C.K. Kelly Martin's Blog, page 9
October 8, 2015
Terence Young and His Tory Brethren: I'm Just Going to Change the Subject
I had to groan inwardly when I read this section of an article on my local candidates' debate: When asked about his party’s plans to help youth joblessness, Terrence Young told the moderator, “I’m just going to change the subject a little bit” before launching into a critique of the Liberals’ drug policy.
Never once when I've emailed Terence Young (my local MP) with concerns has he offered an actual response to the issues I've contacted him about. On each and every occasion his reply has instead told me what my concerns should be and/or has trotted out the official Conservative Party line. Stephen Harper must love this guy to bits. He's a faithful little Tory puppet with no thoughts of his own. Heck, he even looks much like a Harper clone.
And, like Stephen Harper, he seems to have no understanding of the fact that elected officials' function is to represent and serve their constituents, not the other way around. With Harper playing divisive politics, fanning the flames of hate while paying lip service to gender equality when any Canadian who has been paying attention for more than five minutes knows that he couldn't care less about women's rights, our dishonourable Prime Minister seems to be hitting new lows daily. Like Greg Keelor of Blue Rodeo sings, "Sometimes I wonder, just how do you sleep?" I wonder, too, how Canadian voters let it come to this? The kind of nation I want to believe Canada is would have voted out such intolerance and small-mindedness the last time we were at the polls. In fact, by some measures they did -- a majority of Canadians voted for someone other than the Conservative Party in 2011 who only garned 39.6% of the popular vote.
We desperately need new leadership in this country. We just as desperately need to rid ourselves of our antiquated (how did this ever seem like a decent idea?) first past the post electoral system. And Stephen Harper and Terence Young, no, I'm not letting you change the subject.
Never once when I've emailed Terence Young (my local MP) with concerns has he offered an actual response to the issues I've contacted him about. On each and every occasion his reply has instead told me what my concerns should be and/or has trotted out the official Conservative Party line. Stephen Harper must love this guy to bits. He's a faithful little Tory puppet with no thoughts of his own. Heck, he even looks much like a Harper clone.
And, like Stephen Harper, he seems to have no understanding of the fact that elected officials' function is to represent and serve their constituents, not the other way around. With Harper playing divisive politics, fanning the flames of hate while paying lip service to gender equality when any Canadian who has been paying attention for more than five minutes knows that he couldn't care less about women's rights, our dishonourable Prime Minister seems to be hitting new lows daily. Like Greg Keelor of Blue Rodeo sings, "Sometimes I wonder, just how do you sleep?" I wonder, too, how Canadian voters let it come to this? The kind of nation I want to believe Canada is would have voted out such intolerance and small-mindedness the last time we were at the polls. In fact, by some measures they did -- a majority of Canadians voted for someone other than the Conservative Party in 2011 who only garned 39.6% of the popular vote.
We desperately need new leadership in this country. We just as desperately need to rid ourselves of our antiquated (how did this ever seem like a decent idea?) first past the post electoral system. And Stephen Harper and Terence Young, no, I'm not letting you change the subject.
October 2, 2015
On October 19th, please vote.
On October 19th, please vote.
September 30, 2015
The Pain of Standing Still
I stumbled across a couple of articles about a month ago that I want to share with people who are experiencing problems with severe heel pain that won’t resolve, like I’ve been. Okay, I didn’t stumble across either of these articles. I’ve been reading everything I can about plantar fasciitis for well over a year now because chronic heel and arch pain so bad that you can’t really function anymore is a big deal. Honestly, before this I didn’t realize feet could hurt so much and not be broken. I’d had plantar fasciitis seven years earlier and after a couple months of stretching exercises it completely resolved. Well, not this time. This fresh bout of plantar fasciitis was relentless and extreme, effectively taking me out of commission.
If that’s the scenario you’ve been dealing with long-term too it could help you to read the following articles I’ve linked to, and if you haven’t had an ultrasound on your feet to diagnosis plantar fasciitis and your doctor is relying on X-rays alone as proof of the condition, urge them to send you for an ultrasound—a much better tool for diagnosis as the second article explains.
* Is Your Plantar Fasciitis Pain Not Going Away? It's Probably Not Plantar Fasciitis
* Study: Heel Pain, Very Common and Debilitating, Often Misdiagnosed as Plantar Fasciitis Use of Diagnostic Ultrasound Leads to More Accurate Diagnosis
Over the past year and a half I’ve done some blogging about my health issues because they’ve been pretty impossible to ignore. I’ve had slowly worsening heel pain for much longer still, but my situation became debilitating in March/April 2014, to the point that it was difficult to get down more than a single aisle at the grocery store (the shooting foot pain!), descending stairs was often torture (weird electrical pain cutting across my kneecaps) and waiting in line at the pharmacy for five minutes felt like gravity was pummeling my heels into the ground. In short, there wasn’t a lot I actually could do.
For the longest time I was told I had plantar fasciitis and patellofemoral syndrome. I went through several physiotherapy sessions (which made the pain in my feet and knees exponentially worse) beginning in January 2014 and had foot and knee X-rays which were spectacularly unilluminating. Next I was referred to a sports doctors who watched me walk, prodded my heels and arch a bit, then suggested custom made orthotics, a foam roller for my legs, rolling my arch over a frozen water bottle twice a day, a Strassburg sock (the sock equivalent of a plantar fasciitis night splint to keep your fascia from shortening while you sleep), gave me a prescription for heavy duty pain pills that I couldn’t take because they were too hard on my already ailing digestive system (pre-existing problems), and said the only thing she could really do was give me a cortisone shot. Her diagnosis: severe plantar fasciitis which had affected my whole kinetic chain and caused my knee issues.
A couple of weeks later I had to cut a April/May 2014 trip to Dublin short and fly home early because I could barely walk and certainly couldn’t be out strolling around town, sightseeing (I could barely handle the stairs at my mother-in-law’s house for cripes’ sake!) and the same sports doctor, when I showed up at her office feeling desperate, insisted I should’ve been able to handle the trip, literally shrugged her shoulders and said there was nothing else she could do for me. I turned down the again offered cortisone shot which I’d read could cause more problems than it cured and which my GP had warned me she wouldn’t want herself. But as per the sport doctor's advice I went ahead and had $500 custom orthotics made by a professional pedorthist who analyzed my gait, then adjusted those same orthotics four times over four months for me because DAMN they hurt something treacherous, only to find at the end of that period the super duper expensive insoles STILL hurt my heels so much more than if I were wearing the SuperFeet insoles I’d previously bought from the Running Room (and which I still use and find helpful now).
Desperate to make headway and get my mobility back I relegated the custom made orthotics from hell to the back of my closet and in late August 2014 I began radial shockwave therapy, a treatment which supposedly helps 80% of chronic plantar fasciitis cases but instead rocketed my feet into a new level of pain that lasted for five days after each of the four treatments before ultimately returning me to my previous baseline level of OUCH.
Nothing worked for me. Nothing. Not the radial shockwave therapy treatments. Not physio. Not the daily stretching exercises for my feet or strengthening exercises for areas around my knee. Not the foam rolling. Not the hellish night splint sock that only seemed to destabilize my knee further so that sometimes I’d have to hold the kneecap in place when I got up from a seated position. Not the massage therapy I went for at the hospital where the massage therapist admitted she didn’t believe she could help me and mentioned that my feet didn’t feel to her as though I had plantar fasciitis. In fact, she told me if I hadn’t given her any explanation, from the feel of my legs she would’ve thought I had fibromyalgia rather than plantar fasciitis and patellofemoral syndrome.
Instead of feeling better over time things got odder, strange sensations—weakness, numbness, and pain up and down my legs, not just in my feet or my knees. All through this, over months and months, I was constantly revisiting my GP who sent me for bloodwork, more bloodwork, yet more bloodwork, a nerve conduction study and EMG, and a vascular study. And all through this it was difficult to stand for any length of time but nearly as difficult to sit—a strange tightness would build up at the back of my legs after awhile and I’d have to get up and start moving again only to sit down when that became too much for my heels. And all through this it would hurt my knees to bend. Low cupboards became a problem. Stairs were my arch-enemy. Picking things from the floor required careful consideration. I took to wearing knee braces which at first seemed to help provide support and then felt unbearable.
Using the torturous night splint sock on my trip to Dublin in April/May 2014
So sitting and standing for any time were both bad, what was left, lying down? I tried that for a good while too but the less I moved the stranger and more persistent my leg pains and weird sensations became—particularly in a space at the back of my legs about a foot long—until my GP suggested pool exercises which helped reduce the weirdness but not eliminate it. What's also helped a bit are the Z-Coil shoes I picked up in June. They reduce the impact on your heels and joints by 60% more than regular shoes.
Despite these measures, the strange sensations at the back of my leg are constant now, just not as severe. And I’m STILL like a Jack in the Box who has to keep popping up everywhere. I can stand and sit for longer than before, but not anywhere near a normal duration. I need to move. Then stop. Then move again. Never for too long or too far mind you. Not nearly long enough to do a full time seated office job and, well, if I manage to amble around a shopping mall for an hour and a half (with seated periods to break up the time) I’m doing well and feel extremely pleased with myself. I used to walk for hours at a time without thinking anything of it and miss it terribly. This is life in the sloooow lane!
I joined a wonderfully supportive plantar fasciitis sufferers group on Facebook and traded horror stories and treatment regimens with other folks who couldn’t seem to shake their plantar fasciitis. The group helped my morale quite a bit (misery loves company), but why the hell were so many of us still suffering after following medical advice to a T and after undergoing not just one but multiple PF procedures?
And what about my blood work and the various medical studies? Well, time after time my blood work came back as perfectly fine. No sign of vitamin deficiencies or any other underlying conditions. My vascular study results were normal but my nerve conduction study results were not. The January 2015 nerve conduction study showed polyneuropathy that the neurologist said an older person might have without a cause but at my age there would be a reason for. However, at the time of my study he didn’t believe the neuropathy was responsible for my foot and knee pain. Since then I’ve had a knee MRI which showed nothing more than very minor degeneration of the menisci, but nothing out of line for a woman my age and certainly nothing, I’m told, that should be causing the degree and wide area of pain and unusual sensations at the back of my legs. Since then I’ve also seen a rheumatologist who sent me for a feet ultrasound theorizing that I don’t have plantar fasciitis at all and that my neuropathy (which so far after, masses of blood work, is of unknown cause) is causing the vast majority of my issues.
one of my knee X-rays
And guess what? That feet ultrasound I had on September 10th, it was normal. I don’t have plantar fasciitis—the condition I had shockwave therapy, physio, and orthotics for and have now spent so much time, energy and money trying to cure. I mean, hell, no wonder none of the treatments worked, they were for a problem that I don’t have! And neither do I have much wrong with my knees. The rheumatologist said sometimes they can give kneecaps a cortisone shot but in a case as minor as mine they wouldn’t normally even do that, which makes sense because most of the pain and strangeness I feel is at the back (and well above and below) of the knee, not in the kneecap itself.
The rheumatologist wants me to see a neurologist, which will be the next step, but my GP warns the wait could be six months. They’re thin on the ground, unfortunately. And I can’t help but feel angry and short-changed by that sports doctor who pushed a cortisone shot that I didn’t need and who didn’t bother to send me for an ultrasound even though she said she’d never seen a case of plantar fasciitis that had lasted longer than a year, and I was at a year and a half and counting when I walked into her office in April, 2014.
For the moment I don’t know what’s really wrong with me, what’s given rise to the polyneuropathy that’s apparently caused—and continues to cause—me so much trouble, but it isn’t plantar fasciitis. If you, too, have been suffering for a long time and keep getting the term ‘plantar fasciitis’ hurled at you, go get that ultrasound. Print out the two articles I linked to at the start of this post and hand them to your doctor if that’s what it takes to convince them you need one. Because it just might be that plantar fasciitis isn’t what you’re suffering from either, and that no amount of rolling your foot on a frozen water bottle or stretching your calves will make one teensy bit of difference.
If that’s the scenario you’ve been dealing with long-term too it could help you to read the following articles I’ve linked to, and if you haven’t had an ultrasound on your feet to diagnosis plantar fasciitis and your doctor is relying on X-rays alone as proof of the condition, urge them to send you for an ultrasound—a much better tool for diagnosis as the second article explains.
* Is Your Plantar Fasciitis Pain Not Going Away? It's Probably Not Plantar Fasciitis
* Study: Heel Pain, Very Common and Debilitating, Often Misdiagnosed as Plantar Fasciitis Use of Diagnostic Ultrasound Leads to More Accurate Diagnosis
Over the past year and a half I’ve done some blogging about my health issues because they’ve been pretty impossible to ignore. I’ve had slowly worsening heel pain for much longer still, but my situation became debilitating in March/April 2014, to the point that it was difficult to get down more than a single aisle at the grocery store (the shooting foot pain!), descending stairs was often torture (weird electrical pain cutting across my kneecaps) and waiting in line at the pharmacy for five minutes felt like gravity was pummeling my heels into the ground. In short, there wasn’t a lot I actually could do.
For the longest time I was told I had plantar fasciitis and patellofemoral syndrome. I went through several physiotherapy sessions (which made the pain in my feet and knees exponentially worse) beginning in January 2014 and had foot and knee X-rays which were spectacularly unilluminating. Next I was referred to a sports doctors who watched me walk, prodded my heels and arch a bit, then suggested custom made orthotics, a foam roller for my legs, rolling my arch over a frozen water bottle twice a day, a Strassburg sock (the sock equivalent of a plantar fasciitis night splint to keep your fascia from shortening while you sleep), gave me a prescription for heavy duty pain pills that I couldn’t take because they were too hard on my already ailing digestive system (pre-existing problems), and said the only thing she could really do was give me a cortisone shot. Her diagnosis: severe plantar fasciitis which had affected my whole kinetic chain and caused my knee issues.
A couple of weeks later I had to cut a April/May 2014 trip to Dublin short and fly home early because I could barely walk and certainly couldn’t be out strolling around town, sightseeing (I could barely handle the stairs at my mother-in-law’s house for cripes’ sake!) and the same sports doctor, when I showed up at her office feeling desperate, insisted I should’ve been able to handle the trip, literally shrugged her shoulders and said there was nothing else she could do for me. I turned down the again offered cortisone shot which I’d read could cause more problems than it cured and which my GP had warned me she wouldn’t want herself. But as per the sport doctor's advice I went ahead and had $500 custom orthotics made by a professional pedorthist who analyzed my gait, then adjusted those same orthotics four times over four months for me because DAMN they hurt something treacherous, only to find at the end of that period the super duper expensive insoles STILL hurt my heels so much more than if I were wearing the SuperFeet insoles I’d previously bought from the Running Room (and which I still use and find helpful now).
Desperate to make headway and get my mobility back I relegated the custom made orthotics from hell to the back of my closet and in late August 2014 I began radial shockwave therapy, a treatment which supposedly helps 80% of chronic plantar fasciitis cases but instead rocketed my feet into a new level of pain that lasted for five days after each of the four treatments before ultimately returning me to my previous baseline level of OUCH.
Nothing worked for me. Nothing. Not the radial shockwave therapy treatments. Not physio. Not the daily stretching exercises for my feet or strengthening exercises for areas around my knee. Not the foam rolling. Not the hellish night splint sock that only seemed to destabilize my knee further so that sometimes I’d have to hold the kneecap in place when I got up from a seated position. Not the massage therapy I went for at the hospital where the massage therapist admitted she didn’t believe she could help me and mentioned that my feet didn’t feel to her as though I had plantar fasciitis. In fact, she told me if I hadn’t given her any explanation, from the feel of my legs she would’ve thought I had fibromyalgia rather than plantar fasciitis and patellofemoral syndrome.
Instead of feeling better over time things got odder, strange sensations—weakness, numbness, and pain up and down my legs, not just in my feet or my knees. All through this, over months and months, I was constantly revisiting my GP who sent me for bloodwork, more bloodwork, yet more bloodwork, a nerve conduction study and EMG, and a vascular study. And all through this it was difficult to stand for any length of time but nearly as difficult to sit—a strange tightness would build up at the back of my legs after awhile and I’d have to get up and start moving again only to sit down when that became too much for my heels. And all through this it would hurt my knees to bend. Low cupboards became a problem. Stairs were my arch-enemy. Picking things from the floor required careful consideration. I took to wearing knee braces which at first seemed to help provide support and then felt unbearable.
Using the torturous night splint sock on my trip to Dublin in April/May 2014So sitting and standing for any time were both bad, what was left, lying down? I tried that for a good while too but the less I moved the stranger and more persistent my leg pains and weird sensations became—particularly in a space at the back of my legs about a foot long—until my GP suggested pool exercises which helped reduce the weirdness but not eliminate it. What's also helped a bit are the Z-Coil shoes I picked up in June. They reduce the impact on your heels and joints by 60% more than regular shoes.
Despite these measures, the strange sensations at the back of my leg are constant now, just not as severe. And I’m STILL like a Jack in the Box who has to keep popping up everywhere. I can stand and sit for longer than before, but not anywhere near a normal duration. I need to move. Then stop. Then move again. Never for too long or too far mind you. Not nearly long enough to do a full time seated office job and, well, if I manage to amble around a shopping mall for an hour and a half (with seated periods to break up the time) I’m doing well and feel extremely pleased with myself. I used to walk for hours at a time without thinking anything of it and miss it terribly. This is life in the sloooow lane!
I joined a wonderfully supportive plantar fasciitis sufferers group on Facebook and traded horror stories and treatment regimens with other folks who couldn’t seem to shake their plantar fasciitis. The group helped my morale quite a bit (misery loves company), but why the hell were so many of us still suffering after following medical advice to a T and after undergoing not just one but multiple PF procedures?
And what about my blood work and the various medical studies? Well, time after time my blood work came back as perfectly fine. No sign of vitamin deficiencies or any other underlying conditions. My vascular study results were normal but my nerve conduction study results were not. The January 2015 nerve conduction study showed polyneuropathy that the neurologist said an older person might have without a cause but at my age there would be a reason for. However, at the time of my study he didn’t believe the neuropathy was responsible for my foot and knee pain. Since then I’ve had a knee MRI which showed nothing more than very minor degeneration of the menisci, but nothing out of line for a woman my age and certainly nothing, I’m told, that should be causing the degree and wide area of pain and unusual sensations at the back of my legs. Since then I’ve also seen a rheumatologist who sent me for a feet ultrasound theorizing that I don’t have plantar fasciitis at all and that my neuropathy (which so far after, masses of blood work, is of unknown cause) is causing the vast majority of my issues.
one of my knee X-raysAnd guess what? That feet ultrasound I had on September 10th, it was normal. I don’t have plantar fasciitis—the condition I had shockwave therapy, physio, and orthotics for and have now spent so much time, energy and money trying to cure. I mean, hell, no wonder none of the treatments worked, they were for a problem that I don’t have! And neither do I have much wrong with my knees. The rheumatologist said sometimes they can give kneecaps a cortisone shot but in a case as minor as mine they wouldn’t normally even do that, which makes sense because most of the pain and strangeness I feel is at the back (and well above and below) of the knee, not in the kneecap itself.
The rheumatologist wants me to see a neurologist, which will be the next step, but my GP warns the wait could be six months. They’re thin on the ground, unfortunately. And I can’t help but feel angry and short-changed by that sports doctor who pushed a cortisone shot that I didn’t need and who didn’t bother to send me for an ultrasound even though she said she’d never seen a case of plantar fasciitis that had lasted longer than a year, and I was at a year and a half and counting when I walked into her office in April, 2014.
For the moment I don’t know what’s really wrong with me, what’s given rise to the polyneuropathy that’s apparently caused—and continues to cause—me so much trouble, but it isn’t plantar fasciitis. If you, too, have been suffering for a long time and keep getting the term ‘plantar fasciitis’ hurled at you, go get that ultrasound. Print out the two articles I linked to at the start of this post and hand them to your doctor if that’s what it takes to convince them you need one. Because it just might be that plantar fasciitis isn’t what you’re suffering from either, and that no amount of rolling your foot on a frozen water bottle or stretching your calves will make one teensy bit of difference.
September 9, 2015
* READ the first two chapters of DELICATENow availab...
* READ the first two chapters of DELICATE
Now available for pre-order at Mabel's Fables | Chapters.Indigo | Amazon.ca | Amazon.com | Amazon.co.uk | Barnes and Noble | Fishpond | Powell's
Now available for pre-order at Mabel's Fables | Chapters.Indigo | Amazon.ca | Amazon.com | Amazon.co.uk | Barnes and Noble | Fishpond | Powell's
In Stephen Harper's mind...
In Stephen Harper's mind the refugee crisis is just another episode of his reality show, The Grinch who Stole Canada.
In Stephen Harper's mind the refugee crisis is just another episode of his reality show, the grinch who stole Canada
Gee, who does Stephen remind me of here? It's on the tip of my tongueAugust 2, 2015
The Big Bad Outside World
Yesterday Paddy and I were driving along Hurontario (near Steeles Avenue) through Brampton and noticed a cavalcade of cars sporting red flags and stickers. They seemed to be protesting something and I was straining to read the text on the flags when we cruised by a car with a large sticker plastered across one of the back doors. “SAY NO TO IRRESPONSIBLE SEX ED,” it commanded, not understanding the irony it was presenting. You see, irresponsible sex ed is what we had in Ontario for years. Until this coming fall, in fact, this province had the oldest sex ed curriculum in Canada, one from way back in 1998. We were originally supposed to get a new curriculum in 2010, but the Ontario government got spooked by a backlash from religious groups and a small minority of parents.
Meanwhile, according to Safe Families stats, the average age of first Internet exposure to pornography was 11 in 2007 with the 12 - 17 year old group being the largest consumer of Internet pornography. And meanwhile a survey of Ontario high schools revealed “29% of Ontario Grade 9 girls ... felt unsafe at school partly due to sexual comments and unwanted looks or touches; 27% of the girls in Grade 11 admitted to being pressured into doing something sexual that they did not want to do; 14% of the females reported being harassed over the Internet.” And meanwhile more than 50% of transgender youth will have had at least one suicide attempt by their 20th birthday. And meanwhile a New York City study revealed only 23% of straight women use condoms during anal sex as opposed to 61% of gay men, and women 18 to 24 years old are nearly six times more likely than those aged 45 to 64 to report unprotected anal sex.
And meanwhile seventeen-year-old Nova Scotia girl Rehtaeh Parsons committed suicide because of sexual bullying aimed at her after she was the victim of sexual assault. So did 15 year old Audrie Potts of California and fifteen year old Amanda Todd from B.C. And meanwhile eighteen year old Tyler Clementi threw himself off the George Washington Bridge after being bullied because of his sexual orientation. And meanwhile we let the world break fifteen-year-old Jamie Hubley’s heart as he was relentlessly tormented by his peers to the degree that not living another day seemed like a better option. We let that happen because this is the world—the society—that we have constructed, a society some people would like to look away from and pretend doesn’t exist. But young people don’t have that choice. They’re right smack in the middle of it.
And meanwhile two awesome thirteen year old activists, Lia Valente and Tessa Hill, started a petition requesting that the issue of consent be covered in the new Ontario sex ed, a petition which garnered more than 40,000 signatures.
“We hear stories from our friends about cat-calling and slut shaming in the hallways and in the classroom,” the girls wrote in their online petition. “We also notice the lack of awareness about safe sex and consent. … Our society is scared to teach teens and young people about safe sex, and most important, consent.”
Yes, parts of society are scared. I’m scared too. I don’t want young people to be sexually bullied or harassed or have unsafe sex. I want them to know how to keep themselves safe and understand the importance of consent. I want them to respect their peers no matter what their peers’ gender, sexual orientation or experiences are. I want rape victims not to be re-victimized by people who should know better than to blame them for a crime committed against them but apparently don’t because the society we’re raising young people in is full of shame and double standards and early exposure to hardcore pornography which up until this point has not been balanced by good, comprehensive sex ed.
Yes, we used to have irresponsible sex ed in Ontario, but that’s over with, and we should all be very glad of it. The true irresponsibility resides in the fact that it took too long to make the change, an irresponsibility which still hangs on the shoulders of the folks flying those red flags from their cars, embracing ignorance like it’s a shield when it won’t project their child or anyone else's from a thing. Only knowledge will do that.
"Don't limit a child to your own learning, for he was born in another time."
—Rabindranath Tagore.
Meanwhile, according to Safe Families stats, the average age of first Internet exposure to pornography was 11 in 2007 with the 12 - 17 year old group being the largest consumer of Internet pornography. And meanwhile a survey of Ontario high schools revealed “29% of Ontario Grade 9 girls ... felt unsafe at school partly due to sexual comments and unwanted looks or touches; 27% of the girls in Grade 11 admitted to being pressured into doing something sexual that they did not want to do; 14% of the females reported being harassed over the Internet.” And meanwhile more than 50% of transgender youth will have had at least one suicide attempt by their 20th birthday. And meanwhile a New York City study revealed only 23% of straight women use condoms during anal sex as opposed to 61% of gay men, and women 18 to 24 years old are nearly six times more likely than those aged 45 to 64 to report unprotected anal sex.
And meanwhile seventeen-year-old Nova Scotia girl Rehtaeh Parsons committed suicide because of sexual bullying aimed at her after she was the victim of sexual assault. So did 15 year old Audrie Potts of California and fifteen year old Amanda Todd from B.C. And meanwhile eighteen year old Tyler Clementi threw himself off the George Washington Bridge after being bullied because of his sexual orientation. And meanwhile we let the world break fifteen-year-old Jamie Hubley’s heart as he was relentlessly tormented by his peers to the degree that not living another day seemed like a better option. We let that happen because this is the world—the society—that we have constructed, a society some people would like to look away from and pretend doesn’t exist. But young people don’t have that choice. They’re right smack in the middle of it.
And meanwhile two awesome thirteen year old activists, Lia Valente and Tessa Hill, started a petition requesting that the issue of consent be covered in the new Ontario sex ed, a petition which garnered more than 40,000 signatures.
“We hear stories from our friends about cat-calling and slut shaming in the hallways and in the classroom,” the girls wrote in their online petition. “We also notice the lack of awareness about safe sex and consent. … Our society is scared to teach teens and young people about safe sex, and most important, consent.”
Yes, parts of society are scared. I’m scared too. I don’t want young people to be sexually bullied or harassed or have unsafe sex. I want them to know how to keep themselves safe and understand the importance of consent. I want them to respect their peers no matter what their peers’ gender, sexual orientation or experiences are. I want rape victims not to be re-victimized by people who should know better than to blame them for a crime committed against them but apparently don’t because the society we’re raising young people in is full of shame and double standards and early exposure to hardcore pornography which up until this point has not been balanced by good, comprehensive sex ed.
Yes, we used to have irresponsible sex ed in Ontario, but that’s over with, and we should all be very glad of it. The true irresponsibility resides in the fact that it took too long to make the change, an irresponsibility which still hangs on the shoulders of the folks flying those red flags from their cars, embracing ignorance like it’s a shield when it won’t project their child or anyone else's from a thing. Only knowledge will do that.
"Don't limit a child to your own learning, for he was born in another time."
—Rabindranath Tagore.
August 1, 2015
DELICATE: Now available for pre-order at Mabel's Fables |...
DELICATE: Now available for pre-order at Mabel's Fables | Chapters.Indigo | Amazon.ca | Amazon.com | Amazon.co.uk | Barnes and Noble | Fishpond | Powell's
At last, an explanation for the Conservative Party of Canada's success
Have you ever wondered how Conservative Party of Canada politicians and their supporters (perhaps to your horror this even includes some of your unfortunate loved ones and friends!) have continued to defy any sense of logic and reason in maintaining their blind devotion to a party that has dragged Canada back into recession; been a poison pill to national democracy by proroguing parliament on multiple occasions, constantly muzzled scientists with grave climate and environmental concerns, flagrantly ignored Aboriginal rights issues; attacked unions and helped erode checks and balances in the workplace; a party that nixed the long form census – a valuable statistical tool used to guide government resources in battling poverty and reducing the marginalization of disadvantaged groups; a party which crippled the status of women’s budget in a country where 50% of women will be sexually or physically assaulted in their lifetime and where the gender pay gap is double the global average; a party headed by a guy who appointed eight senators who have been caught using taxpayer dollars for inappropriate expenses—the same guy, in fact, who showed a chilling disdain for this country when he proclaimed, in 1997, that: "Canada is a Northern European welfare state in the worst sense of the term, and very proud of it." How is it that anyone would still consider placing a vote for a Tory government, let alone look themselves in the face in the mirror if they’re actually a member of the party, you no doubt wonder? Don’t they care that the Conservatives are prepared to plunder our environment ad infinitum, stealing our descendants’ future? Don’t these people have kids, or grandchildren, you might ask, scratching your head? Don’t they want Canadians of all stripes to have good jobs? Don’t they want to stand up for our human rights, or are they all really just obsessed with Justin Trudeau’s hair?
Well, recent evidence has come to light that finally explains this puzzling, irrational support for the Conservative Party. Yep, information has surfaced which suggested that for several years now the Tory party has operated a string of pharmaceutical manufacturing plants which have produced a drug known to key members of the Tory party as Conservazolam. Inspired by the Soma of Brave New World, Conservazolam dulls higher reasoning function, preventing independent and critical thought in its users and instills a euphoric sense of well-being and affection for the Conservative party. In fact, your friends or loved ones may even have been dosed with Conservazolam without realizing it as the drug is tasteless and dissolves quickly in water. In addition to the effects mentioned above, other common side effects include brain fog, dry mouth and constipation.
Conservazolam, the Tory equivalent of Soma If you or a loved one feels an unreasoning attachment to the Tory party I strongly advise you to secure an independent water supply at once. As soon as Conservazolam has been out of your system for 5 to 7 days side effects will resolve and higher reasoning function return, leaving you free to vote in the coming federal election with all faculties intact. Some high profile Conservative party members who stopped taking their daily dose of Conservazolam in recent months are Peter MacKay, John Baird, Shelly Glover and Christian Paradis. They got off Conservazolam, and so can you! As Jack Layton liked to say, "Don't let them tell you it can't be done."
June 20, 2015
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