Author: Steph Guthrie

On comedy and learning how to be an ally

Steph Guthrie5 Comments

People love to say that feminists and humour are like oil and water. Any feminist knows this is bullshit – in fact, as of late humour has become a key element of how many feminists aim to get their messages across. However, it’s important that we keep in mind our subjective position with relation to the topic when making or engaging with a joke. We need to be careful when creating humour that involves perspectives and life experiences we don’t share. I recently learned this the hard way, and wanted to share my experience with you.

Way back in September 2012, a friendly acquaintance asked me to act in a series of clips for his satirical web series, Propagator. As this acquaintance had done favours for me in the past, I agreed to participate. The first episode in which I appear lampoons the odious “ex-gay” movement and presents a gay-positive message – a message that, as a straight woman who tries to be an ally to the LGBTQ communities, I am more than happy to stand behind. I felt that participating in this effort would be a good way to show my support as an ally.

My clips (which will appear one-by-one over the course of three episodes – check out the first one) are parodies of pharmaceutical ads wherein I talk to the camera about a sense that something is not quite right in my idyllic-seeming life with a husband and children. I then take a drug that reduces repression and “psychotic denial”. Once the drug eliminates these factors, my character has the revelation that she is a lesbian. The message is ultimately an indictment of our society and the pressure it places on people to conform to heteronormative sexuality. It also bears noting that the production team has a number of queer people (all of them men, however).

At the time we shot it, I was comfortable with my involvement because I was comfortable with the overall message. However, in the eight months that have passed since the shoot, I have learned more (and continue to learn) about what it means to be an ally to a group of which I am not part. As a straight woman I have never gone through the experience of coming out and/or coming to terms with the fact that my sexuality does not conform to societal expectations. Had I done so, it’s possible I might take issue with the clip’s satirical representation of this experience. The idea, for example, that coming to terms with one’s sexuality is as easy as taking a pill, or the characterization of previous denial as “psychotic”.

On the other hand, were I a queer woman I might not take issue with any of it – who’s to say? But the bottom line is that I am not a queer woman. As a straight woman, I do not have the life experience necessary to judge the clip in context. I do not wish to condemn the clip outright (I don’t have the perspective to do so), but simply to express that I was not well-positioned to play that character. If I could go back in time, I would have chosen not to participate and instead recommended they get a queer woman to play the character.

I can’t go back in time, though. The first episode is slated for release on Wednesday, June 4th to align with the upcoming Pride festival. At this point in the game I felt it would be unfair to request that the producers remove my clips – after all, they may have developed other content for the episode that makes reference to the clips. There is also no way that we could adjust the content to make me more comfortable, because at the end of the day, we cannot change my sexual orientation, and changing the character’s would have a radical impact on the plot.

I did not want to upend the episode and greatly inconvenience the producers. So I simply requested that I not be credited, as I did not feel comfortable putting my name on the product. I made an effort to express to the producers that I did not wish to insult their work, and that many queer women may indeed have no problem with the clip, but that as a straight woman I didn’t feel equipped to make determinations about it.

My acquaintance was deeply insulted by my concerns and my request to not be credited. In turn he insulted me, called me a coward, accused me of turning my back on the queer community (which really confused me), and suggested that I feel I am “too famous” to work with the production team to adjust the content to my comfort level (which, as previously stated, would be impossible). He trotted out the fact that their production team includes queer people who took no issue with the clip (I repeat, however, that none of those team members are queer women). And finally, he said in a threatening tone that they had no intention of removing my name from the credits or promotional strategy for the episode: “Everyone will know the extent of your involvement.” He has already begun to tag me in promotions on social media.

That’s okay. I am willing to take responsibility for the fact that I shot these clips. I am willing to stand behind the fact that the ultimate message is positive, while acknowledging that the nuances of how that message was conveyed may have problems for some viewers. On a personal note, I apologize to anyone who felt that the clip belittled their experience. And if you’re a queer woman and had absolutely no problem with it? That’s awesome – there are a whole range of ways that we can interpret satire, and everyone’s experiences will position them differently in relation to it.

What I learned between the shoot and the impending release is that being an ally means more than supporting material with a positive intended message. In the future, I will not take part in any comedic efforts that depict a character whose life experiences are not represented in the production team. When engaging with subject matter that affects those who are oppressed in ways I am not, I will take a supportive role and cede to those who have experienced it directly. This is kind of “Ally 101” or even “Remedial Ally 101”. It’s one of those things I thought I already knew. But knowing something and really feeling its importance are two different things. I’m glad I had a chance to learn this lesson in practice, but more importantly, I apologize if I caused anyone pain in the process.

Technology, consent and privacy

Steph Guthrie3 Comments

Nobody (even at their age!) should struggle this much to read a situation.Tonight my fellow faculty member at Academy of the Impossible, Ramona Pringle, hosts an awesome-sounding event (which I sadly cannot attend) called The Connection Paradox: Creating a Social Blueprint. The event’s purpose is to flesh out an idea of how we want to live with technology and with each other. Since I can’t be there, she asked me to send her a few thoughts about the issue, and because of the things I often blog about, my thoughts automatically drifted to gender, privacy and consent as they relate to technology. Here are some of my jottings on the subject.

The dominant fear-mongering rhetoric around privacy and technology has given people an excuse to violate others’ digital privacy in ways they likely know (at least in the back of their minds) are immoral. Because the prevailing wisdom is “nothing is private in digital space”, our culture’s collective response to things like the sharing of intimate images is “well, she shouldn’t have sent him the photo in the first place”. This collective response flies in the face of the distinction between one-to-one and one-to-many communication. If a person chooses to send something via a one-to-one channel (or one-to-a-select-few, such as a group chat with 2 others), the tacit message is that the communication is for this person (or these people) alone. If a communicator wants a thought or image to be widely shared via one-to-many, they will do so themselves. I believe when people distribute intimate images that were texted or emailed to them alone, they know in their hearts that they are hurting and violating the other person, but our collective wisdom justifies their decision to share. That collective wisdom is what needs to change.

I feel this is a manifestation of some people’s belief that technology is an “objective” entity that functions and self-moderates automatically as its own animal, independently of human beliefs, values and behaviour. It strikes me that this is not unlike how people tend to think about the “free market”. I so disgree with this characterization. We are technology – we are the ones who make it, who use it, who decide how it can and should be used (though of course, we aren’t able to predict and control that use absolutely). We can set new and different standards of behaviour and use. IMHO, one of those “new” standards should be what is really a pretty basic/ancient moral code: if someone tells you something privately (especially if aspects of it are sensitive and/or could be harmful to anyone, whether they are involved or not), unless the communicator asks you to share or it’s in the public interest to share, keep it to yourself.

How to implement this standard? I dunno (sorry). It’s a complex cultural issue. In the case of revenge porn I believe the problem is also shrouded in misogynistic ideology that privileges public access to bodies (especially women’s bodies). I do think it would help to start teaching kids about consent as an important subset of how we educate them about privacy in a technology context. This teaching doesn’t have to apply solely to digital violations of a sexual nature (like revenge porn). For example, consider a situation in which a teenager confides to a friend about their crush via one-to-one chat, and the friend posts a Facebook status about it.

Consent should be an integral part of how we educate about privacy, but I think many parents and educators (not to mention the media) would be hesitant to do so. Why? Because it might in some ways qualify or mitigate (and perhaps in some folks’ eyes, undermine) the dominant, hand-wringy messages about BEING CAREFUL WHAT YOU POST because NOTHING IS PRIVATE ANYMORE. But I think it’s necessary. Educating about privacy shouldn’t just be about protecting our own privacy, but also about not violating the privacy of others. And this learning should start early.

Taking the Rape out of Culture

Steph Guthrie1 Comment

On Thursday, May 23 2013, I hosted an event at Academy of the Impossible called “Taking the Rape out of Culture”. It was an open group brainstorm (with some breakout discussions as well) to map the component parts of rape culture – what does it look like in practice? What are the sub-concepts (or as I dubbed them, “subgenres”) under the big umbrella of rape culture?

I was thrilled at the quality of discussion and the diverse range of participants we had. Participants included: people who work in violence prevention, anti-racism organizers, parents, journalists, new Canadians, trans* participants, volunteers at crisis centres. We came at the topic from a variety of perspectives and we really dove into the subject matter.

One of these days I’m going to have to get a WordPress plugin that allows me to embed a Storify, but today is not that day. I do urge you to read my Storify of tweets from the evening, which captures some of the ground we covered and provides detail on many of the “subgenres” of rape culture we discussed. We’ll likely be holding another session in the future to discuss methods of intervening and challenging the many component parts of rape culture, so stay tuned.

Cisters, make today your starting point

Steph Guthrie3 Comments

Today is the International Day Against Homophobia and Transphobia (IDAHT). As with all awareness-raising days, it is only one day amid a sea of others on which we tend to be more indifferent to the oppressions and systems of power that we play a role in perpetuating. However, IDAHT and other efforts like it can be useful for people who are in the early stages of coming to terms with their privilege as a straight and/or cis person. People like the person writing this post.

I have never harboured any negativity, discomfort, or dismissive attitudes toward people who don’t share my sexual orientation, gender identity or expression. For a long time I felt like that was enough. Recently I have begun to swallow the fact that there is much I don’t know about the experience of being a person in this world who is gay, a lesbian, trans*, bi, queer, two-spirited, or gender-queer. To be an active part of the solution, I need to educate myself (and, as I develop greater knowledge and perspective, educate other cis and straight people) on what these lived experiences are like and how they differ from my own.

I owe much of my (admittedly limited, but growing) recent understanding to a new friend named Sophia Banks, an immensely talented freelance wedding photographer who has seen a 90% reduction in business since coming out as a trans woman. Via her Twitter account, Sophia candidly and generously shares the anger and pain inflicted upon her and her fellow trans* people (trans women in particular) by cisnormativity and transphobia. I highly recommend you follow her if you are a Twitter user, especially if you are cis. Sophia has explicitly professed that her goal is to build understanding among cis people. Since it is no trans* person’s “job” to provide these insights to cis folks like myself, I am very grateful to her for expending her time and energy in doing so.

Many of the experiences and impacts of transphobia that Sophia has shared are things that I understood before on some cold and abstract level. However, hearing personal stories of how transphobia plays out in people’s lives adds a punch-in-the-gut vividness and urgency. A key example that comes to mind is the scope of transphobia’s economic impacts on trans* people. As we all know (I hope!), lack of income security often spills over to impact other aspects of life including mental health, housing stability, and experiences of violence at the hands of individuals or the state.

Sophia is self-employed, and her billings have seen a steep decline since she came out as a trans woman. Her once-booming business (I mean, look at those gorgeous photos!) has slowed to a trickle and she is hovering dangerously close to eviction. She is concerned that if she continues to work as a woman (i.e. as herself), she will be homeless. No person should have to erase themselves in order to make a living and keep a roof over their head. I Storified some of her evocative tweets about this, please check it out to read it in her own voice.

Ontario recently added discrimination based on gender identity and expression as grounds for a complaint to the Human Rights Commission – an important victory. However, what’s to stop an employer from simply ascribing a more innocuous reason to their choice to not select a trans* job candidate or proposal from a trans* contractor? “If the interviewer is transphobic, it’s hopeless,” says Sophia. The new Human Rights Code, while undoubtedly important, doesn’t seem to deter many employers from expressing and/or condoning harmful and exclusionary attitudes. If you’re cis this next part may shock you (it did me), though I imagine trans* readers may relate: Sophia told me one prospective employer asked her which genitals she had in a job interview. WTFFFFFFFFF

In addition to facing discrimination from employers and clients, the costs can be enormous if a trans* person opts for sex reassignment surgery (SRS) or other medical supports to align physicality with identity. Financial costs for trans women are especially high – $25K isn’t unheard of. Yet for many trans* people, SRS is not an elective surgery but vital. Not to mention the fact that in a cissexist society, aligning your physical sex characteristics with your identity is often the only way to convince people that you’re a Real Woman or Real Man (ugh), despite the fact that the vast majority of people will never encounter your genitals!

Take trans* people’s access to limited resources, couple it with the high levels of post-secondary education required for social work positions these days, and you get a lot of cis people delivering social services to trans* people whose life experiences are unfamiliar to them. For a person experiencing little income security, precarious housing, and/or lack of acceptance (or outright hostility) from family, friends and colleagues, effective and empathetic mental health support and other social services are crucial. And yet, Sophia has struggled to find support groups for trans women that are actually facilitated by one. “I asked why trans women were not facilitating the groups and they said they can’t find any with the qualifications,” she says. “How can any trans woman afford to go to school for an MSW [Master of Social Work] while transitioning?”

Considering these factors, it is perhaps unsurprising that over 40% of trans people attempt suicide. Considering these factors, it is perhaps unsurprising that, when a video game site editor outed a trans woman on Twitter this week mere hours after she had attempted suicide, people were pissed – though not enough cis people by any stretch. Many cis people who I know harbour no ill will toward trans people were not part of the broader discussion around this incident. Shamefully enough, I probably only heard about it because it happened in the gaming community, in which many of the people I follow are active.

I’m sure for every cis person who participated in that discussion, there were a few sitting on the sidelines feeling perturbed by the whole debacle, but uncertain of what to say or how to contribute. I can relate. I want to do right by trans* people. As a well-meaning but relatively clueless cis person, I don’t want to say the wrong thing unwittingly or ask too many questions and end up causing additional hurt, anger or exhaustion.

If you’re a well-meaning but relatively clueless cis person (it’s okay to admit it if you’re willing to do something to change it), IDAHT is one day out of the year, but you can make it your starting point. Today, take some time to learn more about how to best support trans* people, and how to best participate in the fight for justice across the gender spectrum. Here are some places to start, and I definitely encourage you to post any resources you find useful (either as a cis or trans* person) in the comments.

Sort-Of App Review: r/ally

Steph Guthrie

Like previous “sort-of reviews” on this blog, this is more a description of what I enjoy, find useful, and might change if I could about the mobile app r/ally (@RallyYourGoals on Twitter), currently in beta mode. I’m not an industry expert and my intent is not to provide an exhaustive, authoritative account, just a user reflection.

r/ally recently approached me on Twitter and asked me to beta test the app. The tweet was non-spammy and when I visited their feed, it wasn’t filled with identical tweets to other accounts (which is, for me, typically a dealbreaker). And most importantly, the app concept seemed uniquely designed for me and my interests, which was a dealMAKER.

r/ally is an app for women to collaborate and support each other in pursuing their goals: professional, personal, and anything in between. As a woman who is constantly creating new goals and seeking like-minded collaborators for grassroots projects, the idea appealed to me. One app store reviewer wrote “this is what LinkedIn has been missing,” and I’m inclined to agree.

Not only can people see what projects you’re working on, they can reach out to help even if you don’t know one another. Users have the option to accept or decline offers of support on a goal from other users, and once an offer of support has been accepted, the two users can share private messages to spitball ideas, exchange contact information, and anything else to move toward the goal in question.

The app is currently not location-specific, but I’ve come across users in Toronto and Vancouver so far. Like many products and services that cater to women in a career context, the users at this early stage seem to be primarily middle-class, white, urban and highly educated. A more diverse user base would make for a more interesting and inclusive user experience, and I’m hoping they will get there.

Like any social app, it needs a critical mass of active users in order to be worth checking regularly. I don’t think they’re quite there yet but I definitely see the potential! I seem to share interests with a lot of the users who are there, which has led to a few new connections. The app notifies you of other users’ goals you may wish to support, and so far I’ve found the algorithm produces users and goals relevant to my interests.

As this app amasses more users, I am confident that it’ll be interesting and busy enough to come back to regularly. One thing I think might be a barrier to frequent use, though, is that users appear to be capped at three active goals at a time. For me, this limits the app’s usefulness because I’d like to be using it as a sort of long-term social to-do list, and I typically have more than three long-term goals on the go at a given time. If they removed the goal cap, I’d have a lot more to do on r/ally.

r/ally is a brilliant concept with a well-designed interface and algorithms that drive user engagement. If it gets more uptake, especially among more diverse communities of women, it has a lot of potential to be a go-to app for ambitious women.

How we can stop revenge porn

Steph Guthrie4 Comments

Today I hosted an event at Academy of the Impossible to discuss how to wipe the heinous phenomenon of “revenge porn” off the face of this green earth. Revenge porn is the colloquial term for when people share nude or sexually explicit photos/video of another person without their consent. I’ve written about revenge porn here, here, here, and here. I encourage you to check out my Storify of our amazing discussion at today’s event.

The event generated a few ideas that are worth exploring, and fast. Why fast? Nova Scotia has assembled a Cybercrime Working Group to put together legislative options by June, for projected implementation in fall 2013. The Nova Scotia Justice Minister wants to implement legislation that could “make circulating an intimate image for a malicious or sexual purpose a crime” or “create a new section of the Criminal Code for distributing intimate images without consent” (two very different outlines, IMHO). We want to have a say in how they put this together.

In terms of influencing legislation, we wanted to ensure consequences for youth offenders are rooted in education and development of healthier social norms regarding sex, consent and accountability. We discussed conducting a series of formal and informal discussions with youth. Discussions would focus on their views on/experiences with revenge porn, the social consequences currently meted out and their feelings about those, what kinds of formal consequences they think are appropriate and why, and what kinds of knowledge would help them navigate these situations. The results of these discussions can be consolidated into a whitepaper and could be shared with the media (with confidentiality of participants protected, of course).

In terms of public education, we want to ensure the Ontario curriculum has opportunities built in for students to explore sexuality in a positive way through the lenses of consent, social media, and the law. If these opportunities don’t currently exist (or are not being implemented in practice), we want to form a coalition of organizations advocating for change.

In terms of public awareness, we want to further discuss the possibility of an ad campaign (e.g. posters, videos, etc.) focused on sharing explicit images without consent. This campaign may be in the spirit of the “Don’t be that guy” campaign to combat sexual violence. The next step for such a thing could be a one-hour brainstorming session wherein we free-associate words and ideas connected to the word “consent.” We’ll also be exploring potential media partners/sponsors.

Wanna get involved in any of that? Head over to “Contact” and get in touch so I can put you on the circulation list for updates and collaborative docs!

Child porn isn’t a “community issue,” RCMP

Steph Guthrie7 Comments

TRIGGER WARNING for sexual assault, victim-blaming, revenge porn.

rehtaeh parsons

On Sunday, rape culture and revenge porn claimed another teenage girl: 17-year-old Rehtaeh Parsons of Dartmouth, Nova Scotia. A year and a half ago, 15-year-old Rehtaeh was allegedly gang-raped by four boys in a friend’s home, one of whom took a picture of her rape on his mobile phone and distributed it to the school and community at large.

You can probably predict what happened next. The community rallied around her in disgust that someone would take and share such a photo? Oh, haha, you must be new here, Decent Human Being. Nope, she received a barrage of text messages and social media posts calling her a slut, begging her for sex, and generally shaming her for having been caught with her clothes off, despite the fact that it was allegedly not her choice.

She tried to escape the misery by switching schools and later checking into a hospital, but ultimately the trauma of the alleged assault and ensuing barrage of harassment proved too much. On Thursday, April 4th, Rehtaeh hung herself. On Sunday, April 7th, her parents took her off life support and the world said goodbye to a bright young woman with a promising future.

To add insult to injury, the RCMP did not seem to invest much effort into investigating either the assault or the photograph’s distribution (though they are apparently now investigating the “sudden death of a minor” – useful, thanks). I won’t get into their failure on her rape case, as Anne Thériault has already done a good job of that. I want to ask why the fuck Rehtaeh’s mother was told by the RCMP that the distribution of the photo was “not really a criminal issue, more of a community issue.”

I’m sorry, but I’m pretty sure distributing nude photos of a 15-year-old constitutes a criminal issue: child pornography. The RCMP admitted they were able to trace the photo to one of the boys’ mobile phones, but apparently couldn’t determine who had snapped the picture. What about who distributed the photo, RCMP? The photo was allegedly sent to the entire school and surrounding community – surely a path to the sender exists. And surely our federal police force has access to the latest and greatest technologies to investigate these things.

It’s especially fishy because I seem to remember our Public Safety Minister making a widely lambasted pronouncement that anyone who opposed his draconian internet surveillance legislation “stood with the child pornographers.” (Remember that, Canada? LOL.) So yeah, I kinda figured distributors of child pornography would be a favourite target for the internet-savvy members of our law enforcement community. How foolish of me.

I guess this isn’t the easy, popular kind of child pornography to prosecute – the kind where the distributor is a sweaty 55-year-old man living alone in a basement. I guess when the distributors are close in age to the child, law enforcement decides it’s too much of a “he said/she said” situation for them to get involved. “A community issue.” This sounds suspiciously like how law enforcement tends to treat other forms of sexual violence.

That revenge pornographers with teenage victims are not treated as the child pornographers they are says a whole hell of a lot about bias and failure in our justice system. But really, while minors are the most vulnerable and deserve the most protection, restricting legal recourse for revenge porn survivors to those under 18 would be a failure too. People of all ages have been subject to the malicious distribution of nude and sexually explicit photos intended for private use (I’ve written about it before). Why do we place a higher premium on the photographer’s intellectual property rights than on the subject’s right to privacy?

I’m going to spitball an extremely obvious solution: why do we not have a law requiring the distributor of a sexually explicit photograph to provide written consent from the photo’s subject? Why do we place the burden of proof on the subject to show that she did not consent to the photo’s distribution, rather than on the distributor to show that she did consent?

I think the answer might lie in the commonly held, subconscious perception that women’s bodies exist for public consumption. It’s a problem with deep social roots, but that doesn’t mean our legal system can’t begin to address it. Let’s get cracking, cops and prosecutors. This isn’t a community issue.

What Sam James and I have in common

Steph Guthrie11 Comments

Emotions ran high in Toronto last night when news broke that police had charged popular coffee shop proprietor Sam James with mischief and assault following a confrontation with anti-choice protesters outside a high school near his shop. Sam, who has been a vocal supporter of women’s rights in the past, allegedly threw coffee on the group’s signs, spat at one protester, and assaulted another when he realized he was being videotaped.

The nature and severity of the assault has not yet been disclosed. The Canadian Criminal Code’s definition of assault is fairly broad, and while it covers the application of force, it also covers instances when a person “attempts or threatens, by an act or a gesture, to apply force to another person.” This type of assault could manifest in raising one’s fist or perhaps in what is commonly referred to as “getting in someone’s face.” One can’t really speculate on the nature of the alleged assault, but as there is video evidence of the confrontation, I expect the truth will come out eventually.

It’d be tough for me to abide Sam James punching someone (if that turns out to be what happened), as I’m not a fan of violence. But regardless of the nature of the alleged assault, I unapologetically appreciate the sentiment behind it: visceral anger about a social movement attempting to enact systemic violence upon women’s bodies. Last night I expressed this appreciation on Twitter, much to the chagrin of some of my (almost entirely male) friends. These friends suggested that appreciation of the sentiment was logically inseparable from support for the allegedly violent action. I vehemently disagree on this point. The feeling and the action are two different things, and I’m allowed to feel differently about each.

Here’s the thing: abortion is an issue about which many women feel strongly on not just a moral but a visceral level. The anti-choice movement is a literal attempt to violate and control women’s bodies. Look south of the border at mandatory trans-vaginal ultrasounds, at laws that limit a woman’s personhood in favour of that of a potential child who hasn’t even been conceived yet. Or just look to Prince Edward Island where the province’s practitioners are not permitted to perform surgical abortions, forcing women who seek them to travel out-of-province. Such policies disproportionately infringe on the bodily autonomy of certain groups of women, including undocumented women and low-income women.

And while many of my (again, almost entirely male) friends are fond of condescendingly proclaiming that women have no reason to worry about it, backbencher after backbencher in our majority Conservative federal government keeps raising the foetal personhood issue. No matter that a full third of the House of Commons voted in favour of M-312. No matter that a terrifying wave of anti-choice policies have been written into law in the United States, a nation our current government seems determined to emulate.

It is in this political climate that the Canadian Centre for Bioethical Reform has been mounting protests with gruesome imagery outside Canadian high schools and offering “pro-life” lesson plans to high school teachers. Talk about low-hanging fruit. Make no mistake: this is systemic violence, and it is to this systemic violence that Sam James may have responded with an individual act of violence, the severity of which we don’t yet know.

Few cis men seem to understand and feel the abortion issue in a visceral way, even if they are pro-choice. As a pro-choice woman, I feel a physical twinge that’s probably like a much morally weightier version of what a cis dude might feel when he hears about another dude getting kicked in the balls. What I appreciate about Sam’s sentiment is that it was visceral. It burst out of him. It’s an anger with which I’m familiar through my own encounters with anti-choice groups (and I’ve never encountered one outside a high school).

It’s an anger I must constantly regulate, not only for moral reasons, but because I am in very real physical danger. Those who identify as women, or have done so in the past, typically have to regulate the viscerality of their anger in ways most men don’t. We may have laws against physical violence, but our culture sure does have an intricately woven patchwork of cultural cues that encourage men (and not women) to express their anger through physical violence.

I may not support an act of violence itself, but I am deeply comforted by the fact that a cis guy whose own bodily autonomy is not directly impacted by the anti-choice movement feels the same instinctive anger that I feel when I see such a group preying on high school students. A lot of women tweeted or DM’d me last night to say that, at some point in their lives, they had fantasized about doing exactly what Sam did. That doesn’t mean these women or I condone the action (after all, we haven’t followed through on those fantasies), but it does suggest a parallel to our feelings about the issue. For me, that parallel is heartening.

The future prospects of investigative journalism

Steph Guthrie1 Comment

Last night, the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) published the fruits of an explosive, multi-year worldwide investigation into offshore tax havens. It’s not the first such investigation of theirs, and shows just what can happen when outlets collaborate to dissect matters of public interest.

Journalists from a variety of countries and outlets (including Canada’s own CBC/Radio-Canada) sifted through 2.5 million leaked documents to expose the wealthy people who stash their earnings in covert companies and trusts in places like the British Virgin Islands and Cook Islands. Many of these people are politically connected, like class-action attorney Tony Merchant, whose wife is Canadian Senator Pana Merchant.

This kind of investigation is likely the reason many young journalists go into the business – the promise of serving as an important check/balance on an increasingly unchecked oligarchy of corporate wealth and political corruption. But it’s also the kind of investigation that is less and less common these days. Not only are such projects expensive, they require long-term commitment (and by extension, long-term employees). We’re talking hours upon hours upon hours of paid labour that, for a long time, does not yield content to populate a homepage. It’s an investment in which many publications and outlets seem to have dwindling (if any) interest.

Not to get all York University grad student here, but let’s not forget that many of the media’s powerful people have a vested interest in maintaining the status quo of wealth distribution. It’s worth noting that the only Canadian outlet ICIJ listed as a participant in the investigation is a public broadcaster. What is the best way to ensure this type of work gets funded and produced?

British investigative journalist David Leigh has a few ideas, including a small monthly levy on broadband connections, and collaboration among outlets in the style we saw with the ICIJ investigation. The former is likely to draw considerable ire from people who read the news (much as paywalls have done and perhaps moreso). The latter has worked well in some cases but still requires outlets that have an interest in investing, to some extent or another, in stories with long-term payoff. Other possibilities include crowd-funded stories and investigations sponsored by non-profit or educational organizations.

Where do you go for good investigative journalism? What are your thoughts and feelings on the options above? What other ideas have you come across? Tell me in the comments or better yet, discuss it with industry peers at the MediaTech Commons, a private community for digital media workers to vent, plot, and share their experiences.