Canada’s efforts to appease the US are undermining a fundamental part of our culture

By Humza Sayed

On Nov. 29, 2012, a UN resolution by an overwhelming majority of United Nations member states voted to upgrade Palestine’s political status from a “political entity” to a “nonmember state,” virtually granting Palestine a higher level of political influence in the region to further their goals of a twostate solution, and eventually, peace and stability. A total of 138 countries out of 193 voted for Palestinian recognition. A landslide victory, if you ask me. Except for Canada, who voted against the UN resolution to upgrade Palestine’s status. But why?

It frustrates me that my country, which was once known as a middle power, now takes a hardline stance on rejecting Palestine’s cries for political autonomy. From education in our primary schools and learning of past Canadian prime ministers, I’ve learned things about Canada that I am proud to represent — the notions of impartiality, neutrality, and compassion.

Lets look at Canada’s record of foreign policy. Arguably two of our most beloved and revered prime ministers, Pierre Elliott Trudeau, and Lester B. Pearson, instilled Canada with its inherent qualities of neutrality and compassion. Trudeau showed us that Canada is completely free to do as it pleases in the international sphere — without influence from the US. At the height of the Cold War, Trudeau forged an unlikely friendship in the ideological chaos of Cold War era politics with Fidel
Castro.

Remember Castro? The longterm “brutal” communist dictator of Cuba, despised by the US, his nation a communist ally of the nuclear-armed Soviets? Yes, that Cuba and that Castro. Trudeau defied Canada’s relationship with the US and stood up for neutrality and tolerance, maintaining a close and personal relationship with the man. Castro was even at Trudeau’s funeral, seen in pictures paying his final respects to Trudeau’s casket draped with the Canadian flag.

Can it be that Canada is an international player in the Middle East, and wants to protect its interests in the region? Perhaps, but we must recall the actions of another great prime minister, Pearson. Albeit before his tenure as prime minister, Lester B. Pearson’s efforts to end the 1957 Suez Canal Crisis between Egypt and Israel won him the Nobel Peace Prize. He didn’t take sides, nor did he ask questions. He did what Canadians do best: keep the peace. World powers were divided on how to manage the crisis brought on by
Israel’s invasion of Egypt, and once again, Canada proved to be the middle power, standing for neutrality, compassion, and peace.

Keeping the peace is part of Canadian culture, as was seen in examples extending from Chretien’s backing the United State’s UN-supported invasion of Afghanistan, to his reluctance to join the United States in their non-UN backed invasion of Iraq in 2003. As a nation, we even mobilized in the streets by the thousands to protest the US invasion of Iraq.

So why is it that rather than promote peace by voting for the resolution, or at the very minimum, abstaining from the vote, we had to take sides? Although Canada’s foreign and domestic policies are not as unblemished as they may appear, at the very least, Canada stood for what it believed in. As the examples above show, Canadian foreign policy was shaped and formed by our own accord, and not contingent on our relationship with the United States. The disarray of the Israeli-Palestinian situation once again proves the United States will back Israel at all costs; yet a new light has been cast on Canadian foreign policy. It shows us how the people running our country have changed the course of our foreign policy, from one that reflected Canadian public opinion to one that blindly follows our friends to the South.

I propose that the next cabinet that runs this country returns Canada to its great status as a middle power — it’s what we do best.

Unless your aspiration is to live in a treehouse with your friends who dress up like animals, it’s time to grow up.

By Samantha Thompson

(VANCOUVER) Capilano Courier — Peter Pan said: “Once you’re grown up, you can never come back.” Lucky for him, he lives in Neverland, the place where you never have to grow up and can spend your days fighting Captain Hook and rescuing Tiger Lily. It sounds like a high-quality way of life — relatively free of stress, high emotions and complicated responsibilities.

Strangely enough, some people in the real world are suffering from similar symptoms — they’re choosing to live a life in which they never grow up, and don’t take on adult responsibilities. Adults resonate with “childish” things because of nostalgia. Watching The Little Mermaid brings back memories of a childhood filled with happiness, a time when they could find solace in animated movies. And just because adults have aged past childhood doesn’t mean they need only enjoy “mature” pastimes. Truly reaching adulthood means that you recognize the freedom to make decisions for yourself and enjoy whatever you want.

The Peter Pan syndrome, however, is a label given to those adults who still have the mind of a child. Although the World Health Organization has not yet recognized it as a psychological disorder, articles on the subject suggest that there are a growing number of adults who are demonstrating emotionally immature
behaviours. Humbelina Robles Ortega, a professor for the Department of Personality, Evaluation and Psychological Treatment at the University of Granada, told Science Daily, “It usually affects dependent people who have been overprotected by their families and haven’t developed the necessary skills to confront life.” She says that those with the syndrome “see the adult world as very problematic and glorify adolescence, which is why they want to stay in the state of privilege.”

Symptoms of the condition include an inability to take on responsibilities or keep promises, a significant obsession in appearance and personal well-being, and a lack of selfconfidence. Because there’s a fear of evaluation, people suffering from the syndrome will often trade in their partners for younger ones — so that the level of commitment can remain relatively low.

A society that enables this syndrome is problematic because it encourages people to reject growing up. If people refuse to mature, they will not seek out professional jobs, find partners, or even potentially have children so that the life cycle will continue. Society will stagnate, but it’s important to recognize that those who experience this syndrome are suffering because of the society in which they live. The syndrome is often borne out of a situation where the person has been protected for much of their life, given very little independence, and not made to make any decisions for themselves. As our culture has changed, we’re seeing an increase in this trend of “bubble children,” where the parents are so protective of their child that the child cannot do anything lest they be injured. In an environment like this, there is no chance for the child to make decisions or learn things for themselves through experimentation.

As a result, the transition to adulthood can be all the more daunting. There’s no manual for how to be an adult, and often we make decisions without knowing the full impact of them. This is what frightens people into remaining childish. To keep Peter Pan in the storybooks, we need to encourage each generation to experiment, to try new things, and to make decisions for themselves. We need to establish that failure is not a bad thing, and if mistakes are made, it is so that we can learn from them to be more successful next time. This gentler approach will make adulthood a less terrifying idea.

All right, if you do the math, the percent is closer to zero than one, but they still exist

By Rachel Braeuer

I did a presentation on rape jokes, once. It was for a women and comedy English seminar, and I think most of my class was horrified, but using Freud’s criteria for a dirty joke (there’s a man and a woman, and the woman is always the brunt of the joke) women telling rape jokes upsets that standard, which from an analytical stand point I could appreciate. Suddenly, Sarah Silverman’s rendition of the Aristocrats went from plainly disturbing to some kind of bizarre, feminist, re-appropriative performance art. Rape jokes went from being always terrible to something that could, if done well, challenge rape culture.

But not everyone is Sarah Silverman. There are a lot of crappy comics out there, and whoever made the joke(s) on the Overheard at SFU Facebook page last week can join the club. They all revolved around a comparison of rape to something else through simile or metaphor. Calling them “jokes” is insulting to jokes everywhere. Whoever posted them are the Facebook version of the guys who answer “there are situations in which someone would owe me sex” or “no is just a yes in disguise” on their Okcupid profiles, and are getting publicly shamed for it. If an offensive comparison is your idea of a joke worth defending, you’re wrong. It’s not funny. You’re not funny, and you’re casually defending rape.

When some idiot gets on stage and says something like “wouldn’t it be hilarious if, like, x-amount of guys just raped her, right now?” I wince because there’s nothing funny about that. It’s not impossible, it’s not even improbable, it’s horrifically real because it does happen and rape in itself is never funny. But, like The Peak’s Humourist Emeritus Colin Sharp said, “people seem to misconstrue when something is the topic of a joke and when something is being made fun of. Those two things are entirely different.” This I agree with, and it’s the basis on which I justify my stance that a joke in which rape is the topic, not the punchline, can be funny.

Of all the stand up I’ve watched, there are four bits that effectively deal with the idea of rape culture without reaffirming it. For space’s sake, I’m only going to speak of Louis CK, but watch Ever Meinard’s “Here’s Your Rape”, Jaime Kilstein’s “Rape Culture and Glenn Beck Doesn’t Like Me”, and Wanda Sykes’ “Detachable Vagina” if you’re interested.

In his, CK talks about this waitress he was fooling around with but never had sex with because she kept brushing off his advances. When she tells him later that she wanted him to just go for it because she wanted it to feel dangerous, he responds “What are you, out of your fucking mind? You think I’m going to rape you on the off-chance that maybe you’re into that shit?” I love this because of how horrified he is by the notion of raping someone. A 2010 study found that individuals whose social groups reaffirmed rape myths (through things like rape jokes) showed higher proclivity to rape. This means jokes like the ones made on
Overheard at SFU work kind of like casual homophobia: you might not have any proclivity towards rape yourself, but when you make a joke that normalizes rape, you justify actual rapists’ actions to them, making them more likely to reoffend. Therein lies the Beauty of CK’s bit. The stance he takes makes it impossible for these rapists to find justification.

The punchline of his joke is literally “what kind of an idiot would do this?” the takeaway being “get consent.” No one is laughing at rape victims or the idea of raping someone. They’re laughing at someone thinking it’s ever OK to have sex without consent. Humour doesn’t have to reaffirm all of the negative things in the world, but it will have to reference the bad to change it. A few twits who think they know what’s funny shouldn’t stop the rest of us from enjoying things that makes us laugh and think. But you don’t have to agree. To quote CK again, “To me, all dialogue is positive . . . If someone has the opposite feeling from me, I want to hear it so I can add to mine.” If you interpret CK’s bit differently, let me know. If you think I’m wrong in general, that’s fine too. If you don’t think the bits I referenced should be called rape jokes, tell me what you’d call them instead. If you know other good jokes, awesome!

Write a letter, write an article, or whatever, but let’s have a dialogue and not just passively or aggressively talk at one another.