She discusses his turning back the clock on women's rights, citing many of the measures taken to again subordinate our gender.
There are no arguments with her piece. However, as a nation we should not be at all surprised by this, if we had been following politics back in the Reform Party days.
Part of their policy was to put women back in the kitchen, where it was deemed they belonged. And they made no secret of it. In fact many men were drawn to the Reform movement because of it.
One of their founders, was William Gairdner and his book The Trouble with Canada, according to author and journalist Murray Dobbin, "functioned as ‘the de facto manifesto for the Reform Party’". He sold copies at Reform Party assemblies.
In 2007, Donna L. Lillian, then Assistant Professor of Discourse and Linguistics in the Department of English at East Carolina University, wrote her dissertation on sexist discourse as hate speech, and it was centred around William D. Gairdner. She writes:
In arguing that at least some sexist discourse should be considered hate speech, I first demonstrate that the popular discourse of Canadian neoconservative author William D. Gairdner is sexist.... Sexism, the ideology and practice of relegating women to a lower rung on the social hierarchy than men simply by virtue of their femaleness, is an integral component of neoconservative thinking, and one way that such sexism is produced and reproduced is through language.
To international readers, Canadian author William D. Gairdner may seem like an obscure and unlikely subject for an argument about hate speech. After all, there are many well-known commentators and public figures, particularly in the USA, whose writings might be considered sexist and whose names might be more recognizable internationally than Gairdner’s. In preparing this article, I have, in fact, read dozens of conservative books, articles, blogs, and websites, including some by prominent Americans admired and cited by Gairdner himself (e.g. George Gilder, Richard Viguerie, Newt Gingrich, Phyllis Schlafly, inter alia). Gairdner shares many views with these commentators; however, his discourse style differs markedly from theirs. Whereas they temper their style, largely avoiding obviously inflammatory modes of expression, Gairdner revels in what he describes as his ‘tell it like it is’ style of writing. (1)
He never held back. I read The Trouble With Canada, and the way he speaks about women, or as he likes to refer to us, "radical feminists", made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. It was frightening.
And he was one of Stephen Harper's mentors.
Laura Wood in her Rabble piece also mentions the influence of the anti-women group, oddly named REAL Women of Canada. They were involved in the movement from the early days, and now brag about how often they are invited to Parliament Hill for their input.
Their president, Gwen Landholt, spoke of the "...takeover, by feminist ideology, of the judicial system in Canada, as well as its takeover of the UN. During the 60s, 70s and 80s, the radical feminist ideology was gradually instilled into the cultures of education, work, government and societal life."
"Feminist ideology"? Interesting. I remember a headline when I was in high school, announcing that women who were employed in banks, could now wear pants to work. However, they had to be pantsuits. Our school soon followed, allowing us to also wear slacks, but there were guidelines that were strictly enforced. No jeans, nothing too tight, etc.
We soon broke every rule. It was the late '60s. It's what we did.
But do we really want to go back to a time when we had to fight just to wear pants? For Stephen Harper and his neoconservatives, women's rights are seen as a threat to their masculinity. It is fundamental that they chip away at them, until they all come crashing down.
It took decades to accomplish what we have, and could take decades more just to go back to where we were five years ago. Canadian women have to stand up to this man, and we do that by exercising our hard fought for right to vote.
Sources:
1. A thorn by any other name: sexist discourse as hate speech, By Donna L. Lillian, Assistant Professor of Discourse and Linguistics East Carolina University, 2007
Australian filmmaker Taki Oldham, spent a month following and researching the Tea Party and the resulting documentary: (Astro) Turf Wars (trailer below) , reveals how Corporate America has created a fake grassroots movement to further their cause.
In the above video, Keith Olbermann of MSNBC and Rolling Stone's Matt Tibbi, discuss the movement and at just past the three minute mark, we see David Harmer, a failed Tea Party candidate who wants to abolish public education.
Mr. Harmer is not an educator and his campaign to eliminate public schools is not based on studies or research into the quality of learning.
He is a Wall Street corporate lawyer. In fact he was the lawyer for J.P Morgan Chase, who received a 25 billion dollar bailout, only to take 9.3 billion dollars of it and give it as bonuses to their executives.
One of those to receive some of that tax payer funded bonus money, was David Harmer himself, who pocketed $ 160,000.00. He was hardly a grassroots candidate representing the people who are marching for the cause. (J.P. Morgan also contributed to his campaign)
He sees the privatization of education as an opportunity for profit. Nothing more, nothing less.
And the average American marching for the corporate funded Tea Party, stands to lose the most for their children, if Harmer is able to achieve his goal.
Education becomes tiered, creating a future generation of "haves" and "have nots", something public education sought to alleviate by providing education for all children, regardless of social standing.
The "American Dream" becomes even more exclusionary.
Olbermann and Tabbi also discuss Americans for Prosperity and Republican John Boehner. I had written about this group before, since they have a relationship with the Harper government. You can read it here. If you scroll down that page you will see a photo of Boehner, with Canadian Shona Holmes, to his right. It reveals how the oil and gas industry are behind trying to end our public health care, while preventing President Obama from following through on a universal American plan.
What Could This Mean for Canadian Public Education?
The Reformers gathered in Saskatoon saved perhaps the loudest cheers, whistles, and applause for [William] Gairdner's last shot: 'And my favourite proposal, by the way, is returning choice to education by privatizing every school in the country'. (1)
William Gairdner, is the author of the book The Trouble with Canada, which journalist Murray Dobbin stated ".. helped lay the groundwork for Reform Party policy." (1) Reform Party policy which was then being drafted by Stephen Harper.
In their 1994 book, Class Warfare, Maude Barlow and Heather-Jane Robertson, were already sounding the alarm about Canada's Neoconservative, AstroTurf movement, and their plans to eliminate our public education. And they were trying to sell it to the public with the endearing term "choice".
In Neo-Conservative Rhetoric, the restriction of choice is demonized as the root of all evil; the right to more choice in more areas is touted as the solution to our moral, economic and political conundrums. Governments are viewed as the agencies that limit choice, and the marketplace the venue in which choice triumphs. (2)
But what do they mean by "choice" in education? It means creating a system that is exclusionary and discriminatory, where the purposes of education are not what is best for all children, but on what is best for 'me' or 'my child'.
The educational philosopher John Dewey saw the role of choice in education as the exercise of our collective responsibility to choose from among competing possibilities what is best for all children. No doubt Dewey would be appalled to see choice appropriated by the conservative alliance to uncouple the fortunes of some children from the fortunes of others, claiming that everyone will be better off. (2)
And they have been systematically placing our educational system into the hands of the private sector.
When Neocon Mike Harris proposed a private school tax credit, Stephen Harper, then running the National Citizens Coalition, told the Hill Times: "pulling their children from 'union-run' schools should be a viable option for all parents." (3) The NCC was always anti-union and for a while MP Rob Anders headed up that area of their activism.
But for many "choice" in education means schools that teach religion, and frame their curriculum within the teachings of ancient texts.
In Ontario, Jim Flaherty, as finance minister for Harris, understood that. When he was running against Ernie Eves for the provincial leadership in 2002, an American freelance journalist wrote of Flaherty:
His full-bodied, conservative platform of tax cuts, privatization, and school choice, first caught the attention of grassroots conservatives with his unexpected announcement in last year's budget of a $3,500 ($2,300 USD) per-child tax credit for parents who send their children to independent schools. The measure, according to Laura Swartley of the Milton* and Rose D. Friedman Foundation for School Choice, is the most generous education tax credit in North America. It alone has won Flaherty the support of social conservatives and minority religious groups. (4)
Ernie Eves responded by suggesting that the education tax credit would help religious schools that "teach hatred."
Flaherty has continued his move toward privatizing education, as reflected in his 2007 budget, when he slipped in a little gem, that allowed our tax dollars to fund tuition fees for private religious schools.** He and Stephen Harper defended the move, by saying that it would also apply to public schools. But public schools don't charge tuition:
The Harper government is giving a tax break to families who send their kids to elite private schools, raising the ire of public education advocates. Under a little-noticed measure in last month's budget, scholarships and bursaries to attend elementary and secondary school will now be fully tax exempt. Finance officials estimate the new exemption will mean "significant tax savings" for about 1,000 students – or, by extension, their parents.Officials insisted that the exemption applies to scholarships for either public or private schools. But they couldn't supply any examples of public schools – which are funded from the public purse and don't charge tuition fees – awarding scholarships or bursaries. (5)
And the stimulus funding that has put us into record debt and deficit, included enormous spending on private religious school projects.
Meanwhile, William Gairdner continues to lead the charge, suggesting that only "rusty old lefties who have spent a lot of their careers engineering budget-busting tax grabs and even extortions and transfer-payment briberies of the kind that produced Canada's "free" health care", want to preserve the status quo.
There is a suggestion with critics of public school, that they represent socialism, where all children are treated equally, so the best have no chance of breaking away. But that's not true. There are special classes for the gifted and extra help for those who need it.
And none of this is based on the size of their parents wallets.
Corporations are trying to direct every aspect of our lives, from cradle to grave, by using terms like "free " and "choice", while suggesting that the government is trying to do the same thing.
They call everything a "tax grab" and yet they have no qualms about taking our taxes for their own purposes. They claim that they can do a better job of providing services, but we saw what a good job they were doing, during the economic crisis, that they had created.
They lined themselves up with their hands out. But they didn't use the money for the betterment of the public, only their shareholders and executives.
We must fight to keep our public education, public. If the wealthy want to send their children to private school, they can. No one is stopping them. But they must pay for it themselves.
Tea Party candidate David Harmer, didn't win the election, but there are thousands of David Harmers out there, who represent corporate interests, while using the "grassroots" to fight against their own survival.
And Canada is not immune, as we see with people like Jim Flaherty and Stephen Harper, who use calculated ambiguity to sell us on something that goes against our survival.
* Milton Friedman was Ronald Reagan's financial guru and both he and his wife were longtime supporters of the Fraser Institute, the voice of the Reform movement . If you want to read a good book that follows the money to that institute, I recommend Not a Conspiracy Theory: How Business Propaganda Hijacks Democracy, By Donald Gutstein, Key Porter Books, 2009, ISBN: 978-1-55470-191-9
**If you think that Flaherty is somehow a "Godly" man, check out this story by BCer in Toronto. It would appear that Flaherty and his wife cashed in on the budget, by allegedly cheating taxpayers out of almost a million dollars. He has a lot of documentation.
Sources:
1. Preston Manning and the Reform Party, By Murray Dobbin, Goodread Biographies/Formac Publishing, 1992, ISBN: 0-88780-161-7, pg. 165-166
2. Class Warfare: The Assault onf Canada's Schools, By Maude Barlow and HeatherJane Robertson, Key Porter Books, 1994, ISBN: 1-55013-559-7, Pg. 187-189
3. So What DID Harper Say? The Conservative Leader's sound bite file on everything from taxes to Iraq, health care, gay marriage, nature, left wingers and keeping, By Tom Barrett, The Tyee, May 20, 2004
The above video is only a very small part of a speech that Stephen Harper gave at the Reform Party Assembly in 1991. The rest of the news coverage that included this, can be seen at the CBC archives here. A view of the crowd says a lot about who this party was, and indeed still is.
Harper has his signature smug look, as he tries to convince the membership that policy changes are needed if they want to be able to sell their party to the nation (with the exception of Quebec). But, as author Murray Dobbin has stated, Harper was always very careful to keep the extreme elements out of the party platform when he was writing it. However, he and Preston Manning, appeased the membership by having William Gairdner deliver the keynote address.
I'm going to cover this convention in several posts, because there are many interesting elements to the story, that help to explain what motivates Stephen Harper and what a Harper majority might look like.
The Weekend That Changed it All
By 1991, the Reform Party had been in operation for four years, but had never been more than a Western protest party; strongly opposed to multiculturalism, 'non-traditional' immigration, equality for women and what they deemed to be special favours for Quebec. Stephen Harper himself ran as a Reform candidate in 1988, listed on the ballot as 'Steve' Harper. He lost soundly.
Realizing that if they wanted to expand, they would have to tone down their aggressive platform, Harper began rewriting some of the contentious points. He was a master of ambiguity and verbiage, so many of his points were open to interpretation.
It is also worth noting that it was at about this time that he was expelled from the Northern Foundation. Mind you, he is the only one who makes this claim, but perhaps the other members were not thrilled that he was backing down on their 'principles'. When I look at the people involved in the NF, staying with the group for three years is the real issue here (Dobbin claims that it was formed in 1989, but most others say 1988) It would have taken me ten minutes in a room with just one member, to run out screaming.
Oh, Steve, Steve, Steve ... what were you up to in those three years? I know what the Northern Foundation was up to, and realizing that you were not only a member, but a founding member; doesn't help me sleep nights now that you're running our country.
However, while Harper was toning down the extreme elements in his platform, he was also expressing concern that they might be moving into Ontario too quickly. He knew that the hate groups were well organized there and that they may be poised to take over.
In fact, co-founder Ann Hartmann, who was then president of NF, was the wife of the late Paul Hartmann, a member of the Western Guard, and two of her sons were skinheads. Harper would have (or should have) known this. The concern that they may try to legitimize themselves through the Reform Party was genuine. And yet they didn't expel her from the party for another few years. Go figure.
The Media and Missed Opportunities
But back to the 1991 policy convention. Author Murray Dobbin, living in Saskatchewan at the time, had been following the news of the upcoming policy convention that was to be held in April in Saskatoon.
"When I moved back to Saskatchewan after a year in Ontario, a friend and former political science professor drew my attention to Reform Party policy. It was contained in the party's newspaper, The Reformer, in the form of sample resolutions for debate at the party's annual assembly.
" ... Three policies ... struck me immediately and started me on the course of writing this book. The first was on agriculture ... The farm-policy resolution, which startled me stated that the party's policy was not guided by the interests of producers, but by the 'demand of consumers ... for secure supplies of food at the lowest competitive prices.
" ... It was a cheap food policy. If actually carried out it could wipe out half the farmers in western Canada. (Stephen Harper grew up in Toronto. What did he know about farmers?)
"The second surprise was medicare. Not only was the policy one of eliminating the nation-wide health care system, but it was phrased in such a way that the impact of the policy was obscured."
"Perhaps the most surprising resolution was the GST. There was a resolution from a constituency association calling for the repeal of the tax. But there was another, from the Party's Policy Committee, declaring that the Reform Party only opposed the GST in it's present form. (later in the book the author states that Stephen Harper himself intervened repeatedly at the 1991 Assembly to argue against repealing the GST. (pg. 172))
"There seemed to be little public awareness of Reform policies, yet a great deal of interest in the party and Preston Manning. This could simply be explained by a lack of real media scrutiny of a relatively new party. But with the party's big national assembly coming in April to my home town, Saskatoon, and the national media paying them a lot more attention, these policies and their implications were, I thought, bound to be discussed and reported.
"It didn't turn out that way. The media, with some important exceptions (such as Jeffrey Simpson, who compared Preston Manning and the Reform Party to the Republican Party in the U.S.), focused on what they said they would: the party's decisions regarding running in provincial elections and expanding eastward and it's hard-line on Quebec. While some did tag the party as right-wing, Preston Manning's description of the party as populist, went unchallenged." (Preston Manning and the Reform Party. Author: Murray Dobbin Goodread Biographies/Formac Publishing 1992 ISBN: 0-88780-161-7, pref. vii and viii)
This no doubt had a lot to do with two media giants at the time. Ted Byfield, a founding member of Reform; and Conrad Black.
To say that Stephen Harper is a puzzle is perhaps grossly understated.
He's certainly very secretive about his past, not wanting to grant interviews even to the authors of two recent books on his rise to political success: Stephen Harper and the Future of Canada by William Johnson and The Pilgrimage of Stephen Harper by Lloyd Mackey.
He simply refused a request for an interview from Mr. Johnson but told Mackey that he was planning to write his own story and didn't want to scoop himself. A rather odd statement. Will his book include some of the people he was involved with throughout his career? I can see why he wouldn't want that coming out now.
I've read both books and neither really answered many questions. Far too generic, considering some of the quotes attributed to Stephen Harper over the years.
However, there is another book, not written about Stephen Harper but instead about his Reform Party and it's roots in bigotry, sexism and dare I say it, 'white supremacy'. In Of Passionate Intensity: Right-Wing Populism and the Reform Partyof Canada, the author, Trevor Harrison outlines some of the people and groups who contributed to the success of the party.
Of special interest and concern is one in particular; the Northern Foundation. Now it was said that while Stephen Harper was a member, he was later booted out for not being right-wing enough. However, when you examine the membership closely, not being right-wing enough is not necessarily a compliment. It's like saying Lassie isn't canine enough. A dog is a dog.
What is of importance, though, is this: ‘The Northern Foundation was established in 1989, originally as a pro-South Africa group . . . lists among the founding members of the Foundation both William Gairdner and Stephen Harper ... ' (Preston Manning and the Reform Party by Murray Dobbin. Key Porter Books, 1992 Pg. 134)
By 'pro-South African' group the author means support of the continuation of apartheid. This brings into context the remarks once made by one of Harper's MPs, Rob Anders, when he claimed that Nelson Mandela "was a communist and a terrorist" and voted against making him an honorary citizen in 2001. (Anders was one of the Conservatives who abused his franking privileges and our tax dollars to distribute campaign style literature for our local candidate Brian Abrams)
I plan to go into the issue of 'whites only' in another post, but I want to outline just how deep our current Prime Minister's anti-feminist roots go. For this we have to look at his long associations with William D. Gairdner, mentioned above, and another co-founder of the Northern Foundation; Anne Hartmann, a director of the anti-feminist group, Real Women of Canada. Her son Eric belonged to the Heritage Front, another group with ties to Stephen Harper.
In 2007, Donna L. Lillian, Assistant Professor of Discourse and Linguistics in the Department of English at East Carolina University, wrote a paper entitled: A thorn by any other name: sexist discourse as hate speech, which centered around Harper's partner and longtime friend, William D. Gairdner, as mentioned above. Ms Lillian has spent a great deal of time "...analyzing Canadian neoconservative discourse as racist, sexist, and homophobic." We should be so proud.
In this paper, the author speaks of 'sexist discourse' as hate speech, and cites the texts of neoconservative author William D. Gairdner, as prime examples. Some excerpts below:
"In arguing that at least some sexist discourse should be considered hate speech, I first demonstrate that the popular discourse of Canadian neoconservative author William D. Gairdner is sexist.... Sexism, the ideology and practice of relegating women to a lower rung on the social hierarchy than men simply by virtue of their femaleness, is an integral component of neoconservative thinking, and one way that such sexism is produced and reproduced is through language"
WHO IS WILLIAM GAIRDNER AND WHY STUDY AN OBSCURE CANADIAN ANYWAY? To international readers, Canadian author William D. Gairdner may seem like an obscure and unlikely subject for an argument about hate speech. After all, there are many well-known commentators and public figures, particularly in the USA, whose writings might be considered sexist and whose names might be more recognizable internationally than Gairdner’s. In preparing this article, I have, in fact, read dozens of conservative books, articles, blogs, and websites, including some by prominent Americans admired and cited by Gairdner himself (e.g. George Gilder, Richard Viguerie, Newt Gingrich, Phyllis Schlafly, inter alia). Gairdner shares many views with these commentators; however, his discourse style differs markedly from theirs. Whereas they temper their style, largely avoiding obviously inflammatory modes of expression, Gairdner revels in what he describes as his ‘tell it like it is’ style of writing (Gairdner, 1990: 1).
Gairdner is a highly educated and skilled writer whose academic training in linguistics, literature, and philosophy make it possible to hold him responsible for the form as well as the content of his discourse. He holds a master’s degree in structural linguistics, a master’s in English/creative writing, and a doctorate in English literature, all from Stanford University. He left academia in the early 1980s to pursue business interests and he is currently the owner of an investments firm in Toronto. He is also a former Commonwealth and Pan-American track and field athlete and he comes from one of Canada’s wealthiest families, all of which contributes to his public credibility.
Gairdner has never held political office himself, but has been influential in formulating and promoting neoconservative policies and views in Canada over the past two decades. In November 1987, a new federal party, The Reform Party of Canada, was formed under the leadership of Preston Manning. (In 2000, the Reform Party merged into the Alliance Party, which then later merged with the mainline Progressive Conservative Party to form the Conservative Party, currently the governing party in Canada.) Gairdner has been identified as one the most influential core members of Reform and as their party mentor (Harrison, 1995), and The Trouble with Canada functioned as ‘the de facto manifesto for Preston Manning’s Reform Party’ (Dobbin, 1992: 134).
In the early years of Reform, Gairdner was also one of the party’s most frequent guest speakers at rallies (Dobbin, 1992). In addition to his affiliation with Reform, Gairdner is a former chair of the National Citizens’ Coalition, a conservative Canadian lobby group. Dobbin describes the National Citizens’ Coalition as secretive (1991), but it is a far more public and more prominent group than another with which Gairdner’s name has been associated, namely, The Northern Foundation.
‘The Northern Foundation was established in 1989, originally as a pro-South Africa group . . . (that whites should remain in control). Since its establishment, however, the foundation has developed into a broad coalition of right-wing groups and individuals across the country’ (Dobbin, 1992: 121). Jeffrey (1999) lists among the founding members of the Foundation both William Gairdner and Stephen Harper, the current Prime Minister of Canada.
Originally, I had argued that Gairdner’s writings were representative of ‘mainstream’ sexist discourse, but I now realize I was wrong in that respect. His writing is not representative, and it is precisely that non-representativeness that made me pay attention to him in the first place. Furthermore, in doing my research over the years, I have found that there is very little published discourse research focusing on Canadian data, even less with a linguistic rather than a cultural studies focus. This constitutes a serious gap in the published literature and one of my goals is to try to address that deficit. Elsewhere I argue that Gairdner’s discourse is racist, homophobic, and sexist.
FEMINISTS AS WOMEN?
The out-class in sexist discourse is women, but Gairdner does not overtly denigrate all women. Rather, he denigrates women whom he classifies sometimes as radical feminists and sometimes simply as feminists. He does not include men in his definition of feminists. Furthermore, the women he calls feminists may or may not identify themselves as feminists. He simply imposes the label on women he wishes to discredit.
For example, women who choose roles other than that of full-time stay-at-home wife and mother and especially those who actively seek to create conditions in which women who choose other roles are not discriminated against are the women dubbed ‘radical feminists’ by Gairdner and they are purported to be the instruments of the breakdown of so-called traditional values in Canadian society.
(I have to interject here because there are two instances that come to mind, when discussing sexism and the Reform Party. One is a comment made by Garry Breitkreuz, one of the original Reformers and now a Conservative MP. On October 11, 1993; he was quoted as saying "We should try to keep our mothers in the home and that is where the whole Reform platform hangs together." The other one surprisingly was from Deb Grey in her book: 'Never Retreat, Never Explain, Never Apologize'. I had borrowed the book from the library and no longer have it, but she was speaking of Cheryl Gallant and was quite critical of the fact that she was acting as an MP when she had children at home. I really like Ms Grey, but was surprised at her sexist observations.)
Gairdner classifies as feminist a wide range of women including those who advocate publicly funded day care for children, abortion rights, ready access to contraceptives, sex education in schools, affirmative action for women, equal pay for work of equal value, marriage and adoption rights for gay and lesbian couples, as well as those who resist patriarchy in any other way. (also see David Sweet and the Promise Keepers) The only women whom he does not label feminists are women who support his patriarchal vision (also see REAL Women of Canada, a group also linked with Stephen Harper and the Northern Foundation) in which a woman marries young, bears and raises several children, and occupies herself doing unpaid domestic and volunteer work. Of course, if such a woman were to use her time volunteering for a group promoting any of the causes he disagrees with, then she, too, might be labeled a feminist according to Gairdner’s use of the term. Because Gairdner’s use of feminist encompasses such a wide cross-section of women and includes all women who oppose any of patriarchy’s restrictions on them, I think it is fair to argue that in Gairdner’s writings, feminist effectively stands in for women. Gairdner would sound preposterous and in/un-credible if he were to rail against women, but if he uses feminist as a code word for all women he disagrees with, then he can sound as though he is arguing against a cohesive political movement, rather than against women who in various ways resist and challenge patriarchy, whether or not they identify themselves as feminists.
LEXICAL PROCESSES
One of the most obvious ways in which Gairdner denigrates feminists/women is through his lexical choices. Gairdner views feminism as a serious danger, as evidenced by his use of the metaphor of feminism as a cancer. "Every age seems to have its peculiar intellectual cancers, and this chapter is meant to serve as a kind of anticarcinogen. Like so many, I find myself increasingly surrounded by strident, petty, whining feminist arguments that have now nibbled their way into every organ of our society. If that were the limit of it, most of us would simply get on with our lives and ignore these people. But matters are far worse than the public seems aware. For in order to achieve their objectives, modern radical feminists are increasingly relying on political, economic and legal stratagems that in any other age would rightly, and without delay, have been labelled extremist, even totalitarian." (Gairdner, 1994: 296)
Not only does Gairdner associate feminism with cancer, but in the same paragraph, he also labels ‘feminists’ extremist and totalitarian. Adjectives such as these are apt to conjure up images of fascist or neo-fascist political regimes. ... Gairdner (1992) further resorts to ridiculing and trivializing ‘feminists’ by portraying them in unflattering animal terms. For example, he wants them to ‘get their snoots out of the government trough’ (p. 301). Snoot is a variation on snout, and this combined with the reference to the trough connotes a hog or a sow.
(I have to interject again. Harper's friend Gairdner was also a member of the National Citizens Coalition. In 1997, when Stephen Harper was president of the Coalition , he spent $ 200,000.00 of their money in attack ads he dubbed "Operation Pork Chop". In Edmonton where Liberal candidates Judy Bethel and Anne McLellan were running for re-election, he ran a newspaper ad featuring two pigs drinking champagne, while frolicking in a trough filled with cash. The pig's heads were replaced by those of the two women, and the caption read "On June 2, Chop the Pork. I wondered what kind of twisted mind would dream up such a degrading ad that depicted women in such a manner. Now I know)
A few pages further on is a reference to ‘the bleating objections of feminists the world over’ (p. 307). Sheep and goats are the animals most often said to bleat, although the term can also be used of calves. None of those animal associations can be construed as positive ones for feminists or for women in general. Moreover, the allusions are all to domesticated animals under the control of ‘man’ [sic]. Use of unflattering or trivializing animal terms is a common rhetorical ploy, unique neither to Gairdner nor to political discourse more broadly.
Gairdner also exploits the stereotype of women as emotional and irrational to further demean and discredit ‘feminists’. They are said to ‘aggressively advance’ their cause, and their position has ‘a frantic and bitter tone’ (p. 300).
Academic feminists are referred to as ‘angry, narrow-minded feminists’ (p. 312). Women advocating affirmative action are ‘insecure’, ‘angry’, and ‘conspiracyoriented’ (p. 309). People dealing with violence against women are referred to as ‘near-hysterical’ (p. 327), and advocates of universally accessible day care are ‘rabid’ (p. 334).
Furthermore, ‘feminists’ are repeatedly characterized as full of hate: ‘man-hating, politically motivated feminists’ (p. 344), ‘virulent, cultish, manhating, and family-hating program’ (p. 296), and ‘family-hating, man-hating, tradition-hating’ (p. 118). Individual women are also attacked with labels meant to discredit them and their work by making the expression of their views appear as nothing but an outpouring of negative, uncontrolled emotion. Betty Friedan’s book, The Feminine Mystique (1963), for example, is characterized as being an ‘inflammatory antifamily hate tract’ (Gairdner, 1992: 8). Given the amount of hatred and hostility evident in Gairdner’s own books, this latter accusation is, indeed, ironic.
A concrete example of the way in which Gairdner trivializes the concerns of women is his treatment of the issue of acquaintance rape. As part of his argument promoting conservative sexual morals, which is to say condoning sexual intercourse only in the context of heterosexual marriage, Gairdner attempts to dismiss the reality of date rape altogether ... Gairdner’s formula for avoiding what he sees as the ambiguity of ‘no’ is that women should dress modestly, not be alone with men, not flirt unless they intend to have sexual intercourse, and marry young so that men are provided with an outlet for their sexual desires.
For Gairdner ... the natural family consists of a mother, a father, and their children. Rather, this family configuration also implies ‘a natural hierarchy of authority’ (1992: 82), which he acknowledges is patriarchal but which he advocates as the only alternative to socialism.
In this patriarchal family structure, the man works outside the home and provides the income for the household, and the woman foregoes paid employment and stays in the home to raise and care for the children and do the domestic labor for the family. All other roles for women are deemed to be unnatural or deviant.
Gairdner creates a self for himself and his (ideal) readers which is male, white, financially stable, able-bodied, heterosexual, Anglophone, and Christian, and endows this ‘self ’ with positive attributes, while simultaneously creating both one ‘super-other’ (‘socialists’) and a series of specific ‘others’ including feminists, women, homosexuals, people of color, the French, immigrants, and poor people, all of whom are portrayed negatively.
One of many addresses that Gairdner made at Reform Party functions was the keynote address at their 1991 General Assembly. As Harrison (1995) describes the event, ‘delegates to the 1991 Saskatoon convention gave William Gairdner enormous applause, even more than Manning later received, for his vitriolic speech denouncing feminists, bilingualism, and multiculturalism, among other things’ (pp. 173–4). Dobbin (1992), describing the same event, notes the frequent and extended applause and the cheers that greeted Gairdner’s denunciation of women and women’s rights. Gairdner uses much the same rhetorical style and expresses the same views, whether he is speaking or writing.
Based on these accounts of the reaction of his supporters, one may reasonably conclude that Gairdner’s anti-feminist, anti-woman discourse does, indeed, inflame people’s emotions.(Remember, one of the first things Stephen Harper did when elected was to remove the word 'equality' from the Status for Women)
DENIGRATE THE DESIGNATED OUT-CLASS Gairdner’s depiction of ‘feminists’ as confused, emotional, and even trivial might suggest that they pose so little threat as to not deserve his attention, yet the amount of space he devotes to attempting to discredit feminists and feminist principles suggests otherwise, as do some of the epithets he hurls at them. If he saw them as posing no danger, then surely he would not resort to statements such as, ‘radical feminists are properly labeled intellectual terrorists’ (Gairdner, 1992: 321).
Feminists do, in reality, pose a threat to Gairdner’s program of re-extending patriarchy and reinstating forms of wage discrimination and social discrimination against women, but instead of confronting their position in an academically honest manner, Gairdner relies heavily on attacking the character of ‘feminists’ and trying to discredit them through ridicule, invective, and stereotyping. INFLICT PERMANENT OR IRREPARABLE HARM
Gairdner never advocates physical violence against women, feminist or otherwise, but he does seek to permanently disable the feminist movement and to confine women within the narrow sphere of the idealized traditional family home. Gairdner’s efforts to revoke public funding for women’s groups, to discriminate in the wage and tax system against single adults, especially single women, and to confine women almost entirely to the domestic and voluntary spheres are clearly aimed at permanently reversing the progress of women’s equality.
CONQUER
The end result of Gairdner’s sexism, were he to succeed in convincing Canadians to implement the policies and laws he advocates, would be to institute an uncompromisingly patriarchal social organization. Women would permanently be subjugated to men and rendered powerless as independent social agents. Gairdner recognizes that if he is to succeed in conquering women, he will have to conquer ‘feminists’, since feminists are women who resist his patriarchal order. To do this, he needs to turn feminists into a group that other women fear and despise. (Hence REAL Women of Canada)
Stephen Harper has come full circle. His Northern Foundation created with Gairdner and Anne Hartmann of REAL Women, is gradually removing our equality, by cutting funding and changing the language of women's rights. Through a multitude of extremist right-wing groups, like REAL Women and the Promise Keepers, he is also attempting to change perspective.
Perhaps the best argument for everything that the Northern Foundation stood for is the case of Suaad Hagi Mohamud. A single black woman with a job. NF's worst nightmare.
Laura Wood has an interesting op-ed piece on Rabble: Chipping away at gender equality: Harper's five-year round up.
