ProWomanProLife

  • The Story
  • The Women
  • Notable Columns
  • Contact Us
You are here: Home / Archives for Jennifer Derwey

Is Shawn Simoes a scapegoat?

May 25, 2015 by Jennifer Derwey 5 Comments

Let me first say that the #FHRITP trend is misogynistic and demeaning, and I applaud Shauna Hunt for not being cowered by the men who were harassing her. Shawn Simoes, the ridiculously unlikable man who has been fired from his job after being recorded supporting the #FHRITP trend, is not a popular guy at the moment with good reason, and I doubt he will be able to escape his social media footprint anytime soon. However, I wonder if firing him, though it is completely understandable, will actually address the underlying problem, which is misogyny itself. We have all united in our disapproval of Shawn Simoes, and this has provided us with the illusion that in terminating his employment (in which he earned a substantial salary of $106k, which is always highlighted in the news coverage to emphasize the high level of justice being carried out) all is once right again. But I have to wonder, is all right in the world once again?

We’re all appeased by the outcome: Man says vulgar thing, man is punished. But men do say vulgar things, a lot in my experience, and sexual harassment takes place in nearly every workplace I’ve ever been in or heard of. This is a problem, is it not? Violence against women? Misogyny? Is firing Shawn Simoes going to fix all that? I think French theorist René Girard would argue that it simply calms us back into accepting the culture and the society the way that it is, but leaves it ultimately unchallenged and unchanged. If Simoes is a scapegoat, “scapegoat” does not mean he’s innocent, simply that he’s fulfilling the role of being punished in order for the social order to continue unchanged.

Human beings are fundamentally imitative creatures. We copy each other’s desires and are in perpetual conflict with one another over the objects of our desire. In early human communities, this conflict created a permanent threat of violence and forced our ancestors to find a way to unify themselves. They chose a victim, a scapegoat, an evil one against whom the community could unite.

Again, “scapegoat” does not imply Shawn Simoes is innocent (he’s a jerk, we all agree), but should we, rather than being calmed down by his example, instead be ripping apart the seams of the culture that created him? There are millions who enjoy this degrading meme, and there are millions who are also watching pornography and the brutalization of women which therein informs things. Prostitution, trafficking, rape, the making of women into consumer products, this informs things. Firing Simoes doesn’t address this and can actually serve in the interest of furthering the REAL LIE, the REAL problem, the myth that mysogony is getting less and that women are better off now in our culture simply because they make more money. This affirms our culture, and tells us everything is okay when it’s not (I’m suddenly feeling like the reporter in that scene from Network!).

Shouldn’t we be getting mad instead of celebrating the sacrifice of our scapegoat?

Hunt

 

Filed Under: All Posts, Featured Media Tagged With: Media, misogyny

Getting ready for the March for Life. Say “hello!”

May 12, 2015 by Jennifer Derwey 2 Comments

March4Life

Canada’s National March for Life is this Thursday, May 14th. Provinces around the country will be holding their own individual marches in solidarity with the larger march in Ottawa.

In preparation for this event, I’ve been reflecting on how we present ourselves as pro-life people and how we interact during these gatherings. Let’s use this time and this space as an opportunity to hear things we may have never heard before and to reshape the perspective. We can use this time and space to reintroduce ourselves, because being pro-life is largely a misunderstood position.

Firstly, we are about love, being pro-life is not firstly about legislation, it is about love. The kind of love of your fellow human being that made Canada great in the first place. The kind of love, overflowing into action, that makes Canadians willing to pay higher taxes to provide healthcare for the poorest of its citizens.

Being pro-life is about making Canada safe and welcoming for women and their children, it’s about reaching out to those in the margins and giving them the help they need, it’s about valuing the sick, the poor and the dying. It’s about overcoming isolation and poverty and fear in a violent system, a system that devalues human life, to attain a more perfect society.

There’s not going to be a person holding a sign on Thursday, across the country, that doesn’t feel love for their fellow human being. How do I know? Because you’d have to, because holding that sign doesn’t make you more popular, it doesn’t come with money, and it doesn’t come with accolades.

Holding that sign is a testament of your love overflowing. You love your fellow human beings, and that love has overflowed into action, into community. That sign is your “Hello.”

Holding a pro-life sign comes with suffering and it comes with discrimination and it comes with unjust vilification.

So why do it? Why hold that sign?

Because being pro-life is about love, and it’s also about speaking the truth. Truth that is not diminished or increases by the number of people who believe it, it is the truth, and it is unchanging.

And the truth is that we do not empower women by making them dependent on abortion. We offer hope and truth instead, hope and truth are our “Hello.”

When basic human needs are ignored, rejected, or invalidated by those in roles and positions to appropriately meet them; when the means by which these needs have been previously met are no longer available: and when prior abuse has already left one vulnerable for being exploited further, the stage is set for the possibility these needs will be prostituted, exploited. Abortion arrives as the perceivable “option” for vulnerable women, but in reality it is a violent exploitation of their situation. A situation that places a woman who has unmet needs in an incredible dilemma. She can either do without or seek out the option of abortion that leaves her increasingly divided from herself and ostracized from others.

Abortion is a form of prostitution, that convinces a woman to pay with her body and mind for affection and care which should be freely given. Because abortion is NOT love, abortion is NOT compassion, abortion is the cheap and careless handout we as a society offer to women in need and not a lasting change for the better. Our offerings, our compassion, these are also our “Hello.”

Who turns to abortion? Overwhelming it is the poor, the marginalized, and those already struggling with the demands of parenting. 2 out of every 3 women having an abortion already have children. These women need our help. Helping is our “Hello.”

Hierarchy, inequality, and violence have always been part of human social structures. There were always rulers and ruled, leaders and followers, the fortunate and the needy, the powerful and the weak. Various cultures have treated disparities in status, power, fortune, and ability in different ways. Buddhists emphasize the aspect of karma and destiny, while in the modern West the focus has been on freedom and choice, and the individual’s control of destiny. In this Western worldview, inequalities and differences are often associated with injustice and victimization.

But there is not enough money, not enough staff and volunteers in the world, to support a permanent population of rescuers and victims. We must raise up women and children and parents from this dark corner of victimhood, in all forms, both real and imagined. And we do that by valuing them. Until we restore the proper dignity and perceived social value of parenting, women and their children will continue to be victims of poverty. There will never be “gender equality” until we value mothers. Without mother’s rights, there cannot be women’s rights, only assimilation. Motherhood is the basic biological reality for the majority of women in the world, let’s accept that fact and move on up. Value, dignity and understanding are our “Hello.”

This Thursday, say “Hello” to everyone you meet.

Filed Under: All Posts, Featured Posts, Other Tagged With: March for life

Human trafficking, it happens here

April 24, 2015 by Jennifer Derwey Leave a Comment

We might be inclined to think that human trafficking, namely the trafficking of young women for the purpose of prostitution, is a rather “new” phenomenon. Given the influx of films like The Whistleblower (2010) and Robert Bilheimer’s Not My Life (also 2010), in which he asks “What kind of society cannibalizes its own children? […] Can we do these sorts of things on such a large scale and still call ourselves human in any meaningful sense of the term?”

But sadly, grotesquely, it is not new but perhaps is more universal. The CBC reported yesterday on a human trafficking bust in Toronto where many of the victims were from my province of Nova Scotia.

The arrests came as no surprise to Hailey Thomas, a Grade 12 student at Prince Andrew High School in Dartmouth.

“So many young girls are recruited from schools, group homes, things like that,” she said. “If we could give this information to young women, they could identify, ‘I think I am in this situation’ or ‘I think one of my friends might be in this situation.'”

Nova Scotia is fertile ground for trafficking for a number of reasons, but I would argue that the largest reason is the vulnerability of our children. A 2014 report exposed that “not only have we broken the promise to end child poverty for the children who were living it in 1989, but a higher percentage of our children now live in poverty than was the case in 1989.”

This socioeconomic vulnerability, paired with the degenerating state of young women’s confidence and self-worth (source: Nearly every high-school aged girl’s Facebook page) alongside a loosening on the legislation of prostitution is creating a supply and demand for trafficking that Canada has perhaps never seen before. When Grade 12 students aren’t shocked to hear about their schoolmates being trafficked, it’s time to wake up to the reality of the situation and take the blinders off.

trafficking

Filed Under: All Posts, Featured Posts

Adorable “human mushrooms”

September 18, 2014 by Jennifer Derwey Leave a Comment

Someone once said that people will always find a philosophy to justify their actions (maybe Camus?), and this morning, while beginning to feel a little ashamed of bombarding my Facebook family and friends with anecdotes, photos, videos and a plethora of reflections about our youngest daughter, I have found just the philosophy I need! I share it with you, in case you ever need to defend your own gushings about babies, offspring, grandchildren and all of those little “human mushrooms.”

From GK Chesterton’s A Defense of Baby Worship:

The most unfathomable schools and sages have never attained to the gravity which dwells in the eyes of a baby of three months old. It is the gravity of astonishment at the universe, and astonishment at the universe is not mysticism, but a transcendent common-sense. The fascination of children lies in this: that with each of them all things are remade, and the universe is put again upon its trial. As we walk the streets and see below us those delightful bulbous heads, three times too big for the body, which mark these human mushrooms, we ought always primarily to remember that within every one of these heads there is a new universe, as new as it was on the seventh day of creation. In each of those orbs there is a new system of stars, new grass, new cities, a new sea.

 

Filed Under: All Posts

Why seeing is not always believing

August 26, 2014 by Jennifer Derwey 4 Comments

(Spoiler Alert: Do not read if you believe in Santa Claus!)

What does a 10-week old fetus look like? Recently, the group called Show the Truth brought graphic images to the streets of Halifax. You can watch some pretty one-sided coverage of the event here on CTV News, where one opponent to the display states:

“It uses shame tactics and misinformation and fake science,” said Ashburn. “That is not what a 10-week-old fetus looks like. They’re computer-generated Photoshopped images.”

You can actually watch the words come out of her mouth on the CTV video at minute 1:45. My first reaction to her statement was anger, that someone who is college educated (I know, because I’ve heard her make a similar statement about “fake science” on the local college radio station) could be so wrong about something. This was quickly followed by frustration, that we even allow such ridiculous and fact-less statements to be made on the news and radio. But the lingering feeling that still tousles and twists itself around in my brain is sympathy.

Wouldn’t you sort of have to believe that this is not what a 10-week old fetus looks like in order to support abortion? I know I wouldn’t be able to say it was just a clump of cells when I could clearly see a face and tiny toes. But perhaps BabyCenter.com is in on the conspiracy too, maybe this isn’t what a 10-week old fetus looks like. Heck, maybe Gray’s Anatomy of the Human Body is propaganda!

But it’s my duty, as much as it makes me unpopular, to tell the truth. Because I care about women, because their universities have apparently failed them, and because I won’t let unchecked statements go on masquerading as facts.

1. Let’s not forget that long before Adobe Photoshop (created in 1988, Wikipedia told me so) even existed, people were using images of abortions to expose the death of unborn babies. I would guess that many of those photos are decades old.

2. I don’t know how I feel about the graphic images. I’m not sure if they’re useful. I held up a sign once for an hour, and I don’t really know if it made the impact one would’ve hoped for. I was completely uncomfortable. But regardless of how I feel, how else are people going to see this stuff? They’re certainly not going to put it on the news or in the paper in any impartial way.

3. Even if you don’t like the signs, you have to see the insanity of one group of people standing on one side of the street saying “Please don’t kill babies, this is what they look like” and then people on the other side of the street shouting obscenities at them and showing them their bums. Are we really saying that asking that babies not be killed (in ANY context) makes you a jerk but mooning people doesn’t?

4. This is the last on the list, but the most important to remember…Gray’s Anatomy is not a book of lies, it’s on its 40th edition. That is what a 10-week old fetus looks like, and in Canada, they are killed every day. It’s not like getting a mole removed (please stop lying to women and the rest of the world telling them that it is).

It can’t be easy to see the truth and interpret it for that when you’ve been fooled your entire life. It’s like when my partner was asked to tell his teenage niece there was no Santa Claus. She just couldn’t believe what he was saying and quickly wrote a tell-all letter to Santa reporting him. Maybe sometimes a graphic image is the slap-in-the-face truth that some people need to stop believing in Santa Claus.

 

Filed Under: All Posts

“Abortion: The Unfinished Revolution” Open letter to the conferees

March 5, 2014 by Jennifer Derwey 4 Comments

Dear Dr. Colleen MacQuarrie, conference speakers and participants:

I don’t know you, but I am going to assume that we have more in common than you might think. In fact, I am convinced of it. Forgive my arrogance, but I’m going assume a couple of things. I’m going to assume that we all want women to realize their full potential. I’m going to assume that we all want women to be safe and healthy. I’m going to assume that we all want to uphold the dignity of the female for what it is, unencumbered by stereotypes and presuppositions. I’m going to assume these things because I’m here, in this space, for one reason and one reason alone: I care about my fellow woman. And you too, are where you are, for the same reason. We’re out in the world caring for the marginalized, we’re gently folding into the greater society those that have been neglected. Our work is good and noble.

Many of us do what we do for free. We do what we do by sacrificing time that could’ve been spent doing other, more personally beneficial, things. We do it because it matters so much to us, because other women, complete strangers, matter so much to us.

Your conference is a call to bring abortion access to Prince Edward Island, and you know that I would argue that abortion access is not the solution to the issues that bring women into crisis pregnancy situations. You know I won’t advocate for that, because I believe in every fiber of my being (and we can see it exemplified in the way our society responds to the unmarried mother) that there are implications for a society that provides abortion on demand to its citizens, and these implications affect each and every woman, regardless of her stance on abortion. You know that many women have multiple abortions, and this illustrates that abortion doesn’t lift a woman from the socioeconomic position that brought her to the abortion clinic in the first place.

I would argue that by funding abortion on demand we’re saying it’s okay to have an abortion because gender inequality still prevails in our classrooms and our workplaces, that you won’t get that promotion or that degree unless you have an abortion, and we’ll pay for it.

And perhaps we are not only saying that it’s okay, and that we’ll pay for it, but perhaps we’re sending the message that unless you are pregnant in the most Utopian of circumstances, you SHOULD have an abortion.

You know I don’t agree with you, but we still have so much in common. We still share a view of womanhood marked by strength and infinite possibility. With so much in common, why have we yet to create a space for ourselves to enter into dialog with one another? Why have we not come together to erect a more sustainable and universal vision of the future? Why do we still seek refuge in our podiums, me at mine and you at yours?

We should be fearless, and in our fearlessness collectively exchange ideas, let our moral imaginations reign, let the most truthful ideas win, let the most honest aspects of our passions come to the surface and be written into our moral code.

Sincerely,

Jennifer

Filed Under: All Posts

My new favorite blog

February 27, 2014 by Jennifer Derwey 1 Comment

I’m not Jewish, but that doesn’t mean I, and you too, can’t absolutely love the blog Raising Kvell. I’m all about Amanda Kosior’s posts right now. My most recent favorites are this post on the Happy Birthday Colin movement, a social media birthday party for a special needs child, where she writes,

What if every single person out there who “liked” that page or sent a card, actually started a dialogue with their kids about the importance of looking beyond differences?

And this wonderful open letter to the media to stop labeling children as adopted. It’s thought provoking and funny.

Dear journalists, scriptwriters, and other members of the media: I officially revoke your ability to use the word “adoption,” in any of its related forms. […]

I have been a mother for two-and-a-half years, and my limited experience has shown me that your success as a parent is not defined by the moment your baby is placed in your arms. It is defined by every single moment after. I know this because I just had to have a discussion with my son about what you do and do not put up your nose, a topic I am pretty sure has never shown up in an adoption pamphlet or Lamaze class.

The fact is, parenting is parenting. There is no asterisk next to my name on my son’s birth certificate. My “Mom” necklace is not surrounded by quotation marks. In the eyes of my country and God, I am my son’s mother.

 

Filed Under: All Posts

Merck being Merck

February 24, 2014 by Jennifer Derwey 1 Comment

I have many unkind words to say about the drug company, Merck, but I’ll let the complete and utter disregard for women’s health and lives speak for me. From Vanity Fair,

Danger in the Ring
When 24-year-old Erika Langhart—talented, beautiful, bound for law school—died on Thanksgiving Day 2011, she became one of thousands of suspected victims of the birth-control device NuvaRing. Elite army athlete Megan Henry, who survived rampant blood clots in her 20s, is another. With major suits against NuvaRing’s manufacturer, Merck, headed for trial, Marie Brenner asks why, despite evidence of serious risk, a potentially lethal contraceptive remains on the market.

CHEATED CHAMPION Olympic hopeful Megan Henry, who collapsed with blood clots after using NuvaRing, photographed near her family home in Roxbury, Connecticut.

Filed Under: All Posts

Upcoming Event: Halifax, November 30

November 24, 2013 by Jennifer Derwey Leave a Comment

From CMDS Canada,

Place: St. Benedict’s Parish 45 Radcliffe Dr. Halifax, NS B3M 0E1

Date and time: 5:30 PM, Saturday, November 30th

Current Canadian Initiatives to Legalize Physician Assisted Suicide/Euthanasia (PAS/E) Implications for the Practice of Medicine in Canada

 

Two recent legal initiatives have reignited the euthanasia debate in Canada.

In Carter vs. Canada (Attorney General) 2012, a B.C. Supreme Court judge raised significant legal, medical and ethical issues by ruling in favour of legalizing PAS/E. Even though this decision was overturned by the BC Court of Appeal, the case will be decided by the Supreme Court of Canada. In June of this year, the Parti Quebecois government in Quebec introduced Bill 52 – an Act respecting end of life care that tries to legalize “medical aid in dying”. Regardless of the outcome, these two initiatives have set off another round of public discussion on the question: Is it ever justified to take a human life?

All are welcome to participate.

Facilitator: Larry Worthen, BA, MA(Th), LLB

Executive Director, Christian Medical and Dental Society of Canada

Filed Under: All Posts

Barry Schwartz on the concept of choice

November 18, 2013 by Jennifer Derwey 1 Comment

I’ve quoted Barry Schwartz’s presentations before in my own workshops on the concept of choice, now NPR is picking up the scent of The Paradox of Choice. Is choice always a “good” thing? Read and watch more here. 

The more options there are, the easier it is to regret anything at all that is disappointing about the option that you chose.” — Barry Schwartz

Filed Under: All Posts

  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • …
  • 31
  • Next Page »

Follow Us

Facebooktwitterrssby feather

Notable Columns

  • A pro-woman budget wouldn't tell me how to live my life
  • Bad medicine
  • Birth control pills have side effects
  • Canada Summer Jobs debacle–Can Trudeau call abortion a right?
  • Celebrate these Jubilee jailbirds
  • China has laws against sex selection. But not Canada. Why?
  • Family love is not a contract
  • Freedom to discuss the “choice”
  • Gender quotas don't help business or women
  • Ghomeshi case a wake-up call
  • Hidden cost of choice
  • Life at the heart of the matter
  • Life issues and the media
  • Need for rational abortion debate
  • New face of the abortion debate
  • People vs. kidneys
  • PET-P press release
  • Pro-life work is making me sick
  • Prolife doesn't mean anti-woman
  • Settle down or "lean in"
  • Sex education is all about values
  • Thank you, Camille Paglia
  • The new face of feminism
  • Today’s law worth discussing
  • When debate is shut down in Canada’s highest places
  • Whither feminism?

Categories

  • All Posts
  • Assisted Suicide/Euthanasia
  • Charitable
  • Ethics
  • Featured Media
  • Featured Posts
  • Feminism
  • Free Expression
  • International
  • Motherhood
  • Other
  • Political
  • Pregnancy Care Centres
  • Reproductive Technologies

All Posts

Meta

  • Log in
  • Entries feed
  • Comments feed
  • WordPress.org

Copyright © 2022 · News Pro Theme on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in