Mentor

It was a long time ago.

I was still working in live action film, working on set. I was building a set for a shitty TV show, or a shitty TV movie, or shitty music video. It doesn’t matter, this story has played out many times during different productions in my life. It was always the same.

I was hired because some production designer or art director had a crew of art school graduates and he needed someone to guide them to build the things he’d drawn pictures of. Or more likely, pictures he’d just clipped out of various trendy design magazines. He had bodies but they needed instruction.

A few of those bodies were always women, and those particular bodies were always young and pretty.

I’d take those women, like the rest of the bodies, and I’d show them how to use a jig saw. I show them how it worked. I’d show them what to do and what not to do. I show them how they could use it to make things, and how they could also cut off their fingers if they weren’t careful.

Sometimes it wasn’t a jig saw. Sometimes it was a nail gun or a circular saw. It didn’t matter, the lesson was the same. Here’s how this thing works, here’s how you can make something with it, here’s how it can hurt you if you aren’t careful.

Then I would let them work.

I’d keep an eye on them, that’s essential when you teach anyone to use something that’s potentially dangerous, but it was never a problem because I had taught them. They were capable and able to learn given the instruction.

Eventually the designer would come up to me.

“Why is she using that? She’s going to hurt herself”  

I’ve never heard that sentence with the other pronoun.

“No she isn’t. She’s smart and I taught her. If I was worried I’d have given her a different job”

There were plenty of times I didn’t let people use tools I thought they weren’t ready for.

“It would be better if she were on the paint crew” he’d say. They always want the women to paint.

I always disagreed. I gave each person a job I knew they could do, and then I let them do it.

I didn’t get upset when I heard the news about Harvey Weinstein. Not because I’m ok with any of it, but because it’s Harvey fucking Weinstein and it was completely unsurprising. I can’t “get” upset about something that is already upsetting. I can’t “get” upset about racial inequality, slave labor or human rights violations. Those things already have me upset.

What got me upset was learning that in light of this news people and companies have started being afraid to mentor women because they are worried it might become a problem. People are worried that by giving women the opportunity to succeed they might face sexual assault or harassment allegations in the future. People have been denying others the opportunity to succeed simply because they are women.

If you are one of those people, here’s a life hack for you. Don’t sexually assault or harass people. It’s really that fucking simple.

Here’s another piece of advice, women aren’t dangerous.

Stop acting like they are the danger. They aren’t. The danger is people who can’t treat them like people simply because they are attractive, or because they aren’t considered attractive enough. That’s bullshit.

Don’t be bullshit.

"A guy I know"

I was standing on a street corner doing drugs. Cigarettes, the worst drug of all. It has the shittiest of all the highs, but still is the most insidious drug of them all. It’s only redeeming quality is that brings people together, and that's how I found myself standing outside of a bar talking to a guy I know. That's an official designation, ‘guy I know.’ We weren’t friends, I'd met him a few times so we knew each other, but we also weren't really acquaintances. He was just a ‘guy I know.’

He was a nice guy, an artist, friendly, down to earth. It was always nice to chat with him, but he was out of sorts that night.

The previous night he'd been mugged by a bunch of dudes downtown. They took his phone and wallet, and they gave him a bit of a beating. He was physically OK, but he was still emotionally shaken, he was frustrated, he felt helpless and impotent, so I listened as he talked. There was a moment where I could see he on the verge of starting to cry. It's such an incredibly vulnerable place to be, looking at him I could see a helpless little kid still inside the man. I know that moment, I’ve felt that helpless little kid inside of me. I thInk we all have.

And then he said it.

“Every time something like this happens it's always the same, it's always black guys. I don't want to hear anymore of this Black Lives Matter bullshit. I'm fucking sick and tired of this shit.”

It was a peculiar moment. A second before I genuinely liked the guy and felt bad for him, but then suddenly I was supposed to be angry with him, because it makes me angry when people say racist bullshit like that. For some reason though I didn't react with anger, instead I was surprised.

“Really? It's always been black guys?”

He looked me in the eyes and said it was, and I'm certain he was being honest.

“That's weird, because for me it's always been the opposite.” I said “Everyone that beat me or fucked me over was white.”

He looked at me, mirroring my own surprise. “Really?”

“Yeah, but to be fair, where I grew up, there was only white people around. If you only meet white people, I guess all the assholes are going to be white. That’s just logic. But assholes are everywhere. Where did you grow up?”

Turned out he had grown up in a predominantly black neighborhood. He was the different kid and that made him a target. Just like I had been a target for the assholes in my neighborhood, only I was different for different reasons. Assholes don’t really care why you are different, just that you are. We had been essentially the same kid in similar circumstances, but with a slight twist.

I said “well I guess that explains it, if you are only around one type of person, all the asholes will be that one type. But it doesn’t mean white people are assholes, and neither are black people. Some assholes are black and others are white, but essentially people are people no matter what their color”

“I’d never thought of it like that.” he replied.

That moment made me think about my privilege in a new way. It had never occurred to me that part of my privilege was that it’s been easy for me to not be overtly racist. My parents taught me to not be racist, I never had bad experiences with people who were different from me and the bad people I met were, in fact, just like me from a racial and cultural perspective. I had friends whose parents were racist, but I had the education to recognize it and dismiss it. Once again I realized I’ve had it easy, and I needed to consider that others don’t have it as easy. If I’d merely dismissed his bigotry I never would have been able to change it.

In no way am I saying we don’t have a duty to openly, clearly and loudly speak out against racism and hate, quite the opposite. Seeing the news from Charlottesville this week made me think think about my family. I’ve been blessed to become part a wonderful Jewish family. My wife is Jewish, my kids are Jewish. My mother and fathers in law, my sisters and brother in law and my nephews are all Jewish. When I saw people marching under the swastika and shouting Nazi slogans I felt that in a way I never expected to feel in my life. It was no longer just a thing I’d learned about, it was personal. I knew in that moment that I will, without hesitation, lay down my life to end this fucking movement if that’s what is required.

But then I saw Obama tweet Nelson Mandela’s quote, and that made me think about ‘that guy’ and how I was able to teach him. I realized that it’s not enough to simply fight hard, we must also fight smart. We cannot beat propaganda with violence, that only makes it stronger.

The world is polarized right now and that has been a deliberate act by the fascists. They know that when the world is polarized, people cling to what is familiar and attack what is unfamiliar. They have used this tactic to grow their movement, they used this tactic to win Trump the Presidency. They continue use this tactic to keep us yelling at each other instead of talking with each other. Fascism needs us to play the role of the enemy, that keeps the fear and hatred alive, and that is what gives them power over their followers. We must not play into that role. We are not the enemy, we are society. Hatred is the enemy of society, not the other way around. This is not just about our hearts, it’s also about our minds, we must think before we react or we risk playing into their plans.

This is an important time in our history, we must be loud and we must be clear. Whenever we are faced with a fascist movement like this we must do everything to kill it. But this movement will never die from one giant blow, it will be a death by a thousand cuts. When we face this movement we need to stand resolute and be prepared to spill our own blood, but there will be times when we will only be facing ‘that guy’, and then we must be prepared to listen and educate them so we can steal them from the movement, each one a tiny little cut. Because a movement is nothing without people. We beat fascism by fighting ignorance, because without ignorance fascism has no soil to grow. We cannot teach individuals if we yell at them, they will simply seek their education elsewhere.

This isn’t always going to work, sometimes they will refuse to listen, in every war battles are won and lost. These are not easy times. However we must remember that denying the individual is the tactic of fascism, we need to be smarter than that. Hate and fear are the tactics of fascism, we need to more compassionate than that. We need to teach their followers that their leaders are wrong and evil. We must stand against ideas while trying to bring people together.

We must march and counter protest. We must stand and show the world that fascism will not be tolerated in society. But that alone is not enough, we must also educate the world that fascism doesn’t change society, it corrodes it. So when you encounter ‘that guy you know’ remember, it doesn’t matter that you are right, even though it feels so righteous and good, what matters is how persuasive you are.

Because this one is too important to lose. We need to beat this evil motherfucking movement from every angle possible.

“No one is born hating another person because of the color of his skin, or his background, or his religion. People must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love, for love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite.”

— Nelson Mandela

What if he were my son?

I’ve been avoiding the Brock Allen Turner story as much as possible for a couple of reasons. For one I’m under medical orders to reduce my stress and that shit ain’t helping but also, and I sometimes feel this is the larger reason, this is just another one of these stories. There’s nothing new here, it seems privileged white boys getting away with rape is a growth industry, especially if they are good at a sport.

But I saw something that I haven’t been able to shake. I was reading the limp dick response from Brock’s father Dan A. Turner, which was pathetic at best but in reality offensively irresponsible. What struck me was someone commenting in his defence “How would you feel if that was your son?” Truthfully I can’t really know how I would feel, but that is something I had already considered. I have taken the time to do the thought experiment of imagining my son in Brock’s position, guilty of raping a person.

As some of you know, many years ago I spent two weeks as a member of a jury responsible for passing judgement in a rape trial. It was an experience that changed me in a few ways. During the trial I had the uncomfortable duty of listening to a woman describe in detail, to a room full of strangers, the worst moment of her life. I had a “what if that was my daughter” moment, which is bullshit, she doesn’t need to be anyone’s daughter for this to matter. I just couldn’t stop my fear from taking over and worrying about the people I love. It’s a natural instinct, especially for me, but I’m aware of that and when I think these types of things I direct my thoughts in more rational directions. It reduces the fear and helps me focus on what is actually important. That’s when I looked at the defendant and thought “what if he was my son?”

I thought about that throughout the trial. At first I was doing it because I felt it necessary in order to give that man a fair trial, which is something I take very seriously, but as his guilt became apparent it made me realize my duty as a parent in a new way.  

It’s very common to hear people say “I will always be proud of my kids.” Sorry but that’s bullshit. I will always love my kids, and while I’m generally very proud of them, there are plenty of times when I’m not. When they throw a tantrum, don’t do the dishes, get bad grades, the day before mother’s day when they haven’t remembered to get a card, these are all valid reasons to not be proud of your kids. Love should be unconditional but pride should not. Unconditional pride is meaningless, but worse than that it’s dangerous. If we are never disappointed in our kids how are they supposed to learn that there are limits to their behaviour?

Reading Dan A Turner’s comment on his son’s situation I was painfully aware of the reason Brock thought he could rape an unconscious woman behind a dumpster, his parents wouldn’t hold him accountable. Their concern for their own child obliterated any concern for other people. 

This should be a story about respecting another human being but it’s turned into yet another tale of no one holding people accountable for their actions. I don’t want to see a young man go to prison, I don’t think prison will make Brock a better person, what I want to see is some fucking remorse. That’s what is missing from all of these stories whether is the Rehteah Parsons story, the Steubenville High school story or even the Trayvon Martin story. It doesn’t matter why people do things if they can’t look at their actions after the fact and say “I fucked up.” When Dan wrote that he’s worried Brock can’t enjoy a steak anymore I understood where Brock gets his priorities and life perspectives, and more importantly, I understand that those probably haven’t changed very much.

When I finished my duty on that jury, after I sent a man to prison and had time to process the experience, I talked to my son about it. I told him that I will always love him no matter what, and because of that I would hold him accountable if he ever did anything like that. I told him how difficult it was for me to be on that jury and how that was nothing compared to the difficulty that woman was going to carry for the rest of her life. It wasn’t an easy talk but being a parent isn’t easy, and it was far easier than living with the idea that my son could do something like that.

That’s what everyone should do right now. Before you scream your anger and frustration onto the internet, you must tell your kids that you will hold them accountable for their actions. Because people like Brock are everywhere, pretty much everyone reading this knows someone like him, even if you don’t realize it yet. The courts can’t protect us, and even if they could it would be after the fact, we need to stop this shit before it happens.

Dan A. Turner never thought he was raising a rapist, in that way he is no different than any of us. But he did raise one, not through action but through inaction. So be a parent and talk to your kids. Don’t make the same mistake Dan did.  

My ride home

After a long day at work I get onto the streetcar. Elvis Costello is bleeding through my earbuds. I walk past a pretty young woman. Behind her is a nerdy guy playing his 3DS. Behind him is an empty seat. I sit down.

I pull out my phone and check twitter. I don't care, it's noise, it's politics, it's anger. It doesn't keep my attention. I look at the guy's 3DS, he's playing Smash Bros. I don't like that game but my son does. I can picture my son as this guy in 9 years, engrossed in his game during a boring late night commute. I like him because of that. He's got that oblivious concentration my son has. The oblivious concentration he gets from me.

Twitter still sucks. I'm not focused. I've been working too long. I need to take a walk.

The young woman turns so she can take off her jacket. She sees the guy and her face lights up. She says something to the him. I can't hear her over the sounds of an almost empty gin palace. The guy looks up at her, mid match. She raises her 3DS, it's the XL version with Animal Crossing on the large screen.

His face lights up and they begin to talk. I think it's about gaming.

Twitter has never been less interesting. I keep looking at it but my attention is on the people in front of me. She's animated, she's interested, she's touching her hair.  He's giving her his full attention. He's enjoying this but there's something awkward, like this is new to him.

I want to take Elvis out of my ears and listen but I can't. It's wrong. I'm already intruding. I feel creepy so I keep looking at my phone, but it might as well be turned off. What is happening in front of me is pure, it's honest, it's beautiful.

I'm watching two strangers connect. Two people from different lives who have come together to share this moment through a fluke of discomfort and a shared love of video games.

I vaguely make out the sound of the automated street announcement. Her head turns and I'm convinced that I see disappointment in her face. She pulls the cord and gathers her things. I'm heart broken. This isn't how it's supposed to end. They are supposed to leave together, or exchange numbers, or sit and drink coffee all night. But they don't even streetpass each other.

I realize I'm projecting onto them. I don't care, this is still beautiful.

They shake hands and say goodbye to each other. She leaves and he starts a new match. His oblivious concentration takes over.

All I have left is Twitter.

I get off early. I need to walk.

Streetcar Driver

Last night I was riding the streetcar home. Gill was going out with a friend and I was heading home to spend some time with the boy. The streetcar was unusually empty, in fact three stops before reaching the Bingham loop, my stop and the end of the line, I was the only passenger left. At Scarborough road the driver looked back at the nearly empty car. “You’re my last streetcar passenger ever. On Monday I’m moving to the Subway.”

I walked up to him. “I take it that’s a good thing?”

“Yes and no. I used to drive the subway when I started. I’m licenced for everything, trains, streetcars and buses. You can get buses and trains anywhere but streetcars are special, so I’ve been driving them for over 20 years now. I’ve worked every line in the city. I love these things.” The lights changed, and his foot stomped the heavy pedals that made the car move forward. “But this is ruining my knees. I need to save something for when I retire, you know what I mean?”

“I hear that”

The car pulled to a stop in the loop and the doors opened.

“Thanks for the ride and good luck on the subway.”

“Thanks” he said, and I walked away.

I recognized this man, I’ve seen him before. He use to drive the King car when I worked at Joe Rockhead's Climbing Gym so many years ago. I’ve also seen him on Queen late at night taking loads of tired people home. He was memorable, not only would he call out every stop, but he would also call out every cross street and local points of interest. He was friendly, he would joke with the passengers and when he was forced to hold a car at Young for 10 minutes late at night he would apologize and explain that we were running ahead of schedule and that people needed him to be there at the right time, that they relied on him. He would thank us for our patience.

I met him in a bar one night, it was a local joint I would go into sometimes to write. He was drinking beer, telling stories about the TTC and mildly flirting with the young woman working the bar. I told him that I knew who he was, that he’d taken me home many nights. I complimented him on the way he worked the mic, the way he went above and beyond the call. This was shortly after the TTC had installed the automated stop announcements.

“Yeah, they don’t want me to do that anymore, they have a machine for that now. It’s good in a way, most drivers won’t call out any stops unless you ask them to, but I prefer to talk to my passengers.”

We shared a few beers that night as he shared a few stories and secrets about the job. As someone with a compulsion to share things, I often recognize the same in others so I mostly just listened as the waitress poured us beer, thankful for someone to share his attention.

I don’t really know anything about this man, other than he loves this city and the people who live here. He loves his job even though he sometimes shares our frustration with the organization he works for. We need more TTC employees like that man. It seems unusual that I would have so many encounters with him, but I think the sad truth is his excellent service makes him stand out and be more noticeable. There are only two other TTC driver’s that I will always remember, one was treating a homeless man so poorly that I took the time to go to head office to report him, the other needed my help dealing with a passenger who was harassing the women on the vehicle. I’ve ridden the TTC literally thousands of times and I only remember one driver for doing their job so well that they stood out.

When I think of that I’m kind of honoured to have been his last passenger for a job he loved and did so well. I hope the Subway is good to him.

White Ribbon

About 20 years ago I was bartending in a restaurant. It was the first year I’d heard of the white ribbon campaign to commemorate the lives of the women murdered at the l'Ecole Polytechnique. Thinking it was a good thing to remember I made a ribbon out of the paper from my cash printer and attached it behind my name tag. 

And then my life changed. 

The reaction from women fell into two categories. Most thanked me, many opening up about intensely personal tales of their own sexual assaults. Stories I was not comfortable hearing from casual co-workers. But others shied away at any mention of the cause, their silence speaking volumes. 

Men also had two different reactions. Most said things like “You dude, don’t be a traitor!” or “What are you, some kind of pussy?”. The reactions that really disturbed me were the few guys who looked at my ribbon and felt I’d joined their club, these were guys that also wore the ribbon, but they did it just to get laid. 

That’s when I knew there was a problem and it wasn’t just the random occurrence of lone nut with a gun, it was pervasive. The world changed for me that fall, it was as if someone had pointed out a flaw in the corner of a beautiful tapestry. Every time I looked at it I couldn’t help but notice it, and I was worried that it might unravel the whole thing. 

My boss walked into the bar as he did every morning call his 3 year old daughter and ask how her day was going. He looked me over, the company had a crappy dress code and I was often pushing the boundaries of it, he saw the ribbon and sighed saying “Don’t tell me you’re jumping on the bandwagon too.” 

Sick of being hassled I replied “You know Tony, why don’t we talk about this in 18 years when your daughter is old enough to go to that school”. 

He went silent “I hadn’t really thought of it like that, you’re right. I’m sorry” 

Tony was a good person, but he was caught up in the status quo. He’d never noticed the flaw in the tapestry. It’s 20 years later his daughter is probably in a school somewhere, but sadly I’m not convinced the world is any less flawed. The reactions I get haven’t changed much. While I do seem to be surrounded by men that are better, based on what the women are saying that is not representative of the situation as a whole. 

Not enough has changed, there’s still that thread hanging from the tapestry.   

Emergency

This is a story I told for Raconteurs Storytelling and CBC Radio's Live Through This.   

Write Club - Trendy

This is a piece I wrote about a year ago. It was for a writing/performing competition called write club. I had 10 days to write 7 minutes of material on the subject 'Trendy', then I performed it opposite another performer (Becky Bays) who wrote on the theme 'Classic'. The audience chose me as the winner.    

Trendy, who even says that word anymore? That’s out of date, an old millenium word, it’s pre internet. It’s a word that was last used by my generation, and I’m not going to pretend my generation is current. Trendy is just not trendy anymore. Trending, now that’s the new trendy. Trendy was for nehru jackets, pet rocks and key parties. Trending is for snapchatting your uggs, managing your farmville and hooking up on grinder.

So, what the hell is a trend anyways?

A trend is defined as the direction in which something changes. Now that sounds like a fine definition to me, if you’re a fucking robot. But there’s no magic in that, nothing to express why we've embraced whatever thing happens to be trending right now. Trending is loved, it’s what is on our hearts and minds, it matters to us.

Still, none of that actually explains anything. So what the hell is it?

It all boils down to “memes”. You may have heard that word before but, but many of you think it just means pictures of cats that you share on the internet. Accurately, a meme is defined as "an idea, behavior, or style that spreads from person to person within a culture."[2] The term was coined by evolutionary biologist and Emma Watson look alike Richard Dawkins. He had the  brilliant notion that ideas spread from person to person through human consciousness with the same pattern that a virus spreads through a biological population.

So memes are the individual units and trends are the collection of those individuals. If a meme is a car, the roads, highways and freeways are made up of trends. Trends are the medium that ideas use to flow through time and space. Trends are not static, they move and change. They are the evolution of thought. Without them we cannot have any progress, no growth, no innovation. Trends aren't either good or bad, they just are. They are neutral with the potential to be either.

Centuries ago disease was thought to be an imbalance of the four humors. Water, blood, Yellow bile and Black bile. This trend was the gold standard of medical knowledge, but it was complete bullshit, it was a bad trend. Over hundreds of years different people mulled over the idea that there was something else causing disease. Francesco Redi, Agostino Bassi, John Snow, Robert Koch and Louis Pasteur all followed new trends in science like experimentation, Microscopes and  epidemiology to find better answers. Because of that, the germ theory of disease became the new trend. That’s a trend that done very well for us and has lead us to even newer trends like understanding genetic disorders or cancers. Medicine has grown into a thick braid of trends that grow and adapt to sort out what works and what doesn't.

This happens because ideas move and they feed off of each other. They are alive and constantly looking for people to infect and inhabit. They change the world they exist in and that leads to the birth of new ideas or support for other change. While the first humane society for the prevention of animal cruelty was formed in 1824 it was an idea that had very limited appeal. In 1859 when Charles Darwin published On the Origin of Species it drew a connection between animals and humans that helped people empathize with animals and eventually helped spread the animal rights movement across the western world.

We are social intellectual people that communicate and think. We have a capacity for exploring ideas that is at least as robust as our desire to explore the physical world. and Living in a society we can’t help but hear the ideas of other people as we bump into one another. Those memes spread and that makes us think, often about similar ideas.

There’s evidence for this in the fact that people often come to the same discoveries independently of each other.

Alfred Russel Wallace was coming to the same conclusions about evolution that Charles Darwin wrote about in his book. The two men were developing the same trend because they had both been infected by the same memes of scientific discovery that were abundant at the time.  

In the past these trends were slow to spread, decades or sometimes even centuries would pass before any significant growth or change would happen to an idea, but that is not the case any more. Today we have twitter. We have Facebook and Pintrest and Reddit. We have built an information superhighway dedicated to spreading these ideas, sharing thoughts like so many pictures of cats. We can haz cheesburger, we can haz Buzzfeed listicles and hilarious auto-correct moments where peoples parent talk about anal.

It’s a powerful time we live in, and there is a downside to it. As I mentioned before trends have no morality, they simply exist whether they are the appeal to raise money for a charity or the threat of rape and death to a reporter who’s only crime is sharing her ideas and being a woman at the same time.

Because our trends are so easy to share, it’s so much easier to share the bad ones along with the good. And when we do they often reach further, and build more momentum than they should.

Look at Miley Cyrus.

The “twerking” girl. A woman of letters, all of them open letters of anger and criticism laid upon her by people. Angry people, shocked people, sad people. People who are all somehow surprised that she turned into exactly the woman she was trained to be for most of her childhood. I understand that anger, that guilt. I have a daughter, I’ve paid a fair bit of money to the Miley Cyrus Endowment fund for the Arts. We had the CD’s, I saw the concert film.

That means I’m already a tied to that trend, and  I feel it’s draw. It pulls me in, inviting me to leave my comments, my appeals for Miley to be that “nice young woman she used to be” before Uncle Terry and Aunty Annie took those terrible pictures of you. I feel that urge to assume that she must have no control of her life, the urge to assume that somehow I have all the answers.

But I don’t want to be a part of that trend. Simply because I have an opinion and a keyboard Does not mean I can comment on a situation that I really know nothing about. A situation that has been carefully crafted and honed for the trend machine. I don’t want my ideas to become a part of the crowd sourced advertising scheme.  

We must choose our trends wisely, because once they begin to grow they take on a life of their own. We can waste a lot of time and resources telling each other how we should live our lives. Or we can look for a better campaign to kickstart, something we want to see grow rather than something we are simply reacting to.

And of course cats, We’ll always be able to choose cats.

Jury

It was many years ago, not quite ten but close. They told me when I signed in at the courthouse that the average trial lasted two and a half days, but most people didn't even get picked.

Apparently I'm not most people, my trial wasn't average.

I sat and watched as the lawyers picked their exclusions. There was no obvious reason behind the choices made by the prosecution but there was a clear pattern with the defense. No women between eighteen and thirty five years old were allowed on the jury.

Yeah, it was a rape trial.

The trial began with two days of a young woman telling us the worst story she's ever told. It was painful to listen to, I felt like I was invading her privacy. This was only made worse by the fact that I was taking notes.

The first question she was asked was "what were you wearing?" The second was "how much did you have to drink?"

She was going to a nightclub with friends, what do you think the answers were?

What would you have answered if you were going out for a night of fun?

What does it matter?

When she told us how much she had to drink the prosecution poured an equal amount of water into a familiar red solo cup and we passed it throughout the jury so we could all understand, in a tangible way, how much vodka this tiny woman had consumed.  

In case you missed it the first time, it was the prosecution who did this. The person responsible for bringing this woman's attackers to justice needed to make sure that we all understood how drunk she was. There was a reason for this, she had been too drunk to consent to having sex, and the prosecutor wanted us to understand that. Consent simply wasn't possible.

However there's problem with that, it was irrelevant. She never agreed to have sex. In fact she explicitly said she didn't want to. No, don't, stop were all things she said. But it turns out that's not good enough case. A woman incapable of consenting is a better argument than a woman who openly says no.

Think about that for a second, and what that says about how our courts regard women who have been sexually assaulted. A woman without agency is a more reliable argument than a woman who tries to stand up for herself.

While I was appalled with the prosecutor, in the end I have to begrudgingly admit that it was probably necessary. After discussing this case with eleven other jury members, for two and a half weeks, I'm confident in saying the problem we face is not just with the courts. People just don't want to send a young man to jail. Truthfully I find that admirable, but only in an abstract way. In the practical world we have to deal with people who assault others.

We heard his defense and the physical evidence obliterated it. But there were still people who just didn't want to send him to jail. Many of these people I would describe as a good, honest and decent in every way except one. They weren’t willing to send a rapist to prison when the case was irrefutable. They had no argument, they couldn't show any doubt, let alone a reasonable one. But still they argued

We live in a world where beautiful young women sell us just about anything. And it works. But when a beautiful young woman tries to stand up for her rights, for her autonomy, we're not so sure anymore. We'll believe a woman paid to shill for a car company, or better insurance rates, but when she's stripped of her dignity and fighting for justice suddenly we we don't trust her.

Think about that for a second.

In a world where one out of five women is sexually assaulted, how do we fix that when we simply don't believe the victims?   

I wish I knew the answer.

Burning Desire

My first performance for Raconteurs Toronto. The theme of the night was Fire and Ice

My trip Home

After a long day at work I get onto the streetcar. Elvis Costello is bleeding through my earbuds. I walk past a pretty young woman. Behind her is a nerdy guy playing his 3DS. Behind him is an empty seat. I sit down.

I pull out my phone and check twitter. I don't care, it's noise, it's politics, it's anger. It doesn't keep my attention. I look at the guy's 3DS, he's playing Smash Bros. I don't like that game but my son does. I can picture my son as this guy in 9 years, engrossed in his game during a boring late night commute. I like him because of that. He's got that oblivious concentration my son has. The oblivious concentration he gets from me.

Twitter still sucks. I'm not focused. I've been working too long. I need to take a walk.

The young woman turns so she can take off her jacket. She sees the guy and her face lights up. She says something to the him. I can't hear her over the sounds of an almost empty gin palace. The guy looks up at her, mid match. She raises her 3DS, it's the XL version with Animal Crossing on the large screen.

His face lights up and they begin to talk. I think it's about gaming.

Twitter has never been less interesting. I keep looking at it but my attention is on the people in front of me. She's animated, she's interested, she's touching her hair.  He's giving her his full attention. He's enjoying this but there's something awkward, like this is new to him.

I want to take Elvis out of my ears and listen but I can't. It's wrong. I'm already intruding. I feel creepy so I keep looking at my phone, but it might as well be turned off. What is happening in front of me is pure, it's honest, it's beautiful.

I'm watching two strangers connect. Two people from different lives who have come together to share this moment through a fluke of discomfort and a shared love of video games.

I vaguely make out the sound of the automated street announcement. Her head turns and I'm convinced that I see disappointment in her face. She pulls the cord and gathers her things. I'm heart broken. This isn't how it's supposed to end. They are supposed to leave together, or exchange numbers, or sit and drink coffee all night. But they don't even streetpass each other.

I realize I'm projecting onto them. I don't care, this is still beautiful.

They shake hands and say goodbye to each other. She leaves and he starts a new match. His oblivious concentration takes over.

All I have left is Twitter.

I get off early. I need to walk.