Other Press

  

April 8, 1994

Welcome to the Matriarch Monkey House

(with apologies to
By D.G. Black

Kurt Vonnegut)

“Complete liberty implies freedom from the tyranny of ab-

stractions as well as from the rule of men.”

- George Woodcock, 1944

After reading a recent Globe and
Mail article about a pseudo-feminist
university newspaper, I think the
above quote should also include
freedom from women who feel jus-
tified in cutting off my penis.

Iam referring to a campus news-
paper called Surface at Queen's Uni-
versity in Kingston, Ontario. This
newspaper is presently publishing
what might either be considered
either hyberbole or hate literature.
I'd say hate; what else could you call
a self-proclaimed white lesbian pub-
lication that not only calls for snip-
ping off my favourite and most ver-
satile appendage, but also

---because of my fair-skin and het-
erosexuality--my death? Not so,
many of classmates said at a recent
in-class discussion about the Surface
article. They believe that since we
live in a racist society, a Caucasian-
Canadian such as myself can not cry
racism because I am part of the
dominant culture. I always thought
that the rapacious beast to the south
was the dominant culture. Appar
ently not.
If the Canadian criminal code
does not consider this hate, then

Ernst “goes-to-Auschwitz-and-sees-
only-an-abandoned-summer-
camp” Zundel should be allowed to
continue to spout his version of the
“truth”. I personally believe that in
a truly free and democratic society,
freedom of expression should be
available to everyone; yes, even the
women at Surface who believe they
have justification through political-
correctness to call for the dismem-
berment - and even death - of fair-
skinned hetero males. An individual
or group should be able to say what
they want regardless of whether the
majority agree or disagree with their
views. As well, if you have a well-
prepared and logical argument
(most don’t), then you should be
able to have a forum for your views,
regardless if it is politically-correct
or not. If you are able to present an
opposing viewpoint to any subject,
it makes for a mpre lively and intel-
lectually stimulating life, wouldn’t
you say? Let’s not have the Govern-
ment of Canada decide what we can
and can’t say, or read for that mat-
ter. Censorship creates its own he-
roes. At the moment, the criminal
code limits everyone’s freedom to
voice views that may be unpopular

 

in our society.

One of my classmates raised the
point that we do not live in a racist
society since racism is supposedly
not institutionalized in Canada.That
person also mentioned a very clear
and important fact: some people are
bigots and racists, be they light-
skinned or dark-skinned, and that’s
the way it is. What that person did
not realize was that there are gov-
ernment hiring policies that dis-
criminate against people because of
their sex, skin colour, and even cul-
ture. A recent example was a senior
government job posting in Ontario
where anybody was invited to ap-
ply, except if you were delivered by
nature with the double curse of be-
ing white and male. Let’s not forget
about the Federal Government’s af-
firmative action programme and its
cruasde to right the wrongs of er-
roneous hiring practices; the casu-
alties are fully-qualified caucasian
males that are turned down for gov-
ernment positions and end up work-
ing as phone order-takers at
Purolator Courier. Here’s another
injustice due to the colonized
mindset of the Federal Government:
Guess what percentage of landed

immigrants to Canada were
caucasian last year? 2%. Shame.
Shame.

Let’s define a few terms here just
so we all know what we are dealing
with. According to the Gage Cana-
dian dictionary, the following words
are defined as:

Discrimination - 1. the act of mak-
ing or recognizing differences or
distinctions. 2. the ability to make
fine distinctions. 3. the act of mak-
ing a difference in favour of or
against.

Now, here’s an over-used and often
incorrectly applied verb:

Racism - 1. the exaggeration of in-
herent racial differences. 2. a preju-
dice in favour of certain races. 3. a
political or social policy based on

racism.

Whatever the writers and editors’
intentions are at Surface, they fail
to realize that there is no such thing
as reverse discrimination. There is
only discrimation and racism. And
a compartmentalized, militant ha-
tred that will eat you up.

Now, let’s be realistic and sensible
about this: For those that have not
had their minds colonized by the

forces of the fascistic politically-cor-
rect, I ask: Do you also see sinister
forces at work?Yes, I understand that
as a male, I am considered by some
women to be a potential rapist. As a
white male, I am also considered by
some to be a potential racist towards
visible minorities. Now then, could
Ialso be considered part of the nasty
patriarch and the evil white “elites”
that rule our land? As a person who
considers himself progressive, egali-
tarian, young, attached neither to
any white elitist movements nor to
the top of a power structure - that
allows him to discriminate against
women, men, lesbians, gays, people
of a darker skin colour than his own,
the wheel-chair bound or the ches-
terfield bound for that matter

- I do not feel responsible nor do I
harbour any guilt for any atrocities
that whites have committed in the
past. Specifically, I am a fair-skinned
hetero male and I have nothing to
apologize for. I refuse to be an
apologist and will not kow-tow to
any body.
I say to those that are so full of

hatred at Surface: don’t ... make me
your whipping boy.

Bureaucratic Bullshit, Pretentious Policies and
Asinine Amendments

by Dug Hébert

Hey, did you hear about the elec-
tions for the executive of the Douglas
College Student Society? Do you know
the election results? Well ... neither do I
.. exactly.

Somehow you'd think my atten-
dance at the April 7 emergency meet-
ing would have solved that problem, But
you see, one thing about our Student
Society is that it is ... elected. I don’t
know if you've ever noticed, but a lot
of the time elected officials have to avoid
saying too much; sometimes they actu-
ally do make a lot of noise, but really
they say nothing at all. Let’s face it. Ba-
sically, all politicians are pompous hair-
shirted soothsayers.

Their reluctance to express real
thoughts arises out of fear of creating
negative public opinion. They have to
be extra careful while people are vot-
ing. As you might have noticed if you
have been around the cafeteria in the
last little while, Douglas College has
been having an election. The results of
this election will be felt starting Sep-
tember 1* of this year when the newly
elected pompous hair-shirted soothsay-
ers will take over from the recently van-
quished pompous hair-shirted soothsay-
ers: f

Anyway, back to the emergency
meeting. It ran about two hours. On the
agenda were three items. (Remember
that. Three.) The first Agenda item was
a motion to give the outgoing elected
body (in layman's terms, the sore los-
ers) the power to reverse the decisions
of the Chief Returning Officer. (CROw).
The CROw, in oversimplified terms, is
responible for ensuring that DCSS elec-
tions are fair and democratic.

This power grab was explained as be-
ing necessary because by-laws were bro-
ken. When a non-elected student who

was present at the meeting brought for-
ward the question of which by-law was
actually broken, it was treated with the
dive-and-avoid tactic familiar to a po-
litical debate on CBC.

From indirect sources it seems that
the bone of contention might have been
that a candidate failed to remove their
campaign posters from the college by
the CROw specified time.

A painful bone chard might be that
other candidates also had some mate-
rial up , but managed to take down at
least 95% of their posters. The disquali-
fied candidate asked a DC staff member
to take down their posters (breaking yet
another by-law) because they just didn’t
have the time to come down to the col-
lege.

Of course none of this was ad-
dressed directly at the meeting. It had
to be coaxed out of members attending
the meeting in the hallway, where offi-
cial records were not being made.

Within the realm of officialdom,
the meetings concentrated essentially
upon bureaucratic bullshit, pretentious
policies and asinine amendments. Two
common oxymorons that were flapped
around were “Point of Information”,
meaning I wanna ask somethin’, and “In
Camera”, meaning we wanna be alone
and we won't tell you what we are
gonna talk about.

(Is there a hidden camera? I didn’t
see one. Are they making blue movies?)
If they want to be alone why don’t they
just go to someone's house? There's
probably more interesting furniture/
appliances, as well.

The still elected representatives re-
main in power until the unofficial re-
sults of the election are accepted as offi-
cial (72 hrs after final election results
are tallied) and the Fall semester rolls

around, before the recent election be-
comes worth a hill of beans. That'll
probably be all its worth too; all the stu-
dents who won’t be coming back and
all the new students who will be join-
ing those of us left in September will
be completely neglected in their schools
democratic process.

Not only will the election be stale
by the time it is enacted, but it won't
even be statistically valid. In a school of
approximately 8,000, the gross vote
count probably ran somewhere around
200. You people are FUCKING APA-
THETIC!

The Other Press has a distribution
of 5000 copies. Do you know what that
means? There are 4800 people reading
this who didn’t vote. (Yeah right, ev-
erybody left the minute I screamed pro-
fanity) No wonder there’s no rush to
perform the changing of the hair-shirt.
Nobody seems to care anyway. Maybe it
doesn’t really matter to you who repre-
sents you to the administration.

Maybe next time I'll enter my dog’s
name on the ballot and ask for a smiley
face drawing so you can’t see that you're
voting for a non-human lifeform and
laugh really hard when he has the power
to appropriate you Student Society fees
to pay for a truckload of Milk-Bone and
squeaky toys.

He can lounge around the College
interrupted occasionally to bark at stu-
dents who want to appeal grades, or ask
for extensions in fee payments, or heck,
even complain about sexual harassment.
Would you feel comfortable talking
about your sex life with a dog?

{Wondering about the 2"4 and 3"
items on the agenda? Sorry, we ran out
of time.}