Inside the silence behind sex, dating, and disability

It took less than 30 seconds for the date to go from promising to very bad. After some online chatting, Steve* was excited to meet Kayla, the 24-year-old law clerk he connected with on Plentyoffish. They’d decided on Toronto’s Bull and Firkin Pub, one early evening in August 2012. He spotted her first: strawberry blonde hair, pouty lips—even more attractive in person. Steve, a 27-year-old publicist who has cerebral palsy, uses a pair of canes or a wheelchair for mobility. Tonight, he brought the chair. He smiled at her and headed toward the table. Approaching, he saw Kayla’s calm expression change. She looked puzzled, he says, like a lost child. Her eyes darted down to his wheelchair.

Steve wondered why she looked confused: his dating profile clearly showed him seated in a wheelchair. Plus, it was Kayla who had messaged him first. Maybe she didn’t see his picture? Maybe she thought he was in a Halloween costume? Within two minutes of meeting each other, Steve knew the “maybe” didn’t matter—it was clear, he says now, that Kayla was no longer interested. Her eyes wandered as they chatted. She smiled at her phone more than him. In between sips of his Miller Genuine Draft, Steve asked Kayla the regular get-to-know-you first date questions. She responded with short answers. He says he wanted to sway Kayla’s perception of him, but nothing charmed her. Soon, he just wanted to leave, but didn’t want to be rude. The date lasted 45 uncomfortable minutes, before they decided to split the bill. As Kayla chatted on her phone, Steve backed his wheelchair out from the table and waved goodbye. She waved back limply, still talking on her phone.

She never mentioned his wheelchair. Neither did he. That’s what disappointed him the most: he understood why she was uninterested without her having to say anything.

While growing up, Steve was smothered with attention. “I don’t wanna talk shit or whatever,” he says with a laugh, “but I was a really cute kid. Like really, really cute—just darling.” Based on his own childhood experiences, Steve observes that people tend to be more receptive and doting to kids with disabilities. Now as a grown man with a boyish face and icy blue eyes, Steve says people are generally nice to him. When he goes out, strangers tell him it’s cool that he’s just a guy living his life, which is true. Sometimes, however, he feels like people look at him the way they look at mascots at football games.

As for dating, it’s a minefield of challenges: Before worrying about what to say or what to wear on a date, Steve—like many people with disabilities—feels he has to convince a woman that he’s a human being too (see: Kayla). He must convince them, he says, that his physical disability doesn’t negate his ability or desire to date and have sex—not such an easy task considering the challenges.

Here’s an appalling revelation: Many people believe those with disabilities cannot, will not, and should not contribute to the future of the human race, writes Tobin Siebers, a professor at the University of Michigan, in an essay published in Sex and Disability in December 2011. Such people believe those with disabilities are not capable of reproduction, but if they do manage, the expectation is that the results will be tainted. The ability to reproduce, adds Siebers, is also what society believes makes someone a “quality” human being. Someone who is infertile or physically and mentally unfit for sex is considered “less than human.”

It’s no wonder, then, that a culture of silence has cocooned the disability community. “Sexuality is often the source of our deepest oppression and pain,” says Anne Finger, an American disability issues writer and activist who became disabled after contracting polio as a toddler. Finger says it’s easier for people with disabilities to talk about—and formulate strategies for changing—discrimination in employment, education and housing than it is to delve into their exclusion from sexuality and reproduction. It’s even less easy to talk about the possible need for assistance during sex, the stigma, or even how to overcome disparities in able-bodied and non-able-bodied couples. Sexual rights are not a priority in the disability rights movement, says Finger; it’s creating an image of “the able disabled.”

Unfortunately, the refusal to talk about sex and disability has created plenty of misinformed assumptions—such as the ones Siebers cites and more—and a widespread denial of sexualities and rights. In 2006, about 4.4 million Canadians reported having a disability according to Human Resources and Skills Development Canada statistics. The three most reported disabilities were lack of mobility, pain, and reduced agility among people aged 15 and over. It’s hard to believe none of these millions of people desire sex.

In 2011, Tim Rose and his wife, Natalie Sanborn, founded The Rose Centre for young adults with disabilities. The centre’s mission, in part, is to promote discussion and awareness on disability and sexuality (its secondary goal is to promote positive focus on disability, relationships and sexuality in the general public). Rose, 28, has cerebral palsy spastic quadriplegia while Sanborn is able-bodied. They met through a mutual friend before Rose moved to England in 2011 for his studies. The distance didn’t stop the romance: Now, the two are newlyweds. Rose says they often get strange looks and questions. “She’s been asked if she’s my mother or my nurse,” he says. Still, the couple says they choose to remain light-hearted. Instead of getting angry, they joke that Sanborn will never have to carry groceries—she can just hang them on the back of Rose’s wheelchair. This same positive attitude led to the Rose Centre; with no resources to help navigate dating with disabilities, the two decided to create their own. The centre doesn’t have a permanent space (yet), but it hosts monthly discussion nights and social events at Ryerson University.

Rose says people of all backgrounds and disabilities attend the centre’s events and meetings. “A lot of people who come say they’ve never had anyone to talk to about this,” he adds, “They always keep things internal.” Many attendees lack knowledge and experience in dating. Some  have no experience in, as the colloquial term goes, “making out.” When it comes to knowledge about dating, and such romantic and sexual relationships, he says, many attendees are stunted in their knowledge. And, perhaps embarrassed to talk about it. In situations like these, Rose and six volunteers can start the conversation by talking about their own personal struggles—like how Rose disliked having sex until he “redefined” sex and made it comfortable for himself—and ways to overcome them.

It doesn’t help that sex is such a taboo subject, period. Because of this people want to be careful about what they say, says Demian Brown, a Toronto psychotherapist. That includes people with disabilities and those without. The spectrum of disabilities, and the unique needs, experiences, and challenges, are vast. Perhaps it goes without saying that cerebral palsy isn’t the same as muscle atrophy, and muscle atrophy isn’t the same as spina bifida. People don’t want to look like they don’t know enough about the issue, says Brown. They fear appearing insensitive, ignorant or bigoted. So they clamp up. “If there’s stigma in general, it wouldn’t be easier for one person with a disability to talk about sex to another person who has a different disability,” says Brown. He says it takes someone brave enough to talk about these issues, first,  before communities—and society as a whole—will join the conversation, and grow it outward.

When it comes to the dating world, this sense of the taboo can translate in weird, demeaning ways. Helena*, a 33-year-old Master’s student at the University of Toronto with spinal muscular atrophy, is engaged to her partner of two years. She and her fiancé have talked about having a child one day. It may be difficult—“I would probably require a surrogate and genetic testing before we are able to have one”—but Helena is happy. It wasn’t always that way. Back in her 20s, she says, many guys saw her as “just” a friend or a sexual partner—but not somebody they could form a relationship with.

Helena felt she had to decide if she wanted to be alone and not experience intimacy—or if she should take a chance, meet men online and explore her sexuality. She chose to embrace her sexuality. Mostly, she met men online. She and whoever she messaged would express upfront their interest in having sex. But she also looked for romantic partners. Sometimes she went on dates to develop a relationship, sometimes it was for “other experiences.” Helena thinks of sex as a natural and beautiful part of human experience that should be celebrated. “I never felt ashamed of it. I’ve always been an explorer of life experience.” Helena says she had several sexual partners as a result, but very few relationships throughout her 20s. The men she met while in university wanted to have sex with her out of curiosity or saw her as “an experience.” Helena doesn’t mind. She thinks maybe they craved a new experience, like how she wanted different sexual experiences to learn more about herself.

This is not uncommon. Many people are sexually attracted to people who have physical disabilities—because of their disability. They are called “devotees.” Unsurprisingly, devotees are a wildly controversial topic. Among the many concerns are: whether these type of relationships exploit people with disabilities; whether it turns people into a fetish object; and also what messages are being sent when the disability is put first. Raymond J. Aguilera is a disabled California-based writer who writes on queer and disability issues. He says while there are some devotees who may fall into the “concern” category, there are disabled men and women who choose to participate in these relationships to a devotee. Although he says it’s impossible to say devotees are “good” or “bad”, he believes it’s sex-negative that most of the scholarship in this area portray devotees as predatory and exploitive.

More often, though, this outside culture of silence is fed by the seemingly unshakeable misconception that people with disabilities are asexual. They can’t have sex; they don’t want to have sex. Steve, who says he has a decent amount of sexual experience, says people assume his penis is shrivelled or doesn’t work. “It’s almost like old people having sex,” he says. It’s easy [for people] to convince themselves that ‘they’ don’t do it or ‘it’ doesn’t work.” In one stereotype, mainstream society dismisses people with physical disabilities as undesirable or incapable sexual partners.

Rose knows all about this misconception. Many visitors who come to The Rose Centre say some people assume they’re asexual or incapable of having sex. “In my experience,” he says, “people with disabilities are some of the horniest people I’ve met.”

Sometimes, though, mobility can be an issue—and sex can be physically impossible without personal assistance. In Canada, the profession of personal support workers (PSWs) is unregulated. Support workers are hired directly by clients and work in the client’s home, or they’re hired by agencies, hospitals, and facilitated living buildings. In all settings, their job is to assist clients with daily chores such as cooking, showering and dressing. Many agencies do have policies stating that personal support workers shouldn’t assist their clients with anything related to sex. Due to the unregulated profession and flexibility to create their own policies, though, some agencies or individual personal support workers may choose to provide sexual assistance. This is most often the case if a support worker and client develop a strong enough relationship that the worker is comfortable assisting in sex-related activities, such as manoeuvring their clients in sexual positions for their partner. “It happens under the table,” says Steve, “They become friends.”

But it doesn’t always end well. Brown, the Toronto psychotherapist, did a placement in a mental health hospital in Whitby in 2004. While there, he heard about two support workers—not at his hospital—who had helped their patients with sex and were subsequently fired. Brown and his colleagues realized if they didn’t address these issues, some patients would be at risk. There could be patients living with serious mental or physical conditions consenting to sex with other patients who were more mentally aware or physically able for sex—this breached issues of safety and ethics. Brown used that insight to develop the groundwork and research to create a policy, guided by the belief that patients had the right to engage in consensual sex with other patients. In the end, workers in the hospital were, in theory, allowed to help their patients during sexual encounters if they strongly needed assistance—an issue that, he says, never arose while he was there.

The policy outlined how workers can handle these situations. Long-term patients who expressed desire and consent to have sex would be led to conjugal rooms supplied with condoms. Though not officially part of the policy, workers could assist patients out of wheelchairs, manoeuver them in positions  or supply them with birth control if needed. Before the policy was created, discussion on sex and disabilities was often discouraged or ignored. Differing moralities of each individual contributed to the fear of being rejected for their personal views. “No one wants to expose their sexual views,” says Brown. “If you talk about patients’ sexualities, you’re implicitly talking about yourself.”

Rose has consulted PSWs to assist him and a past girlfriend, who also had disabilities, for sexual encounters. “It can be awkward and a little weird,” he says, “but that’s just part of the relationship.” It’s a healthy attitude to have, especially considering that, as Rose says, the topic of assistance during sex is rarely discussed. People need help, he adds, but they feel weird asking for it—it’s not the same as asking for help cooking, and few guidelines have been put in place to make it so. The thought of refusal can be devastating, and it happens. Helena has heard several stories where workers denied service to clients who needed help during sexual encounters. “Even in long-term monogamous relationships with consenting adults,” she says, “service is refused because the personal support worker is uncomfortable.” Because of varying policies and moral beliefs, not all workers are trained or comfortable enough to handle these situations.

Steve deactivated his profile on Plentyoffish last February. Due to medical reasons, he says he didn’t go out much because of pain in his back and joints. Dating fell low on his list of priorities. Mostly, he didn’t think most women were capable of dealing with his chronic pain and “other crazy things” that many people don’t understand. At the time, it seemed easier to just avoid relationships.

But then he met Crystal*, a petite, brunette woman, in April 2013 at a networking seminar at The House of Moments, an art gallery and restaurant. Three weeks later, Crystal asked Steve out on a date. In June, the two became a monogamous couple. Like most fresh couples, they had a lot to learn about each other. Steve learned that Crystal has mild cerebral palsy. He also noticed her quirks, like how she sometimes bites her bottom lip when she thinks or when she bobs her head rhythmically to her favourite songs. Their relationship is getting serious, but they’re taking it slow. They’re savouring their time together. As for the sex: Steve says it’s both fantastic and plentiful.

Illustration by Nick Craine

For decades, advocates have touted nudism’s ability to combat sexism, objectification, and bad body image. Can it now be an antidote to our over-twerked culture? Rhiannon Russell goes bare to find out

It’s no secret what lies behind the shroud of trees at the end of the long driveway in a rural area of East Gwillimbury, Ont., about an hour north of Toronto. The sign—“naked people beyond this point”—makes sure of it. If that’s not clear enough, there’s also a diagram of a nude family, complete with defined genitals. At Bare Oaks Family Naturist Park, you leave your shame at the road. I first visited Bare Oaks on a brisk October day two years ago for this story. On the drive up to the park from Toronto, I spent most of the time wrestling with the idea of disrobing. Bare Oaks is not a clothing-optional resort, as some are. Weather-permitting, all visitors must undress; this prevents clothed patrons from coming to gawk. The resort allows people new to naturism an adjustment period though, during which they can acclimatize to being naked around others. So Stéphane Deschênes, the owner of Bare Oaks, doesn’t pressure me. Yet, it’s unsettling to be the sole clothed person in a room of naked bodies, drawing more attention than if you undressed and blended in.

Inside the clubhouse, the first thing I do is watch a mandatory video for new visitors about the park’s rules, things like no overt sexual behaviour, no photography without consent, and absolutely no bathing suits. I’m having a hard time paying attention. I can see Deschênes ambling around in my peripheral vision. Though he met me in the parking lot clothed, he’s naked now. I start to sweat, clad in my hoodie and vest, but I keep my eyes glued on the screen, as happy naked people run, swim, and play. See? it seems they’re telling me. It’s not such a big deal. But it sure feels like it is. After an interview in Deschênes’ office—he is naked, legs crossed, and I remain bundled in my layers, working up the nerve—I decide it’s now or never. I undress in the bathroom, which in hindsight seems redundant. It’s tough to force myself to exit it. Not because I feel sexually vulnerable—Deschênes is not the slightest bit creepy—but because this feels so foreign. And I think my body will somehow look that much weirder or worse than everyone else’s.

You know the dream: you show up at school or work then come to the heart-stopping realization that you forgot your clothes. All your peers see you and laugh. This plays through my mind as I stand, naked, in the bathroom, my hand poised over the doorknob, heart racing. My brain, first polite in reminding me I’ve neglected to get dressed, is now frantic. I do not want to open this door. But I take a deep breath, turn the knob, and step into the hallway. Deschênes turns the corner. Six feet tall with zero tan lines, he has a bushy salt-and-pepper moustache that extends nearly the width of his face. Despite my inner turmoil—I’m naked! I’m naked!—he doesn’t give me a second glance. “Do you like hot tubs?” he asks. I nod, my backpack shielding my chest. It’s cold. We head through the dining room (standard except for the photos and murals of nude people on the walls) passing several other people in the buff along the way. I’m trying desperately not to stare, keeping my gaze trained either on their faces or on the carpet in front of me. This isn’t, after all, a place where ogling is appropriate.

Naturism, or nudism, as some still call it, involves baring it all, typically in a communal setting. It’s not about exhibitionism nor is it even remotely sexual. Through stripping down, naturism aims to strip the body of its association with sex and to ease its practitioners of their psychological hang-ups, like body shame and lack of self-esteem. In many ways, it’s a direct social answer to the decades-long lack of body diversity in advertisements, magazines, and television—in favour of often hypersexualized images of skinny women and muscular men. “Our idolatry of the trim, tight body shows no signs of relinquishing its grip on our conceptions of beauty and normality,” writes Susan Bordo, a gender and women’s studies professor at the University of Kentucky, in her book Twilight Zones: The Hidden Life of Cultural Images from Plato to O. J. Simpson. “Fat is the devil, and we are continually beating him—‘eliminating’ our stomachs, ‘busting’ our thighs, ‘taming’ our tummies—pummeling and purging our bodies, attempting to make them into something other than flesh.” Clothing, especially for women, often assists in this dissection (see: push-up bras, skinny jeans, and bikinis).

This is where the naturist ideology comes in, removing clothes entirely from the equation. “The clothes we wear are very good at breaking us down into parts as opposed to a whole,” says Deschênes. “When you’re nude, you are a whole. It’s very difficult to look at a nude person as body parts.” Naturism forces you to accept your body as it is. It is, too, a dose of reality seeing other people’s unenhanced, naked forms: wrinkles, hair, cellulite, and all. On the surface, Deschênes says, it seems like naturism is all about skinny-dipping, but it really can make for a better world. Once you’ve spent enough time in a communal nude setting, he adds, problems with sexuality and body image—all “those things”—are resolved.

The idea of a nudity fix-all is not new. Organized nudism first dates back to Bombay in 1890. Three British men who thought clothing encouraged body shame and that it was healthier, anyway, for the body to be naked in a warm climate decided to form a secret naked fellowship, writes Philip Carr-Gomm in his book A Brief History of Nakedness. By the early 1900s, Europe was ripe for nudism, thanks to exploratory writings about sexuality and health. In Germany, outdoor nudity was promoted as a way to reconnect with nature and expose the body to much-needed fresh air and sunshine. It was in that country that the first international meeting of nudists took place in 1930.

Lisa Stein, the co-founder of two nudist parks in southern Ontario, remembers growing up in Germany around this time, swimming naked in the river near her house. “I never saw my mother hiding her nakedness or anything like that,” recalls Stein, who is now 80. “It comes so natural to somebody who grows up like that.” German immigrants brought nudism to the United States in the 1930s, promoting vegetarianism, a raw-food diet, and living outdoors. By that time, clubs were forming in Canada too. According to the Federation of Canadian Naturists (FCN), “the wave of postwar immigration brought many Europeans with their own extensive experience, and they not only swelled the ranks of membership, but often formed their own clubs, helping to expand nudism from coast to coast.”

In the 1960s, the term “naturism” emerged,incorporating a philosophy about respect for the self, others, and the environment—all themes that dovetailed nicely with the ’60s ethos. In 1967, American psychologist Paul Bindrim conducted the first session of nude psychotherapy at a resort in California. Participants undressed then engaged in physical behavior: hugging and sitting in a circle, arms around each other. “My concept was that physical nakedness could facilitate emotional nakedness and therefore speed up psychotherapy,” Bindrim said at the time. One of his techniques was “crotch-eyeballing,” which was exactly what it sounds like—participants stared at each other’s genitals to eliminate the “exaggerated sense of guilt” in the body. Unsurprisingly, nude psychotherapy caused a media frenzy, but it was covered favourably, as though it were a plausible technique, no doubt in large part because of the open-mindedness of the era.

But, as Ian Nicholson, a psychology professor at Fredericton’s St. Thomas University, writes in the Journal of the History of the Behavioural Sciences, the attention seemed to inflate Bindrim’s ego and his claims grew increasingly grandiose: that nude psychotherapy could cure suicidal thoughts, arthritis, psychosis, and impotence. When the ’60s ended, so did much of the public discussion about nudity. The same magazines that heralded Bindrim’s approach just years before began to portray him as more crackpot than guru. “With little appreciation of the history of the American nudist movement and a near messianic sense of therapeutic mission,” Nicholson writes, “Bindrim did little to separate nudity from sexuality.” Blurring those lines may have contributed to Bindrim’s slide into obscurity, but the connection he made between nakedness and emotional development holds some validity.

Take Sandy Hessel, a stocky woman in her 60s with blonde hair and a kind face. She lives year-round at Bare Oaks, cutting grass and swimming nude in the summer and bundling up to leave her trailer in the winter. Ever since she was a kid, she loved being naked. Her mother struggled to keep clothes on her as she ran around the neighbourhood. When Hessel hit puberty, things changed. Her family doctor began to sexually assault her during appointments. “I shut it down,” she says. “I didn’t deal with it. I withdrew. I wore layers and layers of clothing to hide.”

Yet nudity didn’t lose its appeal. When she was home alone, with the blinds drawn, Hessel would undress. “We feel more vulnerable, more exposed [naked] when really the opposite is true,” she says. “Out in the other world—because I don’t live out there anymore—it is very dangerous. You have to dress to impress and that just attracts attention and it gets worse from there. Men need to be raised differently so that they don’t see women as sex objects and I don’t know if that will ever happen.” Bare Oaks is her safe haven now.

Indeed, Bare Oaks is safe haven for more than 500 people and, out of the 50 or so clubs across Canada, it’s one of the largest. It’s tough to say how many Canadians identify as nudists or naturists because no such data exist, although in 1999, the FCN commissioned a survey to suss out this figure. According to the resulting data, approximately 2.7 million Canadians “have the naturist/nudist mindset (have gone or would go to a nude beach and/or club/resort).” Of those millions, there is a whole range of types, from the stereotypical retiree or senior, to a younger generation of adults gravitating toward naturism as they raise their families.

Breakfast is often a naked affair in the Barnes* household. Luke, Alicia, and their three children, who are between the ages of five and 10, sleep in the nude and make it to the breakfast table in various states of undress, be it birthday suit, underwear, towel, or full outfit. On weekdays, the kids head off to school—dressed, of course—but take off their clothes once they walk in the door at the end of the day. Luke, who works from home, prefers to wear something with a pocket for his phone. But weekends are more laidback. The family often won’t get dressed until absolutely necessary, like when guests drop by or it’s time to run errands.

I meet up with Luke and Alicia, both in their thirties, at a mall food court in the Kitchener-Waterloo, Ont., area. (A few days prior, Luke emails me: “We’ll be the ones that are naked under our clothes.”) The couple was not always so open. Up until two years ago, Alicia says, they were “fairly conservative,” imposing limits on when and where in the house nudity was acceptable. “I came downstairs one day to find my kids dancing on the coffee table completely naked with the curtains open, and I was like, ‘OK, no nudity downstairs,’” she says. “We were having a lot of discussions about ‘is it OK to change in front of the kids?’”

These conversations about how they, and God, felt about nudity—the Barnes are dedicated Christians—prompted them to scour the web for more information. Plenty of Christian naturist websites supported the perspective that nudity was natural and morally sound. Eventually, seeking further clarity, the couple decided to visit Bare Oaks. “It was very freeing,” Luke remembers. “It seemed more practical too. You get wet and you don’t have to dry off and wear wet clothes, that kind of thing … Looking back, I remember various people I talked to, the image I get is their face. It’s people I met, not naked bodies.” They came back with their two boys, who loved that they were allowed to frolic outdoors in the buff. (Alicia’s daughter, from her previous marriage, chose not to go. She’d been growing more body-conscious, piling on clothes. But as the family continued to explore nudity, she warmed up to the idea of nudity at home, shedding her layers gradually.)

Since then, the Barnes’ house has been clothing-optional. In taking this stance, Luke and Alicia feel they’re removing the stigma surrounding certain body parts—for instance, while a penis has a sexual role, it has other purposes too. They also hope their children are learning there’s nothing alien or awkward about the human body. Luke believes it’s difficult for people today to know what a normal figure looks like because we rarely see one, a fact compounded by today’s ubiquitous “ideal body”—one that often involves Photoshop, make-up, and the right camera angle. Body hair and bellies, however absent in pop culture, are normal, which is why he’s sure to bare his. “My kids,” Luke says, “need to know what normal bodies look like.”

Twenty-three-year-old Montrealer Serena Strunga agrees. She was thrilled to find Bare Oaks, where she and her three-year-old daughter, Leilia, have vacationed the past two summers. They also are often naked at home. Strunga hopes Leilia’s naturist upbringing will strengthen her self-esteem as she enters the so-often-insecure teen years. “I hope she’ll realize that body image is not actually that important,” Strunga tells me via Skype. It worked for Strunga. Though she’s had nagging thoughts that she’s not skinny enough or that her breasts are too flabby, she says naturism has helped her feel more comfortable in her own skin—even when those fears and insecurities persist, unbidden. “I mean, I try not to think like that, but it’s difficult to get out of that mindset.”

Deschênes and I sit in the hot tub—a respectful distance of water rippling between us. Steam rises and swirls in the sunlight streaming through the bathhouse windows. Chatting with him, the water up to my shoulders, I feel slightly more at ease. Deschênes is an immensely passionate naturist. He signs his emails “Yours naturally,” and teaches me the lingo: we live in a  “textile” society and a “cotton-tail” is someone so new to nudity the sun hasn’t browned their backside yet. His foray into naturism began as a teenager when he skinny-dipped with friends. He loved it. He did some research and joined the FCN, later becoming a volunteer, and eventually president. He bought Bare Oaks in 2006. Though no longer the organization’s president, Deschênes is the go-to guy in Canada for everything naturism, and could talk for hours about society’s complicated relationship with nudity. He uses words like “socialization” and “brainwashing” to describe how children are raised to hide and be ashamed of their bodies. People living in the body-phobic, image-obsessed world, he tells me, need regular therapy—going naked—to transcend such problems of the textile world. Going naked once doesn’t quite do it. Often in the spring, he’ll notice a bit of awkwardness from members who’ve remained clothed in the colder months. “They’ve gotten back into this idea,” he says, “that it’s not quite right to take your clothes off until they get used to it again.”

So if naturism has therapeutic potential to increase feelings of self-worth and self-confidence, why don’t we all go naked in our homes? Why haven’t naturist clubs seen an influx of new members as society’s body complex grows more intense? Nudity has never fully regained the public profile it had in the ’60s. Bindrim’s era, Nicholson tells me, was “the high-water mark of social scientific interest in nudism and really kind of the endpoint of it as well.” Since then, academic work on nudism has often been critical—and, in the case of nude therapy, he writes, the change has been even more dramatic. In the boundary-pushing ’60s, nude therapy was worth legitimate and lively debate, he adds, but by the mid-’80s people viewed it simply as “unethical” and “‘obviously’ wrong.”

With this type of discourse, it’s not surprising that mention of naturism today prompts smirks and weird looks. It’s generally misunderstood, thought to be code word for swinging or sex clubs or pedophilia. This infuriates Deschênes. “We’ll get somebody who says, ‘When does the sex start?’ or ‘Can my girlfriend and I have sex on the lawn?’ No!” He laughs in disbelief. “And if you do, we’re calling the cops. That’s an indecent act.”

I spend several hours at Bare Oaks, chatting with Deschênes and his staff, sitting on a towel in the dining room as per hygiene rules. This is so ordinary to them that their nonchalance rubs off on me, and by the end of my visit, I feel more comfortable than I thought I could. When it’s time to leave though, my awkwardness returns. I head to the bathroom to get changed, and Hessel gives me a quizzical look. “We just change where we are,” she says with a reassuring smile. So I get dressed in the hallway, hoping no one sees me hiking up my jeans and fiddling with my bra. As I step out of the clubhouse into the cool air, I’m glad in more ways than one to be clothed.

Lisa Stein, who unlike everyone else I spoke to was raised nudist, just doesn’t understand that anxiety. “I find it very difficult to explain this because it is such a natural thing to us anyways,” she says with a laugh. “Maybe not to you or to anyone who’s been told right from when they’re a little person to cover up. Why do you have to cover up? … You were born naked.” I agree with this thought process. It’s positive, healthy, and practical. And yet, I haven’t been back to Bare Oaks or any other naturist park. Nor do I feel a desire to. The thought of baring it all again makes me squeamish. Plus, I’ve made peace with my body. Perhaps, back in my insecure teen years, this trial-by-fire approach would have benefited me. But now, I don’t feel I need to undress in order to up my self-esteem or self-appreciation. I’m already there. Deschênes would argue this is my textile upbringing talking, and he’s probably right. Some habits are hard to break.

* names have been changed

Our Jan/Feb 2014 issue is on newsstands now!

The anti-abortion movement has newly latched onto Post-Abortion Syndrome, a controversial diagnosis that it claims mimics PTSD. The pro-choice response: the syndrome doesn’t exist. How women’s grief became the latest abortion battleground

Outside the walls of Toronto’s Mount Sinai Hospital, a light snow falls quietly on the streets. Inside, the waiting room is not much louder. Several women and a few couples sit in silence. A nurse calls 23-year-old Yana’s name. She walks into a doctor’s office. She sees white walls, an angry-looking nurse, and stainless steel. Yana lies down on a hospital bed. Her legs are pushed back and she gives herself over to anesthesia while a surgeon terminates her pregnancy.

One week earlier in January 2013, her “semi-boyfriend,” who is not in the waiting room, drove her to a sports bar near her house in Richmond Hill and handed her a pregnancy test he bought because his friends told him girls sometimes make this stuff up. It made her feel violated, like he didn’t trust her. She, after all, had trusted him when he showed up two months before that with a handful of articles to read—if the guy pulls out, chances of pregnancy are slim. She had believed him. But now she sat in a bathroom stall and peed on the stick: pregnant. Nine weeks.

“Nine weeks means fingers,” says a friend from her ball hockey team. Yana tries to block the image from her mind. Alone on a gurney, she wakes to a faint outline of the surgery room, vomits on her hospital gown, and wonders if “it’s out.” Fifteen minutes later, she’s eating cheese and crackers on a La-Z-Boy in a room full of La-Z-Boys. Her parents walk her to the car. Her father doesn’t say much, but drives her home.
Back in her bedroom, she Googles anything about post-abortion. The guilt she feels or doesn’t feel. The selfishness she should feel deep inside her gut—her ball hockey friend is sure of that. She clicks onto anti-abortion websites and abortion rights websites. On one of the anti-abortion websites, she sees a book for sale: What God Thinks of You. She sees the word “repent.” A lot of women cry on their babies’ due dates, according to several anti-abortion websites. Yana’s due date was September 27. She chooses the name Helena. When Yana was born, her mother called her a wolverine because of her wild brown hair. Helena, Yana thinks, would look like a wolverine. There’s a blizzard rushing in, layering the driveway, piling on the roof.

Anti-abortion supporters believe Yana’s post-abortion feelings and actions can be attributed to Post-Abortion Syndrome (PAS), a controversial condition coined by U.S. anti-abortion advocate Dr. Vincent Rue in 1981. According to Rue and those in the anti-abortion camp, PAS refers to the negative psychological effects experienced by women who are “traumatized” by their abortions. PAS has never gained recognition in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), however, and many scientific studies—not to mention abortion rights advocates—have questioned that it even exists. Still, it’s managed to dominate Canadian and U.S. counselling services available to women post-abortion—to the point that unbiased, in depth and non-politically charged counselling is often very hard to find.

So where does this leave women who, like Yana, just want someone to talk to? What about those who are free to choose but unable to talk freely about abortion, barred from emotions, frozen between affirmation and regret?
In Canada, many post-abortion counselling services are offered through distinctly anti-abortion Christian-based ministries and organizations; abortion rights advocates, wary and dismissive of PAS, are also largely indifferent to any need for counselling. It’s been this way since the late 1980s—nobody, really, seems to be able to separate PAS from a woman’s need (or not) for counselling. As always seems to be the case with abortion, we have become lost in the political consequences.

PAS was first introduced as a subset of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) believed to cause a range of symptoms from nightmares to loss of appetite, directly related to a past abortion. It soon gained political stamina in 1987 when President Ronald Reagan appointed surgeon general C. Everett Koop to study PAS with Rue as a consultant (according to several anti-abortion websites). Anti-abortion supporters hoped the study would force the reversal of Roe v. Wade. Koop, however, was unable to provide conclusive data about the mental health effects of abortion.

Meanwhile Rue was relentless. He later wrote in his 1992 essay, “Post Abortion Syndrome: An Emerging Public Health Concern,” that “the decision to elect abortion can generate significant resulting psychosocial distress.” In 1995, he wrote PAS is “capable of causing … PTSD.” According to the new DSM 5, this seems unlikely. It states PTSD is not induced by a co-occurring medical condition. Rather, the disorder, resulting from exposure to a threatened or actual death, injury or sexual assault, is diagnosable based on four symptom clusters: re-experiencing the event, avoiding trauma-related stimuli, negative changes in mood, and heightened arousal—such as self-destructive behaviour. Incidentally, these are all criteria anti-abortion advocates claim is present in PAS.

Central to this discussion is the word trauma. Anti-abortion advocates and the post-abortive women who join their debate say a woman can experience trauma if she knew abortion was wrong, but went through with it anyway or was forced into having one. The Canadian Centre for Addiction and Mental Health defines trauma as “the emotional response when a negative event is overwhelming.” Because people respond to negative events differently, symptoms can range from no emotion to feelings of helplessness, anger, shame or even panic.

Criticism surrounding post-abortion trauma, however, predates even PAS. In 1963, for instance, Dr. Jerome M. Kummer published a study in the American Journal of Psychiatry called “Post-Abortion Psychiatric Illness—A Myth?” He found no correlation between psychiatric illness and therapeutic abortion. Kummer stated, “If the ill effects of induced abortion have been so grossly exaggerated, we must ask ourselves why?” He speculates this was “part of the means of enforcing the taboo.”

The taboo has since created much frustration among the scientific community. In an effort to completely demystify the issue, a 2008 study led by the American Psychiatry Association Task Force on Mental Health and Abortion reviewed all empirical research on PAS since 1989. Results found that women who have abortions suffer no greater trauma than women who give birth. It did nothing to silence PAS-believers.

Among the most prominent today is David C. Reardon, an anti-abortion advocate and founder and director of the Elliot Institute for Social Sciences Research in Illinois. Reardon began pursuing the connection between poor mental health and abortion in the ’80s. Though his studies are largely considered flawed and were even disputed in the May 2003 issue of the Canadian Medical Association Journal, 10 he continues publishing. In the March 2012 issue of the British Journal of Psychiatry Reardon writes, “Many self-aware women want help coping with a past abortion experience. Why is it so hard to simply accept their self-assessments and stated needs? Women deserve better.” Maybe, but is the guilt-and-shame approach of PAS really the best approach?

Late February 2013, the snow has melted to a knee-deep slush in Scarborough. Today, like every Thursday since 1990, Second Chance Ministry, a Catholic post-abortion support group, gathers in the basement of Scarboro Missions at 7:30 p.m. On a small table, there’s a rosary with white hologram fetuses encased in light blue beads. Julia, a middle-aged, blue-eyed woman comes every Thursday. She says God keeps calling her there, to share her story with others; Julia is also a speaker for Silent No More Awareness, a campaign where Christian women hold public demonstrations to share why they regret their abortion. She places the rosary in my hands because in several minutes we’re about to pray specifically for priests who, in the days ahead, must choose a new pope. I glance up at the door. No other women are coming tonight.
Father Vince Heffernan, a soft-spoken, white-haired priest, enters the tiny room. He decided to advertise help for PAS in the church bulletin and around the city after he read a story about a woman who regretted her abortion. Usually, several women visit the group each session.

Julia heats up water for instant coffee. I choose lemon tea. She begins to tell her story. After spending years managing depression as well as trust issues within her marriage, she concluded her abortion, over 20 years ago, was the root cause. 17 Indeed, PAS has recently acquired new political leverage in the reframing of anti-abortion rhetoric: women are now victims, not villains. The real villains in this new sympathetic messaging are coercing partners, pro-abortion society, and feminists, as Paul Saurette, a University of Ottawa associate professor, explained on CBC’s The Current in April, 2013.

Certainly Julia believes she’s a victim of a pro-abortion society. She says healing finally ensued when she participated in a mass where women name their so-called unborn children. She named hers Marissa. “The children grow up in heaven,” says Heffernan. This leads to a discussion about ghosts, the occult, evil, if I live with my boyfriend outside the bounds of marriage, and how abortion traumatizes the psyche. The tea bag expands in my mug. Too cold to drink.

Post-abortion support groups such as Second Chance are widespread across Canada. Most are Christian-based, many are anti-abortion, and together they promote a type of closure that cannot exist without repent or shame. Project Rachel, a weekend retreat and ministry, advertises PAS research by Reardon via a website link called Hope After Abortion, while the website of the Pregnancy Care Centre in Toronto has posted a video of a woman who found relief in sharing her story and is now an anti-abortion rights advocate. Abortion Recovery International, an association that is “dedicated to connecting and assisting like-minded abortion recovery centers,” states they have no political component to their support, yet lists resources such as afterabortion.org, an anti-abortion website dedicated to Reardon’s research celebrating “25 years of pro-woman/pro-life leadership.”

Second Chance is co-founded by Angelina Steenstra, the national coordinator for Silent No More Awareness Campaign in Canada. The U.S.-based National Pro-Life Religious Council founded Silent No More in 2003. Its purpose is to “expose and heal the secrecy and silence surrounding the emotional and physical pain of abortion,” encouraging women to attend abortion after-care programs, but also to educate the public that “abortion should be unnecessary and unthinkable.”The first time I see Steenstra is at the University of Waterloo on a rainy afternoon in March 2013. Silent No More Awareness Campaign has set up a table in the Student Life Centre.

Steenstra, dressed in a bright red blazer, stands on a podium surrounded by clusters of sandwich-eating, iPod-wearing students, holding a sign that says, “I regret my abortion.” Julia, who met Steenstra at Second Chance, stands by her side. The university’s Students for Life group invited the group. Steenstra says she was there to “share her personal testimony about abortion” but the timing also complemented the discussion on Conservative MP, Mark Warawa’s Motion 408 which condemns sex-selective abortion. (Both a Parliamentary sub-committee and its parent committee, Procedure and House Affairs, has since ruled the motion non-votable, resulting in Warawa’s decision to not appeal, but rather, replace the motion with “The Safe at Home bill” that aims to protect sex abuse victims.)

Steenstra tells her story. Her voice is muffled under the noise, but certain words find their way through: “date rape . . . illegal abortion . . . suicidal . . . starved myself as punishment . . .” She talks to people who give her eye contact. Most don’t. A group of girls huddle over a sheet of mathematical graphs. A guy in a fringed wool hat and dress shirt gives the finger to another guy across the lounge.

A girl with a black puffer jacket stands to the side, talking into her cell phone. “I mean, I understand the sex-selective thing, but the other stuff . . .” This “other stuff” cannot be explained in one sentence. This “stuff” is why one guy just looked up from his Watchmen comic and stuck his headphones back into his ears. This “stuff” is also why five eager campus anti-abortion advocates and Steenstra’s husband, Walter with the video camera, sit in the middle among dozens of empty chairs. This “stuff” includes politicizing emotions, ulterior motives and suggesting one’s personal feelings speak for all women—a ten-minute narrative about hurt, seeking to end a long, laborious story about choice.

Later, two students approach Steenstra and say they want to get involved; they look as if they just got out of high school. They sift through stacks of hand-outs sitting on a white cloth-covered table. One pamphlet reads, “Goal: Get 10 post-abortive men & women who regret their abortion to sign up on our website.”

That same month, on a warm afternoon in Toronto Miriam McDonald, an editor at the Marxist newspaper Spartacist Canada, struts up and down a hallway at the Ontario Institute of Secondary Education at an International Women’s day rally. “Abortion is just a medical procedure like getting a wart off, except it’s all politicized,” she says. “A woman’s capacity to control her fertility opens the doors to full equality. That’s why it’s … stigmatized.” Another woman standing next to her in a baseball cap, handing out newspapers, says post-abortive women need counselling, not to overcome negative feelings related to abortion, but rather, to cope with society’s stigma and culture of shame. Three young people in lime green shirts with the words “reproductive freedom fighters” scurry back and forth.

Some women may need counselling services before or after they have an abortion, says Joyce Arthur, executive director of the Abortion Rights Coalition of Canada (ARCC). She does not believe, however, that PAS is real. “It’s like the anti-choice movement works in its own bubble,” she says, “making up it’s own science and ignoring mainstream evidence and consensus.” The result, she adds, is confusion—public misinformation that scares women considering abortion. In Arthur’s mind, the act of abortion continues to be blamed for the source of trauma when, in reality, the unwanted pregnancy is often what’s truly traumatic. It’s not to say women don’t experience negative effects, she adds, just that it’s more complex than the anti-abortion activists portray.

At the ARCC table, a pamphlet featuring ARTS4CHOICE, a photographic narrative project that seeks to end shame surrounding women’s abortions, reads, “Now is the time to have the focus of the abortion debate shifted to women and their experiences.” I can’t shake the feeling that it’s a storytelling platform like Silent No More. The parallels are there: today’s display still insinuates politics, just from a different belief system. By placing the emphasis of trauma on the pregnancy, advocates dismiss the legitimacy of what women may feel after abortion. Everywhere I turn, it seems women are expected to take sides before we’re allowed to feel something. It’s as if our feelings represent something greater than our individuality, a value, a duty. Holding the pamphlet in my hand, I can’t help but think: shouldn’t the focus have always been on women and their experiences—minus the debate?
Not all anti-abortion advocates—or even abortion rights advocates—buy into the politics of post-abortion counselling. While the number is small, there are both groups and individual counsellers working to provide women-first, unbiased counselling services. Susan Armitage is one. Armitage is a therapist with a masters in divinity who works in Richmond Hill, not far from Yana. She advertises post-abortion counselling but doesn’t want women to misinterpret her Christian-based website as a strict anti-abortion point of view. To her, counselling is an opportunity to speak—just speak. “It’s a controversial time,” she says. “I’m pro-life, but people who support pro-choice shouldn’t be condemned.” She tells me a good counselling model should be based on the realization of how difficult the lives of pregnant women can be. “If I had a teenage girl come to me and tell me she was pregnant, I would help her understand what both decisions would be like,” she says. “Not paint a picture by saying the baby will make life so much better.”

Over in Vancouver, Everywoman’s Health Centre is an abortion clinic that provides free, non-judgmental counselling services and resources like the book, Peace After Abortion. Erin Mullan, who’s been a counsellor for over 20 years, works there. “When it comes to abortion, nothing is in the range of normal,” she says. “A woman’s culture, her religion or history, could all inform how she’ll feel.” For the small number of women she refers out to other counsellors who offer long-term support, abortion is not the main cause of negative feelings, but rather, “it opens a door of pain.” That door can reveal bad relationships, abuse, or mental depression. Mullan points out that coercion—if a woman’s been forced to have an abortion—accounts for one third of the problems she treats. “It can sit unfinished, inside of her for years,” she says, “if she wasn’t given the space to make choices.” At this clinic, the acknowledgment that abortion can be intimately connected to negative feelings serves no greater purpose than a woman’s well-being.

Post-abortion counselling is an available option at other abortion clinics across Canada. Arthur knows of at least two in Vancouver. Very few attend. Other parts of the country? Arthur polls a pro-abortion right listserv, of which she’s a member. The messages roll in from abortion clinics. Ottawa, Vancouver, Toronto, Winnipeg, Edmonton, Calgary, and Yellowknife all have services. The consensus among these clinics is that women with mental health concerns are referred to other therapists outside the abortion clinic. Some women prefer a telephone follow-up after abortion, while a small percentage return for a free session, without need for long-term care. Many women book the free appointment and cancel. Some just don’t show up. But why would they? Expressing feelings, in the same space one must barricade feelings, seems ironic. Abortion can also be a lonely time and returning to the clinic can be a reminder of this loneliness. Many women don’t want to walk backwards at a place where they’re expected to run forward.

But at the London Health Sciences Centre, in London, Ont., one counsellor says a significant portion of outpatient work follows women who have had genetic terminations—abortion due to fetal abnormalities—a population suspected to be under-served in other centres. It’s also not uncommon for women to seek treatment around their baby’s proposed due date which, strangely enough, happens to be a so-called symptom of PAS, one that Yana had stumbled across while searching websites after her abortion. But for every negative feeling—shame, heartbreak, confusion or otherwise—there are political innuendos that render women voiceless, many of whom are left with a multitude of questions, building up in a culture of silence.

In 1995, Melanie hadn’t been with her roommate’s brother for long, maybe eight months. By the time they had broken-up, he was off to university elsewhere, and she was in school in college, 21-years-old and pregnant. She found out after she vomited into a garbage can on the way to class. Her ex hopped on a bus, travelled to her off-campus residence and made out with her the night before her abortion, something she felt guilty about for a long time. The next day a James Taylor song played over a speaker while she lay on a bed behind closed curtains. Her ex bused back to London and left her alone. Her grandfather died the following day and she found herself travelling home, buying a dress for the funeral, shovelling her emotions into mourning his death.

“It was a whirlwind experience,” she says 18 years later, while making green tea, her apartment windows open. Cars sweep through the rainy Toronto streets, blending into jazz music playing on her radio. Recently, anti-abortion advocates stood outside the church across from her apartment with posters of fetuses. She’s not sorry about the decision, but sorry she was “stupid” for not using birth control. She feels guilty for not feeling guiltier. She feels guilty throwing out vegetables. Melanie wishes there were some way to make post-abortion counselling part of the process. She felt alone. She was uncomfortable going to her friends, her mother died when she was younger, and her father, she believes, would have been overly emotional—abortion is too political, too loaded.

When I was in the eighth grade at St John’s Elementary School in Guelph, I remember watching a black and white film of babies piled up in garbage cans. Years later, at 25, I walked into a Gramercy Park clinic in New York City, where I was living at the time, and had an abortion. Afterwards, I ate a carrot muffin from a deli on the corner and cabbed across town to my Hell’s Kitchen studio. I sat on my boyfriend’s lap, rearranging the small apartment in my mind: where the crib would have gone, the changing table, the play area. There was no room anywhere and I wanted to finish my degree and the decision was not a decision any more. We grabbed coffee down the street at the Galaxy diner. I was wearing a burgundy sweater I no longer own. We talked about the clinic, the doctor, my blood type (O-), the play he was writing, getting a second cup of coffee. We didn’t talk about “stuff.”

But I couldn’t erase the garbage-can babies from my head. I felt shame in talking about my abortion to most people. I had no regrets, but then I’d feel damned, caught in a grey area between lucky and inhuman. Reminded—in small ways—by friends, media or religion, that I should feel immoral and incapable. I ended up scavenging online message boards late at night, reading random abortion dialogue between faceless strangers. People, suspicious of their own feelings. No face with a real name to help me affirm I’d made the right choice —to remind me how fortunate I was. Like Yana, my waiting room was also silent. I told my mom five years later on a pitch-black November evening, driving down a gravel road, when I was visiting home. The Michael Bublé song “Home” played on the radio. It seemed like the right time. It made sense.

Back in Richmond Hill, past rows of strip plazas with Cash for Gold shops and walk-in health clinics, Yana dips her brush into sky blue paint at Your Fired, a ceramic craft studio. Recently her ball-hockey friend threatened to hit her hard with a ball during a game because of her abortion—because she should feel like a murderer. Yana spent the game guarding the net as a goalie, frightened. After, she says she spent the week alone in her room, crying and thinking about taking her own life. “Just feelings that came up,” she says. “But I’m fine now.”

She paints a ceramic letter “J” for a friend’s new baby, gently curving the edges with her brush. A Taylor Swift song fizzles in and out of an old stereo tucked into a ledge above us, mixing into Yana’s words. She says she made the right decision, even if her friend tries to convince her otherwise. What hurts the most now is losing her voice: she’s been a singer since she could speak. “The other day,” she says, “my voice was swallowed inside of me, in this place I couldn’t get to any more.” Last weekend, a jazz musician took her on a “semi-date” and asked her to sing in his band. She’s tried singing around the house. Working on not feeling guilty. Working on getting her voice back.

By Timothy King (Own work) [CC0], via Wikimedia Commons

New FM airwaves lack distinct Canadian sound—and that’s a good thing

By the time you read this, the newest entry into Toronto’s FM radio marketplace will be running at full power, armed with a signal boost obtained in November, two months after its launch.

It shouldn’t come as a surprise that the owners of Indie88 are making their big bet on radio. On-demand subscription services have emerged to challenge mp3 downloads as the music delivery method of the future, but radio remains popular in the present. According to CRTC’s latest annual report, the average Canadian listens to 17.5 hours of radio per week.

Radio also remains the most popular means of music discovery, according to Nielsen, which found that 61 percent of Canadian consumers rely on terrestrial radio for finding something new to love.

For Canadian artists, the coming of Indie88 has to be considered good news. For one thing, the CRTC made it a condition of Indie88’s licence that it must contribute $2-million over seven years to the development of Canadian content, over and above the small percentage of revenue the Broadcasting Act requires any licensee to contribute.

And of course, Indie88 is subject to those infamous Canadian content requirements, also known as CanCon. This means 40 percent of the music the station plays must be Canadian, of which 60 percent must meet the CRTC’s idea of emerging Canadian artists (a lengthy definition based on how much chart success an artist has gained).

The infamy associated with CanCon most commonly stems from the debate over whether the requirements favour foreign broadcasters, most of them broadcasting online, who don’t need CRTC approval to be heard by Canadians. CRTC-regulated broadcasters complain that CanCon requirements restrict their ability to deliver more popular music to their listeners, costing them audience and ad revenue. Every so often, they attempt to get those requirements reduced to a lower threshold than the usual 35 percent.

It’s an argument with no merit from any perspective aside from the profit motive. But Canadian content requirements need to be re-examined nevertheless. Yes, the rules still play an important role in helping artists to break out on the scene, to be heard amid a foreign-dominated landscape and to succeed financially. (Some of the money broadcasters are required to contribute to help Canadian artists develop is no doubt being used to fill gas tanks on cross-country tours.)

Where CanCon falls down, perhaps as a victim of its own past success, is in its cultural impacts. More than ever before, with Canadians thriving in every possible genre, it’s difficult to identify a distinctly Canadian sound.

This is not a bad thing. Think about today’s music landscape in Canada. Unlike in the 1970s, the first full decade of CanCon requirements, we now have a mature scene full of creative artists who tour internationally, boutique labels with influence and full rosters, and a respected, merit-based annual award called the Polaris prize.

All this in a global context where any given artist’s musical influences are as likely to be from across the Atlantic as down the road. Like musicians from anywhere, Canadians today are making music for the world.

Take Vancouver-based 2013 Polaris nominee Young Galaxy. With a synth-based and sophisticated yet upbeat sound, Young Galaxy’s peers are CHVRCHES, Austra, and Sally Shapiro—only one of whom is Canadian. Young Galaxy’s go-to producer, Dan Lissvik, is a Swede whose band Studio was an inspiration on the last two albums.

With a few exceptions who sing about Canadian-ness explicitly—guys like Joel Plaskett and the Tragically Hip—you’d have a hard time explaining what is Canadian about most of today’s Canadian music.

And yet, like most of us, I’ve been known to fall into the trap of local boosterism when it comes to Canadian musicians. Call it the CBC Music complex. In the absence of anything in the music that might reflect my experience of Canada, I fall back on false pride based on the fact that an emerging artist hails from a place I only know from seeing its name on a map.

There’s no use in pretending, as CanCon requirements encourage us to do, that the Canadian sound is something that can be identified, let alone trumpeted as a part of our culture. By all means, let’s foster a system that supports and promotes emerging Canadian talent in a financially brutal industry. But I prefer to enjoy that music in a global context, which is why I’m more likely to switch the dial to Indie88 over CBC Radio 2 and its unquestioned nationalism.