Canadian Feminism

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Just when you think feminists cannot possibly get any crazier, they always surprise you. “A.J. Withers is a queer, trans, disabled anti-poverty organizer based in Toronto,” we are told in . . . its biography at Everyday Feminism, where it has a column with this ponderous headline:

How Disablist Western Ideas of ‘Self-Determination’
Undermine Social Justice and 5 Ways to Make It Right

This article is full of bizarre gibberish:

As a trans person who takes hormones and has had surgery, my ability to direct what happens to my body is essential.
As a survivor of sexual assault, I think it is absolutely vital that people’s bodily autonomy and consent always be respected.
As a disabled person who has had care collectives help me meet my basic needs, it has been crucial that I be able to direct my care while maintaining my own autonomy.
But I am also White and a settler living on unceded land.
My first site of concern with respect to self-determination being embraced as a political ideal is that self-determination is being co-opted from Indigenous struggles. . . .

Withers is a “settler” on the “unceded land” of Toronto, a city of 2.5 million people. Are there any “Indigenous struggles” in the vicinity? How does Withers being queer, transgender and disabled relate to the “self-determination” of the “Indigenous”?

I am using the term Indigenous in an anti-colonial context and want to be clear that I am not saying that all Indigenous people or cultures are the same.
Colonialism works . . . to construct a “pan-Indian cultural identity rooted in a timeless mythic past.”
In speaking about Indigenous people and struggles here, I do so with the understanding that there is profound diversity within and between Indigenous communities and nations.
Consistently, however, within the context of Indigenous struggle, self-determination is a national determination — a collective determination not an individualistic one.
In many Indigenous world views, the individual is not a rugged self-made individual, but emerges in and through community. . . .

You can attempt to read the whole thing, but trust me, the rest of it is no more coherent than that. One wonders what purpose is served by the publication of such stuff. Who is the intended readership? Is there any sizable number of Canadians who get excited about this? “Never mind the hockey scores, Jacques, let’s see what A.J. Withers has to say today about the self-determination of Indigenous peoples.”

My general contempt for all things Canadian is exceeded only by my contempt for feminism. Combining the two — Canadian feminism — is intellectually toxic. Feminist theory is the opposite of education: The more of it you read, the more ignorant you become.





 

95 comments

  1. LOL. I think I started something bad here — I blame Cajun Exile – he’s the instigator – he’s the one who wanted the DAM beaver jokes

  3. Maybe you need to go to The Beer Store and pick up some Molson, then go home and take a rest, guy.

  4. The English kicked the Cajuns, actually Acadians, out of Canada because they were traitors.

  6. Traitor was not exactly the right word. The English kicked them out be cause they would not swear allegiance to the King of England. Not exactly the same thing.

  7. I went to the Vendor and picked up some Lucky, buddy.
    American Moonbats cornered the market on Moonbattery.
    Pelosi

  9. I’d like to see a list of countries where people are most likely to say “screw you, hippie” or “shut your pie-hole, treehugger”. So if I take a vaycay, I can be around my peeps.

  16. Talk about who? I was employing a variation on the beaver euphemism….where you been Sherlock? Under a rock?

    Infadela=blah blah blah=blah bla=blah=INFA PJ4

  21. Either way, the Sumerians weren’t North American, so it’s still cultural appropriation.

  23. A first nations person told me that AJ, a member of and former employee of the anarcho-marxist Ontario Coalition Against Poverty, was their liaison in Caledonia Ontario, when native radicals seized a real estate development as their own a number of years back.

    AJ sent there to support the “warriors” was spouting this looney stuff and complaining about the misogyny of the men so much AJ was ordered never to come back.

    This is what you get when you close most of the long term live-in psychiatric facilities thinking it is more humane “to house them in the community”. And I don’t consider the Ontario Institute for the Study of Education where many of these looney so-called academics hang out to be housing as it is the Faculty of Education for the University of Toronto.

  28. Y’all ought to have to hack through one of those Mtn Laurel or Rhododendron thickets to lay out a house site with wood stakes and engineer’s tape without hurting the shrubs too much…(in case the owner doesn’t like the placement.) That includes setting up a transit to turn the corners and pulling offsets.

    And don’t get me started on the Briars and Fox Grape vines.

  33. If I were planning a trip that far west, I’d be gone long enough to visit Calgary (probably a lodge at Banff, really), Vancouver, and Seattle.

    I’m not going to hump my butt that far and just stay in one place.

    Now when I was in Australia, people asked me If I got over to New Zealand, because “they’re so close.” Now *there* I’d agree with your point. NZ is like a thousand miles or so away from Melbourne, AU.

  34. The problem with Lake Louise is that they stuck a multistory hotel right next to the lake. It sort of takes the wilderness feel away for me, but to each his own.

  37. Canada.
    I changed my email prompt to screw you hippie.
    I hate hippies.
    And hipster douche bags.

  39. I think wilderness areas are important, as long as the urge to create them or set them aside doesn’t go overboard. People in cities need to be able to see what open country is like.

    But a lot of us live in places that look a lot like wilderness, and aren’t so impressed with a lack of man-made structures.

    I’m most impressed when the structures that are there are designed to blend in.

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