misogyny

Tuesday August 30, 2022

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Tuesday August 30, 2022

Neanderthals and Strong Women

May 26, 2021

From a makeshift studio and with a news anchor’s measured tones, one of Canada’s most familiar faces shocked viewers, created a PR disaster at a national broadcaster and set off intense conversations about how employers treat women as they age.

She did it with a polite, unexpected farewell.

“I guess this is my sign-off from CTV,” the news anchor, Lisa LaFlamme said in a video that announced the abrupt end of her 35-year career at the network.

The dismissal of Ms. LaFlamme, who was most likely one of the newsroom’s highest-paid employees, followed a torrent of layoffs and budget cuts at CTV’s network and local news operations over the past seven years, which were made despite government assistance to news organizations. As in the United States, the internet and years of collapsing advertising revenue have left many Canadian news organizations in dire financial straits. The executive put on leave, Michael Melling, had overseen recent layoffs and cuts at CTV.

Wednesday May 26, 2021

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Wednesday May 26, 2021

Ottawa failed to properly implement sexual misconduct report, top Defence civil servant says

Canada’s deputy minister of National Defence says the military’s operation to end sexual misconduct in its ranks “lost its way” because the government failed to properly implement recommendations from a landmark report into the issue six years ago.

May 1, 2021

Jody Thomas said she wasn’t working for the Department of National Defence in 2015, when a scathing report into sexual misconduct by former Supreme Court justice Marie Deschamps was released.

But Thomas said her “observation” is that the Deschamps report was treated like a checklist. She said the government did not “truly” implement it — something the military has been loath to say.

“It was not given the oversight it needed by the civilian part of the department, so my side of the department in terms of monitoring,” Thomas said in an interview on CBC’s The Current with Matt Galloway. 

“I think that as little was done as possible to make it look like the report had been responded to without any real change. No structural change, no legislative change, no outside the department, outside the Canadian Armed Forces reporting — those kinds of things that Madame Deschamps emphasized.”

Thomas’s comment is in stark contrast to what the military told Parliament last month.

Brig.-Gen. Andrew Atherton, director general of professional military conduct, told MPs probing sexual misconduct in the Armed Forces that all of the recommendations in the Deschamps report were fulfilled.

May 2, 2017

“From our perspective, we believe we have achieved all of those 10 recommendations,” Atherton said on April 15. “However, that is our opinion.”

Thomas told Galloway it’s time to be frank.

“My observation would be that it was treated almost as a checklist, and I think it’s time that we were just honest about that,” Thomas said.

The statement is a clear admission of failure when it comes to the Defence Department’s handling of sexual misconduct.

That said, Thomas did say she wouldn’t characterize Operation Honour — the military’s now-defunct campaign to stamp out sexual misconduct — “completely as a failure,” citing the creation of the Sexual Misconduct Response Centre and increased reporting. 

Eyre replaced Admiral Art McDonald, who stepped aside from the top job in February during an investigation into a sexual misconduct claim. McDonald had replaced Gen. Jonathan Vance, who is also under a military police probe over claims of inappropriate behaviour — allegations that he told Global News he denies. Several other senior leaders have also been swept up into the reckoning.

Eyre repeated his message that the military has “failed as an institution to properly address” sexual misconduct over the decades. He called it an “existential issue” that threatens to make the military “irrelevant” in society and not able to defend the country if it’s not fixed. (CBC) 

 

Saturday May 1, 2021

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Saturday May 1, 2021

‘My recommendations will be implemented’: Louise Arbour prepares to review misconduct in Canada’s military

When faced with the idea of conducting an external review on sexual misconduct in the military — six years after a similar review was completed — retired Supreme Court justice Louise Arbour said her initial impression was: “Seriously? It’s been done.” 

October 18, 2016

Upon reflection, Arbour said she saw an environment in which she could make a lasting contribution, having been given a broader mandate from the federal government than the one handed to retired Supreme Court justice Marie Deschamps when she conducted a similar review. 

“I have been given assurances that my recommendations will be implemented,” a point Arbour returned to several times in an interview with the Star on Friday, while acknowledging that “you might think it’s a bit naïve” considering the military’s response so far to the Deschamps review. 

“Six years after the Deschamps report, I think there’s better hope this time that something will come of this…If I was profoundly skeptical and cynical, I wouldn’t be doing this. I really have to believe that there is a window of opportunity.”

Arbour’s external review, announced Thursday by Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan, was immediately blasted by critics as a deflection tactic by a government and military that have failed to fully implement Deschamps’s recommendations. 

The Conservatives said it was meant to take attention away from ongoing questions about the government’s handling of an allegation against ex-chief of the defence staff Gen. Jonathan Vance in 2018.

June 13, 2017

Deschamps — who concluded in 2015 that sexual misconduct is “endemic” in the military — told the Star she welcomed Arbour’s appointment, noting her broader mandate and that her review “would not be a mere repetition of what I did.” 

A former justice on the country’s top court, UN high commissioner for human rights, and chief prosecutor at the international criminal tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda, Arbour brings a deep knowledge of human rights issues to her new task.

“Maybe the most important part of (Deschamps’s) work was the diagnosis,” Arbour said. “It was really earth shattering, the assessment of the prevalence of this predatory, sexualized culture.” 

Arbour said she understands the frustration of survivors of military sexual violence, both those who have come forward, as well as those who never have due to lack of trust in the system.

“I understand their frustration and possibly their skepticism, about just another review by another justice. I get that,” she said. “I really want to say: Just bear with me. I think moving forward, this might be the right time for the right thing to get done.” 

Unlike Deschamps’s mandate, Arbour has been instructed to come up with recommendations on what external oversight of the armed forces should look like. She will also be studying the military justice system’s “systemic performance” in dealing with sexual misconduct allegations, as well as recruitment and promotion to senior leadership. (Toronto Star) 

 

Friday February 21, 2020

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Friday February 21, 2020

Despite His Billions, Bloomberg Busts

You can buy ads and saturate the airwaves with them. You can buy allies, especially with the right budget.

February 7, 2020

But you can’t buy a debate performance, and that’s why Mike Bloomberg’s on Wednesday night mattered so much. This was the man talking, not the money.

And the man needed rescue — from his bloodthirsty rivals and even more so from himself.

Making his first appearance alongside other contenders for the Democratic presidential nomination, Bloomberg knew that he would be under furious attack and had clearly resolved not to show any negative emotion. But that meant that he often showed no emotion at all. Or he looked vaguely bemused, and that didn’t communicate the coolness that he intended. It signaled an aloofness that he very much needed to avoid.

He made a groaner of a joke about his wealth, saying that he could hardly use a plebeian instrument like TurboTax to ready his tax returns for public consumption. He made light of past harassment-related complaints from female employees: “None of them accuse me of doing anything other than maybe they didn’t like a joke I told.”

February 11, 2020

He repeatedly — and laughably — suggested that he wouldn’t tear up nondisclosure agreements with women who have sued him or his company because they wanted the silence as much as he did. Elizabeth Warren hammered and hammered him on this point, but he wouldn’t budge, and that left the impression that he couldn’t budge. The truth would be too ugly.

My first sketch of Michael Bloomberg. Kinda’ resembles actor Christopher Plummer in this depiction. More work needed? Or, why bother? Maybe he’s washed up?*

Ugly: That’s the word for this ninth debate of the Democratic primary season. It had the fewest candidates — six — but the most nastiness, because those candidates clearly felt an urgency to diminish their competitors and elevate themselves before it was too late. A meager haul of votes in the Nevada caucuses this coming Saturday could effectively undo one or more of them; a poor showing on Super Tuesday less than two weeks from now would definitely be the end of the road.

It’s no wonder they wanted a bite of him. It was the first time since Bloomberg announced his run for the presidency that he was within reach. For three high-spending, high-flying months, he campaigned essentially as a phantasm, ubiquitous in television commercials but averse to interviews, a supposed paragon of electability who had yet to put himself before voters, more idea than actuality, able to be seen but not touched.

But on Wednesday night, that changed abruptly. The apparition became flesh. And it was bruised from the get-go and bloodied soon after. (Continued…NYT)

 * It was my second time drawing him, actually. The first time I sketched Michael Bloomberg was while watching him on TV as he spoke to delegates at the 2016 Democratic Party convention.

Thursday April 26, 2018

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Thursday April 26, 2018 

‘Raw hatred’: why the ‘incel’ movement targets and terrorises women

October 22, 2014

When a van was driven on to a Toronto pavement on Tuesday, killing 10 people and injuring 15, police chief Mark Saunders said that, while the incident appeared to be a deliberate act, there was no evidence of terrorism. The public safety minister Ralph Goodale backed this up, deeming the event “not part of an organised terror plot”. Canada has rules about these things: to count as terrorism, the attacker must have a political, religious or social motivation, something beyond “wanting to terrorise”.

Why have the authorities been so fast to reject the idea of terrorism (taking as read that this may change; the tragedy is very fresh)? Shortly before the attack, a post appeared on the suspect’s Facebook profile, hailing the commencement of the “Incel Rebellion”, including the line “Private (Recruit) … Infantry 00010, wishing to speak to Sgt 4chan please. C23249161.” (“4chan is the main organising platform for the ‘alt-right’,” explains Mike Wendling, the author of Alt-Right: from 4Chan to the White House.)

June 6, 2006

There is a reluctance to ascribe to the “incel” movement anything so lofty as an “ideology” or credit it with any developed, connected thinking, partly because it is so bizarre in conception.

Standing for “involuntarily celibate”, the term was originally invented 20 years ago by a woman known only as Alana, who coined the term as a name for an online support forum for singles, basically a lonely hearts club. “It feels like being the scientist who figured out nuclear fission and then discovers it’s being used as a weapon for war,” she says, describing the feeling of watching it mutate into a Reddit muster point for violent misogyny.

Who are the ‘incels’ and how do they relate to Toronto van attack?

It is part of the “manosphere”, but is distinguished from men’s rights activism by what Wendling – who is also the editor of BBC Trending, the broadcaster’s social media investigation unit – calls its “raw hatred. It is vile. It is just incredibly unhinged and separate from reality and completely raw.” It has some crossover with white supremacism, in the sense that its adherents hang out in the same online spaces and share some of the same terminology, but it is quite distinctive in its hate figures: Stacys (attractive women); Chads (attractive men); and Normies (people who aren’t incels, ie can find partners but aren’t necessarily attractive). Basically, incels cannot get laid and they violently loathe anyone who can. (Continued: Guardian)