Public displays of private matters - Irene Mathyssen and James Moore

I agree that the issue now is whether or not it is appropriate for politicians to be checking out pictures of their girlfriends, half-naked, while at work, or pictures of any women. It is so easy to claim the offensive pics are 'legitimate.' Does the label 'soft porn' not apply if the man is in a relationship with the female posing scantily-clad? Why would the writer of this article consider it sanctimonius to prefer that members of parliament keep their minds focused on official matters being dealt with rather than on pictures of scantily-clad women whoever she was. Does this have something to do with current norms by which sex is seen as right and normal and cool, while anything objecting to time and place might be considered old-fashioned, and unsexy? I'm not sure that the motive of the offending MP, James Moore, is relevant (see question asked by writer of the article). When sex is introduced into the public arena in the workplace, and so easily dismissed as possibly being problematic, the question we must ask is why the writer of an article such as this thinks its okay for an MP to be viewing pictures of scantily-clad women on the job. Is it because it's his right? And if it is his right, what else does he have the right to, while on the job.

Irene Mathyssen, NDP MP, raised this matter after inadvertently seeing the images of a scantily clad woman, full-screen, on Moore's laptop computer during a parliamentary session. She thought afterwards that it would have been better if she had approached him first about this behaviour, which she saw as inappropriate, instead of passing the information along and having it end up in public. I don't know how many women have tried to resolve difficulties personally, only to have the individual back off and refuse to communicate, but it has hapened to me, and in a way that has come to ruin my life. Mathyssen is lucky she has the backing of her organization. It is likely that a woman on her own wouldn't stand a chance of having a man attempt to resolve such a problem otherwise.

Added Apr 2012

The phrase “No sex please, [fill in the blank]” (see Sudbury Star, 2003) is a joke, and using it as the title of a news article makes a joke of the issue being discussed. No sex please … we’re Canadian …we’re British …we’re sweaty …we’re babyboomers … we’re married, are just some of the ways it is used in the news.

It’s so easy for people to say this incident was a non-issue, that it should never have been raised, that to have done so was “obnoxiously sanctimonius” – ie. coming from a sense of superiority or high-mindedness in sexual matters, and in a high-handed manner. However, the MP sitting in a session of parliament with his computer screen set at an angle so it was visible to members seated behind him was an unnecessary distraction, to say the least. More was said about it at the time, leading to the incident being dismissed with a ‘full’ apology from the MP who had brought it to the attention of the House.

And who should the Sudbury Star have apologized to? Certainly not to MP James Moore, whose reputation they protected by making a joke out of the incident. There were no repercussions that we know of - no jobs lost and no new regulations about parliament members’ permitted viewing during parliamentary sessions. Members should have some sense about what behaviours are acceptable and what may not be, in certain places at particular times, such as in the House of Commons during a parliamentary session. There’s a time and place for everything, and it is usually left to the judgement of the parliamentary politicians to determine that, as individuals.

Why Ms Mathyssen responded the way she did, by raising the matter without addressing it in private first, or to someone in authority, I don’t know, but the incident occurred close to the Dec 6 commemoration of the Montreal Massacre, and the hype associated with that can lead to increased sensitivity to women’s issues. Even though Marc Lepine’s acts of violence had nothing to do with intimate relationships, the other side of it - the White Ribbon campaign - suggests that men work together “to stop domestic violence, sexual assault, and sexual harassment” (White Ribbon Campaign, 2012). Sexism is part of that, though often considered to be of milder consequence, if any.

A month or so ago, I was carrying out my routine task of rolling the garbage bin out to be picked up the next day, whereupon I noticed a fairly large picture on the inside of the window of a car, directly in front of me as I reached the sidewalk. It was of a scantily-clad woman, posing in a sexually suggestive manner. There was no information on what it was advertising, and no name or phone number. I don’t know how common this is, but there it was! It only happened once, and I have not seen it since, in fact, I haven’t seen anything remotely similar on a car window before, or since then.

In ‘Tempest in a laptop,’ Moore is said to have made accusations against Mathyssen on his website, claiming,, “This was a baseless personal attack, and I am disappointed she resorted to such an outrageous tactic to score a headline." That’s as bad as the original accusation made by Mathyssen, in its tone and substance. He is accusing her of making the accusation about soft porn on his laptop to get at him personally, for no reason that he can see, except to be able to make headlines in the news. Obviously, he was “rattled,” but was he as rattled as Mathyssen when she decided to make public his apparent display of sexual images?

According to Allan Woods of the Toronto Star, “MPs are protected from legal action for anything that they say in the House based on the principle of parliamentary privilege.” But in this case, Mathyssen repeated her allegations against Moore to reporters afterwards, while Moore also overstepped legal boundaries by placing his defamatory comments onto his website. It seems as though they were both at fault. It wasn’t the law Mathyssen was afraid of, was it, that led her to apologize. Could it have been the threat of loss of career, for speaking out against behaviour that for men might well be seen as normal?

The phrase ‘tempest in a laptop’ is a play on words of the phrase tempest in a teapot, referring to a big fuss over a minor matter, similar in effect to the joking, demeaning title of the article ‘No sex please, we’re Canadian.’

Allan Woods continues to distort the event in his ‘Tempest’ article, writing that while telling reporters about it, “the image of the scantily clad woman she had described to her fellow MPs turned into "soft porn, Playboy-type stuff." Sometimes it takes a while to come up with the right words to best explain the situation. “Scantily-clad” could mean images from the underwear section in the Sears catalogue. But we all know the difference between that and the kind of sexually suggestive images that are implied by the terms "soft porn, Playboy-type stuff." And, by the way, the image stuck on the inside of the window of the vehicle I mentioned outside where I live was of a woman scantily clad, but of the Playboy type, not Sears catalogue. It was small, too – the article of clothing work by the woman in the image - not the picture itself.

Both of these people - Irene Mathyssen and James Moore - made mistakes in judgement, but only one of them had to apologize, coming across as the guilty party. So was this an error on her part in “jumping to conclusions,” as Woods says in his opening sentence, or was her lack of judgement more to do with expecting this kind of behaviour among MPs, or any men in the workplace, to ever end. If it did end, if men stopped looking, what could we surmise from that?

The problem returns again to one of time and place. Where should such behaviours be tolerated, or accepted as humorous, or seen as normal, and when? It then depends on the person him or herself to decide and act accordingly.


No sex please, we're Canadian
Sudbury Star
7 Dec 2007
http://www.thesudburystar.com/ArticleDisplay.aspx?e=808127&action=svdMsg&&archive=true#threads
http://www.intelligencer.ca/ArticleDisplay.aspx?e=808127&archive=true

Mathyssen stands by her complaint
By Chip Martin
London Free Press (Sun Media File)
Dec 7, 2007
http://samcpherson.homestead.com/files/Miscellaneous/Mathyssenstandsby.doc

NDP MP sorry for 'scantily clad woman' attack
The Canadian Press
CTV
Dec 7, 2007
http://www.ctv.ca/CTVNews/TopStories/20071206/NDP_apology_071207/

Tempest in a laptop 'Porn' furor grips MPs
By Allan Woods
Toronto Star
Dec 6, 2007
http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/article/283086--porn-furor-grips-mps

White Ribbon Campaign
Online site
2012
http://www.whiteribbon.ca/about_us/#1


Links updated Apr 19, 2012

Clinton: femininity, masculinity, and marriage

Some truth here, finally. It's not a welcome idea that women are able to achieve success because of the men they marry, but in Gary Younge's article in the Guardian (UK), author Suzanne Goldenberg quotes a female lawyer as saying about Hilary Clinton, "This is a woman who is where she is because of who she married". A lot of women, feminists included, aren't willing to admit that that is how they've managed to get ahead, in their own spheres of life, even though they are lesser in status than Clinton's. Marriage has always been, and always will be, the best resource a woman can have (the same goes for men). Thus, the essential ingredients for success, for Hilary Clinton and many other women, are indeed a combination of femininity, masculinity, and marriage. Read also essay on Gertrude (Briggs) McPherson: an interdisciplinary, biographical approach to life cycle development. Gertrude (Briggs) McPherson was a wife and mother, a missionary, artist, author and suffragist. Born in England, in 1908 she went to Hong Kong. . .


All Clinton has to do is prove her femininity. And her hypermachismo
By Gary Younge
The Guardian
Nov 12, 2007
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2007/nov/12/comment.gender

Gertrude McPherson and the Grey Cottage: an interdisciplinary, biographical approach to life cycle development
By Sue McPherson
S A McPherson website
2001
http://samcpherson.homestead.com/files/EssaysandWriting/GMcPhersonGryCttgLifeCycleSMcPherson.doc


Links updated Apr 19, 2012

Pensioners' need for education

Prohibiting discrimination on the basis of age shouldn't mean that the same treatment applies to all people regardless of age, though I would agree that older people should not be treated negatively simply on the basis of their age. They should not be treated any differently to younger people, in opportunities for education, or health care, for instance. On the other hand, age can be a factor in certain instances, such as preventing particular forms of cancer at certain times in the life cycle, or reproductive health at another time. Likewise, that applies to education. Doing away with age discrimination doesn't mean doing away with all awareness of age-related differences. Nor does it mean neglecting the differences among older people based on gender. Especially for the generation of baby-boomers now growing older, there are probably as many of them having difficulties making ends meet as there are the comfortably well-off. That said, I have difficulty with the idea that all older people need to continuously be the recipients of formal education. More of that can be left to the young, while other venues could be made available for senior citizens to follow up on the knowledge gained through life experience.

Colchester: Elderly hit by age rule
By Chris Wilkin
Essex County Standard
9 Mar 2007
http://www.essexcountystandard.co.uk/news/1248020.colchester_elderly_hit_by_age_rule/

Link checked Apr 17, 2012

Marriage and the Career Woman

There must be many reasons why women university graduates aren't marrying. That they can't find their intellectual equals isn't a very good reason, I should think. It's more about level of education, class membership, and potential for moving up in the world that matter. And there could well be many women who don't really want to marry at all, but would rather not state that publicly. How do women expect men to "rise to the challenge of feminism" when men feel threatened by them? Now that the truth is out, such women need to see that the answer is not that being 'like a man' is better than being 'like a woman,' but that there is a place in this world for different kinds of men and women, with different interests, and different capacities. This was a mistake to make being up there with the big guys the place to be, if women wanted to be seen as having worth. So now, as Boris Johnson says, instead of women at the bottom, it's some men and some women down there, while the rest live the 'good life.'


I'll tell you why women are running out of men to marry
Boris Johnson
Telegraph
Feb 1, 2007
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/personal-view/3636932/Ill-tell-you-why-women-are-running-out-of-men-to-marry.html

Link updated Apr 19, 2012

Teenagers vs older women: contraception, pregnancy and abortion

Re: Teenage pregnancy myth dismissed
BBC News Monday, 22 January 2007

Is it this newspaper article or the study itself, of this complex subject, that seems so dismissive of the way things are for women today, whether young or older. Surely this is only part of the problem, that teenage girls are becoming pregnant. What about the ones with unwanted pregnancies, or wanted ones, who decide not to terminate but go on to have the baby. And then, of course, did these researchers look at marital status. I'm not suggesting that all women need to have a husband in order to start a family (in today's world it is a choice that well-established women are free to make), but there may well be a difference in how an unwanted pregnancy develops, between single girls and married ones, as well as differences in ways of working through the problem. It's not all a question of getting "carried away in the moment," as Toni Belfield, of the sexual health charity FPA was reported as saying. I recall a book by Carol Gilligan, with the title In a Different Voice (1982) in which she discusses a study of college girls who become pregnant and are facing the dilemma of whether or not to have an abortion. The book may be a bit outdated for today's world. But making the problem of teen pregnancy into a clearcut issue, whereby wanted babies are carried full term while unwanted ones are aborted, seems dismissive of the process of decision-making that pregnant women must be having to go through, not to mention consideration of their socioeconomic circumstances.


Teenage pregnancy myth dismissed
BBC News
Jan 22, 2007
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/6279601.stm


Link checked Apr 18, 2012

Femininity and Womanhood: the Ashley Treatment

In today's article in The Telegraph by Caroline Davies, "I want my girl to have the 'Ashley treatment'" (06/01/07), young Katie's mother, in Britain, reflects on the situation of Ashley from Seattle, the nine-year old with the condition called 'static encephalopathy.'

I can understand the problem of size and weight, but I would be concerned about the idea of giving a hysterectomy for the reasons presented in the article. Okay, so Katie wouldn't understand what was happening when she menstruated, but she would get used to it, just as a person gets used to other bodily functions. Was it not also uncomfortable and a nuisance when her baby teeth started coming out and new teeth began growing in? Surely the indignity of going to a dentist, or other medical interventions, are something the health care provider or caregiver has to come to terms with. Pain at this time of the month, during menstruation, isn't something all girls experience, so I wonder if the parents/caregivers' know for sure this something she will always experience. I can understand a hysterectomy being performed for the sake of convenience, since menstruation is a nuisance, but I question the reasons given here for having it done. It doesn't seem entirely rational or even fair in some ways, and might be detrimental to the way such a normal happening could be viewed by girls growing up who are reading about this. Is life better when one can remain a child and not have to experience the annoyances and challenges that 'growing up' present? In part this is about quality of life and the experience of life. If one is having to live a restricted life, is it preferable to remain a child forever or to experience something of what it means to be a woman? I have refrained from making any comments about sexuality, though an implied consequence of the proposed hysterectomy and possible hormone treatment would be to have sexuality no longer an issue.


I want my girl to have the 'Ashley treatment'
By Caroline Davies
Telegraph
6 January, 2007
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1538671/I-want-my-girl-to-have-the-Ashley-treatment.html


Link updated April 18, 2012