The Cowards of Woodstock

I went out last night, and who did I bump into but several of Toronto’s highest ranking feminists. We had a good time. They talked, and I listened.

The single most important issue facing feminism, the woman’s movement, the ongoing struggle for human rights and freedoms for women … in Toronto, which means Ontario, which means Canada, is the outrageous prices charged for women to get a hair cut. This led, as conversations do, to the main stream media, and then to Vietnam. Here is what happened as I nodded and listened.

The top five feminists were there…

There was Ann. Ann speaks for the oppressed aboriginals in Toronto. Ann decided that she was aboriginal when she was doing her degree in Arts at Waterloo. She married her first husband in third year of University. His family had a cottage up north. They used to drive past the road that went to a reservation. Ann started to buy aboriginal themed knick knacks. She has an authentic Mohican purse she bought during her honeymoon to her second husband. And now, with her third husband, she vacations in Arizona and has a glass display case of turquoise and silver items to showcase her aboriginal heritage. Turquoise goes well with her blue eyes, and the four weeks paid vacation she spends in Arizona has given her a deep tan and bleached her naturally blonde hair to a golden brilliance.

There was Michelle. Michelle speaks for the oppressed poor ethnic women in Toronto. Michelle has just returned from the house she keeps in Cape Breton, where she was born and raised. She started university with a scholarship to study aeronautical engineering, but was oppressed by the monolithic testosterone tyranny that refused to give her a chance. She switched to a joint major in Gaelic and Social Work, so she could set an example for her sisters. When she graduated, her dad gave her a house in Toronto and bought her a car. Michelle and Ann are old friends from university, where they went to protests together. Ann got Michelle her job as a senior manager for ethnic issues and policies, bypassing the oppressive male-centered beaurocracy with all its rules and credential checks.

There was Patricia. Patricia works for a big bank writing important documents. She is a linguist and she worships Noam Chomsky. When she left the Communist party after breaking up with her boyfriend who was leader of the Communist party cell at university, she found Noam. She has all of his books, subscribes to his pay site, and she tricks the bank into paying for her trips (airfare, hotel, sightseeing, admission) to attend his public lectures. Patricia is an earnest volunteer, and does everything on her own time, with her own money, for the good of the movement. Patricia speaks for the unemployed.

There was Suzanne. Suzanne is the Senior Coordinating Manager for Sign Language Services at a big school here in Toronto. She makes sure that there are sign language translator persons available during all hours of operation and every day of the week. She is tired, as the big male power brokers in the Music faculty are not co-operating. Her hand is sore from being on the phone all day, and getting the updated Sign Language Services Administration Procedures and Policies Binders updated. Suzanne is a volunteer activist, too.
Suzanne speaks for the challenged, because nobody does nothing for the challenged.

There was Fred. Fred went to university with many scholarships to study Pure Mathematics at Waterloo. In his first year, Fred discovered his true self and came out of the closet. Fred was emotionally traumatized when his peers laughed at his tight pink pants and white silk shirts. The last straw was when the brutal fascist administration trolls requested that he not wear roller skates in the classroom and then they tried to silence him by not letting him sing or recite poetry during lectures. This oppression forced him to leave the Math faculty and get an Arts degree in Anthropology with a minor in Drama. Fred speaks for all the women who are not accepted as women by the oppressive male dominated hierarchy of fear. Fred is in town till summer burning up some surplus funds from a Canada Council Grant for Arts funding before his next Grant check comes in. Fred is a volunteer. He is going to help out with his time and get his people, the actors and stage hands, to help out with protests and demonstrations.


Ann was talking about how oppressive it was that women pay more than men for haircuts. And this was true especially in America: the hair salon she goes to in the town outside her vacation time-share in Sonoma, Arizona, charges ten bucks more than the one she goes to in Toronto. Michelle said that her haircuts cost more whether she was at the home in Cape Breton, or Toronto, or at her farm outside of Guelph. Patricia agrees. She thinks the family must be destroyed along with the capitalist system. She gets her hair cut at a salon in the office tower where she works. As a bank employee, she gets a discount, but it is not enough. It is not fair. Suzanne goes to this nice Greek lady on the Danforth, but she is charged more than a man. Suzanne is outraged. Fred gets all his hair styling done by the hair stylist who works for his acting troup, so it is free for him. But, the stylist does charge the other members, and Fred will find out what he is charging.

I said that there were more important things facing the woman’s movement than the price of haircuts. Perhaps the way women were treated like slaves in Afghanistan, or the brutal violence in the Darfur, Sudan.

Ann looked at me and shook her head ‘no’. This is how the conversation turned to the main stream media. Apparently, the important social issues of the day are to be found in the pages of the flagship Toronto Star, and the burning issue for the woman’s movement is this horrific, degrading atrocity that is high prices for hair cuts. I was grateful for this revealed teaching. It is hard enough fighting a monolithic evil that suppresses dissent without taking direction from the caring main stream media, which listens to all voices and embraces diversity.

What a privilege to down a gin fizz or an apple martini with this diverse group of activist rights-warriors, especially as we took turns using our employers expense accounts to pay for the drinks. Everyone had a voice at the table … oppressed aboriginals, oppressed ethnic people, oppressed unemployed people, oppressed challenged people, and oppressed poly-gendered people. Unfair bigots without all the facts would say that this looked like a meeting of fanatic Hitler Youth as everybody there was all the same (white, university educated, employed) but truly, in their hearts, this was diversity. And that is what is more important than facts.

Conversation turned to the main stream media. Ann said that it was unfair what happened to that nice man, Dan Rather. Dan has aboriginal ancestry, and this was a pogrom against aboriginal anchormen. Michelle said that the main stream media only speaks truth, as they have many layers of fact checkers, editors, and computers to dig out all the facts. The problems in the media today are the complete absence of an ethnic voice in all of the media. After that Jayson Blair was sacrificed to the Imperialist War God, things began to get worse. Patricia shared with us that Noam was the one voice for truth in a sea of lock step oppression. The best path to diversity and listening to everyone was to shout down dissent. Suzanne said she wrote up a proposal that the college buy ten subscriptions to Newsweek for the Sign Language in Music program. Fred said that the main stream media speaks for everybody, and tolerates all opinions fairly. He is angry that media mentioned someone who is gay and Republican, as it is only possible to be gay if you support activist viewpoints. In order to protect diversity and fairness, these wrong thoughts should be shouted down.

I mentioned a long list of media transgressions. It seemed like the media were propagandists for a narrow political viewpoint. Their readership is plummeting, and why do they keep firing people? And there is that book coming out, a big thick book, outlining all the tricks and fakery that Dan Rather has done over his career to boost ratings and make himself look good.

I guess my voice was not diverse enough, and the activist gang of five ignored me. Maybe they did not hear me, maybe they were drunk on their outrage over unfair prices for hair cuts.

So, I sat back and thought and listened.

The gang of five were taking a trip down memory lane to Vietnam. The great years when they were happy fighting the man and righting wrongs.

I thought about how much of the anti-war movement was really fabricated stuff, just made up, convenient lies for the newshounds, and how much raw human suffering had been caused by media whoring after circulation. And I thought about the real motives of these activists. Were they fighting against an unjust war, or were they really just cowards, who were too lazy to put aside the pleasures of sex and drugs to defend their own? The main stream media, unchecked in those days by the internet, flush with profits, could spew out what it wanted. The Woodstock generation, those brave boys who did not want to protect mom and dad, home and farm, school and college. No, the Woodstock boys wanted to get laid, and the main stream media gave them the excuse of moral relativism so they could act like rabbits rather than men, and easy abortion meant that they could be irresponsible, and the new morality about drugs meant more fun too. More fun being the eternal post-pubescent teenager with the endless summer of sex and drugs and rock and roll. This is the gift of the main stream media to the Cowards of Woodstock.

I, Fenris, wrote this