I soon realized that, like me, the average McGill student didn’t really believe that we had a right to access free recycled vegan food. And while a handful of ideologically-driven SSMU execs thought it would be clever to lose $200,000 on Haven Books (despite the warnings of its financial auditors), a substantial portion of the student body seemed to be either opposed to the purchase or unaware of the whole fiasco.

I’ve come to the conclusion that most centrists and reasonable students at McGill just don’t give a damn. Political and social moderates seem to stay out of the spotlight at McGill most of the time. When is the last time someone ran for student government without promising to achieve free education and solve the crisis in the Middle East? When did more than a third of McGill students bother to vote in a student election? When’s the last time The Daily published something relevant to more than four people?
I guess it’s not entirely surprising that a majority of students seem unwilling to engage with student government and media. Inertia and apathy might simply be the fruits of long-term alienation from these institutions. Or perhaps, many normal students are busy with an even more radical project: schoolwork.

Still, the actions of our student government and media directly impact the student experience, from our ability to participate in clubs and services, to the image we have in that tiny place called “the world outside McGill.” It’s time we took just a little bit of responsibility for them.

I found the Vote No campaign during the DPS fee increase referendum last month infuriating. Not because its proponents weren’t raising valid concerns about the paper, but because no one bothered to publicly criticize it until there was a question of funding. The Daily fee increase passed by an incredibly slim margin. Almost 50 per cent of students voting stood behind a campaign that claimed The Daily did not speak to most of the student body and represented the views and interests of a very small minority of students. Why did it take a fee levy for them to voice this concern? Where were these moderates when it came to submitting articles to Commentary, writing letters, or running for editorial positions?
If you want to keep campus moderate, it’s not enough to withdraw from public life. Sometimes it’s necessary to vote in student referenda, if only to vote down the preposterous and polarizing motions. Without vocal opposition, radicals will continue to derive legitimacy from the claim that they represent student interests.

To ensure that student newspapers are relevant and adequately reflect your interests, you have to actually write to them. Apply to have a column in The Daily next fall. Believe me, the standards are not that high (see everything I’ve published in The Daily this year for proof of this point).

For all that I’ve criticized the radicals, I admire their tenacity and energy. While I disagree with almost all of their substantive positions, at least they’re willing to act on them. I’ve yet to see a sign plastered around campus that reads “Let’s establish a reasonable dialogue about a problem we actually have the means to resolve.” I guess that might lack a certain cachet.

Riva Gold’s a goner, but not forgotten. Keep in touch: little.bitter@mcgilldaily.com.

The post Be the change you want to see appeared first on The McGill Daily.

To be sure, I do appreciate the Pope’s revival of the red cappello romano, a highly fashionable outdoor hat with a wide brim. This hat has been neglected by unfashionable popes since the early ’60s. But there are also many things I find distasteful about Pope Benedict’s policies. His refusal to overturn the Vatican’s prohibition on condoms to combat the spread of HIV strikes me as grossly negligent. His motu proprio Summorum Pontificum allows the use of a prayer that asks God to “take the veil from [Jewish people’s] hearts” so they will convert to Catholicism, which creeps me out just a little bit.

But while his hard-line conservative and theological positions on divorce, Jewish people, homosexuality, and abortion don’t resonate with a lot of liberal sensibilities, this is hardly unique to Pope Benedict. It would be nonsensical to ask a leader to resign for simply carrying on the policies of his predecessors. Rather, it is Pope Benedict’s direct and increasingly public involvement in a series of church-wide sexual abuse scandals that demand his resignation.

In 1979, an 11-year-old boy was drugged, stripped, and abused by his priest. Then Archbishop Joseph Ratzinger simply transferred the cleric to Munich for “therapy”; he soon returned to pastoral work, where he continued to sexually assault children.

As the cardinal in charge of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Ratzinger issued a confidential letter to every bishop urging them not to report rape and torture, which he claimed were the exclusive jurisdiction of the Church. Interestingly, although excommunication from the church was never used against actual rapists and child abusers, it was threatened as punishment against those who reported the offences to the state. That sure cracked down on the scandals. Since then, hundreds of appalling revelations have emerged from church abuse scandals in Austria, Belgium, France, Ireland, Poland, the U.S., and the U.K.

For the Catholic Church to function as a moral and religious beacon, laypeople need to be able to trust their clergy, and clergymen need to have faith in their hierarchy. Sexual abuse doesn’t just injure its victims and their families; it erodes the entire Church’s ability to work meaningfully in communities or as a credible actor on the world stage. How can anyone preach the word of God with moral authority when its own scandals and abuses are so carelessly swept under the table?
This is not to imply that pedophilia and sexual abuse are unique to the Church. Rape, violence, and abuse happen in a variety of large institutions where vulnerable people are in close contact with trusted authority figures, like schools and assisted-living homes. But the prevalence of this abuse outside the Church does not absolve the Pope of his duty to actively prevent and condemn it. Until the Church officially recognizes that no one is above the law, cases of rape will continue to eat away at the legitimacy of the institution and any claims it makes to representing Christ’s vision.

In 1415, Gregory XII stepped down from the papacy to end the Western schism. Sometimes, it’s the only thing that can be done to restore the Church to order. At the very least, it would be a pretty ballin’ act of penance.

Riva Gold writes in this space every other week until next month. Write her at littlebitter@mcgilldaily.com.

The post Step down, Benedict XVI appeared first on The McGill Daily.

McGill Daily: where were you to criticize the appalling treatment of LGBTQ people under Yasser Arafat’s Palestinian Authority in the West Bank and Gaza? Even today, homosexuality is illegal in Gaza. Palestine has no civil right laws that protect LGBTQ people from discrimination or harassment. Mahmoud Zahar, the most senior leader of Hamas, called queer people “a minority of perverts and the mentally and morally sick.”

The only refuge for persecuted LGBTQ Palestinians has, perhaps ironically, been found in Israel. Many have fled to Tel Aviv and Netanya, where they live illegally to avoid the physical abuse, death, or disownment that awaits them at home.

Several independent human rights organizations rank Israel the best in the entire Middle East in terms of LGBTQ rights. Israel is the only country in the region where LGBTQ people have the legal rights to live safely and freely. While same-sex marriage is not yet legal in the State of Israel, the government recognizes all same-sex marriages performed elsewhere. It also grants same-sex couples common law marriage along with adoption rights and critical spousal benefits.

All Israeli citizens are protected from sexual orientation discrimination in employment, and LGBTQ Israelis may openly serve in the Israeli military. There is a vibrant queer community, an annual Pride Parade, and despite the attention given to the actions of a small ultra-Orthodox minority, over 60 per cent of the Israeli population expresses support for equal marriage.

The treatment and status of women is also considerably different when Israel is compared to any of its neighbours in the region. In Israel, much like in Western liberal democracies, women have been guaranteed full legal equality since the state’s founding in 1948. Golda Meir, former Israeli prime minister, was only the third woman in the world to be a head of government. Since then, women have continued to work in high-ranking jobs, serve alongside men in the military, and participate as equals in the State of Israel.

Maybe The Daily ought to endorse participation in “Palestine and Gaza’s Apartheid against Women” week. Honour killings continue to terrorize dozens of women annually in the Palestinian territories; the Hamas government has not attempted to stop or condemn any of them. In fact, it is suspected of having established many of the very infrastructures which participate in them.

Women hold no ministerial position in either the Palestinian Authority or Hamas, and close to one in four Palestinian women report physical violence against them in the home. In the Gaza Strip, the Egyptian penal code on adultery applies, which allows for reduced punishment on violence against women.

Women’s economic opportunities are also heavily constrained. Palestinian women’s participation in the labour market is the lowest among all Middle Eastern and north African countries, with an employment rate at an appalling 14.7 per cent. According to a study by the Women’s Affairs Center, 88 per cent of women in the region have been denied their inheritance.

This is not to say that it’s never legitimate to critique Israeli policy or to express sympathy for the people suffering in Palestine or Gaza. Both are necessary elements of a fruitful and honest discourse about the Middle East. But we ought to think critically about who and what we support unconditionally. The simplistic vilification of Israel and glorification of the Palestinian Authority and Hamas does violence to sexual minorities and women who continue to suffer tremendously in the region.

Riva Gold’s thoughts appear in this space every week. Write her at littlebitter@mcgilldaily.com.

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With few exceptions, studies in reputable medical journals have consistently indicated that alternative medications are often dangerously toxic or entirely ineffective. These findings are hardly surprising, given that “alternative doctors” in Canada don’t necessarily have to have any particular standard of education or training, and that the medications they prescribe are not equally subject to Health Canada’s standards of safety and efficacy before they are marketed. Peer review and federal oversight of alternative drugs is weak, and the marketing laws surrounding alternative medications are far more lax than those of conventional medicine.

This incredible lapse in oversight and patient protection means that herbal remedies and naturopathic drugs can and do permanently injure patients. Even seemingly harmless herbal medications can interfere with traditional medications required to treat serious conditions like diabetes or HIV. Others have been found to have serious side effects on their users, which are not caught before licensing due to a lack of stringent testing. In 2009, the homeopathic drug “Zicam” in the U.S. caused over 900 people to lose their sense of smell before the Federal Drug Administration warned the public about its potential side effects.

Even when the drugs or procedures involved with alternative medicine do not cause harm, it remains that pursuing alternative medicine entails serious risks when it means foregoing or compromising traditional medical care. People die when they are told to halt their chemo and cure their cancer by simply taking the right combination of herbs and minerals. They die when they try to treat HIV with lifestyle changes and acupuncture alone. And they die when instead of regular visits with trained physicians, they resign themselves to the dubious care of individuals who may not be able to adequately monitor and diagnose symptoms of real and treatable illnesses.

While some forms of alternative medicine may be innocuous, others can threaten the health of the public at large by spreading misinformation and instilling distrust in conventional disease control. For instance, naturopathic medicine explicitly rejects many safe and efficacious vaccines for serious and preventable illnesses like TB. Such a stance on vaccinations threatens not only individual patients, but the entirety of Canadian society when we are forced to bear the burden of otherwise avoidable diseases.

Almost by definition, drugs outside of evidence-based medicine lack scientific data to support their claims of efficacy. An article in The Age, an Australian daily, suggests that the vast majority of homeopathic remedies are devoid of active ingredients. If there was evidence behind the claim that a few natural herbs can cure AIDS, believe me, we would have heard about it by now. This lack of supporting evidence is particularly problematic in the realm of medicine, which relies heavily on informed consent. Without a mechanism to ensure that the information disclosed to patients prior to treatment decisions is accurate, we cannot assume that patients have adequately consented to the possible harms.

It’s true that many suffering patients find refuge or value in alternative medicine, regardless of its weak evidentiary basis. People would probably stop turning to alternative medicine if they did not perceive it as valuable in some way.

At the same time, we must recognize that there is a difference between symptom relief and cure. Alternative medications may be effective at pain relief, but in many cases, so are placebos. There is a difference between pain reduction and actually curing a disease. Pain, anxiety, and emotional wellbeing may be subjective. Tumour growth and insulin levels are not.

It would be unrealistic – and perhaps unjust – to demand a federal ban on alternative medications. We let people engage in all kinds of activities that are harmful so long as they don’t harm others and there is sufficient consent. Smoking is permissible, and one is always free to refuse medical treatment altogether. What federal agencies should do is regulate the use of alternative medications more stringently, and protect children and other vulnerable groups. A child cannot consent to the risks and inherent opportunity costs involved with pursuing alternative medicine. The state should not allow a child to die because his or her parents think tea will cure their cancer or exercise is better at preventing tuberculosis than vaccines. Just like Jehovah’s Witnesses should not be allowed to deny life-saving blood transfusions for their kids, parents should not be allowed to deny life-saving treatments to their children or offer them untested, unregulated, and frequently unsafe drugs.

People often vehemently argue against the decriminalization of marijuana, because they fear it will do tremendous damage to youth. To be perfectly honest, I suspect alternative medications are far more dangerous.

Riva Gold writes in this space every week. Send her your leeches post haste at the address littlebitter@mcgilldaily.com.

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As usual, I can’t tell the difference between any of the current candidates for president. Each makes entirely vague or else constitutionally-required promises like “We’ll build community together” (Are we missing a community?), “We’ll increase accessibility” (What does this mean?), and “We’ll simultaneously stop global warming and lower tuition” (No really, it just takes better organization, apparently). What I do know, however, is that whoever gets elected has absolutely no right to endorse or allow official “political positions” to be made in my name.

There seems to be a mantra going around that as students, we must use student government to be “politically active and socially conscious,” thus taking collective stances on divisive and heated political topics. I think this fundamentally misrepresents the purpose and the capacities of our student leadership. My Canadian government should synthesize and represent collective preferences about foreign policy and human rights. My student government should synthesize and represent collective preferences about Frosh, club funding, and maybe snacks and napping on campus.

When we abuse structures like General Assemblies to make “communal political statements” condemning this, that, or the other, we undermine ourselves in two important ways. On the one hand, we waste important resources that could actually go toward improving student life, achieve nothing, and lose a whole lot of credibility. On the other, we polarize the student body and increase antagonism between groups on campus. For more information about the Choose Life and Israel debates, simply look to any old issue of The Daily or Tribune, or stab yourself in the toe.

As countless people have argued, the views voted on in General Assemblies and even referenda are hardly ever representative of the majority of the student body. Most students are too busy with say, class, on Wednesday afternoons to devote a day to touchy and public political debate.

It’s not as though there were an absence of non-SSMU channels for students to express themselves politically. McGill already has two student newspapers entirely devoted to publishing fringe political views that are, at best, irritating to the average student. We have clubs on campus that affiliate with specific political goals, from Conservative McGill to Solidarity for Palestinian Human Rights. These are better outlets for our political opinions, because we can opt into them, and none claim to represent us without our unanimous consent.

Even positions and statements claiming to represent wholly shared or universally agreeable student interests tend to be dubious. Take the motion on “defending student’s right to body sovereignty” in this week’s vote. Now, to the extent that anyone’s bodily integrity is actually in danger, Canadian law will protect them. It’s not as though SSMU can save you where the Charter cannot. What it does mean, however, is that SSMU will probably employ this ambiguous motion as a justification to ban clubs like Choose Life, or otherwise pretend they have a new mandate for political action.

It’s time to ask how making political statements could possibly make us politically responsible. Let’s face it: a student government has absolutely no clout in the world of Realpolitik. I don’t know what students are thinking when they claim to be promoting peace by passing resolutions for or against Israel. Even if the statements were right, what would they achieve? Does no one see the absurdity in saying “Hey ‘Apartheid state,’ just so you know, the McGill Students’ Society doesn’t like you. You better do something about your policies?”

Student governments should stop wasting resources on issues that they have no influence over and which alienate the moderate majority. I want a government that raises money for student clubs and events, not posters and pretension. Without reform, SSMU has about as much political legitimacy as the current Afghan government. At least Hamid Karzai knows his own limits.

Riva Gold publishes her fringe views that are at best irritating to the average student, once a week in this space. Tell her of your ED issues: littlebitter@mcgilldaily.com.

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“Zionism,” to be sure, could be the belief in the right of the Jewish people to self-determination, generally in the land of Israel. It is neither a static nor a monolithic concept, but rather a bundle of positions that encompasses a myriad of political and religious views.

“Racism,” in contrast, is the privileging or disadvantaging of a group of people based on their race. Note the lack of overlap.

The only way that Zionism is racism is if all forms of nationalism are racism. If Zionism is racism, then any time a historical or religious group seeks self-determination, it ought to be considered racism. In this case, Tibetan nationalism is racism, French nationalism is racism, and, by extension, the belief in the right of Palestinians to self-determination would also be a form of racism. Strangely, most anti-Zionists are reluctant to admit those analogous claims.

Perhaps a recounting of the origin of “Zionism is racism” will be informative. The phrase was first propounded by the U.N. General Assembly in 1975. Shockingly, the baseless name-calling didn’t solve the sensitive Middle Eastern conflict. When the U.N. passed the resolution, Israelis and Jews across the world lost trust and support in the United Nations rather than in Zionist cause. Politically, the most extreme Zionists felt marginalized and alone in the world. Sensing that the U.N. would never treat them fairly, they only became further devoted to Zionism and skeptical of the U.N. as a reasonable partner or broker of peace. What the motion did achieve, however, was a stagnation of the peace process. The slanderous phrase was used to justify the establishment of new settlements in the West Bank.

Though the U.N. rescinded the motion in 1991, the phrase didn’t die there. In the name of Palestinian rights, groups across campus have plastered the slogan and virulently – if not a bit thoughtlessly – adopted it. Obviously, criticizing Israel’s treatment of Palestinians is a legitimate endeavour. But to do so by slandering Zionism as a whole is both misguided and ineffectual at helping the Palestinians.

There exists a wide spectrum of moderate Zionist positions, many of which have advocated for the creation of a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza. Given that Zionism is primarily the simple belief that the Jewish people have the right to self-determination, many Zionist groups openly oppose the settlements in Israel and agitate for better treatment of Palestinians and racial minorities within Israel. To claim that the mere belief in the right of the Jewish people to self-determination implies poor treatment of Palestinians is inaccurate, but also further alienates domestic support for Palestinian rights and moderate, peaceful negotiations.

Domestically, Israel also has a fairly good record of its legal treatment of minority races and cultures, particularly for the region. Of the roughly 6.7 million Israelis, about 1.3 million are non-Jews. Arabs currently hold eight seats in the 120-seat Knesset, and Arabic is an official language of Israel. The only legal distinction between Jewish and Arab citizens of Israel is that the latter are not required to serve in the Israeli army. This doesn’t mean there isn’t still some discrimination in practice, but it does suggest that Israel is being held to a much higher standard here than its neighbours.

To support cultural autonomy and self-determination in dozens of peoples across the world but deny it to a single people is in itself discriminatory. For a people who have, in the last century, faced unprecedented persecution and discrimination on the grounds of religion alone, charges of racism are particularly abhorrent. As Alan Dershowitz puts it, “A world that closed its doors to Jews who sought escape from Hitler’s ovens lacks the moral standing to complain about Israel’s giving preference to Jews.” Zionism isn’t racism, but perhaps anti-Zionism is.

Riva Gold writes in this space every week. React to her at littlebitter@mcgilldaily.com.

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There has been a lot of protest against the tuition increase in the name of “accessibility.” The implicit idea behind this is the notion that raised tuition fees violate some sort of “right to education” for these business-savvy graduate students. Now, it’s one thing to advocate for universal access to basic literacy skills, elementary school, secondary school, and even the more specialized CEGEP. But how on earth can one justify a “right” to receive an MBA under the same name? An MBA is a privilege that a person pursues in order to gain a competitive and financial advantage over the rest of society. Precise figures vary, but there is no doubt that MBA recipients earn significantly increased salaries upon graduation. And most people entering MBA programs have already completed an undergraduate degree and had successful workplace experiences. Forgive me if I’m unsympathetic to their cause, but to suggest that everyone is entitled to this privilege is brutishly naive.

Of course, champions for the purported “accessibility” of education are perfectly satisfied with the status quo, which makes the degree differentially attainable depending on one’s province or country of origin. Without the tuition adjustment, there is very little to be said for the more morally salient variable here: equality of access to MBA programs from people of varying regions. Quebec tuition may have been kept low, but international students have already been paying $19,890 per year to attend. Creating a single but higher tuition fee ensures that while it may be very costly to attain an MBA, it is at least equally costly for all parties involved.

And even if there were some sort of “right” to obtain an MBA, higher tuition wouldn’t violate that right. While higher tuition will inconvenience some people, those who genuinely could not afford to attend at all benefit from increased investment in scholarship programs. Approximately $4,000 per student, or 30 per cent of the increased tuition, will go directly toward student aid.

Here’s the relevant right: universities and the programs they fund have a right and responsibility to keep themselves competitive and financially stable. All MBA students at McGill benefit when instead of losing roughly $10,000 per student per year, they can actually remain competitive in the international community. Let’s face it: good professors often go where they will get paid the most. With new funds from tuition, Desautels plans to develop a new curriculum that includes over 30 new professors, renovated facilities, and significantly improved career services. Many of the most competitive schools in Canada have been self-funding very successfully. Queen’s and the Richard Ivey School of Business retain their stellar international reputation in part due to their whopping $56,000 annual tuition.

In addition to improved quality of education, raising tuition for the MBA program at McGill is good for all McGill students and Quebec residents. The self-funded model will allow Desautels to stop siphoning funds from other McGill students and the government of Quebec. This means other programs, which are often for students doomed to earn far less than MBA recipients, can become much more accessible.

If you support equality of access to education, you should support a raise in tuition fees for Quebec students enrolling in MBA programs. If you think a more competitive and self-sufficient program is important, you should support a raise in tuition fees for MBA programs. And if you support a right to education, you’re entirely misguided to think it applies here.

Riva Gold writes in this space every week. Tell her how much you love paying more for school: littlebitter@mcgilldaily.com.

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These were the things that passed through my mind between 4:53 and 4:54 p.m. last Tuesday, during our province-wide minute of silence for the victims of the earthquake in Haiti. I wasn’t proud of myself after that minute, and certainly didn’t consider my wandering mind a model of moral excellence. But when my professor subsequently decided to challenge the efficacy of that moment of silence, I was sympathetic to her cause.

It started by questioning whether a moment of silence would really do anything for the people of Haiti. My professor suggested that perhaps we only really did it so that we would feel better, without actually having to do anything to help. The class came to agree that the minute did nothing more than breed complacency among us.

Upon further reflection, I think this criticism is trivial. The minute of silence makes a unified, expressive statement about the gravity of the problem, while calling for solidarity and collective action. We use them sparingly, so they can draw attention to the most important things of national interest. As far as breeding complacency – I’m unconvinced. We don’t stop caring for veterans because we observe silence on Remembrance Day. Even if a minute of silence were to achieve very little, it’s unclear that people really take it as an absolution of their guilt and responsibility. It’s a minute of silence, not a wafer. But at this point, I think the discussion was nonetheless a fruitful and reasonable one.

Of course, this being a continental philosophy class, the discussion didn’t end there. By the end of the seminar, nearly the entire class had reached an agreement: donations to Haiti made through institutionalized aid organizations were merely a continuation of the “white man’s burden,” a neo-colonialist project of deculpabilization of the West – nothing more than a ploy to feed into our perpetual saviour complex and establish victimhood in the Other. The minute of silence and its accompanying email were yet another attempt by Satan-worshipping Heather Munroe-Blum to poison our minds with thoughtless nationalism and utter contempt for humanity and all that is good.

And it was on this clear January day that the failures of my liberal education became most apparent to me. Applying an antagonistic, Hegelian conception of subject formation, where self is constructed in an antagonistic relation to the Other, is not an appropriate response to a natural disaster claiming hundreds of thousands of lives. While it’s great to critically analyze media motivations and re-examine our actions with sensitivity to post-colonial concerns and our intractable political commitments, it’s far more important just to send help.

Deconstruction is good, but not when there isn’t time, not when its goal is merely critical, and not when it causes people to hesitate when the cost of hesitation is literally paid for by the blood of others. How incredibly self-absorbed to redirect attention toward “How are we portraying ourselves in light of our colonial past?” instead of asking “how can we best achieve concrete help for those dying right now?” Many people donate to make themselves feel better. I think that’s a powerful motivating force and we should exploit it. Is altruism ever really a prerequisite for charity? There are flaws with many aid channels, but those are reasons to reexamine their structures later and not to avoid helping now.

Does criticizing our aid channels and motivations for giving aid make us more intellectually honest? Perhaps. But at what cost?

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Philosophy is one of those rare majors that, when declared, simultaneously elicits looks of reverence and contempt from others. Philosophy majors are often seen as meek hipster wannabes who emit foul odours and begin every sentence with “it is the case that.” And with good reason. Moreover, it is the case that anyone who tells you they really “get” Wittgenstein’s arguments is either lying to you or ready to write their own column.

But something far more troubling than Converse shoes is plaguing one of world’s oldest disciplines. Philosophy boasts one of the absolute lowest ratios of women to men in academic circles today, closely rivalling mathematics and engineering in a race to the bottom.

Though a lack of data makes it hard to find precise figures, the latest studies indicate that women make up anywhere between 17-30 per cent of academically employed philosophers. In 2007, only 27 per cent of those who received doctorates in philosophy were women (according to the National Center for Education Statistics).

I find this data shocking. If there’s any overt sexism in McGill’s philosophy department, which is chaired by a woman, I haven’t experienced it. Philosophy majors would never sing a sexist song about a factory in Chicago – we’re far too pretentious and sober for that. I’ve had the privilege of studying under five exceptional and revered female philosophy professors, and have seen three female presidents of the Philosophy Students’ Association.

The main problem here is the silence concerning the number of women in the field outside of McGill, where things look a lot less promising. In the top 54 American philosophy departments, less than 19 per cent of the faculty are women. Why did it take me almost four years in the program to hear about this gross injustice?
A grad student suggested to me that the exclusion of women might be a product of a more general shift toward an analytic rather than continental style of philosophy. While the analytic tradition is often associated with formal logic and a respect for the natural sciences, the continental style’s emphasis on the human subject may have historically proven more inclusive to female scholars.

Personally, I don’t think the solution to the tradition’s misogyny lies in attempting to popularize the continental tradition in North America. Of course, this is almost entirely a result of my own personal contempt for continental philosophy. As a Jew of Eastern European descent, there’s a voice inside of me (probably my mother’s) that doesn’t particularly enjoy glorifying the works of Martin Heidegger, Nazi-bastard. Mostly, though, I really just don’t understand the readings. It took me nearly three months to learn what Hegel meant by “ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny” and I assure you, it was not fascinating.

But back to the more general problem. I think a lot of the time the question of women in philosophy is overlooked as a result of the widespread belief that the entire enterprise of philosophy has no real world import. Ambrose Bierce astutely defined philosophy as “a route of many roads leading from nowhere to nothing,” a definition which seems to have caught on.

Granted, there’s very little money to be earned in philosophy, and it certainly won’t win you friends. But even contemporary philosophy matters. Philosophical discourse shapes and challenges the entire realm of thoughts and ideas. It addresses some of the most fundamental questions of meaning, existence, and the limits of human knowledge.

When women are left out of philosophy, they’re left out of a discourse and enterprise whose effects spill over into every academic field. Innovations in philosophy gradually seep into public consciousness, and that consciousness ought to include the voice of women. If a women falls out of philosophy, and there is no one there to read about it, does she make a sound?

Riva’s taking a break until January. Say shalom until next time: littlebitter@mcgilldaily.com.

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While I’m not a Reform Jew myself, I do think that religious ideologies should not be critiqued on the basis of the personal practices of a handful of individual adherents. Kreitner writes that “Reform Judaism essentially reduces religious observance to thrice yearly family gatherings in vague recognition of what ancestors considered major holidays.” Bullshit. Since Kreitner’s only evidence for this claim is his family’s practice, the strongest assertion he could make is “The Kreitner family essentially reduced religious observance to thrice yearly family gatherings in vague recognition of what ancestors considered major holidays.” As it happens, the movement called Reform Judaism encourages religious observance to saturate the daily lives of its members on a number of levels. At the very least, the architects of the Reform movement expect weekly attendance at Sabbath services, which equals at least 52 times a year, to be precise.

But more to the point, Reform Judaism is not about “family gatherings” intended to vaguely “imitate” the authentic, ancestral versions of Jewish holidays. Instead, it aims to preserve those rituals that remain meaningful to its members in light of modern social and ethical standards. “Ancestral traditions” are specifically reimagined in the Reform movement so that the core ideas of the movement – the principles found in the Torah, the Jewish people’s particular religious and historical experience – can speak to modern adherents in ways that are fresh and meaningful. This is why the Reform movement dropped the requirements for things like Jewish dietary laws or the unequal treatment of women, while insisting upon maintaining principles of ethical monotheism.

Kreitner claims he knows of no one for whom the experience of being called to the Torah to become a bar or bat mitzvah was anything more than a scheme to extort money from friends and family members. He concludes that “the realization that nobody really cared led me to consider the whole Judaic enterprise mere pomp and circumstance, and believers of any faith delusional and usually hypocritical.”

While it’s disheartening to learn that Kreitner had such shallow friends, his experience is not to be generalized, and his conclusions are both harmful and unfounded. At a Reform bar or bat mitzvah, a child is for the first time given the explicit privilege and responsibility of leading a meaningful Jewish existence: they take on the duty of leading ethical lives in accord with the principles of their faith, incorporating mitzvoth into their daily lives, and taking on certain ritual requirements. Through direct engagement with rabbinic authorities, family members, and traditional Jewish texts, this can be an incredibly meaningful experience founded on neither delusion nor pomp.

At the heart of Reform Judaism is the belief that an individual may choose to take on an attachment to those Jewish rituals and ceremonies that they find significant or relevant to them. If Kreitner and his friends embraced a few rituals for the sake of money or approval, the problem isn’t with Reform Judaism – it’s with their own appropriation of it. I’d like to think they’re not emblematic of the movement as a whole.

Riva Gold’s work appears every Monday. Don’t trivialize her religion at littlebitter@mcgilldaily.com.

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Who actually believes that the U.S.’s current legal system operates on the basis of natural-law ethics? That Thomas Aquinas listed some principles for a moral life, and then everything just pretty much worked out for him, and Western civilization ceased to change? No contemporary system of civil law takes for itself the maxim that “what is natural is good.” For example, I feel a natural inclination to punch everyone who’s ever used the word “intertextuality.” If I punched them, that would not be good. Case in point. Instead, American law tends to operate with more radical, counterintuitive principles like “what promotes happiness is good” or “what promotes equality and civil rights is good.” Appeals to natural law were used to justify a ban on interracial marriages until 1968. It wasn’t a good argument then and it isn’t now.

This is typically where the religious arguments come into play – that same-sex marriage is contra-biblical, and that marriage is an essentially religious institution. Let’s be clear then: the redefinition of marriage is not in any way an infringement upon religious freedom, as it does not force religious individuals to alter their religious beliefs or action. Religious individuals would still be free to advocate for traditional marriage and continue hating. Here in Canada, for instance, we even extend special legal protection to religious individuals who chose not to perform such ceremonies.

The relevant account of religious freedom – the ability to practice what you believe to be religiously valid – stands only to be enhanced by same-sex marriage legislation. Many religious institutions would like to marry same-sex couples within their religious institutions: Unitarians, the Metropolitan Community Church, Reconstructionist Jews, to name a few. When same-sex marriage is legal, they can actually act upon their religious choices without having to break civil law. The legality of same-sex marriage neither limits the freedom of speech or action of religious individuals. It just means religious individuals are not empowered to limit the action of non-religious individuals in this realm, and I tend to think that’s A-okay.

My favourite argument is the idea that same-sex marriage laws are wrong because “the state should stay out of marriage.” As though the state hasn’t been legislating, sanctioning, and incentivizing heterosexual marriage all along. Interestingly, the people who make this argument rarely follow it to its logical conclusion and try to abolish the institution of marriage altogether. So given that the government doles out legal and financial privileges with marriage, it has a responsibility to do so in an equitable way, and that means non-discrimination against homosexual couples.

“Domestic partnership” status is not enough. Although same-sex couples who register as domestic partners in Maine can receive some limited benefits, there are still substantial legal and financial differences between “spousal” and “domestic partner” status. Federal and state laws require different tax treatment, pensions, and even survivor packages for domestic partners. And on top of the fact that “equal benefits” never really amount to “equal” benefits in practice, the formal category of “marriage” affirms a universal recognition of the validity of one’s relationship. Marriage is a deeply entrenched, socially valuable, persistent life goal for many individuals. If you’re going to deny this to anyone, you better have a damn good reason.

For a state that prides itself on its socially liberal and secular attitude, Maine has a lot of explaining to do. If we learn nothing else from this case, I think it’s time to think federal. Every time voters go to the ballot with this issue, same-sex marriage loses. In a country where roughly one adult in five thinks the sun revolves around the Earth (according to a terrifying article published in the New York Times), civil rights should not be subject to a popular vote.

Riva Gold writes in this space once a week. Once a week. Once a week. Write’r: littlebitter@mcgilldaily.com.

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Voting is not a privilege. It is an absolute right and the means by which all of our other rights are negotiated. A vote constitutes the most fundamental and powerful check on the power of the state over the individual. Every time the state legislates, it is necessarily limiting the autonomy of its people in some way. From minor things like traffic laws to more severe limits upon free religious expression, these policies have tangible impacts on the way individuals are able to live their lives. The only way to ensure that this coercive limitation on individual liberties can be justified is with consent. In Canadian society, this consent comes in the form of a vote.

As such, we really ought to reconsider our criteria for enfranchisement. To become a permanent resident, you have to demonstrate some form of long-term commitment to Canada. You generally live and work here, and are both subject to the state’s laws and forced to pay taxes. What more is needed?
Without a vote, politicians have no incentive to cater to the diverse but unique cultural, linguistic, and socio-economic needs of the permanent population. There is no reason for their preferences to be considered, no legitimate forum for their voices to be heard – unless they are given the power of a vote. Permanent residents often have shared, urgent group interests, such as the language of education of their children or special types of religious accommodation. Without a vote, they can’t meaningfully push for anti-discrimination legislation, and they have no reason to feel like they are part of Canadian society.

Opponents argue that if permanent residents want to vote, they should “simply become citizens of Canada.” As though the process of acquiring Canadian citizenship is ever that “simple” or universally plausible. For one thing, many permanent residents will never qualify for citizenship as a result of linguistic, educational, or demographic criteria that serve as barriers to their inclusion. For another, even those who do wish to become citizens will still retain the status of permanent resident for at least three years, and deserve a voice in the meantime.

Living without a vote is akin to living in a state of slavery, where the coercive use of state power influences your every act and you have no choice but to live with it or to flee. In Canada, we don’t think individuals can consent to slavery. We shouldn’t think permanent residents can consent to it either.

Riva Gold writes in this space every week. Send her your ballots at littlebitter@mcgilldaily.com.

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Men and women, children and adults alike seem to have a particular propensity for dressing up as the ugliest witches they can imagine – old, discoloured, hunchbacked creatures of the night. Irony and jest aside, the message seems to be clear: witches are evil, powerful, and potentially water-soluble. I think we need to seriously reconsider how we create and respond to these stereotypes, even if they’re not intended to be taken seriously.

This week, five Muslim women, including three widows, were stripped and tortured in the Deoghar district of Jharkhand, India. According to local news channels, they were lucky to come out alive. Their crime? They were accused of practicing witchcraft.

In Tanzania, the belief that tragedies and social ills are caused by witchcraft has grown widespread of late, leading to surprise attacks on hundreds of elderly women. In Nigeria, roughly 15,000 children have been tortured or murdered in the last decade for the same reasons.

While we might not consider witches to be a serious threat here in North America, accusations of witchcraft are unfortunately not a thing of the past. Across the world, in situations of disease, poverty, or oppression, ordinary women and children continue to be scapegoated into this role and tortured until they admit relations with the devil. Given that there are still people today submitted to this terrifying reality, it’s more than insensitive to make light of it in Halloween stereotypes.

Witch hunts also shouldn’t be seen as in any way alien to the West. Accusations of witchcraft constituted a prevalent and serious form of female oppression in 16th- and 17th-century Europe that has only recently been recognized in history books. Contrary to popular belief, the witch hunts of the Middle Ages were not about paranoid minorities accusing people who actually subscribed to heterodox religious beliefs. Instead, women who owned land and those who actively confessed Christian faith were targeted. Their property seized, these women were tortured, murdered, and subsequently forgotten.

Halloween costumes may be in good fun, but they have a very real impact on the formation of children’s worldviews and what we deem acceptable as a form of entertainment. Perhaps Mary Malone, a feminist Christian historian, puts it best: “Although the actual experience of being burnt at the stake is unimaginable for us, the issues of denying women’s ideas, experience, and very personhood are still shockingly familiar.” Not only does propagating this stereotype reflect a serious ignorance of our own past, it is cruelly indifferent to the suffering of people who continue to be oppressed across the world today. We don’t like when people dress up as Stalin for Halloween: we’d think it seriously offensive to dress up as victims of female genital mutilation: we shouldn’t dress up as witches.

Riva Gold is one of The Daily’s weekly columnists. Send her your hexes at littlebitter@mcgilldaily.com.

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Does bestowing the award upon Obama somehow delegitimize the Nobel Peace Prize? In short: no. I’m inclined to believe the title already lacks a whole lot of legitimacy. After being awarded to the likes of Henry Kissinger and Yasser Arafat, I tend not to take it too seriously. If we were to believe that despite being awarded to Al Gore for his care of trees, the prize is still important, we would also have to believe that no single recipient could delegitimize it, Obama included.

Has Obama achieved world peace? No. But neither have most winners, and we need to reassess whether we actually want to treat the Peace Prize as a piece of post facto self-congratulatory pomp. A prize awarded to someone who has already finished their work vis-à-vis international solidarity does little good to foster actual prospects of peace. The prize is far more valuable as an expressive statement of the hopes and desires of the world, intended to guide those in power as they face tough decisions.

Fact: Obama is president while Iraq and Afghanistan are in a state of total disarray. But we can hardly expect him to undo eight years of damage overnight or resolve bitter and bloody battles that reach far beyond his short term in office. If we look instead to the closing of Guantánamo Bay, his speech in Cairo, his dialogue with Iran, and Netanyahu saying the words “Palestinian state,” we can see that Obama has not just promised peace but is taking meaningful steps toward achieving it. It may be only nine months into his presidency, but he’s endured a lot of labour pains to birth a new era of diplomacy, and this award may be the breast milk it needs to develop.

And if you still think the Nobel committee was wrong, don’t criticize the recipient; blame the committee. Sure, Obama could have declined the prize, citing his own unworthiness in some touching and well-delivered speech. But imagine the international PR disaster that would be. Who would want to go down in history as the president who’s against peace? It’s not reasonable to expect anyone to decline this award. What we can expect is for them to take its mandate seriously, and continue to work toward peaceful humanitarian ends. I have every reason to expect Obama to do this, and I’m not going to criticize his character in my Facebook status.

Riva Gold is one of The Daily’s weekly columnists. Send her an aggregate of your Facebook statuses at littlebitter@mcgilldaily.com.

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I did a quick spot-check – could I be wearing sneakers with my dress? It had happened before. It wasn’t until I was 19 that I finally learned that shoes come in various levels of formality. But this was taking it too far. I was wearing perfectly acceptable black flats, clean ones no less. But they were not good enough.

My friend caught on to my puzzled expression. “If you’re going to wear a dress like that, you should really be wearing ‘fuck-me’ shoes,’” she explained matter-of-factly. Ever the fashion newbie, I had to inquire about the term’s meaning. She looked at me with great pity. “It’s the shoes you wear to ensure that you get laid, dear.” Christ. To think that all this time, all I needed were some shoes?
I Urban-Dictionary’d this phenomenon, hoping to gain some insight into its ontology. Apparently, “‘fuck-me’ shoes” are generally stilettos with five- or six-inch heels, worn in order to signal sexual intent to prospective mates.

I question the efficacy of these shoes. Many people swear by them, certain that they were the key to many a one-night stand. I cling to my doubts. Really, attractive buxom redhead with ass hanging out of your pants, honestly, you think it’s the shoes?
I can’t help but look down and wonder. All this time, shoes, what more could you have been doing for me? I have difficulty producing accurate intuitions of very large numbers. Can my shoes do quadratics, too? If all we needed to communicate our preferences were shoes, life would be very different. Which shoes indicate “not tonight, honey, I have a headache?” Birkenstocks?
The concept is utterly ridiculous. Which prospective mates actually say to themselves, “Oh man, did you see that brunette in the corner? The one with the ‘fuck-me’ shoes? Yeah, that’s an invitation right there.” And what are ‘fuck-me’ shoes for men? Should we assume that all men’s shoes are ‘fuck-me’ shoes?
Aside from being ridiculous, I find the whole concept of ‘fuck-me’ shoes a little offensive. A woman is attractive when she is as immobile as possible? When on top of the styled hair, on top of the heavy makeup, on top of the revealing clothing, she is now also expected to balance atop six-inch plastic corkscrews? And if a girl chooses to wear those foot contraptions, should that really be taken to entail any kind of sexual intent? In a culture wrought with rampant sexual objectification, it seems more than ridiculous to ascribe consent to a pair of shoes, if only proverbially. ‘Fuck-me’ shoes? Fuck you, shoes.

Follow Riva’s exploits in this space every week from now on. Write her at littlebitter@mcgilldaily.com.

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