Alexa and Dave on -- Christie Blatchford: Toronto, City of Sissies

By: Christie Blatchford
Dec 10, 2011 – 2:00 AM ET | Last Updated: Dec 10, 2011 3:59 AM ET
Source: The National Post
Mark Blinch / Reuters files

Where have all this city's manly men gone? It was in Toronto recently, while temporarily resuming my semi-charmed kind of life there and briefly ditching the other semi-charmed half in Kingston, that I realized how much in need the modern male of the species is of some toughening up.

The bull terrier and I were on a long forced march on the toney part of Yonge Street, in Rosedale.
There were a couple of boys, maybe 10 years old, maybe 12, walking ahead of me. Coming towards them was another small knot of boys about the same age.

The two groups met, and immediately began hugging each another, one at a time. The trustees and ding-dongs at the Toronto District School Board would have been ecstatic; I was mortified and appalled.

This was about the time that Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty was all over the airwaves, with his anti-bullying crackdown, and poor old Doug Ford, a Toronto councillor whose brother Rob just happens to be the city mayor, was caught out (by the Toronto Star, of course, the newspaper in such a permanent state of nervous Nellie-dom about the Fords, forever crying in front-page headlines “The world is ending! Again!”, that it renders the boy who cried wolf a reticent little beggar by comparison) shilling for the Ultimate Fighting Championship, or UFC, which of course was made legal in the province only this year by, wait for it, the government of Premier McGuinty.

Mr. Ford’s sin, through an assistant, had been to ask the TSDB to consider circulating a little brochure about WFC community involvement. “A terrible idea,” one trustee immediately said, noting that “schools are all about peacemaking now.”

That’s quite true: In Toronto, actual education routinely takes a back seat to anti-bullying messages, gay-positive education, recognition assemblies and social justice.

In any case, it already has been a bad month for Doug Ford.

Just days later, while attending a meeting about possible cuts to school nutritional programs, he offered to kick in $1,000 to help a particular program. So shocked were his fellows and Toronto taxpayers at the sight of a local politician offering to reach into his own pocket to pay for anything, they rose up as one to protest that this too must be dead-wrong.

(It reminded me of the time, years ago, when his brother was just a councillor and also got in trouble for not spending enough on his expenses. The nerve of those Ford bastards, not sucking the municipal tit for every last drop! That’s just wrong! But I digress.)

‘I have no particular fondness for gratuitous roughness in games, no time for bullies at all, and as a downtowner, I live surrounded by gay men, who, like most women, I adore as a group’
I think that part of the reason it’s a bad time to be Doug or Rob Ford or anyone like them is that they are too big, too pink, too football-y, and therefore too potentially violent and too-old school manly for a lot of city folk.

Toronto likes its men delicate, slender and arch, not sportif unless le sport in question is maybe badminton, and if those little boys I saw on Yonge Street are any indication, Toronto is even now about to achieve perfection in this coming generation.

Do not mistake this as a plea for head-banging in sport, a defence of bullies, or a veiled anti-gay message. I have no particular fondness for gratuitous roughness in games, no time for bullies at all, and as a downtowner, I live surrounded by gay men, who, like most women, I adore as a group.

But holy smokes, I am wearying of the male as delicate creature. I am wearying of men who are so frequently in touch with their feminine side they, not to mention me, have lost sight of the masculine one. I’m just plain sick of hugs, giving and getting, from just about anyone, but particularly man-to-man hugs.

And the novelty of being the toughest guy in the room – and by this I mean me – is getting really old.

In aid of all that, let me offer a few reminders of the way it was once upon a time and really always should be.
I remain convinced that the best way to stop a bully is not to go mewling to the teacher, who will only call the victim’s mummy, or to your own mummy, who will only call the teacher. The best way is to take the bully out for a short pounding after school – and may I make it plain, please, that I don’t mean the victims should do this, but rather others. The onus for stopping bullies lies not with the people being bullied, but with those who see it happen.

This has been true for centuries, and it is still true, and it works equally well in the locker room, the office, a bar, and on the factory floor or street.

It is possible to be a gentle and kind man without speaking in a soft, sibilant voice that makes all sentences sound to my ear as though they were composed entirely of Ss.

Glasses should be worn only by people who can’t see, not as props.

Gay, as I’ve mentioned, is entirely fine. Fey is a pain in the arse.

I know men have feelings too. I just don’t need to know much more than that. On any list of The 25 Things Every Man And Boy Should Know How To Do, hugging is not one of them. Killing bugs is. Whacking bullies is. Kissing is. Farting on cue is. Making the sound of a train in a tunnel is. Shooting a puck is. Hugging is not.

Feel free to give this to your male children. You’re entirely welcome.

cblatchford@postmedia.com

Response:

Alexa Tomaszewski: 

Blatchford is taking an un-journalistic and very editorial stand here. She is very much setting herself apart and alienating groups of people. This reminded me our conversation, Dave. Are these men acting like women? Are Rob Ford and Doug Ford good examples of manliness or malehood? I shudder to think what society would look like if it were full of Ford brothers. Wouldn’t leave much for us women to look at, would it?

That being said, I think the editorial piece, although very much based in and colored by Blatchford’s personal opinion and experience, raises interesting questions.

First of all, Blatchford seems to perceive her experience in journalism as being quintessentially divided at the sexes. – “And the novelty of being the toughest guy in the room – and by this I mean me – is getting really old.”

As soon as I read this line I thought to myself – is this an instance of a woman acting like a man in the field of journalism?

And Is she bitter about this experience because now these men are acting “like women”? Or are they actually womanly?

I think it's nonsense. York University is a school full of students at difference age points, of different races, and of different genders and sexual identifications. The men at my old university have been dressing ‘pretty’ ever since I can remember.

Does that make them less manly?

Not in my opinion. Why? Because they still acted tough, had exclusive boy clubs, swigged beers, farted and burped like any other man. They just had better clothes. This I attribute more to consumer culture than sexual identity.

Women for the longest time have been the leading consumers – for the home, baby and for themselves. They often shop as well for their husbands and extended families. They buy the appliances. But, it’s 2012 and more men want to and do get into the latest trend.

Do you think Glamourpuss would be around if it weren’t for the fashion magazine?

And fashion magazines have become a thing for men as well. And the androgynous look, well, that’s right in style right now. Fashion houses, magazine newsrooms and television spots are all hot to get the latest model Andrej Pejic because stylists can dress him male or female. It’s almost like anything goes these days.

Can you tell the difference? It’s a crazy, crazy world we live in.

What do you think Dave?

Dave Sim: 

I'm a big admirer of Christie Blatchford's writing. She has certainly been head and shoulders above all other Canadian journalists in deploring the suspension of the rule of law by the McGuinty government in the native occupation in Caledonia, both in her original journalism on the subject and in her book which her journalism lead too, AND in going out and promoting that book even when leftist extremists - as happened at the University of Waterloo - actively impede her ability to speak freely. In those situations, I'm sure that in metrosexual Toronto she is the "toughest guy in the room" -- in the sense of exhibiting uncommon bravery (uncommon in our age, anyway) in doing what's right and standing behind it, four-square and unflinching.

That being said, I would never mistake her for a man. Synchronistically this morning she's writing about her dog as "the most kissed dog in the country" and how she will "catch his big concrete head between my knees, nibble on his lips and looking into them, praise his beady dark eyes." One of the reasons I'm exiled from polite society is for pointing out the female inclination to view animals as people (see "Tangent"). Dogs spend the better part of their canine lives licking feces off their anuses. Every dog ower knows this and yet a vast majority (I would guess mostly women) choose to ignore this and allow their dogs to French-kiss them. I don't know what I can add to that.

On the subject of Andrej Pejic: we're really talking about two models of reality. For men, men and women are opposites in the same way that west and east are opposites. Men like Andrej Pejic are -- like gays and transgendered -- weird quirky exceptions. Nothing is 100% and that includes masculinity. To women, men and women are just  nuanced expressions of the same thing spread across a continuum and consequently view Andrej Pejic as someone of great significance. Men and women are the same basically because Andrej Pejic exists. Structurally, it's an unsound model for reality because what you're doing is making weird, quirky exceptions into centerpieces. We live in a democracy, thank God, so it is possible to build a society on that model if enough women can persuade enough men that men and women are the same, mostly the same or the same in all ways in which society most fruitfully directs itself. So far, so good. I'm the one exiled from polite society with my completely discredited view that men are men and women are women. The ones hewing to the continuum model are the ones running society. We are hurtling in that direction and have been for decades. But I do think the wheels are starting to come off for that absolutist feminist model.

Of course only 331 people don't believe that I'm a misogynist so there's no good reason to even accept the possibility that I might be right and the absolutest feminist model is wrong. I think the wheels are starting to actually fall off the undercarriage of the car and needs to hit the blacktop in a shower of sparks before feminists, generally, are going to start to consider revisiting any of their prejudices and presuppositions.

Okay, now, I'll ask you one. Blatchfod doesn't seem to be talking about metrosexual clothes so much as metrosexual behaviour -- straight men "mincing" their words and acting fey. It's certainly something I've noticed. As I said to you on the phone, I think it's just protective colouration. Guys who want to get laid or find a girlfriend see that women prefer gay men to straight men -- as Christie Blatchford says, like most women she adores gay men as a group. Don't you see this as patronizing and condescending? I had to smile when I read a Letter to the Editor on her article from a gay man saying, speaking personally, the feeling wasn't at all mutual. That is, gay men are gay men, not collective widgets to be set in place where feminists believe they belong -- on the feminist male-female-interchangeable continuum. What do YOU think?

Alexa Tomaszewski:

I think you're more or less right. The hegemonic powers-that-be are the guiding force in terms of where society is headed in the next few decades. For those hegemonic hierarchies to you need to have your weird, quirky exceptions to remind everyone else what "normal" is.  In some ways Andrej Pejic is a good example of that rule. He reminds us that we are part of the bigger picture, on that involves layers of power. The people at the top with the most power need Andrej Pejic because this exception to the rule gives off the illusion that we've become more accepting, when just the opposite is happening.

Christie Blatchford is a great writer. But in this case she categorizes and separates groups of people and then labels one as better or more tolerable than the other. In anthropology this type of categorization was used to separate cultures, people and religions. After decades of classification by anthropologists all over the world, modern (post-19th century) anthropology has to look at this system of classification and break it down because everything today is fluid. The continuum is pulling us all forward and is engaging each person in global communication -- globalization means society is more nomadic and cosmopolitan than ever before, notions of east and west as separate are breaking down. Could this be the same for notions of gender? Especially as the subject experiences a more fluid, undefined identity?

So yes, Blatchford is being condescending and patronizing, but more so, she's being narrow-minded. To be man or woman is scientific fact, to act like a man or woman is gender identification. We all identify in different ways, especially as the notion of "normal" becomes more and more muddied. As individuals in society we create our identity from the barrage of images we receive daily and how we act is an extension of that consumption.

Dave Sim: Hi Alexa. Let's see if this works.
    On Blatchford's main point -- where have all the manly men gone? -- I think a good illustration is when my relationship with Susan was coming to an end (she's the one you were asking about, with her forthcoming book, DAVE SIM'S LAST GIRLFRIEND) and I said to her on the phone, "What you need is a squishy feminist you can push around."  And she YELLS over the phone, "NO!"  Well, you know, at that point it's beyond comedic.  You don't yell at a real man "NO!" you yell "NO!" at a squishy feminist.  So, it's beyond comedic and it is, self-evidently, structural.  This is how the-society-formerly-known-as-Christendom has chosen to be.  As a result, if you're a man in a relationship you have only two choices: capitulate (the squishy feminist option) or leave (the manly option).  I mean, it's outside of my parameters to hit a woman under any circumstances -- the proverbial bitch slap: "smarten up".  For a dissenting view, Google search Barbara Walters' interview with Sean Connery.  Actually a follow-up where he states the case: "When you've given her the last word and she's had the last word and she goes back to it again..."
     As I say, once I realized that it was a structural problem -- that the way society has chosen to set itself up the only options are capitulate or leave and you are inevitably going to reach that fork in the road. Then it seems completely ridiculous to start down that road in the first place.  It's been fourteen years and I've never had a moment's doubt that that's the case: don't go down that road because it only leads to that same fork.  

Let's Talk About Fashion!

Alexa Tomaszewski: So explain a bit to me how someone like you, with your reputation as such, ends up doing fashion. ‘Cause you know fashion, Dave. Don’t think I didn’t  notice those McQueen booties and Chanel bags. You told me about Stan Drake and Alex Raymond. You could have reproduced their panels to tickle your fancy. Why’d you go high fashion? ‘Cause it is high fashion.

Dave Sim:  Fashion magazines, to me, are women at their best and -- maybe more importantly -- at their most open since I take it as a given that 99.9% of the audience is women, so this is women talking to women.  Women talking to women have a far lower "b.s." threshold than women talking to men.  So, for me, it was always a good way to check on what the fairer sex was thinking about and talking about and how that's evolving.  When I broke up with Susan in 1998, that left a big gap in my life. The fashion coverage in the newspaper is far more cautious because the fashion writers know that men read the newspaper as well.  You don't want a "too revealing" paragraph that someone might accidentally read.  Fashion magazines are HARDCORE!

Okay, now I'll ask you one:  it's not unusual to have to put all discretionary spending on hold while you're going to school to prepare for a career.  How disorienting is that, since you've just come out on the other side having gone from No Spending to Some Spending? What are the things you miss the most when you can't afford to spend money on them?

Alexa Tomaszewski: That’s a tough one. Without giving too much away, suffice it to say I can never have too many bags. Hand bags, slouchy bags, clutches and everything in between. You mentioned your love for Michael Kors. Hello! That’s what I’m talking about. I can’t wait for the day I can afford Louis Vuitton. And, I mean, when I turn 30, there’s no way I’m not gifting myself with a pair of Louboutins. My feet can’t handle them.  I’m praying the man knows how to make a woman’s foot feel good while wearing them for however many hundreds or thousands of dollars. I can’t afford expensive make-up. I miss that.  Dior, YSL and Anna Sui make stuff to-die-for. We talked perfume bottles, so you know my affinity for pretty things.

You must have noticed that I have an affinity for high fashion. I think it’s classy. It’s a good reflection on women whereas many of the women on television I think are a sad, sad reflection on feminism - gone crazy.       

Dave Sim:  We got into the "how skanky are women today" discussion just a bit at the end of the interview for CEREBUS TV.  That's one of those things that you really notice when you're verging on retirement age as I am.  I referred to the video "Do It Like A Dude" as an example of a direction I don't think girls really want to go, although it clearly has great appeal for a lot of them.  What used to be called a tomboy, a phase girls went into and came out of, is now seen as "not wimping out like a girl".  You can get yourself into a lot of trouble thinking like that.  Guys tend to encourage it because it means more access to cheap and easy sex.  Back in my womanizer days I really relied on that quality.  Girls tend to see having absolute control over their romantic lives as absolute freedom, but they do tend to make bad choices, far worse choices than back in the day when their fathers had to approve of their boyfriends, so the freedom really tends to amount to the freedom to mess themselves up.  To put it bluntly, if the girls are making the call, as a guy you'll get laid a lot more often.  Most of the time they just need to be ovulating and sex sounds like a great idea. Fathers are far, far more difficult to fool.  Impossible to fool, in fact.  If all you want to do is get his daughter's pants a few times he'll smell it on you like panther sweat no matter how much you try to sound like a future son-in-law. He's the only one who really has your best interests at heart while really having no stake in your life apart from your best interests. He wants you to be deliriously happy, but he wants you to be deliriously happy Long Term, not deliriously happy for the next year or two.  Who else can you really say that about?

Okay, now I'll ask you one: In that same discussion you brought up Ariel Levy's book and her thesis  about how women are basically modelling themselves to one degree or another on the Lady Gagas and the Katy Perrys who are really modelling themselves on strippers and hookers and that strippers and hookers are, 9 times out of 10, severely traumatized and abused women who are making their decisions as a result of trauma and abuse.  I'd say there's a persuasive case to be made there.  But, what can be done about it, do you think?  How do you persuade young girls that Lady Gaga and Katy Perry aren't good role models?

Alexa Tomaszewski: Well, as a grown woman fed from the tit of Britney Spears videos I can honestly say I think GaGa and Mizz Perry are a fantastic and delightful change of pace from Christina grinding in those godawful chaps. It was bad before, and GaGa is as entertaining as a live-show.

I’ll admit it, I saw Britney Spears live, with my mom (never-retirement age, you’re a jokster), and wow, just wow – word’s can not describe. Well they can, the next day The Toronto Star called Spears as enthusiastic as a dead eye’d stripper. Brutal, and it was.

You persuade young girls to become excited by other things, anything but the television. That’s where most of the poison is. You need to make women enthusiastic about themselves, we need to focus on cutting bullying out of the school system.  It’s an over-populated planet, we best be nice to each other – man or woman. 

Ok, Now I'll Ask You One

Dave Sim:  Okay, I'll start off our "Okay, Now I'll Ask You One" discussion.  I haven't really read any of the new mainstream Marvel and DC comic books since I started Glamourpuss, but it seems to me there's a strong undercurrent of misogyny in them just from what I've been hearing: rape of the heroine as a plot device, super-heroines manipulating super-heroes with their sexuality, all things that were completely unheard of back in my day.  Are things really bad or are there some bright spots when it comes to "women characters in comics"?

Alexa Tomaszewski: There are bright spots. During out interview you talked about Buffy-loving, t-shirt clad women reading comic books and you’re not that far off in a sense. Joss Whedon is a humanist. Are we surprised women like his work? I’m hoping he can pull off a decent super-heroine in the upcoming Avengers movie because yeah there are a lot of skimpy outfits and boobs in mainstream comics. Marvel and DC wouldn’t dare have one of their heroines raped, are you kidding?  Of course you are. 

So, you are known on the web as a misogynist. We’ve talked a lot about Glamourpuss, comic books, and fashion. Not a lot about women in general.  Are you a misogynist?

 

Dave Sim: I'm not a feminist, but I don't think that makes me a misogynist.  I just don't think things are working very well when you have a divorce rate up above 60% and I think feminism has to shoulder its fair share of the blame.  We need career women AND stay-at-home wives and mothers and I think you have to decide very young which you want to be and work at becoming that.  If you postpone your career until your forties you're starting too late. If you postpone marriage and having kids until your forties you're also starting too late. Both require single-minded devotion to do properly, I think. Both make lousy hobbies. 

  

Okay, now I'll ask you one:  how difficult is the Internet making it to actually build a career?  Since everything's free on the Internet people tend not to pay people to do things on the Internet.  Again, way back in my day, that problem didn't exist. I may only have gotten $10 or $15 for a drawing that was published in a fanzine but I got paid.  I wouldn't do free work.  But now isn't it a situation where you have to start doing free work and hope someday someone will pay you?

Alexa Tomaszewski: As a writer it’s not easy. I wonder how my career would have turned out in broadcast – but that’s a society based on looks and surface veneer. That’s not how I want to compete. I think writing is the most meaningful way to explore the undercurrents of things like revolutionary events, culture and also as a human in existence with other humans experiencing a complex and diverse world. This is not a pursuit that pays the big bucks. Education is valued, but you need to work very hard to make a dollar in a society that would rather watch Teen Mom or Dancing with the Stars than read an article I worked six months on. Which by the way you’re missing out on Dave, Teen Mom, haven’t you heard? ADD is totally in. 

Going back to your earlier thought, shopping high fashion does require single-minded devotion.You can't have four babies and be running to Holt's to pick out that perfect designer piece for Friday night's dinner can you? Choosing couture is like choosing wall paint, you have to live with it. Many women would argue the following fact, but I think you have to sacrifice beautiful things for diapers.