concern might not have been completely misplaced. Interestingly, despite living in the West all his life, speaking a European language (Spanish) as his mother tongue, and so on and so forth, physically he looked less ‘White’ than Boyfriend A. In other words, likely no one would have mistaken ‘B’ for an Italian. Yet for cultural reasons, I’m more comfortable in referring to him as ‘White’ than I am Boyfriend A. The Philippines, in my view, is not a Western country; Nicaragua is.

Final question: Is my daughter White? In her five years of life, she’s generally travelled in White/mixed milieus. In her class, for instance, most of the other children are white – a large proportion of whom have blond hair and blue eyes – but there is a little Filipino boy and another child with a Jewish mother and Chinese father. I’ve always figured my daughter could ‘pass’ for Italian or Greek and would not necessarily stand out as non-European. However, at her end-of-the-year school party last June, the nanny of one of her classmates asked me whether my daughter was ‘Latin American or something’ (of note, the nanny herself had an interesting ethnic history, being born to a White British father and mixed Jamaican Black and Chinese mother and later marrying and having a son with a Black African man). So perhaps my little girl isn’t quite as Caucasian-looking as I thought. Then again, I used my daughter’s American Indian ancestry to my advantage when I went to the Native Canadian Friendship Centre in Toronto to look for a back pouch to carry her in. I remember telling the staff there that I wasn’t Native but she was.

Post-script question: How will my daughter identify as she gets older? That’s difficult to answer now. Just as in Toronto she’ll have a choice of which religion she might wish to follow, or the choice not to follow any religion at all (right now I’m raising her as a Lutheran), she can ‘choose’ a racial identity that best suits her, whether that be White, Hispanic, or, more remotely, Native American. Or she can decide to be just plain old Canadian. But will she ever be considered completely ‘White?’ Only time will tell.

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