Stalkeriffic! When does being a "fan" go too far?

I can spare you the English lesson about how the word "fan" is derived from "fanatic." But why, I wonder, do we give such a negative connotation to the latter when the former is perfectly acceptable? Everyone is a "fan" of something. But if you add those extra two syllables, you've basically just called someone "batshit crazy" and "obsessed." So where does one draw the line?


I bring this up because of the recent brouhaha over at Oh No They Didn't!. (Let's skip past the whole "yeah, yeah, I'm a card-carrying member and contributor" bit, shall we?) A rundown, for the TL;DR crowd (that's "too long; didn't read," for you non-netspeak types):


A teenage girl - 13 or 14, it seems - somehow purchased the address of her favourite singer's private residence, got her mother (!!!) to drive her and a friend to said house, took a bunch of creepily intimate pictures (things like the guy's dogs, who were inside the house, and what was on his front porch, etc.), and then stuck around for 2 hours until he got home so she could get his autograph and take photos of him with them. (All of the photos and screencaps are at the above "brouhaha" link. I'd rather not host the Facebook profile 'caps of a kid here. Just in case.)

I haven't quite made sense of what happened in which order, but it would seem that the girl proceeded to post the pictures of this guy's house (it was Alex Gaskarth from All Time Low, for the record) all over Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr and anything else she could get her hands on...and someone, I suppose, directed Alex's attention to the things she posted. I guess he'd assumed, when he signed the autographs and took a picture with her, that she and her friend had just been passersby who were fans, and didn't realize that this girl had, in fact, hatched one hell of a scheme in order to get to him that night (including, as she so wisely posted back and forth with her friend on her public Facebook status, "Oh we are totallllly stalking him...we cann get arrested together...OMG we can tell the cops he raped u[s] and then we could ride in the same police car as him! FUCK I AM GENIOUS" / "oh my god. perfect! alex fucking gaskarth is a [r]apist! fuck yessss! now we just need someone to drive us.....").


Needless to say, the foul language and spelling errors are not mine. The way moronic teenagers "spell" today is a subject for another blog entry entirely(yyyyy). I weep for our youth(hhhhhh).


But more importantly...did they really just post what I think they posted? Why, yes, they did! LOL LET'S ACCUSE OUR FAVOURITE SINGERRRRRR OF BEING A RAPIST SO WE CAN BE IN THE BACKSEAT OF A COP CAR TOGETHERRRRRRR LOLOLOL


What the hell.


I could spend hours dissecting the many ways in which this is just over the top stupid and flat-out wrong, but I trust you can come to those conclusions yourselves. Rape jokes aren't funny; false accusations aren't a joke anyway; these children need to be chained up...ad nauseum. Here's what appeared on the singer's Twitter page not long after he realized that this fan encounter wasn't quite normal:


[CLICK IMAGE IF YOU CAN'T READ THE WHOLE THING.]

I'm a little surprised he didn't call the police, but given the girls' plan, perhaps it was best he didn't. Ay yi yi. The fact that the girl has since taken to begging Alex's forgiveness on Twitter is an extra dose of disturbing. And some of the discussions in the ONTD comments don't help, either. I don't think it makes me a "special snowflake" if I say that no, even at 12 or 13, I didn't think stalking my celebrity crushes was something I just had to do. My friends and I had posters on our walls, wrote silly stories about meeting rock stars, giggled over late-night phone calls as we watched MuchMusic spotlights or stayed up to see our favourite actors in their latest movie. That is what I thought "normal" teenagers do when they're fans...but as you can see from that discussion thread, my opinion is but one in a sea of many.


Granted, somewhere in all of that talk, the subject of social networking comes up. I'd be stupid to say that the existence of MySpace and Facebook and Twitter - hell, the internet in general - hasn't drastically changed the face of being a "fan" since I was a kid. My favourite movie stars weren't accessible at all in most cases, beyond whatever interview popped up in the latest TeenBeat magazine. (Oh, god, I'm aging myself.) Nowadays, you can have long conversations with John Mayer or Clive Barker or Kevin Spacey on Twitter, because it's a safe space for them to get to know their fans, and for their fans to get a glimpse into what used to be a completely mysterious way of life.


(Ah, yes. The Trent Reznor/social media debacle of 2009 also begs for its own blog entry. Someday soon, I promise. In the meantime, this discussion, to which I contributed, does a pretty damn fine job of breaking down the reasons why not ALL celebrities should let their fans see what's behind the curtain.)


Back to the original question, then: What divides "fan" from "fanatic," aside from four letters and the idea that you're certifiable?


I've done some things that people might consider extreme to see a concert of a favourite band (whether spending insane amounts of money for the ticket or travelling to another country - or continent - for the show) or attend the reading of a favourite author (like wearing a bridesmaid dress and carrying a bouquet while roaming around downtown Toronto trying to hail a cab... It's a long story). But as far as I know, I've never crossed that creepy line. I've been lucky enough to meet all sorts of famous people, many of whom I admire greatly and whose work I love dearly. I've gone on to be an acquaintance or a friend of some of these people; others I've seen or met once and have been perfectly happy with that. The line, for me, is that I've never visited myself upon my favourite singer's private property, be it a car or a house or whatever else. Every celebrity meeting I've had has taken place in an open, non-intrusive way: I meet them at their public event, or I'm introduced by mutual friends, or we happen to be at the same club or party, where it's normal to approach anyone and have a drink and some conversation. If ever I end up with that famous person's home address or phone number, it's because that person gave it to me, and nobody's going to buy it from me for any amount of money. If we become acquainted with each other on a more friendly, let's-hang-out level, it happens organically. I'm a collector of experiences, that much is for certain, but I'm not one who is comfortable crossing any sort of line without a green light first.


Take my most "extreme" fan activity: Flying to the UK to see a concert. Yes, I did that in 2008. The band I'd loved for 20 years was touring, but not in my part of the world. I had a good job and was making good money at the time...so I just decided to go for it. My father and I took the whirlwind trip of a lifetime together, visiting our family's homeland of Scotland for the first time ever, and the concert was the icing on the cake. My mother wasn't well enough to come with us, and she'd asked if I would bring home one souvenir for her: A photo of me with the band she loved nearly as much as I did. So, once at the venue, I sent a note backstage with my polite request, and thought, "Hey, if they can do it, great. If they can't, I'm still so lucky to get to see them perform live after all these years." I could've remained just another anonymous face in the crowd and I'd still have loved that show. As it turned out, they were extraordinarily gracious, and invited me backstage to meet with them after the show, and my Mom got the picture she wanted so much. I also came away from that evening having met some fantastic new people, and loved the country so much that I went back again a year later, no concert tickets in hand that time. It was one of the best things I've ever done...and I got to meet some of my musical heroes without being creepy about it. I didn't lurk next to a stage door in the rain for hours, or hunt down their tour bus, or try to befriend security so I could sneak in somehow. I simply asked. And I was rewarded a thousand times more than I'd have imagined I would be.


Now, I know this can't possibly be a typical fan experience. I can scarcely imagine my hardcore U2 fan friends would get a response like I did to a pre-show handwritten note sent backstage. Even bands who aren't as detached from their fans as those heavy hitters are probably very often inaccessible to their audience. But that's the thing: I don't think a band being harder to reach means that a fan should try harder to reach them. It's a fine line, between lucking out and getting that autograph, and turning into a full-time, full-fledged groupie. (Don't get me started on that subject. The road manager of a friend's band once referred to me as a "groupie," and he nearly had his nose broken in return.)

I ask the question again, and have no intention of answering it myself, because I think it differs for a lot of people...and, frankly, I just don't have the answer. Where is that line? What does someone have to do to escalate from loyal fan to psychotic stalker? And the question that is perhaps of the most interest to me: How far would you go - or have you gone - to see or meet your favourite band/actor/writer/celebrity? How far is too far? Is there a price tag, a measurement in miles, or a social line that you can point at and say, "I won't go past that point, right there"?



Here's hoping the teenage All Time Low stalker asks these questions next time, before she again publicly makes an ass of herself. And let us hope, too, that this was her "all time low."



I couldn't resist.

Rape? Not rape? Don't Ask Amy: Defaulting To "YES"

I'm not normally moved to write about something such as this in a public forum, but after stumbling across a link yesterday, one that detailed the story of an "Ask Amy" column in the Chicago Tribune which blamed the victim of a rape (yes, the college student was a victim, Amy said, first and foremost of her "own awful judgment" for daring to drink at a campus party)...I can't not write something about it. I could so so in my private blog, but everyone over there has already seen the shocked Twitter updates and so on. It's better to say it all here.

I think it was the somewhat frustrating conversation I had with my parents after reading all of this "Ask Amy" garbage that made me realize it wasn't a subject I could just shove aside and forget about. My mother and I have discussed similar things at length throughout my life; we've debated, argued, agreed, and most importantly have just talked about it. About rape. About power. About what is and isn't okay. We haven't always agreed on every point - hell, we've had some pretty bizarre arguments about what is "proper" for a young lady to do - but that's not what matters, from where I stand. She raised me to be able to discuss these things and be critical and careful in both theory and practice.

My father is a bit of a different story. It's not because he thinks differently than I do; he's quite possibly able to become even more angry at the thought of a man thinking he has inherent rights to a woman that he clearly does not. He's the kind of dad who - no word of a lie, here - used to park down the block from my date's house, thinking I wouldn't see his car, just in case. In case of what? I don't know. I'm not sure what he thought he could do from his car to help if my date decided to attack me mid-movie in the rec room. But damned if he didn't sit out there and read his book, believing himself to be in "stealth mode" (even though I always caught him when I'd be getting into my car to drive home), just in case his little girl found herself in danger at the hands of a guy he didn't know well enough to trust. (I sort of wonder if such a guy exists, actually. I'll have to ask him if there's ever been a guy I've dated that he truly trusted not to harm me in some way. Hmm.)

Did I mention that he was doing this stealth-driving act while I was in university? Yeah. Did I mention that my mother has always seemed quietly pleased that he did so? Yeah.

And, all in all, I can't say it ever made me angry for long. They weren't trying to ruin my fun or police my social life; they were trying, in their possibly insanely overprotective way, to make sure they were there if I needed them, because they both knew that bad things happen and that some guys can't be trusted.

The trouble we ran into during our conversation about the "Ask Amy" situation yesterday stemmed from a very organic place. My mother knows what I mean when I say, "I wish our society didn't just assume that a woman defaults to 'yes,' and that she has to kick, bite, and scream 'NO!' if she's going to avoid being touched or grabbed or spoken to inappropriately by men." (I should probably qualify that by saying that I do not think all men are inherently evil. For the purpose of this post, I'm discussing the men who do think they have these rights, and who don't feel they ought to take any responsibility in what happens if a woman's resistance isn't "strong enough" or...whatever.) During the conversation, I made reference to something that had angered me last year: "The Open-Source Boob Project". I'd break it down if I could, but you're probably better served if you go to the link and read up on it (this post in response, written by a friend of mine, is excellent, too; there's something of a "highlight reel" posted here, along with a link to the response essay entitled, "A Modest Proposal: Open Source Swift Kick to the Balls Project"). It did have that same feeling of "Women Default To YES!" to it, although it later came out that the whole situation had been poorly explained, and that the writer of the post is not an evil, woman-hating predator.

Even so, it just happened that this post and its ideals surfaced only days after I'd been sexually assaulted in my workplace. The "Project" would have riled me up no matter what, but the timing certainly made it worse. The man who assaulted me was very clear about the fact that he thought he had every right to put his hands all over me, and that, because I hadn't backhanded him yet, he could just keep going. Never mind that I was in shock, or that I was afraid it would only escalate further if I angered him; it was my perceived halfhearted refusals to let him go any further (he'd gone plenty far enough, thanks) that seemed to embolden him, as though I actually needed to knock his teeth down his throat for the word "NO" to mean anything to him. Telling him to stop, to let me go, making excuses so I could escape his grasp...none of it worked. I only got away from him when he, rather dementedly, interpreted my "NO" and "MY BOSS IS RIGHT UPSTAIRS" as "You'll have another shot at me tomorrow when we're alone, I promise!" In the end, I don't care what it was that allowed me to get my wrists free of his hands. I got free. And I was the one who went through hell for months afterward, being persecuted by the insensitive police officers who didn't seem all that interested in my case if it wasn't "real" rape or if I didn't feel strong enough to go to court right away. On top of that, after my employers had to change things around to accommodate me and my (apparently ridiculous?) security needs, I was fired from my job only three weeks later. Draw your own conclusions there. It might be telling, too, if I add that I was forbidden to tell any of my coworkers - all of whom were female and had to walk a good distance to their cars alone, in the dark, right outside the very building where this guy worked and where the assault had taken place. They didn't want to "cause a panic." Yes. Better to leave them totally blind and not know that there was a pervert with access to their office. We wouldn't want a panic.

Anyway. Tangent. Yes. My point, though, is that I'd told my mother all about the Open-Source Boob Project, and how much it bothered me that, even if the guys involved in the original post didn't feel "entitled" (even though discussing the fact that women who go to comic and sci-fi conventions dress provocatively for the men's viewing pleasure certainly smacks of it, doesn't it?), it was still a slap in the face to many of us who hadn't really thought about it before...but yes, our society does think that a woman's default is set to "YES." What we have to go through to prove that we mean "NO" is ridiculous.

I hadn't ever discussed that whole issue with my father. He was with me the night the police came to get my statement, and he did his best to comfort me when I cried about how I just couldn't understand how someone as strong and (apparently) intimidating as I am gave off the signals to this guy that it was okay for him to grope and kiss me in an empty stairwell. (See? Victim-blaming, done by the victim herself!) But he's not as tuned into pop culture as I am (and as my mother therefore is, as she's usually the one who gets to hear all of my ranting), and he doesn't have the front row seat that we do to just how pervasive the Yes Default really is.

For that reason, his immediate response to the "Ask Amy" situation was to go into Mr. Fix-It Mode, which seems to be common among the men I've known. He was full of solutions about how this particular fraternity should be handled, and what this victim needed to do, and so on. None of what he said was wrong, but it missed the broader point. We still live in a society that is completely permissive as far as things like this go. This girl went to a frat party, told this guy she would NOT be sleeping with him, had several drinks, still said no, took the guy at his word when he promised he wouldn't make a move on her and would just take her to lie down when she started feeling unwell from the alcohol...and when he raped her, she was still so unsure about whether or not it WAS rape - because, as she said, she wasn't physically strong enough to kick or punch him, and could only verbalize her rejection of his advances - that she wrote to an advice column to ask if she was really a "victim."

It's encouraging to see the amount of outrage directed at this Amy woman's response, because it hits the nail on the head. Some of the comments had me chuckling darkly.



"If you are a drunk man, it's not your fault that you rape someone; if you are a drunk woman, it's partly your fault if you are raped. LOGIC FAIL."

"Because rape isn't a choice or a deliberate action: it's a bodily function, like throwing up on someone because you drank too much. Which is also embarrassing, especially if you've 'done it before'."



How could Amy possibly live with herself after advising this girl to confront her rapist to clarify what actually happened that night in order to ascertain if it was, indeed, rape??? WHAT THE HELL KIND OF ANSWER IS THAT??? What woman, who already carries the shame of the attack (because it's rare, I've found, to come across a woman who's been assaulted and who doesn't at some point ask herself if she somehow did something to "deserve" it - myself included), would want to face her attacker and talk it over???

I don't know if men, even the most well-intentioned of them all, will ever really understand what it's like to have the very real concern constantly in the back of their minds that today will be the day that someone will violate them. On the subway. In the parking lot. At work. In their driveway. Women live with knowing that there are far too many people out there who believe that, unless you're walking around screaming "NO!" at the top of your lungs 24/7, you are somehow giving permission. The way you dress, the way you walk, the places you go, the oh, so absurd idea that maybe you want to go shopping alone on your way home from school or work. Newsflash, gentlemen: Women are even less "allowed" to do things the way they'd like to do them than men are in saying or doing sexual and demeaning things to those women. It happens to us every day to some degree. EVERY DAY. We - none of us - have the luxury of setting foot outside of our houses without thinking about the precautions we have to take. I tried to explain that to my father. He tried to understand, but he always ends up back in the same place: "The guys I've known my whole life have never thought they could say or do those things and have it be okay." Well, that's good to know. I like knowing there are lots of men out there who don't think women are their property. I'm certainly fortunate to have so many men in my family who have such respect and empathy for women; not many people are as lucky as I am. But just because you haven't heard it, or seen it, or been surrounded by Bad Guys, does not in any way mean that they aren't waiting for one of us outside the grocery store, or that otherwise "well adjusted" men don't suddenly think that a girl getting drunk at a college party equals permission to do whatever he wants to her. And my father knows this, too; why else would he be parking one block down to make sure I was safe when going on a date with a guy he hadn't met yet?

There is no logical conclusion to this post. I wish there was. I'm not a good enough writer to tie this up in a neat little bow. What I can do, though, is leave it off with a link to an essay that I came across while reading all of this "Ask Amy" crap, one that, maybe, if I read it to my Dad, would finally make things make sense. The fact that I've been on the unfortunate receiving end of two "Not Rape" situations (I won't discuss the other one publicly, because - as bizarre as I'm sure it would sound to most - I don't want to ruin the life of the guy involved, despite that experience being considerably more...well, it was rape, I've come to understand, but still... That one gets left alone) makes this essay that much more poignant.

Read it here: The "Not Rape" Epidemic. Pass it around. And I sincerely hope you know someone - anyone - who hasn't had at least one of the things described in Latoya's essay happen to her. I'm not sure I do. And that makes me want to cry.

[ETA: Amy has addressed her critics with the lamest non-retraction/apology ever. I sincerely hope the Tribune fires her sorry ass for this debacle.]

NIN/JA, fickle fans, expletives and videos: My farewell to one of my favourite bands.

I was in the process of trying to find the exact set list for the NIN/JA show that took place on June 5th in New Jersey...and I'm coming across an awful lot of...well, frankly, bullshit.

Read the comments to this Rolling Stone article as a primer. Hell, just read the article itself. What the...?

I found out from a friend maybe three days ahead of time that NIN would be performing before Jane's Addiction. (If I'd had half a brain I'd have seen the huge notice on the NIN website.) I said, "Wha...?" and then got over it. Because despite not even owning any of JA's albums, I loved the '90s alt scene, and I don't care in what order they play; seeing NIN and JA share a stage is like a rock-gasm for people who were heavy into the club circuit throughout the last decade. Having Tom Morello tossed in for good measure was simply a cherry on top of it all.

I consider myself a pretty good critic as far as concerts go. Lord knows I've seen enough of them to be called, if not an expert, at least thoroughly informed on the subject. I've seen NIN five times (or is it 6...? Yes, it's six! HOLY CRAP), so I have a basis for comparison. And I would say that the NIN/JA show was easily the second best I have ever experienced. (The absolute best was on the summer leg of the With Teeth tour in '06 - it cannot be beat. Not only did Bauhaus open for them, but the electricity in the crowd, the gorgeous summer night by the lake - same venue as the one they played the other night - and the amazing set list and brand new light show were just unbeatable.)

Having said that, one could argue that it's because I've gotten to see them so many times that I can feel as fulfilled and as happy with whatever Trent wants to throw at us as I am. I do wonder how I'd have felt if the NIN/JA experience had been my first (and, as it appears more and more each day, the LAST). But on the other hand, I know NIN's catalogue backwards and front, sideways and then some, and I didn't learn it from seeing them live; I already owned it all going in. I'd be hard pressed to come up with a set list that would disappoint me, because I love stuff from every Halo that has been put out.

Trent made it very public that there would be no flashy light show this time, and that they wouldn't be playing Closer and all of the other mainstream pseudo-fan favourites. They just played those in November! (And, okay, AGAIN, I will grant that Toronto is insanely lucky because we've almost always gotten to see NIN both at the start and at the end of a tour, so we get two different shows with different set lists etc., while other cities get passed over completely. I saw one Fragile show, two on the With Teeth tour, two for Year Zero, and then the NIN/JA set. All in my own city. That's lucky. I do get that.) The point is that Trent made it abundantly clear that this was the Wave Goodbye tour, and it was for the die-hards, not the poseurs. Silly little blonde sluts who like to bump and grind to Closer at their local sleazy dance club were not the target audience.




(My clip, which sadly did not go far enough to let everyone hear me screaming, "IT WON'T GIVE UP IT WANTS ME DEAD GODDAMN THIS NOISE INSIDE MY HEAD"...because I wanted to dance, not film. Sorry 'bout that. I do know there's complete video of it elsewhere on YouTube, though!)



So instead of the same old regurgitated set list for the umpteenth time, Trent opted to give the fans something else. Something about which, at least at the Toronto show, people in the audience were SO pumped. Nearly every song they played, you would hear thousands of people exclaiming things like, "Holy shit!! I never thought I'd hear this live!!" I was one of those people. I had to apologize to Ian, my intrepid partner in concert-crime, who is a relative NIN novice, because I'd sent him a bunch of MP3s to prep him for what he was likely to hear...and I think only ONE out of the 30+ tracks I'd given him ended up being played. But he was pretty amused to see me jumping up and down - literally - because we were getting to hear Heresy instead of Closer, and I'm Afraid Of Americans instead of Only. (You really must check out this awesome footage of IAOA from our show.) And despite only even recognizing two of the songs at all, and never getting to see the mind-blowing light shows that had marked the previous Lights In The Sky tours, and being younger than me (just shy of 24) and therefore never being exposed to NIN as part of his nightlife, he enjoyed it. I don't think you could help but enjoy it; there was just an energy in the crowd that was infectious, and everyone was simply there to have a great time. And I think everyone did - certainly everyone around ME, and the reports from other friends at the show were the same. [ ETA: Browsing the NIN.Com boards, I see that the West Palm Beach thread is mostly negativity, whereas nearly everything said about our Toronto show was over-the-top positive. In the WPB thread, there is - seriously!! - a guy who says they were "entitled" to an encore. A contradiction in terms, to be sure, Einstein. ] It was a nice way to say goodbye to the longtime fans, and clearly it was enjoyable for some of the newcomers as well.


I'll have to ask my friend EmCee to weigh in on this, too, because we were at the same show and she was in the section ahead of me, so she might be able to lend more insight into the vibe. But from everything I witnessed, people were having a blast, even while the sun was still up! (NIN in daylight is, truly, a weird experience.)

[ETA: EmCee's response to all of this: Yeah, I was at that show and people were totally into it from my POV.

Hell, I know I loved it. I've never gotten to see NIN before and I am absolutely in no way disappointed with this being what is most likely the only one I'll ever see. IMHO, it was tight.

Those tickets are pretty. Shame mine says [my brother's name instead of mine]. Oh well. Still look all shiny. Nicest looking ticket I've got on my board.

Anyone who bitches and moans and acts all entitled can go DIAF.

Well said, my friend. ]



Back to the über-bitching that's spreading across the 'net, then.

(It's really not so bad, you know, once you get past the taste...)


what a fuckn letdown man. if theyre really gone now an that was what we were left with than FUCKYOU NIN.



I'm reading comments like these, and just shaking my head. Everyone's entitled to their (grammatically flawed) opinion, and of course there will be shows that are better than others, but come ON.

Went to the Austin show and it was awful. NIN was lackluster and sounded weak. Audience was not into the music. Trent recently tweeted about it: “Not one of our better shows. Despite our efforts we seemed unable to win over the crowd. Texas ends with a whisper.” about 4 hours ago from Tweetie -
Trent should buckle down and focus on the tour and not his cheapo girlfriend.

And then this:

There were a lot of very pissed off people at the West Palm show… NIN opened for Jane’s, but nobody knew that was going to happen. I guess my fault for showing up a little late, got there around 7:45 and NIN was already on stage. Then they didn’t even come out for an encore. The stage looked like they were going to come back out for a bit and then all of a sudden the lights came on and they started setting up the stage for Jane’s. Heard a lot of booing… Lots of pissed off people…



Sigh.


Now, see, here's the thing. A lot has to happen to make a concert orgasmic. There has to be a certain synergy between band and audience. Sometimes it happens organically; sometimes it has to be pushed a bit before things start rolling; sometimes there's a misfire and the connection just doesn't take. Keeping NIN as the sole example (just because it could get messy if I start comparing good vs bad shows when I'm talking about totally different bands/crowds/expectations etc.), I can say that I was underwhelmed at the winter show of the With Teeth tour. Part of it was probably because the one I'd seen in July, only a few months previous, was The Best Show Ever. But there were other elements, too - the electricity wasn't the same. The set list wasn't as good. Hell, our seats were crap. But not in a million years would I go and post something like those comments above just because things weren't firing on all cylinders.



I like this response, given by another Rolling Stone reader:

Hey Austin...How can you be mad at the band. They feed off the energy of the crowd. You got no feeling….you fail.



This is SO TRUE. Sometimes there'll be a crowd who come in with this indignant attitude right off the bat, thinking about what they paid for their ticket and having a specific set list in mind, and it's as though they've set themselves up to be disappointed. I've been to other shows like that, with other bands; you can feel it before the show even starts. Instead of there being a buzz in the crowd as everyone comes together in anticipation of what they're gonna see when the curtain comes up and the lights go down, there's an expectation. As though the band is a bunch of trained circus dogs who are expected to perform a certain set of tricks, and one false move totally kills the moment. The band is up there, working their asses off, and the crowd is barely moving. Because OH NOES THEY DIDN'T PLAY MY FAVOURITE SONG!!



To which I say, "If you want to hear your favourite songs in the 'right' order in the 'right' way, STAY THE FUCK HOME and LISTEN TO YOUR iPOD."



For the record, NIN has only ever played my "must-hear" songs once each. I wait with bated breath every single show, hoping to hear the first notes of Ringfinger and The Wretched. Only once, ever, did that happen. And y'know what? THE SHOWS WERE STILL AWESOME.

And god forbid if the band acknowledges a night when the crowd wasn't feelin' it. Because then you incite remarks like this:

Did you see Trent Reznor whining about the Austin show on Twitter? Really, is he surprised? IT SUCKED! HE SOUNDED LIKE SHIT. He needs to grow up and stop being a ass. He’s “sad” that the crowd wasn’t into it, well if he had put together a tighter show, we would have been into it.




Now, okay, I wasn't at the Austin show. I can say nothing with any authority about how good or bad it was. And I've seen Trent whine (OY OY OY), and I've rolled my eyes at it too. But the remark he made about that one concert wasn't whiny. And when fans take something like that and twist it around, why on earth do they expect their supposed favourite band to work nearly as hard next time?? If they can do no right, why bother?



I'm trying to find a comment that was made about how Trent "didn't interact at all with the audience" and that was a bad thing. I'll post it here if I can find it. But y'know what? TRENT DOESN'T TALK TO THE AUDIENCE. With the exception of ONE of the six shows I've seen - during which he actually dragged a stool to the front of the stage and sat on it to explain why he likes bringing NIN to Toronto more often than anywhere else, and what makes these shows stand out to him (it was quite a surprise to the whole crowd; fifteen thousand people fell instantly silent to hear what he had to say, and it was really very touching and kind of surreal) - he has always kept it to "thank you" and "good night" and that is IT. What the hell kind of NIN fan are you if you're expecting him to, like, get everyone singing Head Like A Hole in the round???



(The idea of that just made me LOL.)



Maybe it's just that the stereotypical NIN fan is all angsty and only happy when they're pissed off, or something. Get a load of this:

There was a BIG problem for those of us that bought nin.com Atlanta pre-sale tickets. This was COMPLETELY screwed up, they didn’t have the tickets ready at all! There were literally hundreds of people waiting in line to get their tickets. Once you got to the window (which took over an hour), you had to give them your name, and then someone had to run out and find them somewhere and bring them to the window. It was a total fiasco. I got there just before 7pm, and we didn’t get our tickets until almost 8:15pm. We missed Streetsweeper and half of the NIN set. And we were actually lucky because we were at the front of the line. I feel bad for all those behind us that were waiting. I WILL NEVER GO TO ANOTHER NIN CONCERT. That’s what you get for being greedy old man Reznor.



...uh.

This is NIN's fault how, exactly...? Sounds to me like the venue is shit. 'Cos we got NIN.Com presale tickets, and we were treated like royalty. No lines anywhere, a separate entrance, better seats (without the insane "convenience fees" from TicketBastard on them, no less)... Hell, even the tickets themselves are pretty! (I still have to take a photo of mine. ETA: Okay...that was harder than I thought.)



It is a hell of a lot harder to photograph a shiny ticket in bad light than I expected it to be. Further attempts to show the shiny prettiness of my ticket did not turn out terribly well. But you get the point. Probably. It's SHINY and it has my name on it and it's purple and silver and stuff. Photos don't do it justice.



Anyway, I guess my point is that this is turning out to be one of the more controversial and talked-about tours that I've ever seen, and I'm genuinely shocked at how much of the talk is negative. I've done my fair share of bitching about certain concerts (is there a soul alive who hasn't heard my kvetching about the 2005 U2 gig where Bono lectured us all to call our PM - he even had the phone number up on all of the big-screens for us! HOW THOUGHTFUL - to get Canada to "drop the debt", and then told us how we could have better spent the $200 it cost each of us to see the fucking show???!?). Some concerts deserve to be bitched about. And as I've said, it is ALL a matter of opinion, and every show will strike something different in every member of the audience. But from where I was sitting (literally and figuratively), my assessment was that Trent Reznor went the extra mile to give his actual fans a proper farewell - from playing rare and thrilling stuff, to controlling the ticket prices (honestly, $75 to see three of the biggest music icons of my generation?!? WOW) and offering better seats/easier access/nicer treatment to the .Com crowd, to making sure that everyone was allowed to bring whatever cameras they wanted to bring without getting hassled by security - and for all of his efforts, he's gotten more shitty feedback than any of the truly awful bands or shows I've ever seen.



I don't blame him for waving goodbye. If my "fans" were as greedy and thankless as the most vocal ones I've seen thus far, I'd have quit long before Trent did.

If only FOX was truly "Gut"less.

It seems I've been writing a lot of letters lately. Such a Canadian stereotype, I know, but I'm so tired of being prim and polite when it comes to international politics. I was just beginning to get past my rage concerning the O'Reilly keynote speech when another horrible bastard - from the same network! SURPRISE! - decided to insult my country, our armed forces, and therefore by default my grandfather, great-grandfather, and countless great-uncles who have served in the military. This man should be fired for the things he said, and I have sent a copy of the letter below to every available email address and bulletin board I can find. Once again, I acknowledge the fact that this is little more than tilting at windmills, but it took me three minutes to write it. A small sacrifice in the hopes that it just might affect something.

I doubt it. But it makes me feel better, anyway, to unload my venom on someone who deserves it.

A very brief primer, for anyone who's been living under a rock and hasn't heard word one about this situation: Watch the offending segment, filmed the same day that four more Canadian soldiers were killed in Afghanistan. Then have a look at what this prick is passing off as an apology. And then see how angry even our own journalists have become as a result. If you're on Facebook, take note of the fact that all 600 of his 'fans' are disgusted Canadians, many of whom have crossed the line into death threats. Not our proudest moment, to be sure, but I can't say I don't understand that kind of disgust and rage.


Consider yourselves caught up.



To Greg Gutfeld:

I don't care how this gets to you, or if it's even read BY you. It would suit me just fine if your peers, however distant, and/or your colleagues and/or your superiors receive it instead.

My American friends - none of whom even watch your poor excuse for a network, let alone the show in question - have been apologizing to ME because of what YOU said. It's truly pathetic when a good group of people feel the need to distance themselves from their own nationality because you've embarrassed them by being the ultimate stereotypical American that the world has come to loathe. What's worse is that you haven't even apologized for yourself! You made a pithy statement about how Canada "misunderstood" what you said. So that's our fault, too, huh? I think you've been watching too much South Park, pal.

I just realized that I'm typing all of this under the assumption that you can read. That's rather foolish of me. Perhaps you can get Bill O'Reilly to sound out the words for you...?

I'd never heard of you before this. I hope I never do again. And I hope someday the freedoms our soldiers have afforded you are snatched from your greasy little hands.

Part II - To everyone associated with FOX:

You would be well advised to rid yourselves of this Gutfeld person and the others of his ilk; Canada is a very large country, full of consumers who are only too happy to boycott any product your advertisers are selling for as long as you allow uneducated mouthpieces to represent you.

Unlike America, we in Canada are regularly shown our soldiers coming home in coffins. My commute every day is along what has been renamed the Highway Of Heroes, which runs through Toronto, and I have seen altogether too many processionals of these young men and women being repatriated. We gather on overpasses with Canadian flags and we honour them in silence as their caskets are driven past us. There is absolutely no room for humour in this.

The talking heads responsible for this uproar need not offer another insincere apology. Fire them, save your ad revenue, and do not ever mention my beloved country again.

My open letter to - and final words on - Bill O'Reilly.

The petition to have the It Happened To Alexa foundation withdraw its invitation to Bill O'Reilly started out seeking 10,000 signatures. The engagement is only 6 days away, and the goal has now been lowered to 2,000. As of my last check, it hadn't even broken a thousand names.

Disheartening.

So I went to IMDb, planning to post a thread in O'Reilly's message boards with a link to said petition, and wouldn't you know it? His profile is up and running, but the message board dedicated to him is marked "Section Closed".

Next step: the man's own website. Apparently you have to pay to become a premium member if you wish to use the "Contact Bill" form. I'm not even willing to pay extra on the cable bill to get FOX News, so I'm sure as hell not going to give a dime to talk to him in cyberspace.

Final step, then: I found his email address, and I wrote the most restrained, polite message I could manage without gagging. You catch more flies with honey, after all, and I don't think my message would hold much water if I was simply being one of those screechy bitches our friend Billy seems to loathe so very much. Instead, I polished a few paragraphs and hit 'send'. Chances are it will make no difference whatsoever. Few things do when it comes to people like him. But at least I can say I did it.

---Original Message---
To: Bill O'Reilly
From: me
Subject: The "It Happened To Alexa" Hullaballoo
Date:

Mr. O'Reilly -

Surely you've received a mountain of mail about your upcoming talk at the "It Happened To Alexa" luncheon, and the petition asking for your withdrawal. I'll keep mine as short as I can.

Please don't speak at the engagement.

I realize that part of being an on-air personality is putting across what is often a more extreme and exaggerated version of yourself; perhaps the many comments you've made that lead the public to believe that you're a misogynist, among other things, is a direct result of those exaggerations. But I will say this: I was sexually assaulted a few months ago (and no, I don't expect you to care; maybe it would make a difference if you knew that I was wearing medical scrubs at the time, and was alone inside the building in which I worked, and was not in any way making a target of myself the way you said Jennifer Moore did...?), and when I tried to imagine sitting at a luncheon and listening to you speak about rape survival, I felt ill. I couldn't handle hearing a man who has been quoted more than once saying things that amount to "s/he deserved it" or "s/he brought in on him/herself" telling me that he's on my side.

I ask you, Mr. O'Reilly, to please simply consider what your television audience has seen and heard from you, and then think about what the rape survivors at this luncheon will be feeling when you take the microphone and do an about-face (and lie to them?) by saying women's rights matter to you. Please don't make any of those women feel even more belittled and guilty and humiliated than they already do. I can only assume that your reason for never apologizing for some of the more truly upsetting remarks is that you believe you are right, and that there are times and places wherein assault is justifiable. It won't matter what you say on March 19th; what you've said in the past is already out there, and you can't unring that bell.

I appeal to your obviously sizable intellect, and whatever humanity you may have behind your on-air blustering, to reconsider this speaking engagement. Your withdrawal from it would speak volumes about whether or not you actually DO care about how a woman who has been raped or otherwise assaulted should feel. There are so many topics about which you are the perfect man to speak...but the degradation and abuse of women is not one of them.

I'll never know, as we no longer get FOX News here without paying a small fortune for it, but if you did read this far, I thank you.


~Heather xxxxxx
Toronto, ON, Canada



You have the link to the petition. You can try your luck at IMDb, if you like ( http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0971123/board ). Now you have his email address, too.

Six days left. Never say never.


And that's the last I have to say about it.

The Bill O'Reilly petition. I had to post it.

I don't have a lot of faith in what petitions can do, really. Life is not just one big Erin Brockovich lovefest. But every so often I'll see something that makes me practically erupt with rage, and I feel like I'm better off just sharing the damn thing, whether it has any effect or not.

This time it's Bill O'Reilly who's made me feel homicidal. Not that he usually doesn't anyway, just by existing. But women who've been victims of sexual assault - or, hell, just PEOPLE in general - need to know about this disgusting error in judgment (that's putting it kindly) and should say something about it.

O'Reilly has been invited to speak at The It Happened To Alexa fundraiser, which, if you didn't know, is a foundation built to raise awareness about rape and to offer support and resources to victims of sexual assault. I can think of a few men who might be worse choices, but...not many.

I'm borrowing liberally from my friend Rachel's note about this in order to give background to why this bastard doesn't deserve to have an oxygen supply, let alone have the opportunity to listen to himself talk in the presence of the very people upon whom he likes to prey:

Bill O'Reilly is scheduled to speak at a fundraising luncheon for the rape survivors advocacy group It Happened To Alexa Foundation at the Ritz Carlton in Manalapan, Florida, on March 19th, 2009. This is, simply, outrageous.

According to its website, the purpose of the It Happened to Alexa Foundation is to "help support rape survivors through the trauma of the criminal trial, in the hopes that more survivors will go through with the prosecution in order to put these perpetrators behind bars...[and to] assist rape victims families with travel expenses during the litigation process."

A laudable mission, indeed. But not only has O'Reilly been accused of sexual harassment at work (settling out of court and paying his accuser a multi-million dollar sum); he also has a history of making blame-the-victim comments about sexual assault, including the following:

"These two girls come in from the suburbs and they get bombed, and their car is towed because they're moronic girls and, you know, they don't have a car. So they're standing there in the middle of the night with no car. And then they separate because they're drunk...

"Now Moore, Jennifer Moore...She was 5-foot-2, 105 pounds, wearing a miniskirt and a halter top with a bare midriff... So every predator in the world is gonna pick that up at two in the morning. She's walking by herself on the West Side Highway, and she gets picked up by a thug... And the thug takes her over to New Jersey in the cab and kills her and rapes her and does all these terrible things to her..." (Bill O'Reilly, The Radio Factor with Bill O'Reilly, 8/2/06)

"And the question is, why didn't [11-year-old Shawn Hornbeck, kidnapped, held and raped for 4 years] escape when he could have?...The Stockholm syndrome thing, I don't buy it...The situation here for this kid looks to me to be a lot more fun than what he had under his old parents. He didn't have to go to school. He could run around and do whatever he wanted...I think when it all comes down, what's going to happen is, there was an element here that this kid liked about his circumstances." (Bill O'Reilly, Fox News' The O'Reilly Factor, 1/15/07)

We can only presume that the board of the It Happened to Alexa Foundation were unaware of O'Reilly's history when they extended the invitation to him. But unfortunately, all objections to O'Reilly's appearance since then have been met with a polite rebuttal.

We consider it wholly inappropriate that Bill O'Reilly should be given the opportunity to promote his new book by associating himself with an organization that does such laudable work on behalf of rape victims.

Please join us in asking the It Happened to Alexa Foundation to withdraw their invitation to Bill O'Reilly and replace him with another, more appropriate, speaker.




Do whatever you feel is right. Sign the petition, don't sign it, watch his show, turn it off, buy his books, burn them, whatever. I've done what I feel is right, and that is to bring this to the attention of my friends and readers. People like Bill O'Reilly do not deserve to have their crimes and misdemeanours swept under the carpet; if a petition can make someone's life a little more difficult - be it his or that of the moron(s) who chose him as a speaker - then it was worth the ten seconds it took to type in my info and hit 'enter'.




**AN ASIDE:** I know I don't update this blog often; I do, however, provide daily links of all types (including the above-mentioned) via my Twitter account, so please feel free to follow me there, too.



***ETA:*** A kind commenter added this additional link for those looking for more background about why O'Reilly is such a heinous choice for this engagement: "O’Reilly Should Apologize to Rape Survivors; Gets Worst Person for Four Straight Nights". Thank you, C.


If you think others would get something out of reading this, PLEASE pass it along, via email, Facebook, Digg or any other means. As I so often say, every little bit helps.

Travolta's son dies...at the hands of L. Ron?

I've been quite sick for the past week, so you'd think I'd have had my TV on a lot. Not so. In fact, it was my mother who told me last night that John Travolta's eldest son, Jett, had been found dead earlier that day in their vacation home in the Bahamas.

You have to know my first thought was, "Ah, yes. The Scientologists. Bet he was sick and they opted not to treat him."

Initially, though, it looked like a freak accident - the boy had a seizure and hit his head in the bathtub. It's terrible. The kid was only 16. So, for a fleeting moment, I felt sympathy for his parents.

And then I got online.

Let's go back a bit, to when I first saw this utterly psycho video of Tom Cruise, which was yanked from YouTube almost instantly, but Gawker.Com has bravely hosted it ever since, despite countless legal threats.



I remember thinking, as I watched it and gaped at the insanity before me, that I wondered how the hell John Travolta - who I believe is an even higher-ranking member of the Church - had managed to keep a relatively sane profile to the masses. Now, of course, I figure he just has better handlers, because apparently there's been a war raging over his son Jett for the last 14 years. Why? Well, Jett was, by all accounts other than those of his parents, autistic, but to declare that would be to admit that he was a "Degraded Being", in Scientology-speak. So instead they blamed carpet cleansing agents used in his childhood bedroom for giving him Kawasaki's Disease (a very, very rare autoimmune illness that usually resolves itself by the age of 8). Because at least then they wouldn't have to deal with that whole "OH NOES PSYCHIATRY IS TEH EEEEEVILLLL!!1one!" issue.

(Was that glib of me?)

Now I'm reading articles about how Jett was nonverbal (confirmation links will be posted when I find a solid backing for this) and required 24/7 care. First of all, that would explain that whole "Travolta Caught Kissing His M Nanny" debacle...



Well, okay, no. It doesn't explain that. But it explains why they had a caretaker for their kids, which had puzzled me a bit, since their youngest is 9 and Kelly Preston has publicly stated that she's set aside acting to be a hands-on mom.

So they have this guy on the payroll to watch over Jett, whose alleged autism has never been treated (much to the outrage of Travolta's own brother) and who has shown some sort of seizure disorder in his life. This man was, apparently, the one to find Jett dead in the bathroom on Friday morning. Which wouldn't be strange, necessarily...

...except for the 12-hour gap between the last time Jett was seen and the time his caretaker bothered to check on him.

The kid goes into the bathroom and doesn't come out...but nobody wonders? And nobody heard him fall??

Huh??

Still, all of this could be blamed on bad parenting or a series of bad choices or...whatever. But I remembered reading about the much-ballyhooed father of Scientology and the death of his son, so I wandered over to Wikipedia to check the guy out.

There's a whole lot to read, my friends. Like his weird relationship with Aleister Crowley (whose name has long been associated, rightly or not, with the Church of Satan), his involvement with "sex magick rituals", his bigamy, and the beating and torture of his wives and children.

Heck of a guy!

But here is what is specifically said about his son:

In March 1952, Hubbard moved to Phoenix, Arizona. Hubbard started the Scientology religion while he was living in Phoenix. In mid-1952, Hubbard expanded Dianetics into an "applied religious philosophy" which he called Scientology. That year, Hubbard also married his third wife, Mary Sue Whipp, to whom he remained married until his death (though separated by the early 70s, when Mary Sue was incarcerated for her involvement in Operation Snow White). With Mary Sue, Hubbard fathered four more children — Diana, Quentin, Suzette and Arthur — over the next six years.

Quentin Hubbard, born in 1954, was groomed to one day replace him as head of the Scientology organization. Quentin was uninterested in his father's plans and had preferred to become a pilot. He was also deeply depressed, allegedly because he was homosexual. Quentin attempted suicide in 1974, then in 1976 died under circumstances that might have been suicide or murder.

My point, I guess, is that people who keep saying (and yes, they're already saying it - blogs the world over are alight with the debate) the church couldn't possibly have anything to do with Jett's tragic death should look at the source. It's NOT an organization that has a history of taking care of children, and the man whose books they live by and who they worship and want to emulate is a scary bloody figurehead, indeed.



ETA: Courtesy of a kind user over on IMDb, we can throw another log onto the "Hubbard hated kids" fire; apparently he started running into trouble with the law over his brutality and insanity 50 years ago. (I find it darkly amusing that "Dianetics" was called a new brand of psychology.)

ETA II: Another rather disturbing link. Here's a report from an ex-Scientology church member explaining what Scientology will do to handle Jett Travolta's death.



I wonder when the tireless defenders of the "church" will add it all up. You would think, if nothing else, that evidence of Travolta flying to a Celebrity Scientology Centre before bothering to claim his son's body might raise a few eyebrows. (Who knew you could track down someone's private plane and flightplan online? WILL WONDERS NEVER CEASE??)

The fact remains that we'll never know what really happened. The moneymen have surely begun to spin this tale into oblivion. Latest reports confirm that Jett will be cremated in the Bahamas; they're not even going to wait to return home (even though Johnny boy has already flown there once; nothing suspicious there at ALL).

It's so sad that the children of these people have lost their lives because of these bizarre cult rules. Jett was a "Degraded Being"? For being born autistic?? The only thing "degraded" here is the IQ of anyone who'd let their families suffer because a sci-fi whack job wrote a lousy book.


For more scary reading, I'd recommend Xenu.Net. And I wonder how long it'll be before I get the C&D order to remove this blog post. Bets, anyone?

On sexual harassment. And worse.

I don't update this thing for a month, and then I come back with this? Yes, you have permission to scowl at me for this. But it's timely. It's not my place to go into the details of why, but I'll give a very brief overview:

A friend of mine has a daughter who is...let's leave it at "middle-school age". I adore my friend, and I adore her daughter; I love how strong my friend is, how opinionated she can be without treading on others, and she's clearly passing that same inner and outer strength along to her young lady. But I don't think it's just my affection for them that has me so outraged over what happened to this girl a few days ago. It makes it worse, yeah, but I think I'd probably be sickened by any permutation of this. And I expect you will be, too, which is why I'm writing about it.

This girl - who we'll just call A. - went to school, as usual. While waiting for the bus to arrive at her usual stop at the end of the day, a few of her classmates - boys - approached her and started doing that thing that all adolescent boys do. You know, whatever the modern day equivalent to pigtails in the inkwell would be. Teasing, kidding around, kinda being jerks, but...whatever. It's all part of the experience of entering teenage-dom, right?

Right. Until the tone of it all changed and turned into something that no adult woman should have to tolerate, much less a girl, no matter how strong and smart she is. A girl just waiting at a bus stop, like any other day, in broad daylight, with other kids around. Lascivious remarks, graphic objectification, all culminating in actual physical contact that, while she wasn't harmed in a bodily sense, was way over the line of what any boy (or girl) should ever be allowed to do to a classmate.

Because I haven't yet gotten permission, as it were, to write this about A., I'm trying to refrain from going into too many details, which I know will make it hard to convey the horror of it...but I can draw a parallel for you between A.'s experience and something that happened to me when I was a few years older than her.

When I was about 16, I had a boyfriend. He and I got together when I was 15 and he was 17, and we were together into university. In our high school, there was nobody who didn't know we were a couple, and I think that probably insulated me from a lot of things that other guys might have chosen to visit upon me. But there was one guy friend who, out of nowhere, opened my eyes to the unpleasantness that can mark male-female relationships. He was a friend of my boyfriend, too, so it never struck any of us as weird that I would occasionally talk to him on the phone at night, after school, before bed, about class projects or pieces of music we were studying or our respective relationships.

But one night was different. One night, in the midst of him trying to explain how to get an A+ on my paper about A Tale Of Two Cities, he just changed the subject completely and started asking totally inappropriate questions about my physical relationship with my boyfriend. I deflected for as long as I could, and then he switched tactics. He asked me if I "ever got [my]self off". I think I laughed, either out of surprise or because I thought he had to be kidding. This wasn't something we'd ever so much as hinted at discussing before, and it sure as hell wasn't something I was up for talking about - with him or with anyone!

So I said the first thing that came to mind. I snorted indignantly and said, "Why? Do YOU?"

To which he responded, "What do you think I've being doing ever since we got on the phone?"



I think I'll take a moment to let the feeling of revulsion I still feel, sixteen years later, pass.


I hung up. We never talked on the phone again, and whenever I had to see him, at school or at parties or at music functions, I would dodge him as best I could. On a couple of occasions I had to come right out and tell him that I was ending my association with him. There was even an incident, later, where a group of us were walking back toward our high school on a lunch break, and he took it upon himself to smack me in the back of the head several times for no apparent reason (bear in mind that he was 18 by now); that resulted in my boyfriend grabbing him by the throat and holding him up against the chalkboard in our music room, threatening to kill him if he ever came near me again. The freezing-out process eventually led to him engaging in some really distressing stalker-type behaviour, including one night when he drove to my house in the worst imaginable blizzard to deliver my Christmas gift, and even as I hid in the living room, out of sight, with my boyfriend (who by now wanted to kill the guy), and let my father try to convince the scary bastard that I wasn't home, he wouldn't let up. He just wanted to come in for a minute; he just wanted to leave the box on the kitchen counter; he just wanted to leave a note; he just, he just, he just... My father finally made him go, back out into that hellish weather at 10 p.m. on a weeknight, and if I remember correctly, I turned to my boyfriend and started to cry, asking him, "What did I do to make him think this was okay?"

People who know me know that I'm no shrinking violet. If there's a "type" who would normally blame themselves for not reacting strongly enough to something, or for "letting" someone do or say things to them without punishing them immediately and painfully, I have never been that type. But that was probably the first glimpse I got into the other side, the dark side, where a girl realizes that she's not necessarily as prepared or equipped or defensive enough to deal with the things an arrogant, entitled, sick bastard will visit upon her when he gets the chance.

Many of you know that I have, unfortunately, come up against worse incidents since that high school situation. And in me turning to my family and friends for support and advice, I learned just how many of you, too, have stories that vary in detail but that all end in the same feeling of anger and helplessness and fear. We're all women who thought we should have reacted differently, that we ought to have visited bodily harm on the swine who thought they could take whatever they wanted from us, and we've all had moments when we beat ourselves up for not doing what we should have done. We all know that's just not right - that turning these things into our own fault is salt in our own wounds, and is simply wrong - but we do it anyway. We spend days, weeks or years asking why we didn't break the guy's nose or take him to court or even avoid whatever situation we found ourselves in, and it's a waste of energy. It's not our fault that there are people out there who'll wait for you to be vulnerable, even for a second,and then move in for the kill...whatever form it takes.

Of course, I can say this, but as some of you - those closest to the ordeal I suffered in April - well know, I've done exactly the same thing. I've run the gamut of self-blame and am still caught in the "it could have been worse; it could have been rape" cycle of thought. I know I shouldn't do that to myself, but it creeps in sometimes, all the same.

Back to A., then. She's younger now than I was then, and what she dealt with a few days ago was, in many ways, creepier than my Phone Call From Hell. She had to hear things like that from boys who were right there, physically, in front of her. And brava to her, because she did everything right, and with any luck those boys won't be bothering anyone again anytime soon. But my reason for writing this is simply to express my disgust and horror at what little girls are apparently having to deal with from their peers. Hell, I was freaked out by my situation at the age of 16, when I had a built-in protection system in the form of a football-player boyfriend; I simply cannot imagine how I'd have felt, going back to school the next day, had I been a few years younger or less insulated. How I'd have dealt with it had it been more than one creep, and was instead a group of friends who thought it was okay to say vile things to me and lay their hands on me. I'm so proud of A. for having her head on so straight; she's dealt with this beautifully, and I applaud her and her parents for just taking care of business and getting on with it. Here I am, days later, still furious and horrified on her behalf. Less than half my age, and the girl has more poise than I do.

So what stands to be gained from typing all of this? I don't know. Awareness, maybe, that these incidents are happening earlier and earlier in young people's lives. Commiseration, perhaps, among those of us who've had to deal with someone harassing or assaulting us, treating us like their own personal playground while we freeze up inside and are left with scars that probably never fully fade. Another friend of mine was brave enough to share her experiences with sexual assault in her blog some time ago, and I remember turning to her for advice and comfort when I had my demoralizing experience - first with the assailant, then with the police - this past spring. I guess my writing this is my way of saying that I hope I can do for someone else what that friend, and others, did for me in the sleepless nights that followed my assault.

And in all of this there is a young lady who's now been introduced to one of the most unsavoury parts of human nature, at such an early age, and she's dealing with it. It bothers me that we can't protect anyone from this sort of thing, because it's so...ubiquitous. Kids can't even just be kids anymore. They instead get smacked in the face - or the backside, if you will - with things nobody should have to confront, least of all a fledgling teenager who should still believe in respect and harmless crushes and pigtails in the inkwell.

It's heartbreaking.

"My heart belongs to Daddy": The Virginity Movement and "Purity Balls"

A friend of mine posted a set of unimaginably disturbing links about "the Courtship Movement", which, as she pointed out, is well-intentioned but has somehow managed to flip the "squick" button for a lot of us. I'll be borrowing liberally from the links she used (and I hope she doesn't mind!), and adding my own editorials as I go.

Preaching abstinence to teenagers is not inherently a bad thing. In this sex-crazed world, it's important for kids to know that they do have the option to JUST SAY NO, and that it is nobody's choice but their own. I was a teenager in the '90s, and I seemed to run with a bizarrely "pure" crowd (I do hate that word; as was mentioned in my friend's original post, it makes it sound as though a girl/woman who has chosen to engage in sexual activity becomes less valuable somehow - "used goods", as it were). Yes, there was sex, but everyone in my group of friends was paired off, most of us carrying our relationships into university, and some of us beyond and into marriage/cohabitational bliss. None of us drank underage, there were no drugs, no smoking, no sleeping around... It sounds utopian and probably outright untrue, but there it is. I was there. I know. We were an aberration, I suppose; those of us who chose to have sex were responsible and monogamous, and those of us who chose not to weren't looked upon as "lame".

But therein lies my problem with preaching only abstinence, which is the central theme of books such as "I Kissed Dating Goodbye", apparently a popular read in this Courtship Movement. Kids will be kids; covering their eyes and not educating them about all of their options, and the most responsible way to handle each of them, simply isn't realistic. (I was going to add, "...in this day and age," to that statement, but I suspect there was just as much premarital sex happening in Jane Austen's years as there is now; the main difference is taking a literal roll in the hay on ye olde plantation versus "all those clumsy, sticky fumblings in the backseats of cars" - thank you, Dr. Hannibal Lecter.)

Here's where the squick factor comes in. Long have we known of events like the traditional Southern Cotillions, the coming-out parties that announce a young debutante's "arrival" onto the scene. Now, though, there are glitzy bashes that, on the surface, look just like a cotillion or a prom, but are something altogether different. And are, in my opinion, freaky as all hell.

Introducing "Purity Balls", in which girls of various ages pledge their virginity. To their FATHERS. (Also known, according to the Wikipedia entry on the subject, as "Father Daughter Purity Balls" or "Purity Weddings". Just...ugh.)

A quote from the article to which I linked above:

In a chandelier-lit ballroom overlooking the Rocky Mountains one recent evening, some hundred couples feast on herb-crusted chicken and julienned vegetables. The men look dapper in tuxedos; their dates are resplendent in floor-length gowns, long white gloves and tiaras framing twirly, ornate updos. Seated at a table with four couples, I watch as the gray-haired man next to me reaches into his breast pocket, pulls out a small satin box and flips it open to check out a gold ring he’s about to place on the finger of the woman sitting to his right. Her eyes well up with tears as she is overcome by emotion.

The man’s date? His 25-year-old daughter. Welcome to Colorado Springs’ Seventh Annual Father-Daughter Purity Ball, held at the five-star Broadmoor Hotel. The event’s purpose is, in part, to celebrate dad-daughter bonding, but the main agenda is for fathers to vow to protect the girls’ chastity until they marry and for the daughters to promise to stay pure. Pastor Randy Wilson, host of the event and cofounder of the ball, strides to the front of the room, takes the microphone and asks the men, “Are you ready to war for your daughters’ purity?”

Cue my gag reflex.

Until I read my friend's blog entry,I had no idea such parties existed. I'd always thought it questionable that nuns wore rings on their "wedding finger" to signify their marriage to God, and my stomach has always turned a bit at the sight of little girls walking down the aisle in miniature wedding dresses to meet the priest at the front of their Catholic church and become "confirmed" (which, to me, is synonymous with "owned") by the religion. But these are only my opinions; I feel strongly that everyone should have their own, and not have someone else's shoved down their throats (or in turn shove theirs down anyone else's). I am against organized religion (which is not the same as being against faith or spirituality; a lot of people make that mistake when I say such things), but I can, in many cases, understand why others choose to subscribe to a certain religion or set of beliefs.

This whole Purity Ball, thing? No. No. That I cannot understand.

To quote my friend's entry: "I'd be pro- these events, albeit with reservations re: the tackiness of turning an important private spiritual decision into A Public Display That Looks Like Yet Another Damned Prom, except for one thing: the girls don't make this promise to themselves, or to their God. They make the promise to their fathers (and here's an insider view that will explain why)."

She hit the nail on the head as far as one of the reasons this concept bothers me so much: These girls should be making this decision for themselves, or, if they're doing it in the name of their religion, making a promise to their deity. Wearing a ring that marks you as your father's property until you're married, though...? Oh, yep, there's that nausea again.

I realize that we incorporate parts of this into widely undisputed rituals in our lives already. The father who "gives his daughter away" at her wedding is, essentially, allowing his daughter to become currency that's exchanging hands, from one man to another. I'm quite sure it's not looked at that way by most of the people who do it - it's probably meant to be a sweet gesture, a moment where the little girl has grown up and left the nest, and her father is indicating that he trusts this new man to love her as much as he always has. But you see my point. And there's also the issue of a woman changing her name after marriage. She usually has her father's last name to begin with, and once the ink has dried on the contract wedding license, she takes her husband's name instead. (That too has always driven me INSANE, and mark my words: I will never change my name for any man, and my "chosen" name - the one I use as my pseudonym - is in fact my mother's maiden name.)

Anyway, back to the Purity Balls. (Doesn't that just sound wrong?) Here's an interesting article about these events also taking place for boys, and the differences between the two. As is pointed out early on in the piece, a woman's transition away from virginity involves an actual, tangible, physical change (remember all those lovely morning-after-the-wedding rituals that involve a man hanging his white sheets outside the honeymoon suite's window to show everyone the spot of blood, thereby proving he got himself a good one?), whereas boys remain physically "intact" no matter how much sleeping around he does. The article underscores the disturbing dissonance between a woman's purity (of body AND soul) and a man's integrity. Read it. It's...eye-opening.

All of this horrifies me. But I think my jaw hit the floor hardest when I got to this part of my friend's blog entry (in which she wisely points out that this guy can't write to save his life and makes it sound like he was 12 when he took his daughter out for a night on the town...): "Here's Jonathan Lindvall, explaining how he coerced his twelve-year-old daughter into putting him in charge of not just her sexuality, but her emotions: At age twelve, I took Bethany out to dinner one evening and presented her with a golden necklace with a heart-shaped pendant formed like a padlock. There was a small keyhole and an accompanying key. I presented the pendant and necklace to her and asked her to "Give me your heart" (Prov. 23:26). I explained that I wanted to keep the gold key as a symbol of her trusting me with her emotions. I specifically asked her to not entertain romantic thoughts toward any young man until she and her mother and I together conclude that he is God s choice to be her husband. (There is scriptural precedent for the young people involved to be consulted and consent to a marriage arrangement.) I explained that at the beginning of her marital engagement I would give the gold key to her betrothed, and that although she might not yet love him, she would then be free to aim her heart toward him. Bethany unreservedly entrusted the symbolic gold key into my care, and with it, her heart."

I'm well past nausea now. I think I'll have to ask my father about this. I expect he'll shudder and tell me he was just as happy NOT TO KNOW, thankyouverymuch. And where, might I ask, are the mothers in all of this???

I could go so much further in-depth than I have; my friend's entry certainly did, and provided even more astonishing - and, to me, disturbing - revelations about what's going on in my neighbouring country (and probably here in Canada, too, really). But I'll leave the links and those articles to speak for themselves, I think. And tonight, before I go to sleep, I will silently thank my parents for teaching me what I needed to know, and trusting ME to make the choices I needed to make as I went along, always letting me know they were there if I had questions or needed guidance. I am not betrothed to my father until some other guy comes along, nor do I have to feel guilty if and when I choose to enter into a relationship with a man, and for those privileges I thank my parents, not a god or a church or an organization that seems to be built around making independent girls feel like used up trash.

I don't know that I ever realized just how lucky I was until I read about the Purity Ball that never got thrown for me.

A little linkspam goes a long way.

David, I am here to announce that you are my 900th Facebook Wall post. The best part? It was part of what is truly the basis for our most intellectual exchanges, and reminiscent of the night we drove all over the city listening to NIN and quoting Elmer Fudd. "Wupert, you're pwastered!!"



The race to 1000 is on. I haven't a clue what to do to celebrate it when it happens, though. I shall have to think. To be sure, #666 would have been much more fun.

Now for some potentially interesting links:

• Anyone who thinks Canadians are all nice and sweet and friendly 100% of the time has never seen our little-known ritual of killing dogs, squirrels and raccoons, and then posing them with flowers between their paws in High Park. Yeah, I wish I was kidding, too. "There is something obviously concerning and bizarre in the park," Pinto said. YOU THINK?!?
  
  
• Do you guys all remember our dear old pal Mike Strobel, the "journalist" who so gleefully destroyed (or TRIED to destroy) the careers and the lives of several doctors, including the one we know here in public as "Dr. L"? Well, he's getting a wee taste of his own medicine, as he's been deemed "too ugly" to attend the BeautifulPeople.Net launch party in Toronto. Boy, is he ever.
  
  
• You kinda have to feel sorry for this dude. A guy gets released from jail and isn't sure if he's allowed to keep the clothes they gave him on the inside, so he takes 'em off and leaves naked, then gets arrested for public nudity. Yeesh. Cut him some slack, huh?? Up here, someone would have just handed him a Toronto Maple Leafs banner to wrap himself in and patted him on the head.
  
  
• Umm...I need to throw up. Mini-Me is suing TMZ for leaking his sex tape. I don't think I'm gonna make it to the bathroom. I'm still in therapy over the Tom Sizemore tapes. OH MY EYES.
  
  
• And WHAT?!??!??!? CHRIS NOTH QUITS LAW & ORDER: CRIMINAL INTENT!?!? Augh!!! Just...augh!!! To hell with every TV show I ever like! First CSI ditches ♥Jorja♥, then L&O: SVU gets rid of our good Canadian boy Adam Beach, and now this?!?! HELLS, NO!!! (I don't even wanna discuss Gary Dourdan, thanks. That one was his own damn fault.)
  
  
• OMG. I've had some bad dates (Yellow BMW Guy leaps to mind...), but HOLY CRAP. Listen to these messages left for some woman by a guy to whom she VERY WRONGLY gave her card, and then thank your lucky stars that none of us (as far as I know) have ever met this guy. WHAT A BASTARD!!!
  

I think I'll just not watch the news or read the 'net, like, ever again.

Ancient History: what passes for journalism, and how it affected me once upon a time...

I was reading back through old LiveJournal posts, looking for a particular link, and I happened across an entry from 2005 that brought back a whole lot of memories.

See, at the time, I was kinda-sorta romantically involved with my boss - a doctor - and he was dealing with a College of Physicians and Surgeons case that simply would not go away. Everyone who knew anything about the situation knew that the complainant was a lunatic, and while I'll grant that the doctor's judgment was lacking in a lot of respects, I cannot - even now, long after an unpleasant personal and professional breakup - tolerate reading the outright bullshit that one columnist was passing off as truth.

The "journalist"'s name is Mike Strobel, and somehow he still has his job at the Toronto Sun. I don't read his trashy paper any longer, but I see his name every so often when I'm surfing Canoe for entertainment news and the like. He's deplorable. I and my friends had already started taking issue with the biased and just plain BAD writing in which he'd been engaging, especially with respect to another doctor whose tawdry life story apparently made great copy (because, you know, exploiting the childhood sexual abuse a man suffered at the hands of his mother is oh, so tasteful!). But when the shit hit the fan, and Strobel turned his beady little eyes toward the man I called my friend, my lover, and my colleague, I went ballistic.

I found the letter I wrote to him, and thought it was worth reprinting here. It's from April 2005, and I think I ought to re-send it to his inbox every single day, just to piss him off.

From my LiveJournal (with a few identifying details - my own name and that of my beau, for example - redacted for privacy):

---

In case the guy was bored and hadn't been harassed in a while, I finally got around to sending a letter of my own to Jackass Mike Strobel. HW was kind enough to draw my attention to this article, his latest piece of crap. Here was my response:

Mr. Strobel:

The first time I recall reading an article penned by you was in January of this year. I'm sure I'd read others before, having spent much of my life in the GTA, but the articles you wrote about Dr. Kevin White, the London physician whose license was lost due to come rather shocking circumstances...? That seems as good a place as any for me to start.

Upon reading your coverage, I must admit, I was intrigued by the picture you were painting. Whatever issues I may have had with your almost insultingly informal writing style were set aside, for the moment, because I assumed (foolishly) that I was at least getting "the real story" about this doctor and his exploits. I posted links on my weblog, directing my readers and friends to your articles so they, too, could share in my surprise that such things were going on in the Ontario medical profession.

What struck me about my readers' responses, though, was not that they shared in my surprise about Dr. White's secrets and behaviour. Rather, they each commented first upon how skewed your perspective seemed, and how nobody felt like they were getting an actual story out of you. They all made mention of how biased you seemed, how willing you were to simply play up the salacious bits and never try to explain another side - or even indicate that there was another side. Surely there was. Dr. White's explanations were played down in your article, apparently for the sake of you making your piece into something funny or entertaining. I daresay the subject matter was not meant to be amusing for the public to read. (In my opinion, writing the article in such a way was almost as sick as what the doctor himself purportedly did.)

Let's fast forward a bit. Last month, you again had occasion to descend upon the College of Physicians and Surgeons to get another scoop. This time it was the case of Dr. L. I am actually very familiar with this case, and have been for the better part of four years now. I've heard all sides of it firsthand. I know what is fact and what is opinion. I know why Dr. L chose to submit the "agreed statement of facts" that he did. I know what the College and the lawyers agreed upon. I know what the accusers reneged. Having said all of that, then, I know that the article you wrote on March 25th was factually incorrect, and once again simply showed your penchant for crucifying doctors without ever giving any indication that there could be another side to a story.

It was then, reading your article about Dr. L, that I realized I couldn't possibly believe much of what you said about Dr. White. I know nothing of Dr. White; I have never met him and have not heard of him outside of your reporting. Even so, seeing how off-centre your storytelling (a more appropriate word, I think, than "reporting") was in terms of Dr. L's situation, there seems to be no way for the public to have any clue how close you've come to the truth with any of your other articles.

Yes, the College makes its own decisions. Yes, these men have to answer for whatever it is they may have done. No, we should not have to read one-sided, half-baked analyses of these stories. The public deserves a better view of things than that.

I'm now reading another piece you somehow slipped by your editor today. It's about Dr. DeLuco, and the "ménage à trois" about which you seemed to have so much fun writing over the past couple of days. Strangely enough, I had been reading the Sun last night and had come across the article about DeLuco's appearance at the College, and as I read all of the "ooh la la"s and so on, I found myself thinking, "Who on earth writes like this in a paper that's supposed to be several steps up from the National Enquirer?"

Sure enough, it was your article.

I'm cancelling my subscription to the Toronto Sun. I was disgusted enough by your coverage of the L case on a personal level, and how you gave no thought to the way a story is told and its effects on a person's family, friends and practice; now I'm left to doubt practically every word your editor allows into print. If the Sun ever chooses to begin actually reporting again, and giving a whole story without so much sensationalist garbage thrown in for fun, I may consider picking up another issue. Until then, I wouldn't lower myself to read the trash you churn out every day.

Sincerely,
H.S.



P.S. [a note to my LJ readers] I know at least a couple of you actually got responses to your emails to Mike Strobel. Thank you again for writing to him. And I'll be sure to let you know if I hear back myself.

---

I did, in fact, hear back from him - a smug little email that read something like, "Thank you, Ms. S. It's always nice to hear from my fans." I should have known.

In any case, let this be out there for all to see. The man still, inexplicably, has his job. Mike Strobel is a hack, and worse yet, he is a liar. Libel doesn't seem to faze him; no matter how many of us wrote to him or to his editor, to give them a chance to remedy his countless factual errors, he made no move to admit any error on his part or print any corrections. Keep that in mind the next time you're on a GO Train and you pick up a crumpled issue of The Toronto Sun. What you're reading really is the trash that it appears to be.