*Warning: working knowledge of Taylor Swift lyrics required*

We are never ever ever ever / Asking for it

— FeministTaylorSwift (@feministtswift) July 4, 2013

GENDER = SOCIAL CONSTRUCT. THAT NOT MEAN THAT GENDER IS INCONSEQUENTIAL, ELECTIVE, OR NONEXISTENT. HULK SMASH BARRIERS, NOT IDENTITIES!

— FEMINIST HULK (@feministhulk) June 9, 2013

It is illogical to train female humans to fear harm from strangers, then call them “oversensitive” about Internet trolls

— Feminist Spock (@FeministSpock) December 23, 2010

And the saddest fear / Comes creeping in / That you never loved me / Or her / Or anyone / Because all women are objects to you / Yeah!

— FeministTaylorSwift (@feministtswift) July 1, 2013

IT NOT ACTUALLY COUNT AS CHALLENGING YOUR OWN PRIVILEGE IF YOU EXPECT COOKIE EVERY TIME YOU DO IT.

— FEMINIST HULK (@feministhulk) March 27, 2013

Insulting men by calling them women is as meaningless as calling a rock a tree.The two are different, not unequal.

— Feminist Spock (@FeministSpock) December 19, 2010

Today was a fairytale / You were the prince / I was a beautiful submissive girl with no personality / It was kind of a terrible day actually

— FeministTaylorSwift (@feministtswift) June 27, 2013

HULK NO FEAR PATRIARCHAL HEGEMONY! HULKS SMASH HEGEMONY AND EAT FOR BREAKFAST! SPRINKLE ON GRANOLA (ALWAYS WASH CAREFULLY FIRST).

— FEMINIST HULK (@feministhulk) September 28, 2012

It is not logical to shame survivors or those who are unsure about their own experience. It is rational to #talkaboutit

— Feminist Spock (@FeministSpock) December 19, 2010

Someday / I’ll be / Living in a country with marriage equality / And all you’re / Ever gonna be is mean

— FeministTaylorSwift (@feministtswift) June 26, 2013

GLOBAL OUTRAGE. POLITICAL GROTESQUERY. HULK PAUSE WITH PUMPKIN TEA, PONDER PRIVILEGE (INCL OWN). DISCOMFORT, EMPATHY = ALSO FORMS OF SMASH!

— FEMINIST HULK (@feministhulk) September 18, 2012

I am most grateful to @Feministhulk for smashing gender binaries. I do hope to study them scientifically first.

— Feminist Spock (@FeministSpock) December 19, 2010

I’m just a girl / Trying to find a place in this world / Outside the virgin-whore dichotomy / Because my sexuality doesn’t have to define me

— FeministTaylorSwift (@feministtswift) June 25, 2013

TEACH GIRLS STRENGTH. TEACH BOYS NURTURING. TEACH BOTH THAT “BOY” AND “GIRL” ARE JUST SUGGESTIONS. SMASH START EARLY!

— FEMINIST HULK (@feministhulk) March 26, 2012

Go ahead and follow @thismagazine on twitter!

Toronto netted more mentions in This Magazine over the last year than the Maritime and Prairie provinces combined. Ontario was mentioned more than all of the other provinces combined.

To prepare for our regular staff meeting earlier this week, we flipped through the last year of This to see what we covered well, and what we’ve missed. The findings clearly showed us the kinds of stories we tend to cover—and pointed to a few things we need to work on.

First a word on the informal nature of this survey: my count was quick and dirty, and may not be 100 per cent reproducible at home. I counted all articles: features, short articles, This & That, graphics, and so on, from our November/December 2008 issue up to, and including, our upcoming issue. I assigned each a topic (environment, books, queer issues, etc) and a location (Japan, Newfoundland, Toronto, etc).

We love the environment—who doesn’t? We love the environment so much that it was our most covered topic in the last year. We brought you articles about learning to live without cars, and people at home and abroad practicing permaculture. We also did well coving Canadian art and government.

This Magazine started out way back in 1966 as This Magazine is About Schools, but somehow we avoided stories about education almost entirely over the last year, with the exception of our cover story about Africentric schools. Race and immigration were two other topics we only touched on. Stories about the economy, the internet, women’s issues, First Nations, and queer issues landed in the middle.

We also seem to love Toronto and Ontario. We focused on people and issues in Ontario (heavy on Toronto) as often as we focused on the all of other provinces combined. British Columbia was the runner up for most covered province. New Brunswick, P.E.I., and the Northwest Territories didn’t even get an honourable mention. Ouch. Rest assured that we’re already working on fixing these gaps.

Here’s a link to view the spreadsheet on Google Docs. If you’d like to slice and dice the spreadsheet yourself, you can download it as a CSV spreadsheet file. (Warning! It hasn’t been spell-checked.)

So here’s where we appeal to you, our readers. What places, people and topics do you want to see in This in 2010? What do you think we did well this year, and what do you want to see covered more often? Comment below or send us an email and tell us what you think. We keep track of data like this because we want to improve and broaden our coverage, to represent every inch of this country and give a voice to people who are underrepresented in mainstream media. Obviously we still have work to do; we hope you’ll help us make This Magazine even better.

[Original creative-commons photo by Ustat ]

If you’re a journalist and still brave enough to announce that fact on social occasions, you can be more or less assured what the next question will be. “Don’t you worry,” someone will always begin with a sheen of sympathy, “that journalism is dying?”

There are a range of responses from which to choose: pull out some far more dire stats about the future of the car industry, offer a lukewarm endorsement of the Huffington Post-model, or remain in denial and pretend to be distracted by an incoming plate of hors d’oeuvres. But if journalists are smart – and as glamour and riches fade away, intelligence may be one of our only remaining virtues – we will stop bristling about defending our professional worth and personal sanity to perfect strangers, and instead feel honoured that people still care enough to ask the big question: “Is the mainstream media dying?”

Which is why it’s great that the relatively new Canadian Centre for Investigative Reporting is getting together a discussion panel to ask that question, as well as the follow-up: “Can investigative reporting save it?” And then, perhaps the biggest question of all: “Should it?”

Bilbo Poynter, the executive director of the centre, admits these questions are more about creating provocation than seeking resolution. And there is no doubt that the CCIR has assembled a distinguished panel of journalists — including the evening’s moderator Gillian Findlay of the premier investigative program The Fifth Estate, John Cruikshank of the Toronto Star, and several other important voices in Canadian journalism.

Still, on first glance, the idea that investigative journalism will save the mainstream media looks like a tough case to make indeed. As investigative reporting budgets are among the first things to go at most newspapers and magazines, muckracking looks more like a gangrenous limb on the sick old man that is mainstream journalism. Investigative journalism is great, most editors agree, but it is also slow, expensive and not always guaranteed to produce racy — or any – results. Hardly a winning combination in the fast-moving, commentary-heavy blogosphere.

Yet when journalist stop quipping long enough to let those awkward cocktail party conversations continue, it becomes clear that what people fear most about losing with the death of journalism looks very much like the work of investigative reporters: protecting the underdog, uncovering corporate malfeasance, and holding democracy to account. Will investigative reporting save journalism? I’ll let the panel convince you of that or not. But the really compelling question is a variation on the CCIR’s third question: Without investigative reporting, does journalism deserve to survive? It is a question without an easy answer. And as any investigative journalist will tell you, those are the best kind.

The panel takes place Wednesday, Aug. 5 at 6:30 p.m. at the NFB Mediatheque. 150 John St, at Richmond, in Toronto. Admission is a donation.

For more information call 905-525-4555 or e-mail canadiancentre@gmail.com

Photo of Frank McCourt, Courtesy of Kent Meireis Photography Blog

I first read Frank McCourt’s Angela’s Ashes when I was 14. My family took a road trip from Saskatchewan to Ontario — 1,800 kilometres, 20 driving hours, and about 40 pounds of gummy bears. Anyone who has travelled across the country in a minivan with too many bodies and too few roadside stops knows the mortal danger this poses to familial love. Mine was no exception.

While discontent stewed in our stuffy van, I instead buried myself in the tribulations of a desperately poor Catholic family living thousands of miles away in Limerick, Ireland. In the McCourts I felt I had found the enviable foil to my cranky, sweaty, all-too-ordinary family. There could be no more dignified love, I believed, than one resilient in the face of poverty. Here were people with none of the things I had — not snack food (or any food at all, most of the time), terrible 90s cassettes, or the minivan that contained them. And yet they held together, and even managed occasional moments of grace. When Frank watches his brother Malachy walk down the street, his broken shoe flopping off his foot, I thought, “That is the purest love I have ever seen.”

“The happy childhood is hardly worth your while,” McCourt wrote, with characteristic wryness. Yet, as I grow older and re-read passages of Angela’s Ashes — one of three books plus a children’s book that he wrote — my sense of the book’s message has changed. Frank McCourt was too shrewd a writer to suggest that terrible, grinding poverty is noble. The moments of grace are the book’s exception, and the many moments of shame and despair, the rule. To be poor does not create dignity; it erodes it.

When the news came that McCourt had died on Sunday afternoon, I felt the shock and sadness that will be shared by many. It reminds us how remarkable it was that he faced the assaults of a difficult life and still boasted not one but several professions. A teacher, a (Pulitzer Prize-winning) writer and a humanitarian. How many of us can truly call ourselves even one of these?

But for me Frank McCourt remains, above all, one of the few people who had the courage to tell the truth about poverty. Poverty is ugly, malignant to the human spirit, and for far too many, inescapable. “Misery lit” critics call his brand of literature, underscoring the awkward balance such memoirists strike in turning bleak truths into fine art. If beautiful books about the poor are written, it is not because poverty is beautiful. It is because poverty must be shaped in a more appealing, even slightly fictionalized mould, or we would never read the depressing truth.

When I heard that McCourt was ill and not expected to survive I mourned both him and the first novel on which he was reportedly working. He was a rare and much-needed voice. I hope we won’t eulogize a remarkable life at the expense of acknowledging that his childhood was not the kind anyone should have to endure. The greatest tribute we can offer Frank McCourt is to ensure he has no successors.

Toronto-based physician Ken Walker—perhaps better known as nationally syndicated medical columnist Dr. Gifford-Jones—points out in a recent article that life’s cards are unfavourably stacked against those with a Y chromosome, and he attributes social conditioning to be a primary culprit.

Males live an average of 5.3 years less than females and are generally more likely to die from diseases. They are also three times more likely to be murdered and four times more likely to commit suicide. Walker attributes these figures to the dismissal of preventative medicine in favour of a John Wayne-swagger of macho immortality, combined with the emotional repression that comes along with such a demanding persona.

Walker does acknowledge the stats that can’t be explained by the “boys will be boys” hypothesis, such as the higher occurrences of infant mortality rates in prematurely born males, as well as the elevated rates of developmental disabilities, autism, and colour blindness. He fails, however, to suggest a possible cause. For that, we turn to the Aamjiwnaang First Nation community near Sarnia, Ontario.

Beginning in 1994, the percentage of male births in the community began to drop dramatically; between 1999 and 2003, males represented only 41.2 percent of births, compared to the roughly 51 percent global standard. Male fetuses are much more frequently, and inexplicably, snuffed out through miscarriages and stillbirths than their female counterparts. The environmental contamination of hormone-mimicking or “endocrine disrupting” chemicals is increasingly believed to be the culprit behind the community’s “disappearing males,” as the reserve sits in a polluted river valley immediately adjacent to several large chemical industrial plants.

Ever since last year’s shelf ban of bisphenol A-laden hard plastic water bottles, endocrine disrupting chemicals with futuristic-sounding monikers have attained an unprecedented level of notoriety. The long-term devastation of persistent organic pollutants (POPs) is an undeniable truth nowadays, with multiple generations of usage beginning to show tangible, measurable effects. Males, it seems, are on the short end of that stick.

Aamjiwnaang girls play ball (photo courtesy of cbc.ca)

Now, a report published in today’s PLoS Genetics reveals that the Y chromosome itself is in danger, stating that: “[The] rapid evolution of the Y chromosome has led to a dramatic loss of genes on the Y chromosome at a rate that, if maintained, eventually could lead to the Y chromosome’s complete disappearance.” While the article assures readers that this occurrence will not necessarily be the end of males, but rather the catalyst for a new pair of sex chromosomes, the news is nonetheless difficult to digest.

The good news? Males, you’ve still got one sturdy X chromosome to rely upon.

And narcissistic it is. A recent CBC documentary addresses those of us born after 1970 (myself very much included) by the not-so-subtle moniker “Generation Me.” The children of the Baby Boomers (more passively, “The Me Generation”), we’ve grown up being told just how special we are from the moment our heads crown from the birth canal. Our notion of self is defined not only by entitlement, but by an immense sense of self-importance brought upon by years of parental conditioning. We each fancy ourselves to be not only unique and special snowflakes, but the best possible unique and special snowflakes, and, while we may not have invented the quarter-life crisis, we have certainly perfected it.

While Facebook’s demographics are rapidly bridging generational boundaries, most of its users still fall within the 18-34 year-old range—Generation Me at full throttle.  As both shameless exhibitionists and hopeless voyeurs (again, myself included), we relish in celebrity culture while simultaneously craving a slice of the fame for ourselves. Which is why, studies suggest, we are completely careless about the kind of personal information we are willing to disclose on our Facebook profiles.

courtesy of http://collegecandy.files.wordpress.com

“Youth are sharing a great deal of information on social networking sites such as Facebook and may not fully realize the consequences of this disclosure,” says Amy Muise, one of two University of Guelph Psychology PhD students recently awarded nearly $50,000 in government research funding. The research in question? Why, disclosure of personal information on Facebook, of course.

The grant, awarded by the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada to Muise and fellow graduate student Emily Christofides, amounts to nearly the maximum allotted amount for the office’s Contributions Program, which is considered among the top privacy research funding programs in the world.

A June 9 University of Guelph press release quotes privacy commissioner Jennifer Stoddart: “I’m proud that our office is able to help encourage relevant and cutting-edge research. I am also glad that we can work with established organizations to spread knowledge about the importance of privacy.”

Whether or not this research is enough to knock some sense into our self-obsessed noggins is anyone’s guess, but this is at least a step in the  right direction toward figuring out how to create boundaries between our lives and the meta-existences we forge online.

Insite provides a vital service for the most marginalized. From Flickr.

But for Insite, this is a reprieve and no salvation. The case the plaintiffs have launched in an effort to save the Vancouver facility is a bold one. They argue Insite’s exemption from anti-drug laws isn’t just a good idea; it’s constitutionally protected by the charter right to life, liberty and security of the person. Shut Insite down, they warn, and drug addicts will die. To make their case, they cite the federal government’s own 2008 report. It found that 87 percent of IV drug users on the downtown east side were infected with Hepatitis C and 17 percent with HIV-AIDS. Nearly 60 percent had had a non-fatal overdose – meaning the next time they might not be so lucky. The government side replies, however, that drug laws are reasonable and necessary given the harmful effects of drug addictions on society overall.

Even if Insite wins the appeal this summer, the Conservatives have vowed to take the case to the Supreme Court. This means months or possibly years of legal purgatory for a place that was supposed to be, of all things, secure. And as the legal battle continues, the Conservative PR machine has already started spinning the line that courts are apolitical bodies with no business interfering in the decisions of popularly elected officials on this controversial issue. Let’s pause for a second and ask, what if they’re right? Ultimately, Insite’s future doesn’t depend on a charter right. It depends on funding. And courts forcing the government to fund services is tricky at best, invasive at worst.

Insite has received widespread admiration from national and international civil rights, medical and law enforcement organizations. It is considered the gold standard in addiction treatment. There has never been a single fatal overdose on Insite’s watch. For a group of drug addicts on Vancouver’s east side, that isn’t an accomplishment. It’s a miracle. Moreover, according to the Conservatives’ own polling, 60 percent of Canadians support safe injection sites. The legal case in favour of keeping Insite open may be close, but the political one shouldn’t be.

As Canadians, we rightly celebrate the role courts have in protecting minorities when no one else wants to. But that shouldn’t stop us from fighting long and hard and loud in the political arena . Whatever the courts decide in the next couple months, let’s hope the public outrage is so resounding that the government has no choice to keep Insite open – if not as a question of justice, as a question of politics.

From Flickr. As the original caption points out, Torontonians will apparently do anything to avoid actually littering.

The phenomenon gets coverage, amongst other places, in this month’s Atlantic. A firm called Positive Energy did a test project in Sacramento in which they sent people power bills with either lots of smiley faces (“you used 58 percent less electricity than your neighbor this month”) … or none (“you used 39 percent more electricity and it cost you $741 more”). This led to a 2 percent reduction in energy usage in the neighborhood, or the equivalent of 700 fewer homes on the grid, according to the Atlantic. That’s a huge reduction for something with few costs and no real drawbacks.

I read the Atlantic article while sitting on the patio of a Starbucks at Bathurst and Bloor on an oppressively hot Toronto evening. Despite the strike, the store had whisked away its trash and worked some of its Starbucks magic to ensure those piles of discarded coffee cups were never seen by its guilt-prone, environment-conscious clientele. In contrast, the public garbage bin outside the store provided stark proof of just how much garbage our city produces. Someone had pried open the taped-up receptacles, but still the bin was full and garbage had spilled onto the street.

Faced with the prospect of littering in front of a patio of onlookers, most people instead shamefacedly tucked their newspapers or water bottles under their arms and kept on walking. Of course, I have no illusions that not throwing that particular piece of garbage into that particular bin made any difference. But I also suspect that the person who carries his trash around for 20 minutes before finding a discreet corner in which to throw it will think twice before buying the next newspaper or water bottle. It’s a rare welcome consequence of the strike that there are no more magical city employees to make our garbage disappear, forcing us to grapple in a very public way with the mess we create.

The problem I have with this new application of social proof theory is the same problem I have with writing blog posts about the environment. It feels a lot like nagging. And no one likes being nagged – especially on an issue like waste production, on which we are all far from perfect. However, at it’s best, the idea is not about creating more shame and self-loathing about the environment, but about turning that shame into something productive. It’s about taking the same competitive instinct that makes us mow our lawns or get our kids haircuts and using it to help our world.

This morning when I realized my garbage can was getting full, I thought, “Ugh, what if the strike drags on and these bags start to pile up in front of my apartment. That will be embarrassing.” And then I thought, maybe I’ll take that extra 10 minutes and bring my mug and use some Tupperware today. Not that I think it will save the world – too grand a goal for a Thursday morning – but it will help save face. It may not have been the noblest thing I’ve done all week, but it just might be the best.

Cohen’s newest movie, Bruno, to be released July 10th, is well ahead of schedule in creating buzz – and of course, controversy. The movie is the third in a very loosely connected series featuring characters from Cohen’s faux-interview show, Da Ali G Show. In previews, Bruno, a gay Austrian model, makes the rounds of Prop. 8 rallies, baby photo shoots, and anti-gay self-defence courses. Almost as notorious as these early glimpses of the movie itself are the outlandish publicity stunts that have accompanied it – including Bruno posing naked on the cover of GQ or landing on Eminem at the MTV Movie Awards clad only in a jock strap.

Some of this is obviously funny, and some of it so shocking you just have to laugh. Either way, Bruno seems poised to be at least the hilarious hit Cohen’s previous film Borat was. It’s been a long winter full of bad news, and I think most of us are ready for a bleached-blonde, Brangelina-mocking fashion model with a little Ron Paul on the side.

I hate to go further than that. Cohen has already captured the title of the fun, cool, bachelor uncle, and which leaves the rest of the media looking like the chic liberal parent who makes everything oh-so-awkwardly serious. Still, Cohen as much as acknowledges this kind of discussion needs to take place by claiming the film uses humour to ignite debate about racism and prejudice in our society, so let me venture this much.

Without having seen the film, it’s safe to say the movie will play on gay stereotypes. It’s also safe to assume it will give a megaphone to homophobes and bigots they would not otherwise have. The movie doesn’t, as Human Rights Campaign so earnestly requested, come with a warning that the it was “designed to expose homophobia.” And though that would be a tad over-the-top, it’s also too neat and easy to say that people will always figure that out for themselves. There are, I’m afraid, plenty of people stupid or bigoted enough to use the movie to confirm instead of condemn their own prejudices.

Of course, on the other hand, Cohen is right that Bruno will draw attention to some troubling aspects of our society, and that it is more damning and likely to get far more widespread attention than “serious” news coverage – which I’m afraid is a something of an indictment of mainstream journalism as well. That’s more than enough motivation for me to escape my muggy, garbage-perfumed city to sit in a dark air-conditioned movie theatre for a couple hours and laugh without thinking too hard. Let’s make sure it’s also sparks some important discussion, on this blog and elsewhere …

Over the years, I’ve seen many creative, intelligent, rebellious teenage girls discouraged for being themselves and breaking the mould, and watched the subsequent damage to their self-esteems—not to mention the havoc wreaked on their academic performance, work, and relationships. I, too, was once trapped on that boat. It’s hard to be different, and we all would have benefited from a strong dose of shamelessness. Better yet, we could have used She’s Shameless.

An offshoot of the self-described, “fiercely independent” Shameless magazine, She’s Shameless is an anthology that boasts an array of autobiographical accounts taken from the lives of female writers, thinkers, and activists who have learned to be unashamed of themselves and the paths their lives have taken. Body image, teen pregnancy, sexual discovery and creative pursuits are all fair game for conversation in these poignantly honest firsthand narrations of PoMo coming-of-age. Among my favourites are Jowita Brydlowska’s jarring “Losing my Virginity,”  and the cartoon advice guide “Things I Wish Someone Had Told Me as a Teenaged Girl,” penned by Zoe Whittall and inked by Suzy Malik; with such helpful teen life suggestions as “If you really hate your high school, leave” (an invocation to find an alternative school, not to drop out) and “Your poetry is probably awful, but keep writing it,” I wish someone had told me these things too.

Editors Stacey May Fowles and Megan Griffith-Greene—the publisher and editor of Shameless magazine, respectively—dedicate this lovingly assembled book “For all the shameless girls who know there’s got to be something more, and to all the shameless women who help them find it.” Clearly, these women have earned their feminist stripes.

(The book launch party for She’s Shameless: Women write about growing up, rocking out, and fighting back , is happening at the Gladstone Hotel Ballroom, 1214 Queen St West, Toronto
Tues June 23; 8pm (doors 7:30pm),$5 or Free with book purchase)