Hillary Clinton is Still My Hero


As much as it’s possible for me to have heroes, I still consider Hillary to be one.

Not only a hero, but a feminist one. And if you knew me at all, you’d know that I cringe a lot at the thought of openly declaring for a personal feminist icon.

Feminism is such a charged term. I’ve been on the pro and con side of the use of it over the course of my adult live, but in recent years, I’ve decided that it’s the best term to describe my feelings on equality.

In my opinion, if  a person believes that men and women are equals in the eyes of the law – civil and human rights – that person is a feminist. Whether they call themselves a feminist or not is up to them, but that’s how I view them.

Back in 2008, I supported Clinton in the Democratic primary race over Obama.

Not because she was a woman.

It is my believe that when all things are equal, people who support feminism should support women in political races because that’s the road to parity in terms of legislative representation, which is crucial in moving females forward on all fronts rights. And equality is a good thing for everyone.

However, I supported her because I thought she was the most qualified and that he wasn’t quite yet. Nothing has happened over the past eight years to convince me that I was terribly wrong in my assessment at the time.

As the 2008 race heated up, I remember telling my husband that the primary was shaping up to be a sexism versus racism contest. Were Americans more racist or more sexist. I felt that latter and though disappointed that I was correct, I wasn’t surprised.

Like many Hillary supporters, I felt she sold out at the convention, but the reality was always that she was being a good politician. She saw the writing on the wall, took one for the team and was rewarded with Secretary of State.

That’s how politics works.

And while how politics works makes me roll my eyes hard – because it’s a game invented by men that doesn’t work as well as it should or could, and we all suffer for the pig-headed, power-hungry idiocy of it all – I admire the way that Clinton has learned the game and bests her male colleagues at it more often than not.

It is not easy to succeed in a world that still mostly belongs to men and operates according to the rules of privilege that have changed little over the millennia.

It takes brains, determination and a whole lot of what is commonly referred to as “the right stuff” to ascend the ladder in a profession that not only has little use for women but is inherently hostile to them.

Hillary Clinton has done what few women have done, and she’s arrived not once but twice at the doors to the pinnacle of American politics – vying with not just some success for a nomination to run for President.

At this point, I can hear the anguished cries of Millennials and Gen-Xers exhorting me to look at her “lies, shifty ways and innumerable crimes against (insert name of your favorite horror here)”.

And it’s at this point, I sigh heavily.

I don’t have heroes. Not in the pristine sense of the word. Even when calling Hillary one of my heroes, I am not using the word the way others do.

I don’t expect perfection. I don’t even believe that it’s possible.

I am especially skeptical that anyone could reach the upper echelons of political power could be anything other than a flawed and compromised human being because to be a good elected representative of people anywhere means have made tougher calls than most could fathom even contemplating.

I don’t admire Hillary Clinton because she hasn’t made mistakes. Really bad ones sometimes even. I admire her because she hasn’t quit.

Even with a past that arguably isn’t always stellar, she still appears to believe that the system can be used for good. That it’s possible to achieve change even though it’s more evident than ever that change isn’t always great and that great change is often achieved at a heart-wrenchingly slow pace and is not universally wished for or welcome.

She believes in team, equality and the hard work both take.

When I look at Hillary Clinton, I see someone who has spent her life evolving. It doesn’t seem that she ever arrived anywhere and said, “Well, I’m here, it’s all good, and I’m done.”

She pays attention, sees when tides are turning and isn’t afraid to follow them if needs be. Even in the face of derisive scolds and harsh personal attacks. And frankly, it’s her ability to adapt and change that strikes me as being the most realistic approach to life because life isn’t set in stone. Shit happens. You roll with it or you get buried under a stinking mess.

I understand Democrats and Independents who see Clinton as part of a problem that plagues American politics these days. I get that she’s not change the way they’d like it to be.

I wouldn’t argue that she understands the system and knows how to work it. But in that sense, she’s no different than Bernie Sanders, whose been a politician much longer than she has and is just as adept.

But I see Hillary Clinton as a smart, shrewd, strong woman who’s succeeded in ways no other woman has before. She’s followed trails blazed by others and pushed those boundaries farther than any woman has before. How is that not change? She could be the President of the United States of America. A capable woman leading the most powerful nation in the world.  How can that not make a difference?

When I listen to all the reasons that people won’t support her. Won’t vote for her. All I hear are excuses, rationalizing away a leap forward for women – for the world really – that simply don’t add up to more than material self-interest or a lack of life experience or both.

Because, in my opinion, real change is something that shakes the pillars of a foundation and rattles the teeth of those inside.

At the end of the primary, if Clinton is the nominee, she will be reaching out and building consensus. Count on that. If not she will be the team player backing Sanders, the same way she backed Obama – something that can be counted on too should it play out that way – mark my words. Which is just about sums up why she’s achieved the success she has. She understands that sometimes you lead and sometimes you give support. That real change is a group effort.

If Your Religion Requires You to be a Dick, You Need a New Hobby


Last spring our provincial government passed legislation designed to protect LGBTQ kids in our schools. It wasn’t perfect legislation, but it was necessary and long overdue.

Not long after this party that had held the right to form government in Alberta, the Progressive Conservatives, lost an election in a surprise upset to the New Democrats, so it fell to the new government to make sure that this legislation was implemented.

The implementation process has – for the most part – been adopted by school districts with a minimum of fuss, but a few Catholic school boards, and a wildly trans-phobic parents’ group, have been kicking up a hysteria driven drama-fest by asserting that implementing perfectly reasonable human rights protections will lead to Sodom and Gomorrah in school washrooms and gym locker rooms all over the province.

Part of the fear driving the misinformation campaign that has stalled at least 3 school boards in the act of just doing their damn jobs, is the strange notion that trans kids “come out” in the same manner that gay kids do.

I will cop to having not been terribly knowledgeable on the subject myself previously, but a bit of research and some serious paying attention fixed that up quick.

Basically, it gets down the confusion (sometimes I think it’s deliberate of some people’s part) of gender and sexuality.

It’s 2016. We should all know that our gender is not determined necessarily by our DNA and that our sexuality is not determined by our biology – strictly speaking.

Trans kids understanding of their gender occurs the same way it does with cis kids, and they, quite naturally, would like their gender identity acknowledged in the least hysterical manner possible, so adults should be working diligently to make sure that this happens all the time. Not just when it’s easy to do or when everyone’s archaic points of view on the subject line up with the idea that everyone has basic rights all the time.

And one of those rights is to be allowed to use the proper washroom (though I will have to admit to believing that gender designated washrooms are way past their ‘best by” date but that’s a post for another day).

The straw person the anti-trans rights people are very fond of is that teenage boys and men will dress up as females to access washrooms for nefarious purposes.

It’s hard not to laugh, but it’s also hard not to see where they’d get such a trope of an idea given how often such a ruse is used in movies and television as a way for men to infiltrate the world of women.

But we should remember, it’s just a trope.

We should also ask ourselves just how often we’ve personally gender-checked everyone in a public washroom or change area before using it ourselves.

I would hazard the answer is – never.

The reality is that we’ve all been wandering about the world, minding our own businesses forever while LGBTQ have been doing precisely the same thing.

Just like trans kids have likely been using school washrooms too.

Some with more safety and success than others and that’s precisely the point of the implementation of Bill 10. Safety and success for trans kids in our school systems.

It boggles my mind that any adult would argue against making sure that children can go to school, use the washroom and change their clothes for P.E. and sports without being harassed or harmed.

Anti-safe washroom folks make some fairly wild claims about cis kids being harmed by their peers being allowed to use washrooms and locker rooms. Claims that frankly don’t add up given the fact that our kids are not squatting over open pits and have private stalls to change in locker rooms.

Factor in the reality that gender has nothing to do with sexuality, it’s hard to give much credence to the over-wrought fears of the anti-trans crowd.

But it’s easy to see this same religiously fueled discrimination agenda being extended to lesbian, gay, and bi kids if the nonsense sexuality meme is allowed to take hold.

I understand parents being fearful. It’s difficult when you realize that not only is your child an autonomous being but a sexual one too. And when both things scare you to your core, it’s a terrible day when you are faced with the fact that not only are both those things true, but in addition, your child has a life outside your home that you know very little about and have very little input into or control over.

The answer, which is obvious to most of us but not all, is to make sure that your child understands that they can come to you for anything and with anything. It’s establishing a relationship of open communication and trust so that you do know what’s going on at school, who your child’s friends are and what they are learning. And it’s remembering that your child’s world view and values really do start with you and school doesn’t change that.

What isn’t the answer is also very clear. Trying to control your child by imposing blanket control over other people’s children.

Human rights are human rights. We all live in the world together, and we venture out into the world first through school. We should not want our schools teaching that discrimination, harassment and exclusion are okay things in any instance at all.

There is nothing sexual about using the washroom when you need to go. Neither is changing in and out of your gym clothes. We shouldn’t be teaching our kids to be fearful of washrooms and change rooms. We shouldn’t be promoting the idea that either are unsafe places.

We should be making sure that all our kids feel safe and comfortable being themselves.

While adults are avoiding the necessary adulting that needs to happen with Bill 10 implementation, perhaps it would be a good time to step back and think about the effect this is having on our kids. What message is really being sent? I don’t think the anti crowd is sending the message they think they are and that’s a problem.

Human rights are human rights. That’s the line in the sand. If your religion is telling you otherwise, you have some serious soul-searching to do.

Good Friday’s Death March


I joke about death marches. These days they are mainly the slogs between one school holiday break and the next. Just the wastelands of early rising and chauffeuring the youngest from one place she has to be to another place she wants to be.

But the first real death marches I participated in took place during the Lenten seasons of my youth when I was finally deemed old enough to participate in the Stations of the Cross.

In every Catholic Church I have ever been in, the journey Christ made to his crucifixion is depicted in pictures or sculpture along the outer walls of the church. There are 12, and Lent is the only time I can recall that they are referenced as anything other than decor.

As a little kid, I found them quite fascinating. Aside from the fact that they were a lovely distraction from the deadly dull mass, they also appeared to tell a complete story, which was in contrast to the painted scenes of angels and saints that adorned the ceilings.

I rather likde biblical stories when I was young. I had a children’s bible that I read from cover to cover, so I had a vague idea of the story on the church walls and was certain that whatever ceremony that went along with them had to be better than rest of Easter, which was dreary and dreadful by turns.

I knew Holy Week by heart and loathed every minute of it from the longest mass of the year on Palm Sunday, which even the crisp green palm fronds couldn’t make better, to through to the blessed relief of Easter Sunday, marking the return of 30 minute services.

Yes. 30 minutes. The pastor and associate of my childhood parish were old school and could rattle off a mass that you could set your watch by. And they were slow. I had an great-uncle who could say a mass in 20 minutes. My dad also thought it had something to do with Father John having been in North Africa during WWII. I’ve always suspected it was because the old goat was too lazy to write a sermon longer than a paragraph.

When I was in grades one and two, Lent was not the arduous, guilt and penance-fest that it would become. I think the sisters may have even indulged the bunny aspect of it a bit. So there were no stations of the cross for us though we were made to sit through the numerous all school masses, and in grade two, when we were instructed in confession and prepped for our first communions, I vaguely recall sitting in the pews as Father Schmidt explained the stations to us. I was sure walking them had to be more interesting.

Imagine my disappointment then when in grade three, I was introduced to the mystery of a ritualized tale that would torture the rest of my school days for 40 days every spring.

Sr. Theresa, a wizened little thing with fingernails like talons, spent a week getting us ready for our first trip around the outer ring of the pews following Jesus’s death march.

We learned each station – I was and still am fond of Veronica wiping Jesus’s face because I like to imagine a brave girl defying the Roman guards to do it – and we created a little prayer-book with a page for each station. We wrote our own prayers and drew lovely pictures of torture and death to go along with them.

I have to admit that I was quite excited the first time.

The excitement was over by the fourth station and the realization that this was an awful lot of standing, praying and then walking tiny distances to stand some more and pray some more.

And we did this every week of Lent.

The next Lent, Sister Annette had us trudging those same steps every damn day and for extra measure, she made our pastor lead us around as a disgruntled, fidgety group at least twice (though in my memory it seems like it happened more often than that). I know she forced him too because Father Powers loathed us children. He never willingly stepped foot in the school, and I have vivid memories of him nearly choking us with those damned candles on whatever the hell saints day when they would bless our necks for some inexplicable reason.

Once I was deemed old enough to endure the stations, my father decided that I should attend Good Friday stations.

When I was small, my mother never took us to the Good Friday service and I don’t blame her. Four children with barely five years separating the oldest – me – from the youngest, no one should have to do that. Dad was seldom off work but when he did manage it – we went to the stations – and I was grateful that this didn’t occur too many years in a row. Because it literally took the better part of an entire afternoon. I am pretty sure Jesus dragged that cross faster than the stations took.

As it was,even when we escaped Good Friday, we’d already been to mass on Thursday evening – where we were forced again to read the Passion that we’d just read the Sunday before.

And good god, I hate the fucking Passion.

All the good speaking parts went to the priests and lectors with the rest of us left with voicing the idiot mobs screaming “Crucify him!” and “We want Barabas!”

By the time I hit junior high, I’d had enough, and I refused to do anything but stand and kneel.

My father was not understanding when I explained to him that I would not have yelled either of those things, had I been there, but he couldn’t make me read aloud with the crowd, so he settled for making sure I was following along (generally, I read ahead).

Good Friday, in addition to the stations if I was unlucky, also meant that for sure Dad would decide to do all five of the sorrowful mysteries when we said the nightly rosary.

Saturday was some half-mass and a holy water ritual that even today I am uncertain of the origins or point, and sometimes, there would be grown-ups, who for reasons that baffled me, were hell-bent on converting to Catholicism, which meant a longer service for the rest of us.

Sunday – there was the Easter Bunny – before a mercifully short Passion-free mass and followed by donuts.

Donuts continue to be my favorite Sunday memory of childhood.

Earlier this week, I noted on Twitter that Easter was my least favorite Catholic holiday. Unlike the Protestants (and admittedly I knew but a handful in my youth), Catholics – at least where I grew up – didn’t kick off Lent with pancakes. It was an ashes, guilt and penance-fest. With meatless Fridays, fasting and watchful adults to make sure that you gave something up for the duration.

Lent was a joyless death march where at some point, you would recreate an actual death march.

Easter is the most important holiday of the Catholic calendar. Literally the foundation of the church. And more than anything else, it set me on my path to rejecting the whole implausible thing.

Someone noted that Easter has improved since the dark old days of my youth in yore.

I can’t imagine how, but I will take them at their word and remember what a good friend always reminds me, Easter is just a zombie story, celebrated with pancakes and chocolate eggs and immortalized by a rock opera.