Seeking Hilarity

What’s a gal gotta do to be included in the words of her national anthem?

There they were – Maelle and Christine, Kaillie and Heather, Hayley and Shannon – Canada’s Olympic sweethearts, flushed with triumph, draped in gold medals and owning the podium on our behalf.

But as our hearts swelled with pride to the sounds of O Canada, the lyrics reminded us once again that no matter how you slice it, if you’re sporting double x chromosomes,  “In all thy sons command” just doesn’t cut it.

Never mind the bloggers and commentators who insist that the word “sons” refers to women as much as men. Let them check their dictionaries. Ask them how it feels to substitute the word “daughter” in Rudyard Kipling’s memorable line, “And you’ll be a man, my daughter.”

Or consider what the average TV viewer denied the dubious pleasure of watching My Three Sons in the 1960s would conclude if they came across the title of the show in their local TV guide today: What are the chances they’d assume the program was about three female offspring, or even two boys and a girl?

Zero. The chances are zero. You can trust me on this one, I’ve tried it at home. And at work.  Teaching business writing at a community college in the late 1990s, I encouraged hundreds of students to embrace the power of precise language. Every year I’d invite my classes to close their eyes and picture an image to accompany Robert Browning’s famous words: 

“Man’s reach must exceed his grasp, or what’s a heaven for?”

When quizzed afterwards about the image that had popped into their heads, male and female students alike typically described one of three things: a) some guy in a suit climbing a corporate ladder; b) a major basketball star shooting hoops, or c) Michelangelo’s Adam reaching out to God on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. Go figure.

People are quite literal in response to language. On hearing the word “kangaroo”, we invariably picture not a dog or a horse, but a kangaroo. Amazing, I know.  And words like “statesman” or “mankind” also elicit images of men.

Research backs this up. Words matter. Just ask scabs and terrorists – or (ahem) replacement workers and freedom fighters.

I get that Canadians are emotional about the perceived threat to our national anthem. But the backlash against changing a word or two so it no longer leaves out the majority of the population has been stunningly short on reasoned argument or cogent analysis.

“You’re messing with tradition,” cried some (evidently unaware that the original 1908 lyrics were gender neutral, and all sorts of other changes were made in the 1980s). 

“Don’t try to distract us from the important issues,” howled others. (And I agree there are lots of other pressing matters. But ensuring that our national anthem uses language that reflects Canada’s enshrined equality principles? Also important.)

Then there was the regrettable, “How dare this government do something for women’s equality?!” And believe me, I sympathize with the “too little too late” reaction, the “no way you’re winning me over with such an obvious ploy” response.

But here’s the thing: if a program or policy aims to make this country fairer and more just, in a substantive or symbolic way, the political stripe of the party proposing it should be irrelevant. Standing in the way of progress for purely partisan reasons is part of what’s wrong with Canadian politics in the first place. (Even politicians know that.)

A longer version of this post was published in today’s Ottawa Citizen

<http://www.ottawacitizen.com/sons/2648928/story.html>  

If you’re at all sympathetic to the views expressed, please forward the link to others, and email your MP and your local newspaper to say so.

I’m not what you’d call “an early adopter” of new technologies.

For example, I never texted on my conventional cell phone – largely because finding the letters required an acuity of vision I no longer possess.

And I’m sure it’s a measure of my terminal unhip-ness that for a period of several weeks, I believed that sending flirtatious email messages to my husband constituted sexting. (I’d heard sexting was a mainstream phenomenon, and couldn’t believe that only 20% of teens were doing it. It didn’t immediately occur to me that the phrase “doing it” was more relevant than I’d realized.)

I also read in one of the country’s more serious newspapers (yes, I’m aware that newspapers are so 18th century), that “Twitter” is now THE source of must-have information. (This is puzzling in the face of other reports about devoted “Tweeters” having been the first to learn the indispensable news that Ashton Kutcher refers to Demi Moore as “Wifey”, and that the real reason Jennifer Anniston dumped the serial cheater, John Mayer was because he was addicted to this form of communication, the constraints of which almost guarantee banality.)

But to prove I’m not a complete luddite, I’m going to start twittering myself, just as soon as I’ve finished responding to all of last year’s email, backed up my 1998 files, and clarified one thing: I’m told Twitter’s technological sophistication allows its users to block followers. But as I understand it, limiting the number of people with nothing better to do that to read your thoughts 140-characters at a time would be completely contrary to the point of the service.

I did recently re-activate my Facebook account after a two-year lull. I had initially signed up at the urging of several colleagues, but when I discovered that the social networking site was really a competition for friends, and I was already behind 329, I logged off immediately.

Then I turned 50, and couldn’t remember my password. Like every other institution that has required me to come up with a random collection of impossible to guess numbers and letters, Facebook had forbidden me to write the creaturing thing down. Twenty-four long months later, confronted by an insistent demand for my secret code, I tried all the obvious possibilities: time2waste, 2old2learn, and f#@*this. Then I just gave up and got back to work.  

If you search “What would Jesus do”, Google delivers 360,000 pages. Put a .com after the unpunctuated phrase, and you get a site promising you 10% off “the widest collection of WWJD bracelets and apparel on the internet.”  (Is it just me, or is there something deeply disturbing about this?) I don’t doubt Jesus existed or that he lived an exemplary life. But he’s not the easiest guy to relate to. (The Immaculate Conception, for starters… The walking on water business. The loaves and fishes trick. The crucifixion, of course – not to mention rising from the dead afterwards.) Really. How can a well-meaning but deeply flawed woman living two millennia after such a performance even pretend to model her behaviour after such a man?

Laura Secord, on the other hand, is family. I share her bloodline and – amazingly – her profile. Her heroic acts – while impressive – happened less than two centuries ago, played out within a few hundred miles of where I live and, most importantly, remained within the range of the humanly possible. It’s at very least remotely conceivable that – on a good day, fortified with enough chocolate – I, too, could muster sufficient courage and perseverance to accomplish something mildly admirable (if not country-cementing).

Laura Secord’s mother died when she was 8. Naturally — people being even clearer in 1784 than they are now about the indispensability of women — her father married again. A few years later, after his second wife died, he married a third time.

By then, Laura was 14, and had 10 siblings. (I know!)

No doubt as one of the eldest, she was expected to shoulder some of the work then classified as women’s. This included cooking, cleaning and childcare, of course, plus tending orchards, planting vegetables, raising chickens, milking cows, and churning cream.

And there was no mall-hopping in her spare time. That was spent spinning thread, weaving cloth, and sewing clothes.

I know what you’re thinking: no wonder the woman was slim! When would she have found the time to eat?

 And yes, it’s becoming only too clear:  slipping out of the house that hot June morning in 1813 – even if it was to negotiate a 30-kilometre walk in inappropriate footwear through dangerous territory – might have been a welcome change of pace for the slaving Laura.