The Love Calculator

Dr. Love says that me and Rob have a 81% chance of working out.

Good to know the odds are in our favour.

It's good to know what you're gifted at

More Movie Passes

Free Movie?

I have passes (3 passes good for 2 people each) for Becoming Jane

Wednesday, August 8

7:00 pm

Grant Park

Come and get them from my place if you want them.

Call first.

Women today

I read the book Hating Women last week. Good read. Boteach, a rabbi and somewhat celebrity (he has his own show on TLC) speaks as a concerned father of daughters about how females are maligned in our society. Can't disagree with that. He talks about the false empowerment that appears when women talk about how strong they are to appear in Playboy or Girls Gone Wild videos. Also can't disagree.

He talks about how in the past, women were considered superior to men and that it was widely understood that the world needed their feminine influence. Uh - don't think so - women in the past were treated as if they were beneath men, as can be seen by a cursory reading of history. Boteach overlooks the obvious contradiction by saying that society did not implement the belief well, which just seems silly.

He talks about how women need to band together and come against this hostility, speak out against the disparaging images of women, protest against mistreatment. I agree, but I think he is wrong in that it is not just women that need to band together, it is concerned people. Just as many men as women should speak out against degradation, more men than women should take action on some concerns, for as Jackson Katz points out in an interview on his book (which is now on the must-read list) violence against women is fundamentally a male problem, yet we treat it as if it's a female problem, and it does not get better.

It is difficult, too, for women to rally together, as what is there to unite us? The feminist movement failed miserably. I see 2 reasons for this. First of all, feminists themselves insulted, and continue to insult, women who choose to become full time mothers, only giving value to that which men already ascribed value to. Women insisted on the changing of women more than the changing of society's attitudes to women. The feminist movement gave value only to choices that were typically made by men.

Second, the feminist movement became indistinguishable from the abortion movement, and women's rights became defined by abortion itself. This drove a deep wedge in between women in society. While some women felt like they must be like men and be able to not be pregnant in order to be equal to men, others understood that abortion is in fact denying the unborn rights in much the same way that men denied them to women. Feminists missed out on the chance to give dignity to women's procreative power, instead only valued what was a characteristic of men: the ablity to not carry a child. Even today, it seems that the only really huge women's demonstrations are about abortion, which is pretty weird because it's legal. I was at a child care conference where a major Canadian feminist was invited to speak and she chose to speak on women's rights and the victory of legalized abortion. At a child care conference. It would have been funny were it not so unspeakably sad.

So is there a new movement that needs to happen? One that incorporates both men and women, and one that seeks to give dignity to all people, regardless of age or birth status? One that stands up for people's rights and recognizes the inherent dignity of life? One that stands for love, giving and generosity? Then I remembered that that is supposed to be the church.

Images of reality

It is refreshing to see the voices that are coming forward to show how not only do we only see a small portion of women in adverstising, we actually don't see real women at all.

Two especially good ones:
Dove Campaign for real beauty
"Metropolitan" magazine

Finding Joy

A few years ago, when I was making a serious attempt to lose weight, I found myself pacing the house as I dealt with the desire to fill my face with food. I prayed, asking why this was such big issue. The answer came swiftly: "Because you feel like the only joy you have in life is eating."

How does one end up there? Start with a pretty dysfunctional family - a mother with some significant mental health concerns, a loveless marriage between mother and father with daily conflict, a sense of never being good enough, a dad who cared but who was worn out by the constant harrasment of his wife. Due to little modelling of social norms, I entered school with little idea how to make and keep friends, and continued on in that vein as this was before the days that teachers tried to influence anymore than test scores and blatant disobedience in their students' lives.

Outwardly, because I'm fairly intelligent, I learned how to put on a show of normalcy and suck in the rest. But happiness was hard to find. No matter where I was, what I was doing and who I was with, it never seemed to be adequate. I had friends, but I'd always think about the friends I didn't have and what a loser I must be that those people weren't my friend. I could be doing something that should be fun but I'd feel cheated because some other girl had a boyfriend and I didn't. Or others had husbands and I didn't. Or others had kids and I didn't. Or more money. Or supportive parents. Or somebody else had a special part and I didn't. Etc., etc. Most of all, I didn't seem to be capable of initiating fun, only waiting for others to make the first move.

I remember the first time I sensed that changing. It was even before trying to lose weight. I was working at a group home and I took the kids to a figure skating event. I remember watching a certain figure skating and thinking how beautiful and wonderful her performance was, but this time not feeling jealous or ripped off that someone else had a special talent and I didn't.

Donald Miller writes that self-help books simplify the answers to problems, that authors look back at the experiences of their lives and pick out a few points that seem salient and write about them. In real life, these solutions were rarely linear or formulaic, just authors force the experiences into a nice neat package. I'm not going to do that. I don't exactly know how things changed. I think there was some deliberate attempts on my part, but also some situations I fell into that influenced me.

In the happened upon category, the most profound experience has been my children. They take joy in so much that I would have ignored. They have taught me to live in the moment, to notice the specialness of the ordinary, to appreciate the smallest pieces of love, progress and beauty. Being their mother has forced me to be initiater, and I have become more comfortable in that role.

Sometimes I must also make decisions to have fun, to find joy. I used to play piano on a daily basis. I could spend hours at it, and I wrote dozens of songs. Around the time Taryn was born, I stopped. The joy was no longer there, and music was starting to become associated with something very ugly, which I won't write about in this blog (you can ask me about it in a private email if you want). I would meet people from my past who would ask me about what I was up to musically because they knew it was so important to me previously. And I would say "Nothing."

We did something a couple of weeks ago to change that. Our family went ot a music store and put some serious moolah into a bunch of books that would be fun. Taryn bought a book of new songs at her level, Rob got a teach-yourself-piano book which he'd been talking about doing for awhile, and I got a book of children's music to sing with the children, a book of Baby Boomer music (Like "I Heard it through the Grapevine", Beatles hits, and the like) and a book of the classics: Pacabel, Beethoven, Mozart and more. I forgot how great it is to play a Bach piece, how much fun it is to sing a song like "Moon River".

Today we went ot the water park at Portage la Prairie. So many smiles - by the kids, by me. I didn't wish that something was different. I did think about all the joy we have in front of us as the kids grow and change and we have different experiences together (like going to Minnesota in August!). I could be in the moment, and hope for more. I could initiate and I could appreciate.

I am finding joy.

Free movie

I have access to FREE passes for an advanced screeing of the movie Hairspray on Thursday at Grant Park. You want? Date night? Let me know.

More updates on trying to get my Masters

What a complex web I'm finding as I'm trying to figure out how to get my degree accepted by the U of M. Their bottom line, as I understand it, is that the colleges are not members of the AUCC. 2 problems with this. 1) The AUCC is a lobby group, not an accreditating organization. The inappropriateness of using a lobby group as criteria for degree acceptance should be readily apparent. While there are some quality criteria for membership, there are other criteria that aren't related to academic quality (e.g. size) as well as the manner in which institutions enter the AUCC, which is related to 2) The AUCC has told one college that they cannot become members unless the U of M recognizes them. So it's a circular argument. The U of M won't recognize an institution unless the AUCC does, that the AUCC won't recognize an organization unless the U of M does.

Why the U of M won't recognize it has to do with the Province. Here is what one person told me:

The province authorizes the granting of degrees. That happened for Providence
in 1973, and Booth I believe more recently. The province is also responsible
to approve the granting of teaching certificates. This becomes a sticky
point. So far the province follows the teacher's union in saying it will not
recognize the UM B.Ed. if the entering B.A. was from Booth or Providence
(CMU apparently has a separate "deal"). The university does not want to
graduate B.Ed. students that the province will not certify. Nor does UM want
to start selecting departments in which a Booth or Providence degree is
recognized, and which it is not... It seems to be an all or nothing
situation.

So who knew my lack of acceptance could be related to the religious discrimination policies of the teacher's union? All of this is starting to seem like it's ripe for a human rights complaint, especially in light of the supreme court decision in BC where it was decided that the BC Teacher's Union could not discriminate against Trinity Western University on a simlar case.

There was also a remark that Booth and Providence are not Universities, which is simply symantics. The Act that regulates the term "University" simply says that only the Province can decide who gets to use the term, but applies no particular criteria to the use of that term. Also, as an article on a Government of Canada website points out that in today's era of post-secondary education "We conclude that the terms [university, college, public, private] are not so
useful and that we need to start describing the postsecondary universe somewhat differently."

STOP!

I'm just drowning in comments here, people!
Lighten up!

"Men have a sense of entitlement toward women which precludes them from making any honest effort to be worthy of them"

From an article by Shmuley Boteach

(At the request of my husband I will clarify that I did not choose the above quote in reference to our marriage, but rather I feel that it is a brilliant commentary on relationships in our society. Happy, Rob?)