In this morning’s Ottawa Citizen, a journalist asks: “… as women happily display themselves as sex objects. It raises the question: Is feminism dead?” I don’t know if feminism is dead but I wanted to point out that feminism is not about women displaying themselves as sex objects but about equal rights and equal opportunities. And when it comes to equal rights and opportunities, there is often more than meets the eye.
Take abortion for instance: poster procedure for women’s rights and equal opportunities… Or is it? I don’t need to start linking to previous posts: just scroll down long enough to find the next post on campus free speech, informed consent, pregnancy crisis centres, abortion counseling or post-abortion trauma (post-abortion what??) and you will find a world that doesn’t really want women to know what’s going on with abortion as long as they get it done. How equal is that? And I’m not even getting into coerced abortion (coerced what??), whether the coercion is physical or psychological.That’s it girls, just go and be whatever you want to be: firefighter, CEO, Secretary of State. Just don’t bother us with your babies. Everybody is treated equally here, like a man.
Go ahead and soothe yourself thinking that women still have a long way to go because there are 50-foot posters of half-naked girls adorning the outside walls of La Senza. It reminded me of walking back to the office on a warm summer afternoon, a couple of steps behind a co-worker who had just had her breasts, ahem, “enhanced”. Yes, men were ogling. But that’s — arguably — why she had it done. Where’s the inequality? The last time I went to La Senza, it was a woman’s store selling women things. Unless this has changed radically, the titillating images are selling something to women, not men. Poor taste? Probably. Inequality? No. Just like a boob job.
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