Saturday, July 18, 2009

Next Up: Government Subsidized Chastity Belts

Apparently, sexual violence in Quebec is caused by "hypersexualized" teenage girls. The federal government has a plan (and the $) to help:

OTTAWA — The federal government has allotted nearly $355,000 to help reduce sexual violence in part by promoting self-esteem and "solid values" among young Quebec girls.

Much to ridicule here, and Diva Rachel does an able job of it. I would just call attention to the following:

The project description says 15 girls in the regional county municipality of Matane, a community on the Gaspe Peninsula about 400 kilometres northeast of Quebec City, will be trained to act as community outreach workers and agents of change in their schools and communities...

Remember last Novemeber when Queen's University planned to train "dialogue facilitaters":

Their job will be to intervene in conversations they overhear among students in dining halls and common rooms in which topics of race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender, disability and social class are discussed. The facilitators, says Patrick Deane, the university's academic vice-president, are supposed "to serve their peers ... in difficult or sensitive discussions" and foster "a spirit of mutual respect and understanding ..."


There was a huge, I mean huge outcry. Robert Sibley, for example, wheeled out the specter of Communism:

...it amounts to the imposition of Marxist and left-radical agendas to the exclusion of others. In other words, the program's real purpose is to promote the supposedly progressivist ideologies of radical feminism, gay rights, multiculturalism, and, lest we forget, anti-westernism (read: anti-Americanism and anti-capitalism).

Note that the Queen's initiative involved no public money (as far as I can remember). In this case, we have the federal government shelling out $100,000s to fund a cadre of chastity cops, who will infiltrate the local community and "facilitate" when girls start to talk dirty, whatever counts as talking dirty out in the boonies "400 kilometres northeast of Quebec City". Not the imposition of socialism, clearly; more like the imposition of something out of The Handmaid's Tale.

I eagerly await the media backlash

h/t Dawg.

3 comments:

Ti-Guy said...

whatever counts as talking dirty out in the boonies "400 kilometres northeast of Quebec City".

It'd make a licentious libertine like you blush, BCL.

Karen said...

Beware of or prepare for the Dammit Janet brigade! See my post of a couple of days ago.

Just sayin...

Anonymous said...

KNB, I think that its fair to say that the Cons have distorted the work of that group for their own particular ideology.

Maybe if some actually read what the group is doing and how they worded it, they would have a different take.

In this case, I'm blaming the Cons for such a stupid presser AND stupid journalists looking to sensationalise based on their own prejudices coupled with ignorance.