Bigot-o-grams

[bcholmes]

I've received a few pieces of mail from Olivia Chow's campaign since the election: a volunteer thank-you party invititation, and stuff like that.

Yesterday, I got a letter: the return address indicated it came from the "Olivia Chow Re-Election Campaign". I opened it up, and across the top it reads "From the desk of Michele Landsberg."

Ugh.

This Michele Landsberg:

What makes a woman? If a man cuts off his penis, pumps himself full of hormones, gets silicone breasts and electrolysis, and stuffs his feet into high heels, is he/she a woman?

To me, that surgically and chemically altered person is a walking testament to the craziness of our cultural rigidity. If all children weren't crammed into pink or blue categories, with prescribed sets of feelings, beliefs and behaviours, maybe the gender-ambiguous wouldn't be driven to such painfully harsh medical extremes. Would that everyone could live freely, in freely chosen sexual modes, without mutilations and lifelong chemicals.

Being female is a complicated mixture of physiology, cultural conditioning and lived experience -- or even, as one academic thesis would have it, "a political category created through oppression." Out of politeness, I'd be willing to call that surgically altered person a woman and use the feminine pronoun. But a part of me will always feel outraged that "woman" could be defined as an outward set of physical characteristics - lack of penis, fake breasts - along with an ultra-sexist "female impersonator" style of clothing and gesture.

She wrote this in a Toronto Star article talking about the Kimberly Nixon/Vancouver Rape Relief case. The article closes by likening Nixon's resistance to being discriminated against to rape -- to her forcing herself on an organization that has said 'no'.

The letter goes on to ask for my help in helping Olivia pay down her campaign expenses (I cannot legally give her campaign any more money, so the plea is not particularly well-aimed).

Y'know: I know that NDP'ers don't have to all agree on party policy. But I support the NDP because I believe that opinions like Landsberg's are anathema to them. And I would hate to learn otherwise.

Comments

[the_siobhan]

I suspect that a lot of NDP'ers don't even know about her opinions. They think "Oh, well-known local feminist, she'd be good to have as a sponsor."

That's no excuse of course. I'm strongly of the opinion that if you are asking somebody to be a public face in support of your platforms you make damn sure that somebody isn't an asshole first. But I do think it's a case of ignorance rather than support of her assholery.

[trouble]

Ugg, I hate it when that happens. I'm so sorry she's the name on these campaign requests. :(

[hypatia]

I just called the constituency office and asked them about this. Read the first paragraph of what you wrote quoted. The woman on the phone was appalled, unsurprisingly.

If you'd like, I got the Riding Association's email:

atulbahl15 at hotmail.com

His name's Atul.