I can illustrate this change with something my sister told me. She went to a big concert event outside of Edmonton a couple of years ago. I don't remember the name of the festival but it included a lot of big, mainstream rock names like Nickelback and others I have absolutely no interest in. At that concert, a large number of women flashed their boobs in the same manner that Ms. Binks describes in her article. This wouldn't (obviously) be a problem in and of itself, but my sister said the general atmosphere was not one where women could choose to do this or not and others would admire their beauty, but where they were under constant pressure to flash with an unspecified but vaguely violent threat for all women. This threat was felt to such as extent that my sister said she wouldn't leave the campground area her and her friends were sharing without taking a male friend with her, even if just to go to the outhouse. The idea that a women in these times would feel the need for a male escort anywhere in public appalls me, particularly when it's not in some out of the way area that is generally accepted as “risky” (although these areas really shouldn't exist anyway) but in a popularly attended, mainstream music festival. This is something people often bring up in relation to theocratic states and yet it is happening right in Canada. Once again, if we have to continually defend our right to enjoy our lives without a palpable shadow of sexual violence, it is not really a right in the way I've conceptualized "rights".

Sorry if this is a bit rant-y. But I wanted to underline this idea that, by admitting that the rights we thought were achieved by my mother's generation, it seems that those achievements are then rendered to be somewhat of an illusion. Faced with the prospect of a never-ending defensive battle, I can understand, even if I don't agree, with the temptation for some women to just want to give up and minimize the risks to themselves. I've seen a lot of celebration of feminist achievements in some of the recent threads (I really want to read Ten Thousand Roses but I think it will have to wait until I'm back in Canada) and I'm grateful for those achievements, but I'm also wondering what some who know more than I might have to say about what hasn't been achieved and why.

Edited: "it" to "I'm". I knew I'd miss one.

[ 05 March 2005: Message edited by: dokidoki ]

As I read your first paragraph, I was about to sign on to this:

quote:

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How can one be said to enjoy a right if it has be continually defended? I feel very much that taking our rights for granted ought not to be a luxury but a given. The idea that I wouldn't be able to secure an abortion if I were pregnant or that I would ever have to think of my (sexual or other) behaviour with a view towards not inviting disrespect of my rights had, until quite recently seemed totally foreign to me.

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Even as an old gril, I have been lulled into complacency over the last couple of decades, believing that our successes had succeeded, as it were. But then, as I read the rest of your post, I remembered the old fears, and the fact that they have never really gone away at all.

Employment-equity laws were the easiest battle for feminists to fight and win, since they are fairly superficial and benefit mainly a highly visible and voluble middle-class minority of women. To a degree, the same is true of family law.

But legislative changes haven't changed hearts and minds very much, I don't think. The one real change I have noticed and believe in is the change in many younger men, men now in their twenties and thirties, many of whom seem really to have grown up with feminist values and views. I'm not the best analyst of how that happened, but I'm grateful to see it. I certainly see it on this board, eg, although I also see ... but let's not go there right now.

As I read through the second half of your post, I remembered the fears that I have lived with all my life. If younger women are feeling physically intrepid, are assuming that they are always free and secure in public, then great for them. I have never felt that way, and I'm not sure I have reason to change my mind yet. I became complacent, I guess, because for two decades I did have that man beside me, and however equal he and I considered ourselves to be, I think now that he was also an automatic protection for me that neither of us wanted or recognized, but others did.

Och, dokidoki, you are so right. The heart says that we should be able to take our rights for granted. But the head says to the heart: "See yourself in history. That much was done, there and then. It wasn't as much as we thought, but it is what was possible there and then."