On Sexism, Sexual Harassment, and Misogyny

I don't usually post political things as I do plenty of thinking and discussing about such things in my offline life, but I can't help but feel really disturbed as I read about the massacre that happened in California over the weekend.

Though I've told this story to friends and acquaintances in person, I have never written about this on this blog because I didn't want to speak ill of France and give a bad impression the town I was staying in, my friends there, and my experience, but now I feel compelled to share.

When I was living in Saint Étienne in 2010-2011, I experienced nearly daily sexual harassment and sexism by men and boys hanging out in the streets. There was the time I wore red-orange nylons at American Thanksgiving and was chased after down the street by an adolescent boy shouting «Madame! Madame! Vous avez des belles jambes!» There was the time I was on my way to the gare early in the morning when it was still dark out and a man asked me if I wanted to «sucer» him. There was also the time I was out for a walk with a friend wearing the blue shirt (pictured in my American Thanksgiving post) and another adolescent made sexual sounds at me. There were other times too, that were less memorable because it happened so frequently. The men were persistent and relentless. Often they would engage you under the pretense of asking you a benign question. You were damned if you answered them and you were damned if you ignored them. It got to the point that at one point I decided to change my birthstone ring to my left ring-finger, recalling something my room mate had said about travelling in West Africa. But it didn't matter, the men would just say that well, your fiancé isn't here, right? I remember that time I ran to the Méliès café and hid out from that one aggressor. 

It also got more violent. A friend of mine was grabbed in the crotch by a complete stranger. One of my room mates was mugged by two teen boys. One time, a group of four of us was walking home when one of our friends walking home with us who is gay was threatened to have his eyes and tongue cut out. It had never occurred to me until that point that they would be armed. It got to the point where I was afraid to go out after dark, even in spring time. My fear of being out after dark persisted for a while after I returned home to Vancouver. I was particularly afraid walking home in the dark from the seabus, which is less than a 10 minute walk. It took me a while to feel safe again. But I still often look over my shoulder when walking alone at night no matter where I am. 

I tried talking to my colleagues at school about it. They sympathized. One said that his girlfriend got it worse because she was of North African descent, so "one of them," so they held her to a higher standard.

It got to the point where walking to the train station to head to Paris for the marathon I thought to myself "I'm dressed like a slut," when I was only wearing a modest dress without any nylons because it was a heatwave. The heatwave lingered, during which time I felt the need to wear jeans and a sweater in sweltering heat in order to try and avoid the harassment and nearly gave myself heat stroke.

Me, in Paris, wearing the dress.

This is in part why I think France is over-romanticized. But this is nothing particular to France, as we can see from the massacre in California, or the hundreds of missing and murdered Aboriginal women in Canada, or the suicides of Amanda Todd and Rehtaeh Parsons, or the 1989 massacre at École Polytechnique in Montréal.

I'm really shaken. J'en ai marre.

The Great Glebe Garage Sale

Saturday was the Great Glebe Garage Sale. Every year the whole Glebe neighbourhood puts on this giant garage sale. I can't tell you how many square kilometers of garage sales it works out to be, but it's huge!

I had two missions for the garage sale. First, as I don't yet have a key chain for my Ottawa keys, I wanted to find the tackiest key chain ever. Second, for my book club that is happening in June in Vancouver (which I plan to Skype into), we're reading Fight Club. But as I've read it already, I wanted to find a second-hand copy.

I didn't find any satisfactory key chains nor a copy of the book Fight Club (though I did find a VHS copy). I nevertheless had a great time snapping pictures of odd finds (not pictured: a giant ziplock bag of daily contacts), and witnessing Simon (pictured above-right with a retro citrus juicer he scored) haggle for lower prices. He got my roommate, Flynn, a tie for her boyfriend for a fraction of the original cost, from $3.00 down to 25-cents.

The weirdest find, however, was probably this:

Nobody in our group bought this curious object, but I wonder if it found a home with someone else.

There was food, music, and many of the garage sales were advertising that they were donating the proceeds of the day to charity. I actually had so much fun, I think I might end up becoming an extreme garage-saler when I get back to Vancouver.

Charles Edenshaw

Museums in Ottawa are free on Thursdays after four o'clock. I plan to take full advantage of this throughout my summer here. Today I was fortunate enough to be able to catch the Charles Edenshaw exhibit at the National Gallery before it closes on Sunday.

Having grown up in British Columbia, I am familiar with the art of BC coastal First Nations, but don't know anything about it from an art history. That's why I thought the National Gallery's Charles Edenshaw exhibit was so fantastic, because it had plenty of explanatory texts. (I'm sorry I didn't make it to the exhibit when it was at the Vancouver Art Gallery this past winter as it looks like it included more pieces.) The UBC Museum of Anthropology, which I visited just before leaving for Ottawa, has an extensive collection of BC First Nations artifacts but relatively few interpretive panels so I found it overwhelming. 

I especially liked Charles Edenshaw's Elephant Cane Handle, which the exhibit explained was inspired by circus publicity that Edenshaw saw in a newspaper. Too often I feel that mainstream society sees First Nations as solely historical. What I like about the Elephant Cane is that it is evidence of Edenshaw responding to European influence and thus the dynamism of his (and maybe more broadly Haida and First Nations') art.

(Photo of Charles Edenshaw's Elephant Cane Handle via Vancouver Art Gallery)

Ottawa Odyssey

I've been in Ottawa just over a week now. Today I ventured out with my friend Hannah to Gatineau Park for a hike. It was super awesome, but getting to and from there was a bit of a transit odyssey.

Until now, I've found transit in Ottawa to be super awesome. I live just off the transit express way so it takes me maybe all of 15 minutes to get to work in the morning. Today being Sunday, though, I failed to anticipate reduced service. This wasn't too bad on the Ottawa side. The 8 was only running every half hour across the Chaudière bridge so I walked. But this meant I missed my STO bus connection. After waiting un quart d'heure and trying to text for the bus, I figured an alternate route using the STO's mobile site (which is actually pretty good). Not entirely knowing where I was going because Google Maps doesn't know STO bus routes, I watched my blue dot approach my destination.

Hannah and I hiked partway to Pink Lake before turning around and deciding Lac des fées was more attainable (Pink Lake is a 16km round trip).

On the way back I met an awesome woman d'un certain âge waiting for the bus. Her name, I later found out, was Jocelyne and is able to say "hello" in seven different languages, including Portuguese, Spanish, Chinese and Yugoslav. She also seemed to be an expert on the Ottawa-Gatineau bus system so she took it upon herself to be my guide. She chatted with me about all sort of things, including la charte de laïcité right up front, Ottawa's history, as well as more personal subjects including how the ambassador of South Africa came to be her coffee buddy. It was un plaisir to chat with her and certainly made for a more interesting ride. She seems to be a figure in the city. She said she knows many of the bus drivers and that many of them call her ma tante. I hope to run into her again later this summer to catch up!