Social
Services Mandate |
Check out Heather Bird's Mar. 30/99 article "Shelter or Crackhouse" to see an example of how the victim machine is working in Toronto.
Dismantling the Victim Machine Godammit, I was molested when I was four, raped when I was 15 and it wasn't fair and it wasn't right. I certainly didn't ask for it and it most definitely was not fun. It was par for the course in hillbilly Saskatchewan. In those days, women were virtually excluded from most professions. Now there are many many women lawyers. Leslie Sullivan and Sonja Hansen, for instance, prosecuted Martensville and the Foster Parent scandal. There are women RCMP officers and some are mature, responsible officers. But there are also the Claudia Brydens (first investigator in Martensville). Social workers? Carol Bunko-Ruys. Psychologists? Margaret Graham Woloshyn. In 2002 we can add Ontario's Christine Bartlett-Hughes and Judge H. Pierce to this list. And of course, south of the border we have Diane Fairstein in New York. It is a bloody mess. We went from macho-centric hillbilly country to gender-equal hillbilly country. Your basic anti-intellectual braindead province from which most intelligent life fled. What intelligensia remain are holed up in an ivory tower with blinders on. I was 23 and living in Ontario when, along with three other socialist women I wrote and presented a brief to the Royal commission on the Status of Women headed by Florence Bird in 1968. As we discussed the composition of this brief, it became clear to us that if we wanted equality in the work place, we would have to change many attitudes: we must have reliable child care and share the burden of unpaid labour (housework) with men. Etc., etc., etc. I returned to Saskatchewan in 1971, full of hope. The recommendations of the Bird commission have been largely implemented. Women have many more opportunities. We have legal protection in many areas. Yet we continue to be victimized and to behave childishly in many situations. One of the worst behaviors is crying and appealing to men's protective instincts -- and then using those instincts against them. This has produced a whole generation of bitter males and confused children. I would venture to say it produced eminem. I'm sick of it. If we want a decent society, we have to work at it. Where do we start?
It started here as everywhere with the struggle for equality rights. The "personal" became "political" and the huge gap between public image and private reality became an abyss. Politics in Saskatchewan has always been dirty and within this cess pool, a lot of scum floated to the top. The money got spent and many saw their affluence slip away. Revenge, greed, ambition, sloth . . . whichever deadly sins fuelled this machine, it's time to take it to the junkyard! injusticebusters will continue to name the problems and publish the names of those responsible for the problems. Justice will be served only when those responsible account for their deeds.
Not a Love Story starred Robin Morgan, who after editing the anthology Sisterhood is Powerful (which included Valerie Solanas' famous Scum Manifesto - too bad Valerie didn't get some of the money and she might not have shot Andy Warhol). Morgan visited Saskatoon in 1972 shorly before publishing Monster, a rage against UK poet laureatte Ted Hughes accusing him of murdering Sylvia Plath. Andrea Dworkin and Catherine MacKinnon influenced legislation. Rape Shield laws were enacted on both sides of the border. In Saskatchewan, Gay Caswell
became a spokeswoman for the anti-abortion side of the movement,
which exalted motherhood
For this victim, who started
LAAW,
Legal Aid for Abused Women every day is like Christmas, and
no doubt for the lawyers, too! Like this
one! Whether or not O.J. Simpson was guilty, Johnny Cochran
managed to insist on consistent, corroboratiive evidence and
because the People did not provide it, his acquittal was just.
Nicole Brown has now become a staple in the Victim industry.
Canadian
Justice The deck got shuffled , and
now men and women are getting together again: men and women who
support the new regime Elder abuse: Is it really so widespread or another suggestion designed to inflame and outrage? (The hysteria machine) Or, as the general public tone has become more greedy and less empathetic, is abuse of all vulnerable creatures inevitable?
Special Joint Committee on Child Custody and Access spins its wheels in response to the victim machine. In case you don't know about these committees, go here. Human Rights commissions were ostensibly established to protect persons from abuse of their rights as set out by, among other things, the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Just go to this site to see the shift of their focus. This is another make-work project for people who don't know what the hell they are doing and care only about their right to have cushy jobs in a protected organization. Have you tried to get help from them lately? No doubt you got a letter back telling you that the person you were asking about either was or was not part of a "protected group!" No wonder a lot of Canadians have become cynical about affirmative action and minority rights legislation!
People get grants to start projects which don't get finished because the funding ran out. The internet is full of pages that unqualified people were given money to put up, and then were abandoned when the grant ran out! The funding money has run out. That site is gone or abandoned with outdated information! Many people who thought they should run the world are now on the loose. They may have lost their jobs, but they still have their ambition and rather too much self-esteem! Punishing them is the only reason one could possibly justify building more jails! there is still hope: Judith Levine | John Doe site |
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30 years ago the
burgeoning feminist movement put the ugly underside of women's
unequal status on the social agenda. Betty Friedan wrote The
Feminist Mystique, young women read Simone de Beauvoir's
The Second Sex and Doris Lessing's 
The
Golden Notebook, Canada held a 
Women
achieved nothing close to economic equality, but a few more women
had a bit more money now than they did in the days when husbands
and fathers controlled the bank accounts. Starting from the trite
observations that women were exploited as sex objects, that control
over our reproductive organs and different arrangements for raising
our children, and education were essential before we could step
into anything approaching social equality, the struggles and
debates took place over every kitchen table, beside ever water
cooler, inside every classroom, locker room and blue-collar worksite
in the industrial world. The word feminism took on many different
meanings. A new breed of partially liberated people took on domestic
violence, sexual exploitation 
of
underage persons and other genuine social problems. Some brought
insight and intelligence to the cause while others created the
victim
machine.
Kate
Millett (Sexual Politics) and Germaine Greer (The Female
Eunoch) presented the case for female equality in honest
if angry language. Then came the NFB film 
and family to saintly status. She won an American award from
Phyllis Schaffley's organization and went on to serve as a Member
of the Legislative Assembly in Grant Devine's government for
one term. She was a controversial figure. She and her husband
John had children, adopted children and fostered children. She
was instrumental in pushing for more compensation for foster
parents in the early 80's. Her own competence as a parent was
challenged, she was defeated in her second bid for public office
and her influence plummeted as quickly as it had arisen. She
was both a creator and a victim of the victim machine.
Ellen
Bass became to therapy what Robin Morgan had been to culture
-- they pushed a candied poison far more dangerous than the "enemies"
they claimed for the movement. Marilyn French (Beyond Power)
and Susan Faludi (Backlash) brought some reason to the
issue in the early 90's but by that time whole university sociology
departments and other spaces in the academy had been taken over
by people drunk on their own feelings of victimization. In the
name of science, they fudged statistics, created new (and utterly
unfounded) methods of teaching, therapy, counselling, and, particularly
within the colleges of law, ethics. The first wave and a half
of feminists went after THE MAN, a generic as well as gender-accurate
description of abusive power; this new bunch went after any man
who happened to be closeby and vulnerable. Then they went after
each other. One of the most notorious legal achievements of this
lot was the enactment of rape shield laws and the increased admissibility
-- and even the preferability -- of uncorroborated testimony
in courtrooms all over the continent. ! The calculated use of
tears in court was also refined (See 
"Networking"
as a response to "old boys' clubs" created nepotism
which made many old boys look like infants by comparison! If
the old ways of helping out your buddies, getting them appointments
and jobs, showing them the quickest 
routes
to the troughs and slushbuckets were corrupt, the girls have
certainly matched them and have found innovative ways to outdo
them. Thus was created the Victim Machine! In Saskatoon, 
funds
studies which keep Victim Machine careers alive while women and
children continue to launguish in poverty, the single most significant
factor in crime! This 
and
the men and women who want 
See
the social science and humanities projects
If you would like to experience just
how bad things are in Saskatchewan, check out the page below,
which is what you will find if you go searching on an engine
for a crisis line in Canada. Try phoning the numbers. Many of
them lead to 
February, 1999: In
Ottawa, homeless and poor people received this welcome from the
cops! Does anybody give a damn?