Facebook doesn’t belong in lecture halls

Are laptop-users ignoring their professors or just multitasking?

A cropped tee and mini skirt certainly doesn’t say ‘love me for my mind,’ it does say something about Western emancipation

There exists a point in many young girls’ lives where it becomes fashionable to stick your tongue down your best friend’s throat at a club and later post the pictures on Facebook. Ideally, your best friend is of the same sex, clad in a cheap polyester bubble dress, and surrounded by a gaggle of young men chanting, “Dooo it!” or “Guuuuhh!”

This is not power. That point is made clear by Maclean’s recent cover story titled “Outraged moms, trashy daughters,” which tries to make sense of how mothers of the women’s lib movement managed to produce the barsexual daughters of today. Anne Kingston writes, “For these girls, Snoop Dogg’s misogynist Bitches Ain’t S–t is not an affront but a ring tone, and ‘slut’ and ‘bitch’ are not put-downs but affectionate greetings between female friends.” Nancy Vonk, the co-chief creative officer of Ogilvy & Mather, was quoted in the article saying, “I’m so deeply pained to see where women are today and how girls—and I mean girls—are being groomed to believe their purpose in life is to be sexual beings that please men.”

Of course, there’s a perpetual belief that the new generation is always more misguided than the one before. A few years ago, mothers watched their abhorrent daughters flip the bird at tradition and march on parliament so they could be seen as the “housekeepers of the nation.” Fast forward a few years and a new generation of daughters are letting their poor husbands starve as they seek paid work and—gasp—stop shaving! Later it’ll be an affront to want to be a “full time mom” and suddenly, “A blow job is just like shaking hands,” according to Kate Lloyd, the director of program and service development for the Learning Disabilities Association of Ontario. But even Lloyd acknowledges that, “there is some of that sensationalizing for sure,” though she’s fervent in her belief that “the sexualization of young girls is at a point it’s never been before.”

But is it just tired moms fussing about their unruly daughters? Not entirely. The New Yorker’s Ariel Levy published a book back in 2005 called Female Chauvinist Pigs: Women and the Rise of Raunch Culture, in which she laments the idea that sexual power amounts to any real type of liberation or clout. Levy speaks with American author Erica Jong who says, “If you start to think about women as if we’re all Carrie on Sex and the City, well, the problem is: You’re not going to elect Carrie to the Senate or to run your company. Let’s see the Senate fifty percent female; let’s see women in decision-making positions—that’s power. Sexual freedom can be a smokescreen for how far we haven’t come.”

So it’s not just exasperated mothers sensationalizing their daughters’ rejection of “traditional feminism.” According to Levy, we’ve developed a real raunch culture where “Bimbos enjoy a higher standing than Olympians.” Everyone agree?

Obviously, if I took this rhetoric at face value I would be grooming my nails instead of my next point. But not all girls are solely preoccupied with achieving the perfect tan, and reasonable readers know that. Along with more American Apparel-clad asses conquering our downtown billboards and reality TV shows of Sn00ki performing fellatio on a pickle comes increased coverage on the effects on young girls. And while some may, in fact, reach for the Strubs, many others turn and chuckle, then go back to the books.

It goes without saying that sexual exploration is a normal part of growing up. Our bodies are changing, hormones are going wild and the brain is trying to fervently catch up. The decision-making area of the brain—the frontal lobe—is not fully developed until the mid-20’s, according to some studies, which explains why many teens post their underage drinking photos on their Facebook pages, even though they are Facebook friends with their mom. Oopsies.

Luckily, these impulsive trends begin to settle; the numbers swing significantly after 24. But for many, like Jong quoted above, the problem is not just that this promiscuity—however temporary—is so exaggerated, but that girls believe it gives them a sort of power. To them, the freedom to show cleavage is feminism.

Now, before we start digging up dusty copies of The Feminine Mystique and writing off this generation as wholly composed of “lost, trashy souls,” maybe it’s worth exploring how this idea got its roots. Undoubtedly, this group of young women is more globally tuned-in than any generation before. We have access to breaking information from all over the world, sent directly to our inboxes, iPads and phones at all hours of the day. Pair that with an increasing global social conscience, and girls undoubtedly pick up on stories of women journalists in Sudan being sentenced to 20 lashes for wearing pants, or catch a glimpse of Time magazine’s recent cover of 18-year-old Afghan Aisha, who had her nose and ears cut off by the Taliban after fleeing her in-laws.  There are even stories closer to home; just two months ago, a father and son plead guilty to the so-called honour killing of Toronto teen Aqsa Parvez, who refused to wear a hijab.

If we draw our gaze slightly up from our navels, is it really any wonder why many girls today believe sexual freedom amounts to a certain form of strength and liberation? While a cropped tee and mini skirt certainly doesn’t say “love me for my mind,” it does say something about Western emancipation.

Of course, portraying one’s self as a sex object isn’t quite the right way to gain esteem and respect, but neither is portraying one’s self as hopelessly disadvantaged. In Kingston’s article, Susan Nierenberg, a mother of a 25-year-old woman and the vice-president of global marketing of Catalyst, an organization tracking female advancement, says her daughter mistakenly believes that the workforce is an even playing field. “I hate to tell her that’s not the way it is. I want her going into it thinking she can do anything. But I also want her to be smart about it,” Nierenberg says.

In other words, go in thinking you’ll have to work doubly hard? Why not convey that idea also? Indeed, there’s no better way to convince someone to see you as equal than to perpetually remind him of how unequal you are. It worked for Hillary Clinton, right? Everyone remember: “To be able to aim toward the highest, hardest glass ceiling is history-making.”?  While Obama’s racial allusions were subtle and infrequent during the Democratic primary, so much of what we heard from Clinton was, “Wouldn’t it be lovely to have a female president?” I suppose we can keep wondering.

To get back on point, while the ‘fight’ for sexual equality may not be over–so to speak–it’s been reduced largely to an ideological battle, which, granted, is probably the hardest to tackle overall. But hounding the new generation to “look for the sexism” in daily life probably isn’t the way to go. Internalizing the belief that one will is perpetually victimized can be just as debilitating as the belief that flirting will get you respect in an office. At least you can shape up for the next work placement.

So, we can provoke this hysteria that the new generation of harlots is soiling the efforts of women past, or we can take a good look around at the women in higher education, medicine and the general workforce, and take a global perspective to evaluating the strides women have made in our society. And girls—do me a favour—take down those loathsome Facebook photos.

-Photo by wolfgraebel

The Facebook campaign

We take it for granted today that social media is a force to be reckoned with — with students and younger folks leading the charge. It’s really amazing how fast this new reality took hold. I had my stint in student politics from 2003 to 2006 and I never leveraged social networking for that. It all came later. Well, I’m all socially networked now. But I still haven’t tried to use it to make a real point yet. Maybe I haven’t had a truly original point to make until now. Now I think Leonard Cohen should be our next Governor General.

For those who haven’t heard, Stephen Harper recently announced that he would not be recommending Michaelle Jean for a second term as Governor General. Although the Governor General is nominally the Queen’s representative, in actual practice it will be the Prime Minister’s decision as to who is appointed. This decision is effectively one that Mr. Harper can unilaterally make, but all kinds of practical constraints intrude. It has to be someone who won’t embarrass either the nation or Harper’s party. And for all that the Governor General may be very important for a brief time in some constitutional crisis (prorogation anyone?) the odds of this happening again any time soon are so long that it isn’t worth buying a lot of negative press with an unpopular choice. So where does that leave us? This is politics played in the theatre of public opinion. And this is what social media was made for.

So here is Leonard Cohen for Governor General – The Facebook Campaign. And really, why not? He is respected and even revered both internationally and domestically. He is fluently bilingual and is gladly claimed by both French and English Canada. He loves our nation in the quiet way only true Canadians understand. He is spiritual and morally centered without pushing his faith on anyone else. He’s a heck of a good choice in every respect, save perhaps that he’s probably too smart to get suckered into the job. That, and he makes a much better income on stage.

But leaving aside the unlikeliness of the choice, does having a bunch of people in a Facebook group really prove anything? I don’t know. I waffle back and forth on this one. But I do believe in the power of an idea. And social media gives me the power to turn a quip over breakfast into a potentially national movement to draft this man into office. And that’s pretty cool. If enough people join maybe we can actually get his name in the mix. Who knows?

What really matters, more than anything, is that we demonstrate to the government that we are indeed still watching. We care who represents our nation, even in a role that is often just ceremonial. Our choice for Governor General sends a message about who and what we are as a nation. The message I’d like to send to the world is that we’re a nation not afraid to be led by a poet.

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Questions are welcome at jeff.rybak@utoronto.ca. You can also follow me on Twitter.

Students join groups and professors sign petitions against proroguing, but whether the momentum can last is questionable.

If you’re anything like me (student, politically aware, karaoke singer of Don’t Stop Believing), you’ve received a facebook invite to one of “Canadians Against Proroguing Parliament” groups out there by your friend that wanted you to join the “I Support A Coalition Government!” 13 months ago.

But it’s not just political science students getting involved virally—it’s also their professors. Across the country, an impressive list of scholars are putting their name to a letter, written by University of Montreal philosophy professor Daniel Weinstock, which argues “The Prime Minister is not only making cavalier use of the discretionary powers entrusted to him in our Parliamentary system, but in so doing he is undermining our system of democratic government.” (you can read the whole letter here).

Leaving aside the question of the quality of the letter’s argument—which Andrew Potter deals with much more eloquently than I could—it showcases, along with the multitude of facebook groups out there, the way in which universities are uniquely suited to bring Canadian politics into a digital age that goes beyond blogs.

You’ve got a bunch of smart, energetic people in a fairly small space, debating ideas and being used to 16-hour days. Lord knows professors, at least the good ones, are willing to have spirited discussions. It’s a resource to be leveraged. In America, the 2008 election saw the intersection of campuses and technology as a key part of the campaign from very early stages. In Canada? We’re still getting taking our time getting there (of course, the US had that Obama guy to excite students digitally for an entire election. I know very few students who are excited by Ignatieff or Harper physically, let alone digitally).

For his part, Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff, in lieu of being able to be in parliament, is in the midst of his university speaking tour. If his team is smart, they’ll use the events to keep the conversation about proroguing going on campuses. Whether that momentum can be sustained is questionable though—generally, campus clubs aren’t nearly dedicated enough to leveraging anything long-term out of a leader’s visit.

And of course, it’s one thing to join a facebook group or tweet, it’s another to show up for a rally, or god forbid, donate some of that student loan money to a political party.

My contribution to the year-end review potluck

December is always a weird time a year. It’s a month where the western world tries to grind to a halt and finally stops for about one week. Around this time, people start posting notes on Facebook that dissect the last year in their personal lives. And this year, news sites are filled with retrospectives on the news, people, fashion, pop culture and technology that defined the decade.

I read a particularly astute Facebook update in which the poster likened 2009 to a boorish house guest that overstayed his welcome. It made me think about how I felt and how I would remember this year. Truthfully, I am always glad when a year is over. December is a month of expectation and anticipation and I am always relieved to put it behind me. I am always more capable of making plans and looking forward when I am safely on the other side of the calendar instead of counting down.

That being said, 2009 feels like three different lives bound together loosely by the last four digits of my digital camera’s date stamp. From January to the end of April, I was in Toronto finishing my last semester at Ryerson. My last year of Ryerson was by far the most emotionally trying of the four years. I had to come down from the high of going on exchange, a summer of backpacking and settling back into routine existence. It felt like all the fun parts of university were over. It was the longest I had lived with my parents since I started university and I was not a happy camper.

Making meaningful summer plans are always a source of anxiety, especially in journalism school. If you want a good internship, you need to start applying in December. So what to do when you know you’re leaving in September to do something completely unrelated? Keep your head down, suck it up and take a retail job while you wait to leave? It was a worry I had since I returned to Toronto in September 2008. You don’t want to find yourself among those scouring the “writing/editing” section of Craiglist in May. It was more pressure this year since we were graduating and it was now possible (nay, mandatory) to search for a full-time job. Through a miraculous stroke of luck, I managed to avoid all this. In January I got an email telling me I received a scholarship to study Mandarin in Taipei. In hindsight, I chose to treat this like a free pass to sit back and suffer the rest of the school year until I could get the dodge out of there.

Taiwan was a completely unexpected stop in 2009. I can say now, without a doubt, that it was the best part. Before going there I only knew about its existence and never given the country a passing thought. There was also something amazing about revisiting the Chinese language. Learning Mandarin came so naturally, I astounded myself everyday. Lessons in the textbook would spill out of my mouth without having to put in study time. It was always full-steam ahead. Of course it’s much easier to like something when you are good at it. I left with a different attitude about Chinese language and culture and I have to credit Taiwan for a lot of that.

Which brings me to the here and now in France. This is the part I hate the most about these year-end lists–self-eulogizing while you’re still living. Increasingly I’ve been finding it hard to say positive things about my experience here. Until now, I have been fortunate and sheltered in my experiences abroad to avoid some of the normal feelings of living abroad, namely loneliness and isolation. It sounds obvious but the biggest adjustment was realizing that when you’re no longer a foreign student, you don’t have a ton of other foreign students always ready to hang out with you. When you are at a place where you can speak the language, however badly, you now have the option of trying to mix with the locals (and a nagging feeling that you should, instead of befriending other foreigners.) This has been proved harder and more intimidating than I thought. Being a new kid in a French workplace isn’t easy either. It has not only been getting used to the French way of doing things with my colleagues but also becoming a cog in a school system I didn’t grow up with.

In the past two years, I’ve begun to measure time in countries or associate periods of my life with a place. I remember Utrecht and Taipei as such beautiful and happy times in my life. However, they were instant gratification. Toronto is a mix of social circles from different periods in my life that I could fall back into, which makes things both mundane but comfortingly easy. The worst part for me so far is the disappointment that I don’t love France yet. I really hoped and expected that I would.

Lately I’ve been thinking that France serves another purpose in the greater scheme of things. There wasn’t much difficulty or responsibility in Utrecht or Taipei, so I rarely had feelings of dissatisfaction. Here, for the first time, I have to try and work at building a life and finding a niche for myself. Needless to say, I’m not there yet. The catch is my contract finishes in four months anyway. I don’t believe in being defeatist and resigning myself to waiting until I can pack up and leave. I’ve done that before (see: the paragraph about how I spent the first third of 2009) and it didn’t make things any better. So I think I have my new year’s resolution and the first part of 2010 cut out for me.

Hey Jaclyn (?) Lee (?), How are you? I am well. I hope all these years after our graduation have treated you kindly. First of all, I’m not exactly sure that your name is, in fact, Jaclyn . I’ve been told through the grapevine that you have a bone to pick with me, but I [...]

Hey Jaclyn (?) Lee (?),

How are you? I am well. I hope all these years after our graduation have treated you kindly.

First of all, I’m not exactly sure that your name is, in fact, Jaclyn . I’ve been told through the grapevine that you have a bone to pick with me, but I don’t remember you in the slightest. What I do know, however, is that you’re really upset that I won’t add you on Facebook. Now I make no pretense of being popular, so it’s not like I spend my days ignoring friend requests, but certainly I say no to more people than I say yes to.

But I genuinely cannot remember who you are. I usually only identify people by a distinct character flaw, so you must be really perfect because nowhere in my half-decent memory can I find you or your name. I will go ahead and assume you are a blond/brunette white female between the ages of 17 and 20.

What I can’t understand, however, is why you would be so wound up over the fact that I won’t add you. Clearly we had little contact, nevermind a full conversation.

Please show yourself. I feel like I may owe you an apology.

Or maybe I don’t. Maybe I’ll find out who you are and it’ll just increase me ire for you and people like you, who require the popularity contest that is Facebook friending. And to be so irked by the fact that I just won’t say yes, to be so personally offended by it that you tell one person who tells another who tells me and then you become this joke, this extravagant joke about this broad that is hurt because I will not add them – well that’s so sad for you.

Or maybe you’re not like that, who knows?

In my defense, the purpose of Facebook is to keep in touch with people that you want to keep in touch with, however, if there is no need found on the part of either parties to keep in touch, what’s the purpose behind it? The way I see it, some people drift away, some people don’t. I have no desire to keep talking to that girl that sat in the back row of my Math class and cut Simple Plan lyrics into her wrists.

For all I know, Jaclyn (?) Lee (?) could have been that girl. In reality, what would we have to catch up on if we’ve never been caught up int he first place?

So please, if I hurt you – or any of you, for that matter! – please expose yourselves to me. As some do when I delete them, confront me. I’ll give my reasons and you give yours.  It’s Facebook. It’s not even as serious as Twitter – IT’S FACEBOOK.

Anyway, I hope there’s no bad blood. Or maybe I do? Depends on who you actually are.

Hope you’re well, Jaclyn (?) Lee (?)!

-  Scaachi

Untag all those photos, because my Dad is now on Facebook

When my Dad answered the phone on Monday, he had exciting news. “I joined Facebook,” he said casually. I froze, shocked. I had long feared this moment, but had imagined the danger had passed until now.

He was already updating his profile, adding friends, and uploading pictures. In short, he had already gotten the hang of things.

He informed me he already had several ‘friends’ – Uncle Yves, Uncle Burton, and Cousin Fay. It was a short, but powerful, line-up of family and friends who I had been alarmed to see entering the social media bubble. My fourteen-year-old brother, unsurprisingly, seemed reluctant to accept his friend request.

My Mum seemed slightly amused by this development. “Your sister and I went to the mountains yesterday, but your Dad stayed at home,” she whispered on the phone in the kitchen, anxious not to be overheard in the living room, where he was tagging photos of a fly fishing trip. “He’s been on Facebook all weekend!”

We shouldn’t be surprised. My Dad is an old hand with the Blackberry – we regard it as significantly more important than his second kidney. He doesn’t just use it for e-mail, either. Way back when, he introduced me to the first Arctic Monkeys album by bringing up a BBC article on them during a family dinner.

But long after he had signed up for a YouTube account so he could save all those videos of shark attacks, he didn’t seem to have an interest in Facebook. I thought he saw it as a bastion of poor grammar, but perhaps it just flew below his radar.

Not so for many parents these days. Although Facebook used to be for kids-only (or at least those under 25), a haven for party photos and un-censored rambling, it’s slowly being sanitized. As parents enter the fray, photos are rapidly being un-tagged, language quickly cleaned up, and ‘girls of the world’ applications surreptitiously removed.

Students have been cautioned for years to remember that the internet is a public space. But the disdain of a future potential employer is no kind of motivation to be careful, compared to the more current, and more horrifying, prospect of my Dad browsing photos of me at “Beerjing 2008.”

Some parents are on Facebook to be snoops, it’s true, but most of the parents I have seen seem to just want to keep up with their kid’s lives, and maybe some of their own friends, too.

They leave messages commenting on profile pictures, telling their children they miss them, and occasionally finishing with an ‘xoxo.’

Now, my own Dad has a chance to do the same. Although I tried to talk myself out of the idea, eventually I did a light purge of my own profile, and sent him a friend request.

I knew I might have to be a little more careful in future, but I figured it would probably be a good thing, for my privacy and my career prospects.

He just accepted my request, and I’m looking forward to posting links to articles I know we’ll disagree on, and maybe some new music I think he’ll like. The best part is getting a peak at his newest photos long before Christmas rolls around. There’s four albums already, and it’s almost possible that he has better things to do than “creep” my profile.

And now, I’ve received another friend request. It’s from my Aunt. ‘Friend suggestions’ are popping up, flashing the faces of my Uncle, cousins, and family friends. And I’m not quite sure what I’ve unleashed.

Yet another career ruined by Facebook

Take down your home address, remove your SIN and delete those incriminating photos

It seems we’re all taking a lesson from our beloved Toronto mayor in failing to read the fine print. (See Miller’s Illiteracy: Infrastructure Stimulus Fund.)

And, staying true to our national heritage, we’ve decided to blame The Man. Today’s target: Facebook. That evil, information-hoarding, corporate lackey serving troughs to capitalistic insatiability. Or something.

Privacy Commissioner Jennifer Stoddart posted her concerns in a report released Thursday. Stoddard says that Facebook does not comply with Canadian privacy laws and gives the company 30 days to amend procedures. Subsequently, the case can be brought to the Federal Court to force Facebook to tighten its policies.

Chief concerns include third party access to user information (via games, quizzes, etc.) and Facebook’s retention of personal information after users have closed their accounts.

…Well boo hoo. Cue the violins.

To me, the approach is baffling. Let’s spend lots of money bringing a case to Federal Court that could so easily be solved by telling our 14-year-olds not to post photos of themselves drinking Smirnoff Ices and making out with their best friends. No, the lesson: deflect blame, and you shall prosper.

To be pitifully cliché, it’s my opinion that privacy in an information age is an illusion. There are breaches everywhere—when you use your credit card, fill out survey or attend a public event or club. Chances are, if you don’t remember what happened last night, BeforeLastCall.com can refresh your memory.

It’s not an Orwellian prediction come true or an international intelligence conspiracy; it’s idiots like Ray Lam forgetting to de-tag his photos. So take down your home addresses, remove your SINs and delete those incriminating bachelor party photos. It’s time to come to terms, dear disgruntled, anonymous commenter, that if I really want to, I can probably find out your name. So be nice.

New head of British spy agency has his cover blown, by his wife, on Facebook

For the story, click here.