Concerned by book burying

This letter appeared in the Aug. 27, 2003, edition of the Daily Gleaner in Fredericton.

Dear Editor:

True Canadian history should be taught to our children. I hope someone in the teaching profession will respond to this letter.

When I asked my granddaughter if she was taking history lessons, she said yes. I asked her, “What history was being taught?” She said “Les Voyageurs.”

It is my belief that the minister of education should refrain from imposing through the school system any false rewritten history to our English children. New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island and Nova Scotia are blanketed in past British history. It was the British, not the French, who originally settled here. This history cannot be truthfully changed.

It was the Hudson Bay and St.Lawrence River area the French settled in. The fact remains, I am concerned about the destruction of our British history concerning Canada, and especially the Maritimes.

A heavy equipment operator was to demolish a building in Weymouth, N.S. He was told there was a pile of books in there which was to be put in the dump along with the building. He checked out the type of books, and he picked out a beautiful book on the history of the Seven Year War in Canada, 1756-1763.

He loaned that book to me and I read it. It is worth its weight in gold. Why was this book being destroyed? How many more books of this type are being destroyed for sinister reasons?

The letter was signed: Melvin A. Smith, Fredericton

I am the last person to agree with burying, burning or otherwise wilfully destroy books. If what Mr. Smith relates is truly what is in those books slated for burial, then perhaps they should have been buried.

However, I think Mr. Smith may actually have always believed the British came before the Acadians, and those books slated for burial happened to confirm what he always believed. Yet, anyone who has taken the time to read about Maritime history, especially the more recent and objective books, must clearly realise that the French settled the Maritimes as surely as they settled the St. Lawrence.

The British clearly settled the Maritimes as well, but only after the Acadians had been forcibly removed from their lands. Indeed, propaganda at the time had many British colonists believing that the Acadians lucked out in finding present-day Nova Scotia as they didn’t have to work all that much to earn their living from incredibly fertile ground. The Acadians were “indolent,” they would say.

The colonists who “replaced” the Acadians soon came to realise that the Acadians were far from indolent. One of the Acadian agricultural strategies, reclaiming marsh land from the sea and rivers, required building and maintaining dykes called aboiteaux. The silt left there before the aboiteaux and during extreme flooding is what made the land so rich. When the aboiteau started to break down, the new colonists from New England had no idea how to fix them and would call upon authorities in Halifax to send some Acadian prisoners to have them make repairs.

Thus continued their love-hate relationship with the Acadians, whom the English settlers wound up needing more than they cared to admit.

In the Name of Freedom

Doctor: How did you suppress the natural sexual drive? Drugs? Punitive laws?

Prime Minister: In the beginning, a little bit of each. Now, after 300 years, the entire concept of sexual reproduction is a little repugnant to us.

From the episode “Up The Long Ladder,” Star Trek, The Next Generation.

One of our dearest friends has recently found religion. Mormonism, to be more exact. While still fairly favourable to the concept of evolution, she has found a way to integrate Adam and Eve into her cosmology and had also found greater spiritual insight ever since she stopped touching herself “down there.”

My main reason for advocating for greater sexual freedom is, in part, driven by my upbringing. As I grew up under the watchful eye of my mother, I came to see the many problems caused by secrecy and shame when sex and religion get mixed. My mother was a reserved catholic whose religious knowledge sometimes came into conflict with her medical training as a nurse. I’m not sure she ever resolved the conflicts. She just sort of swept them under the rug.

So when I was starting to come of age, so to speak, she would often try to have me go see one of my uncles for “the talk,” since I had no father to fill that role. She was especially pleased when one my aunts married a doctor. Surely he could guide me well. I don’t think she ever understood that I would have preferred hearing it from her, even if it meant searching through her medical textbooks to complete those parts with which she had most difficulty. In the end, all I really had were the books.

I’m sure that weighed heavily on my mind my wife and I decided to try to have as much openness at home as possible for the sake of our children. We didn’t bother wrapping towels around ourselves when we left the shower. I certainly didn’t wear much of anything most of the time, and my wife, who was more sensitive to cold, would do the same when it was exceptionally hot. This was not sex education per se, but it did lead to interesting discussions which included aspects of sexuality. And the Look Who’s Talking movies didn’t hurt either.

One of the things we learned along the way was how so many people, but especially women, were cheated out of such things by churches which took stands against even the innocent practice of masturbating. For a long time, myths concerning masturbation (it will make you blind, crazy, or stupid; you’ll lose your “healthiest blood” that way, you will damage your sex organs, etc.) have been circulated, and even promoted, to instil shame and maintain control over flocks. Yet, we know that masturbation is useful for better understanding our bodies and how they react their bodies. Furthermore, Planned Parenthood tells us that masturbation helps people relax and relieve stress and physical tension. Orgasms can often be a natural painkiller, which is why many women masturbate to relieve menstrual cramps. In men, frequent ejaculation may lower a man’s risk of developing prostate cancer. So if there’s no partner around, masturbation is the next best thing.

Here’s the big thing for me, though: Most men wind up masturbating one way or another. Is it in our genes? Is it because men somehow allow themselves a little more latitude? I don’t know. But it’s often been said that 90 per cent of men masturbate and the rest lie about it. Women, as a group, don’t masturbate nearly as much, or at least they don’t readily admit to having done so. And I can’t see religious admonitions against masturbation as having helped in this regard.

From what I’ve been able to learn from our newly religious friend, her religion also forbids, or at least discourages masturbation, and she has accepted its teaching on this subject without question. She adds that by avoiding thoughts of sexuality, she has experienced spiritual growth in other areas. I won’t contest her experience. I cannot feel what she feels.

But while refraining from “touching one’s self” is at least as legitimate as doing the opposite, I cannot say the same for encouraging others to do so. And here comes the gist of the problem. When she has daughters of her own, will she deny them the chance to discover for themselves how their bodies work? Will she expect them to deny their sexual natures until marriage? All in the name of spiritual perfection?

One of the obstacles to full freedom for women has been other women eager to crush those who would work for progress in the name of a deity, a religious leader, or just to keep up appearances. I sincerely hope our friend does not become one of those.

The Weighty Issue

For a long time I have been looking for a way to describe the difficulties of losing weight to people who have no trouble at all keeping a healthy waistline. I think I may finally have a found an analogy that works. Please bear with me.

It was long thought that children had a natural talent for learning languages fluently and effortlessly. This skill was somehow turned off in adolescence and early adulthood, leaving most adult people feeling hopeless about ever mastering a second or third language. However, experts in the field know this is not true.

For the first five years of one’s life, practically all one ever does is learn a language (and maybe even two). During those first five years, we are mentored toward perfecting pronunciation and committing words and concepts to memory by people who encourage us along the way. Other things are taught as well, but they usually aren’t as intellectually demanding. By the age of five, our mastery of whatever language we are learning is well underway.

It therefore follows that we could also master another language by the age of 30 if life would allow us to take a five year leave of absence from work at the age of 25, and truly concentrate on learning that second or third language. But life rarely affords most of us that opportunity. Work demands, children, church (for those who have that commitment) all conspire to leave us little time for learning that extra language.

The same can be said for losing weight and adopting a healthy lifestyle. It might help some of us if we were in an environment where mentors could be following us as we go about dealing with learning to like healthier foods and becoming more physically active during our waking hours. But the demands of our modern world are such that we must contribute to the economy. This means either running one’s own business or working for someone else to earn one’s salary. We are expected to work at least 35 hours a week (more often, 40) in order to afford buying food, paying for clothing and housing, and buying a host of things that may or may not be necessary just to keep the economy going. Work demands, activities for children, volunteering, church (for those who have that commitment), doctor’s appointments... With all that to worry about, who has time to invest in adopting a new lifestyle?

The very structure of modern society doesn’t help, either. For decades, people would walk to neighbourhood grocery stores to buy what they needed when they needed it. Now, we have residential zones where no stores are allowed, and people see nothing wrong with having to use a motorised vehicle to get to the store and come home with large quantities of food. Instead of getting our exercise through everyday activities, we actually have to set time aside for exercise!

In Back to the Future III, Doc Brown tells bar patrons how things are in the future. At one point, a patron asks: Does anybody walk anymore?

Brown says: Of course they walk, but they do it for fun.

The patron: For fun? Who’d want to do that for fun?

I don’t know to what degree the irony was intended, but I find there’s a wealth of wisdom in that exchange.

Sex and Such

There is a sort of feminist primer at a site called Finally Feminism 101, which seems to have started at blogspot before moving on to wordpress. I’m not sure anymore how I came upon the site, but the first page I visited there was this one. In summary, it was an attempt to explain exactly why there must be a distinction made between a sex act in which one engages wilfully and consensually, and a sex act where one participant is clearly the victim of an assault.

Not that long ago, I heard that a former priest who had been posted in my hometown when I was a child had pleaded guilty to molesting young boys. I was one of those lucky ones who only knew him from afar and thereby avoided becoming a victim. But those circumstances grabbed my attention more than the assaults themselves.

Sexual assault in general may still be underreported, but it is definitely being reported far more than ever before. The shock value is just no longer there, so it tends to slip from my radar. So, in a way, I’m glad that page at Finally Feminism 101 woke me up a bit. A good kick in one’s complacency is never bad when truly needed.

However, it begs the question: How did I become complacent? How does anyone become complacent about such things?

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Since consensual sex is allowed and even encouraged in the right circumstances, the right to say no to sexual activity has a necessary corollary: the right to say yes. Of course, some will do everything they can to deny this right to others, and they will be convinced they have the moral authority to do so.

In 1976, the American Humanist Association (AHA) addressed this problem by publishing A New Bill of Sexual Rights and Responsibilities. In 2003, the magazine Free Inquiry published what it said was a revamped version more in keeping with the times, though it still followed the original quite closely. So closely, in fact, that The Humanist “responded” with an article of its own titled What Do We Do Now that the Sexual Revolution is Over? and called for a full critique of the declaration.

Among the many issues mentioned is that fact that people have been “held in bondage” by rules as to what they can do, with whom, and in what circumstances. But this presents the unintended double entendre since “bondage” is also a sexual fetish. And while it was assumed in the past that all workers in the sex industry were there due to lack of choices in the workplace, we now know this is not always the case, and the part of the Bill concerning prostitution should be rewritten to reflect that. In other cases, there’s the matter of using less outdated language.

The AHA is not the only organisation to have grappled with this issue. The International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF) published a declaration of sexual rights which follows closely the style and intent of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Indeed, even the World Health Organisation has ventured into the fray with unofficial statements concerning gender and human rights.

No doubt the various world religions would disagree with a lot of what can be found in these statements and declarations, and so would many who follow those religions. But then, to what degree do many in the West today actually follow those religious rules concerning sex? Over the past decades, marriage had become less frequent and less permanent. Now, it would seem even boyfriends and girlfriends have become a thing of the past. Rather than invest in relationships, many people find "friends with benefits" (fuck buddies) to satisfy their sexual urges with no intention of going any further. At a time where they must invest almost everything into their careers, relationships seem to get in the way.

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Of course, there could be more to this. Remember those articles I wrote on how we went from being sperm-competition avoiders to sperm-competitors and how we may be swinging back again? Remember also how I wondered whether we could actually ever swing the pendulum back that far? Well, at least one husband-and-wife team would seem to agree with me.

Christopher Ryan and Cacilda Jetha are the authors of Sex at Dawn: The Prehistoric Origins of Modern Sexuality. I haven’t read the book yet, but according to an interview in the press, they make the case that non-promiscuity is nothing more than a social construct, and that our sexual natures simply aren’t compatible with it. They say sexual fidelity likely didn’t appear as a social requirement until the advent of agriculture. Before, men didn’t have any property to pass down to the next generation, so paternity was of no importance to them. And women received food, shelter, help in caring for children, and sex from their community rather than from an individual male. (I would add that women often supplied food to the community. Gathering was often more successful than hunting.)

While the authors don’t criticise monogamy per se, they do think the story we are told about exclusive monogamy being the ideal for our species is a lie. Non-promiscuity can work for a great number of people, but not everyone, and maybe it’s time we faced that fact.

The sell is the crime, not the sale

(...) no religion-inspired law or government policy should exist if there is no secular justification for it. The State should deal only with life, health, property and other things of this world. (From my Sept. 7, 2010, post, Criticising Religion.)

Canadian laws against prostitution will remain in force for now. An earlier decision had struck down key provisions of the Criminal Code of Canada which dealt with communicating for the purpose of prostitution, keeping a common bawdy-house and living off the avails of prostitution. Justice Marc Rosenberg of the Ontario Court of Appeal ruled that it would be harmful to the public interest to allow a lower court ruling to immediately come into effect before a recently launched appeal is finally heard. However, the stay is only effective until April 29, which means the prosecution must make its case by then.

In Canada, prostitution per se is not a crime. Rather, the law forbids the solicitation or proposal of payment for sexual services. So while prostitution is technically legal, virtually every activity associated with it is not. The Criminal Code prohibits “communication for the purpose of prostitution.” It also prohibits keeping a common bawdy house for the purpose of prostitution. Some of the legislation was enacted as recently as 1985 in an attempt to deal with the public nuisance created by streetwalkers. But due to “bawdy-house” legislation, the obvious alternative, that is working more safely indoors, was prohibited.

This led to a constitutional challenge launched in 2009 by a three women who sought to have certain sections of the Criminal Code relating to prostitution struck down. The provisions at hand were (a) living off the avails of prostitution of another person, (b) stopping or attempting to stop and communicate with someone for the purpose of engaging in prostitution or obtaining the sexual services of a prostitute, and (c) keeping a “common” bawdy-house. The applicants claimed those provisions of the criminal code violate section 7 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which says: Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of the person and the right not to be deprived thereof except in accordance with the principles of fundamental justice.

Furthermore, they claimed that the provision concerning the keeping of a bawdy-house violated section 2(b) of the Charter, which guarantees the fundamental freedoms of thought, belief, opinion and expression, including freedom of the press and other media of communication.

In her ruling, Ontario Superior Court Justice Susan Himel agreed that some provisions of the Criminal Code actually contribute to the dangerous climate in which sex-trade workers must earn their living. “These laws, individually and together, force prostitutes to choose between their liberty interest and their right to security of the person as protected under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. I have found that these laws infringe the core values protected by section 7 and that this infringement is not saved by section 1 as a reasonable limit demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society,” wrote the judge.

It should be noted that she didn’t just strike down the provisions as requested. While sections 212(1)(j) (living off the avails) and 213(1)(c) (communicating for purposes of prostitution) were indeed struck down, the provision concerning bawdy-houses was merely changed. She left the specific provision, section 210, intact, but changed its definition at section 197(1) to remove the reference to prostitution. If acts of indecency are performed in a house kept for that purpose, it will continue to be considered a bawdy-house.

The judge makes clear that only those provisions have been struck down. Other provisions such as stopping or attempting to stop a motor vehicle for the purpose of prostitution, or impeding or redirecting pedestrian or vehicular traffic for such a purpose continues to be illegal. Also, many provisions concerning the offense of “procuring” remain in effect, as do those dealing with minors.

The decision is now on the CanLii website to be read by all. Personally, I find the decision to be well thought out. If nothing else, the judge appears to be well informed of the true dangers regarding prostitution, that is, the powerlessness of prostitutes before the law and those who would do them harm. Politicians, of course, aren’t so sure. They want votes and they know people who oppose prostitution in any way, shape or form often frequent polling stations. Oh well, with all the debts and deficits already at hand, what’s a few more million, eh?

When I die

If you publish something on your own website or on an Internet service where you have full responsibility for content and presentation, did you think about what would happen to all that should you die? Have you made arrangements for your Yahoo and Hotmail accounts after your death? What about your social network accounts like Facebook, MySpace and Twitter?

Nobody is immortal. You can live on for many years or die in a car accident today. One day or another, our time will come.

Do you want your website to go on after your death, perhaps with a death notice? Your blog could be of great interest to your grandchildren. Then again, when readers know you’re dead, they’ll stop visiting anyway. Do you want everything to stop immediately or a few weeks down the road?

Whatever your choice, you will need a trustworthy service or person who can handle that aspect. He, she or it must have clear instructions and all your usernames and passwords, as well as the names and addresses of partners picked up along the way for your blog or service.

The password is probably the most important issue. Check out a site called Dead Man's Switch. This is automated service sends messages and waits for your reply. If the message remains unanswered for several days, the service notifies a person whose name and contact information you provided so that person can take whatever measures were planned.

A Gmail account stays open forever unless next-of-kin ask for its removal. If they want access to the account, they must provide information and documentation, including a death certificate. It might be easier to confide the username and password to someone you trust or reveal them in your will.

An inactive Hotmail account will be removed automatically. Until then, next-of-kin can be gain access to it by sending in information and documentation. At Yahoo, however, everything remains confidential. If you have not given your username and password to someone else, the most that can be asked for is deletion of the account.

Facebook will not allow anyone else to access the account, but once notified of your death by next-of-kin, it can turn it into a memorial page upon request. MySpace will delete the page upon request, but will not allow it to be modified or deleted in any other way.

Do you have a PayPal account with a few hundred dollars left over? It would be nice if your loved ones knew how to access them. If a subscription to a Web domain is to be renewed soon, it would be nice to know. Otherwise, the domain will be given to someone else.

Copyright law varies from one country and one region to another. In general, it may be possible to transfer your copyright to others. If copyright is left to the estate, there is no guarantee that your Web material will remain online.

You don’t have to put everything in your will. There could be a separate envelope in which you inform the executor of which material you want deleted from your computer before anyone else gets to see it.

Here are a few resources:

http://webmasterformat.com/blog/what-happens-to-your-website-if-you-die

http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/what-happens-to-your-email-and-social-networking-sites-when-you-die

http://menwithpens.ca/what-happens-to-your-website-if-you-die