On Men's Place In Feminism: Part One (Probably)

Give me back that hammer.

About six weeks ago, I was fortunate enough to attend a conference about how to engage male allies in the fight to end gendered violence, namely violence against women. I was there as a volunteer-in-training for the very awesome Sexual Assault Support Centre of Waterloo Region, which boasts one of the very few Male Ally programs in the country*; a program which, it turns out, is at least as comprehensive as the programs espoused by the speaker of the conference, Rus Ervin Funk. Go team!

Is This Feminist? And Other Relevant Questions

Oh, FEMEN and your feminist boobs. Your uniformly thin, smooth-skinned, whole, mostly white, two-breasted naked torsos are just so subversive, and lard knows there's no other way to get the media to pay any attention to you!

Guh.

But this post is not about FEMEN, necessarily, because lots of people have been saying whatever I would say about them for years now. Read here! And here! And here's what I wrote about Slutwalk, and here's what I wrote about hookup culture, in which you could just replace the actual subject with "FEMEN" and voila! Reconstituted. In the immortal words of everyone's favourite spinster aunt: If the liberal peen is keen, the result can only demean. There's no need to add to the list of criticism - in fact I can't believe that such interesting, thoughtful, and patient analyses have arisen out of this SAME. TIRED. SHIT.  Update: Meghan Murphy totally beat me to it this morning!