I’m tired of this sad trend—the one in which it isn’t inherently oppressive social institutions being questioned, but the victims of them. Victim blaming is a lot easier than changing things. Attempts at discrediting feminism are made because admitting that gendered oppression exists would be an admission that things need to change. Attacks on feminism are a large-scale version of victim blaming: the oppressed are blamed and everything is done to justify the oppressor’s actions.

There’s this socially constructed illusion of choice that everyone can succeed, monetarily and in earned respect, if they just work hard enough. However, as we know, that equality will never exist without equity; this pull your life up by the bootstraps mentality does no one any good. Rachel Fudge writes about this in her essay “Girl, Unconstructed” published in Bitch magazine’s 2006 collection Bitchfest. Fudge is critical of the Girl Power movement in contrast to the Riot Grrrl movement, zeroing in on the confusion between equality and equity: “[Girl Power] turns the struggle inward, depoliticizes and decontextualizes the cultural messages about gender and behaviour … If, as Ann Powers wrote so hopefully nearly a decade ago, girls are seen as ‘free agents,’ they have only themselves to blame for their failures.”

The all-about-personal-choices rational excuses crimes such as rape and forcing individuals to live in poverty. If you don’t want to get raped, don’t dress like a slut. If you don’t want to be attacked, carry a weapon and don’t walk outside after dark. Don’t have a baby if you want to succeed in your career. This messaging tells us there rules are to be followed—forget changes in accepted behaviour amongst genders and middle to upper class nepotism within the workplace. The rules women are expected to follow are especially highlighted by mainstream media, school dress codes, court rooms—and almost everybody—when it comes to sexual violence.

“Victim blaming is not just about avoiding culpability—it’s also about avoiding vulnerability,” Dr. Juliana Breines writes in a 2013 article for Psychology Today entitled ‘Why Do We Blame Victims?’ “The more innocent a victim, the more threatening they are. Victims threaten our sense that the world is a safe and moral place, where good things happen to good people and bad things happen to bad people.”

Bad girls are the ones that don’t follow the rules. They may have sex, be working class, be queer, have an addiction, live with mental-based illness and/or be a person of colour. In Canada, notably, the dehumanization of Aboriginal women also persists. A recent example being the case of Cindy Gladue, a sex worker who was brutally murdered, and whose alleged murderer was initially found not guilty until a recent appeal. Stephen Harper has said that Canada’s missing and murdered Aboriginal women is not an epidemic and not on the Conservative’s radar. Aboriginal women are dehumanized the same way other racialized women are when it comes to sexual violence. Black women must live with the hypersexualized Jezebel stereotype used to justify sexual violence because—so the horribly misogynistic and racist theory goes—being women of colour, they are inheritably hypersexual and animalistic. You’d be forgiven for thinking the only time powerful white folks seem to care about women of colour who are victims of sexual violence is when is when the crime is committed outside of western society.

This month, for instance, a horrific story has been making headlines. A 10-year-old girl living in Paraguay, who was raped and impregnated by her stepfather, is being denied her right to an abortion. This is undeniably a huge injustice. Nothing like that would happen in North America. Like, in 1988 when Stephen Friend, a representative in the Pennsylvania General Assembly, said it is almost impossible for a woman to become pregnant through rape, because her body will “secrete a certain secretion, which has a tendency to kill sperm.” OK, that was 27 years ago. But only three years ago Republican Todd Akin said that from what he understands from doctors, “If it is legitimate (emphasis mine) rape, the female body has ways to try to shut the whole thing down.”

Akin apologized for his comments, but then retracted his apology in his 2014 paranoid titled book Firing Back: Taking on the Party Bosses and Media Elite to Protect Our Faith and Freedom. Here in Canada, during the same year as Akin’s comments, Rob Ford’s niece, Krista Ford reiterated the rules for women in a tweet: “Stay alert, walk tall, carry mace, take self-defence classes & don’t dress like a whore. #DontBeAVictim #StreetSmart.” Her famous uncle is no better.

But even though media headlines and interviews with neighbours glorify the good girl—the straight-A, virginal, young, white girl—the courtroom does not award the same spot on the pedestal. Alice Sebold, author of Lucky and The Lovely Bones, was raped in 1981 and has fought inside and outside of the courtroom to prove this. In a 1989 piece for The New York Times, she writes about how not only did the justice system fail her but even her own father could not figure out how she was raped if she did not want to have sex: “When I was raped I lost my virginity and almost lost my life. I also discarded certain assumptions I had held about how the world worked and how safe I was.” As we see with Gladue’s case, 26 years later, not much has improved. In her book Men Explain Things To Me Rebecca Solnit writes, “Credibility is a basic survival tool.” How does a victim gain credibility when they live in a world that denies bad things happen to those that don’t deserve it?

“When bad things happen to good people, it implies that no one is safe,” Breines writes. “That no matter how good we are, we too could be vulnerable. The idea that misfortune can be random, striking anyone at any time, is a terrifying thought, and yet we are faced every day with evidence that it may be true.”

A former This intern, Hillary Di Menna is in her first year of the gender and women’s studies program at York University. She also maintains an online feminist resource directory, FIRE- Feminist Internet Resource Exchange.

Ford arrived to the Toronto Region Board of Trade dinner on Monday, only to discover that his name was not in fact on the list, despite receiving an invitation for it last November. According to Scott Brownrigg, the director of public affairs for the Board of Trade, the invitation had been sent by mistake, and he had called Ford in December saying so.

Regardless Ford managed to bluff his way into the dinner, but didn’t stay long; half an hour later he was seen leaving the premises. Clearly something didn’t agree with him, be it the food, or perhaps the scathing speech made by the Board of Trade chairman Carol Wilding.

“We were, and remain, preoccupied with the question of leadership within the Region.”

This recent embarrassment comes on the tail end of a number of other incidents, all of which have landed Ford under media scrutiny, including: a video of him drunk and performing a Jamaican accent, a delayed speech after being stuck in an elevator for 45 minutes, and most interestingly of all, a promise of $50 million  in “efficiencies” in the way the city is run.

The promise was made last week by the mayor, wearing a Denver Bronco Jersey, but he refused to divulge any details as to how or where this money was going to appear from. After the crack scandal last year, Ford was stripped of many of his powers as a mayor, a move that he described in the same speech as a betrayal, and that he no longer trusts his colleagues.

“How can I trust these people when they stabbed me in the back? No I’m sorry. Once bitten twice shy, and I’ve been bitten pretty hard.”

Instead he told reporters that “we would see the money Wednesday,” in reference to today’s city council meeting. But many remain skeptical about the proposed money savings. Councillor Josh Matlow told the Star that he believed Ford’s promise was just the mayor playing politics, and is promising ideas he know won’t pass.

“If the mayor actually wants to garner support for any of his motions, I think an earnest person who really wants to see a motion passed would speak with their colleagues and try to convince them… To simply spring a $50 million budget cut on council without any opportunity to understand what the repercussions of those actions might be, how services would be impacted, it just doesn’t seem like a sincere move on his part,”

It also begs the question of where this money might be coming from, as in the city council meeting today a number of social services are under threat of severe budget cuts. One such service is in particular trouble. The Housing Stabilization Fund has a proposed budget cut of $4.3 million and, if it passed, could seriously affect the homeless in Toronto.

The Housing Stabilization Fund (HSF) focuses on preventing homelessness and offering emergency aid to those who are on the streets. By cutting its budget further, the city is putting those who are most vulnerable at even more risk—as shown by the recent death of Richard Ian Kenyon, who died on the streets of Toronto in ice storm in December.

Whatever Rob Ford’s next move is, it’s clearly something that will be under a lot of scrutiny.

But while all of the other politicians played the game they’ve been groomed to play Ford stumbles on, making, at every turn, the wrong decision on how to proceed. Pundits and observers will ask themselves, what is he thinking? Why doesn’t he resign or at the very least take a leave of absence to deal with his issues? Doesn’t he understand the damage he is doing to his career? They are trying to apply their rational decision making skills to someone who seems very irrational.

Yesterday, standing at the podium, in his colourful NFL logo tie, Ford did not appear to be the mayor of the third largest city in North America. He seemed more like a scared little boy, painfully unaware of the damage he has done this city, willing now, to apologize — multiple times as if each additional sorry will go further in white-washing his mistakes.

As Hillary DiMenna summed it up here on Monday, smoking crack is actually not what makes him a bad mayor. It’s like tenth on the list probably, after homophobia, racist tendencies, lack of vision, lack of leadership, inability to understand mayoral powers, ignorance, unwillingness to compromise, and alleged spousal abuse—after all that, there’s smoking crack in a drunken stupor. Or as Bob Rae put it in a tweet yesterday:

It’s not the substance abuse, it’s the people abuse, it’s the lying, the bullying, the wasting of time, resources, because of a cover-up

— Bob Rae (@BobRae48) November 5, 2013

And while his attempts to turn this progressive city into some dystopic populist backwater have failed, he has moved the needle towards that end under the guise of saving taxpayers dollars and fighting for the little guy. This is really scary. This proves what can be done when a willfully uninformed population gives a man the responsibility to lead Canada’s largest city.

All of his political fallacies have been unearthed and discredited, most of his lies have come to light, but the only ones we seem to care about involve his personal life. Which is curious given who this man is. If you’ve followed his career even peripherally you would know Ford doesn’t exactly have a clean past. This was not Mother Theresa getting caught smoking crack on video, an event that would more properly require our rapt attention and moral hand wringing. This was a man whose repeatedly showed he lacks any sort of self control.

Still, the salaciousness of this story is undeniable. Nobody (in this office at least) got any work done yesterday, huddled around a live stream of reporters hearded into a corner nervously anticipating a “big announcement”. And I can’t help but feel that was Rob Ford’s ultimate fuck you to us all. I’m going to make you wait around all day, believing that I’ll finally bring some tact and dignity to this side show. I’m going to step to the podium with contrition written all over me. The entire world will be watching. And then I’m going to show everyone what this city has elected. I’m going to show the world who Toronto felt was best to publicly lead this city. An uncouth, parochial, bigot who will not step down and will continue to parrot the embarrassingly small town lines that got him elected. A man unable to grasp the gravity of this moment. That is what Toronto is to the world now.

First up: when he questioned whether a video about homosexuality should receive city grant money: “I have no problem giving money out to physically or mentally handicapped children or seniors, but spending $5,000 on this video is disgusting, it is absolutely disgusting to spend this amount of money on this, whatever it was called, video.”

Then, in 2006 at a Leafs game he asked a man if he wanted his “little wife” to be raped and shot in Iran.  The year before, he spoke out at a council meeting while discussing grants for transgender individuals: “I don’t understand. No. 1, I don’t understand a transgender, I don’t understand, is it a guy dressed up like a girl or a girl dressed up like a guy? And we’re funding this for, I don’t know, what does it say here? We’re giving them $3,210?”

Since 2008 calls have been made to the police by Ford’s wife, Renata, as well as her mother, reporting the mayor’s alleged abuse. (The charges were later dropped.)

He’s called fellow female politicians a waste of skin and allegedly groped mayoral race rival Sarah  Thompson.

Oh, and, he’s also said many things like this: “If you’re not doing needles and you’re not gay, you won’t get AIDS, probably.”

Drug addiction and alcoholism—for anybody—is an illness; sexism, homophobia and abuse are not. If we’re going to scrutinize Ford, let’s take the time to examine his entire terrible track record. Certainly, we’d like an apology for his sense of entitlement, which seems to make him believe it is OK to tell women to get raped or deny opportunities to others according to their sexual orientation.

Hillary Di Menna is a former This Magazine intern. Check out her new blog Gender Block every Monday at this.org