Friday, December 21, 2018
Alternative Christmas plans
Some ideas for how to spend your holidays when everyone else in town is busy with family.
Posted By Vaughn Stafford Gray on Fri, Dec 21, 2018 at 12:07 PM
Ah, the holidays. Finally, the time of year when you can participate in that long-standing Halifax Christmas tradition of having your entire social circle head to Ontario while you're here by yourself. Great!
The yuletide season can be festive, delightful and frustrating all at once. From terrible Secret Santas (really, hand sanitizer?) to over-indulging in mince pies and peppermint schnapps-laced eggnog (don’t knock it till you try it), the holiday season is a rollercoaster of activities and emotions. What to do when you’re spending the holidays by yourself or with a reduced number of friends? We got you! The Coast understands that sometimes you want something off-piste so we have put together an itinerary for a non-traditional yet fun holiday.
Sunday, December 23
Think of a darn good reason to call in from work tomorrow. It’s a half day anyway.
Grab a cup of coffee or tea (if that's your thing). Open up your email and unenroll from all those newsletters that you’re no longer interested in and stores that you no longer shop from. Also, reply to those emails that have been lingering in your inbox since September or just delete them. Purge that inbox.
Head to a decent chain grocery store. Hang out in the baking aisle. Watch pandemonium ensue when key holiday baking items like nutmeg are nowhere to be found.
You know that nice restaurant in the north end that you’ve always promised yourself you’ll go to? Go! Don’t have a paramour or bestie to go with? Still, go. Sit at the bar order a good glass of wine or bubbly, people watch and eavesdrop.
Christmas Eve
Go through your closets and gather gently used cold-weather clothing and grab a few non-perishable items. Make a drop-off at Shelter NS or Out Of The Cold. Let’s not forget to help others this holiday season.
Head to the mall (best bets are Park Lane and Mic Mac) around
Head to a coffee shop and purchase a few gift cards and hand out to the less fortunate that you pass along the way. It’s a warm gesture that will be appreciated.
Stock up on necessities at the NSLC and your favourite brewery. Splurge on that bottle that you’ve been eyeing for a while. Tis the season for bubbles and excess.
Meet up with a friends/fam and gorge on Chinese food. Technically a Jewish tradition for spending Christmas Eve, it’s a hassle-free way to have a great night out and not worry about clean-up afterwards.
Christmas Day
Have left-over Chinese for breakfast and if there are gifts to open, cool. If not, no biggie. Call your loved ones and that friend who you’ve been meaning to call back since Thanksgiving.
Start searching for vacation deals. Look outside. Look at that picture of Jamaica on your screen. Look back outside. You see? Set up alerts to be delivered to your inbox once the price is right. Hold on, dear frozen one! Your tropical escape in February isn’t that too far away.
Head to the movies. See two. Enjoy the fact that you’re in plush leather seats not sweating over a stove and arguing with the family member who really wants store-bought stuffing.
Pop round to a friend’s or over to your neighbours' for dessert. Folks always welcome randos after the formalities of family time.
Boxing Day
Have a nice bath with lots of sweet smelling stuff you got at Christmas At The Forum. Head outside and help your neighbours shovel. Bond over cursing city hall and nature, then stay in bed and binge-watch something new on Netflix. Order a pizza—there’s nothing more festive than ham and pineapple.
Look at your chequing account balance and get your outfit for work ready. You’ll be leaving on time. Early, if you’re taking the number 7 Robie bus.
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Opinionated is a rotating column by Halifax writers featured regularly in The Coast. The views published are those of the author. Thursday, December 20, 2018
Support the artists that create your fantasies
Porn can be deviant and still be ethical. That starts with paying performers.
Posted By Leslie Greening on Thu, Dec 20, 2018 at 4:03 AM
You’re probably a thief. If you’re not a thief, you have knowingly benefited from the work of another thief. Watch porn much? Maybe you aren’t a thief and you do buy your porn. Maybe you do support the creators whose content you’ve long enjoyed on Tumblr for free. Excellent! Keep paying for your smut. Changes are brewing and we need your support.
If you’ve been online at all over the last couple weeks you’ve almost certainly heard that on December 17, Tumblr banned all NSFW content. This comes shortly after an issue with child porn being discovered on the site. Apple immediately responded by removing the Tumblr app from the iOS store. Whether the policy shift is a direct response to the child porn issue or simply puritanical Apple strong-arming the platform, this is a major loss. No one is suggesting child pornography should be allowed. Settle down. But this is the latest in a series of attacks on open sexuality happening online.
Since SESTA/FOSTA passed in the good US of old A, Craigslist has ended its “dating” listings and Backpage has closed its advertising services to sex workers, forcing
This change is a huge blow to a variety of curators like those in the LGBTQ+ community looking for alternative bodies and content different from the cis-hetero normative porn offerings on major sites. This is especially hard on creators themselves. Artists, independent lingerie manufacturers, fetish wear entrepreneurs, smut authors, sex educators and sex workers of all stripes are losing an outlet to express themselves, their products and the opportunity to build fan bases that translates into clients.
If you’re worried about how you’re going to bust your next nut think about the people this change is impacting the most and consider supporting them. The hard-working people who create the material you use for a good wank deserve your continued patronage, even if it does cost you a few bucks. Find your
Help the people in your fantasies survive. Many sex workers have videos you can buy on ManyVids or
If you want to watch free porn or can’t divorce yourself from Pornhubs ease of use, try and use their verified section so you know the people making the porn are getting paid. Sex can be deviant and still be ethical. That starts with paying performers.
But sex work is illegal! Yeah, well, so is stealing content but you have no problem doing that every time you log into Pornhub or Redtube to get jerk-off material for free. So save me your hypocrisy. You wouldn’t walk into a grocery store and take your shopping home without paying. Stealing porn or using websites that allow stolen porn is no different.
Stop using unethical porn sources to fuel your masturbation fodder. Stop perpetuating the stigmatization and marginalization of
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Opinionated is a rotating column by Halifax writers featured regularly in The Coast. The views published are those of the author.
Thursday, November 29, 2018
On journalism and biting the hand that feeds you
Making the news industry dependent on tax credits risks giving a future government leverage to keep reporters in line.
Posted By Michael Karanicolas on Thu, Nov 29, 2018 at 4:46 AM
Last week, as part of their Fall Economic Statement, the federal government announced several initiatives to provide financial support to news organizations, including tax credits to support the production of original news content and to support subscriptions to Canadian news media. They also announced additional direct support for non-profit local news organizations to create open source news content, and that these organizations would also be able to receive charitable donations. Predictably, Canada’s biggest newspaper chain welcomed the initiative. Equally predictably, opposition leaders accused the government of using the initiative to buy favourable coverage in the election year.
Over the past few years, plenty of ink has been
In some countries, subsidies to journalists are used explicitly as a tool to control critical coverage. The government has promised that eligibility for the funds will be determined by an independent panel comprised of members of the news and journalism industry, who will also be tasked to “promote core journalism standards [and] define professional journalism.” But who will choose the members of this panel, and what safeguards will be put in place to protect its independence? Just a few years ago, Stephen Harper’s government used the tax breaks that Canada grants to charities as a weapon to attack his critics, particularly environmental groups. Since many of these groups depended on charitable donations, Harper’s audits threatened their ability to stay
The subsidy for local non-profit outlets who produce open source news content under a Creative Commons licence is also worth considering carefully. It could well backfire by further degrading the willingness of Canadians to pay for content, undermining the viability of existing, for profit, local news outlets.
None of this is to say that the programs are a bad idea. They may be the only hope of pushing back against another growing trend, where news outlets are bought up by wealthy patrons. This can be incredibly corrosive to democracy, as the people of New Brunswick can attest.
David Simon,
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Opinionated is a rotating column by Halifax writers featured regularly in The Coast. The views published are those of the author.Thursday, November 22, 2018
Gender reveal redux
Acceptance and invisibility at the Transgender Day of Remembrance flag raising.
Posted By Laura Shepherd on Thu, Nov 22, 2018 at 4:10 AM
Professionally, I never came out when I came out. I just disappeared.
I couldn’t deal with it. For most of my career, coming out in any way would have demanded
I still remember the “No Gay Tories” headline in the Herald, about 1985, when some Tory cabinet minister openly mused that the government was justified
I worked in politics for a competing party that briefly held power, and it’s not inconceivable to suggest that if I’d come out publicly as trans in the early ’90s in that role I’d have been the centrefold in Frank Magazine, obliterating my credibility and career in about five column inches.
When I worked for the school board on the South Shore, the province introduced a new sexual health education resource for middle schoolers that you can bet got read by their parents as well. A couple of years later, I swear, a measurable consequence was that people started giving each other permission to talk about being gay. Before that, it was only a topic for ridicule and contempt, never for understanding or acceptance.
Before Caitlyn Jenner came out, trans people didn’t really register on the public radar either, at least in Nova Scotia. We were effectively blind to the existence of non-binary genders before about the midpoint of the current decade. When I first began living openly, I can’t tell you the number of times city bus riders surreptitiously photographed me, elbowing their seatmate to great giggles and guffaws. Once, two women practically jumped up and down in the aisles, excitedly posting my photo to Instagram. That was six years ago. They’d be kicked off the bus, today. That’s real change.
I’ve changed, too. I’ve had to work hard on myself to move past all the shame and self-hatred I had internalized over a lifetime in the closet, and I still find an occasional dust-bunny where I just swept. I can see how I might have projected all that onto others, assuming they could only misunderstand and dismiss me. I really don’t know where the line lies in my own life between
I’ve studiously avoided contact with those I knew professionally—politicians, public servants, media reporters. It requires me to dead-name myself to everyone I knew—“You used to know me as...well, now...” It’s tedious.
I went to the Transgender Day of Remembrance flag-raising and proclamation at the Grand Parade on Tuesday morning. Organized by the Halifax chapter of PFLAG, it was sparsely attended. The crowd was so thin, mayor Mike Savage had no choice but to shake everyone’s hand, just to get to the podium.
I was acquainted with the mayor before he entered
“You knew me a long time ago,” I told him.
“Your face is familiar,” he replied. I dead-named, then reintroduced myself.
“No kidding?” the mayor replied. “Holy shit!”
Then I was Laura to him. Just like that. I took a selfie with him and he seemed perfectly comfortable with me. It made me more comfortable with myself. It occurs to me that’s what acceptance feels like, once you allow yourself to receive it.
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Opinionated is a rotating column by Halifax writers featured regularly in The Coast. The views published are those of the author.A war on every front
The Dog Island crew explore the Halifax International Security Forum.
Posted By Andrew Neville, Chris Parsons and Hugh Stewart on Thu, Nov 22, 2018 at 4:07 AM
You are eight years old and today is the first day of fishing season. Your father has finally taken you out with him and even bought you your own pole. Though you’re too young to understand adulthood, you can tell that this is how you become the person you hope to be. Your chest swells and your hands shake as your father helps you thread the rod. He guides your arms as you draw back. “Not bad!” he exclaims as you cast for the first time.
Except it is not 1996. It is 2018 and it is
Bleary-eyed you try to make sense of why two Greek boy scouts are standing with Cindy McCain, the beer heiress and widow of failed bomber pilot/
You leave to drink, but you cannot drink water. Water nourishes and you have forfeited any right to nourishment, spiritual or otherwise. It’s
The hotel has sandwiches, roast beef, good enough. You grab one, removing any and all vegetables before taking a bite.
The three of you sit on a leather sofa in the lobby debating whether or not you really want to try to get an interview with Eli Lake, an egg-shaped
You wonder how the actual journalists can bear to do this. They file stories. They moderate panels. Their publications are sponsors. Don’t they understand their complicity in normalizing this charade? Are they, like you, under the spell of the free sandwiches and toothbrushes? Are they simply drunk on the sweet nectar of access?
Your breaking point is a panel on the importance of letting women and minorities also murder people. Your extremities numb as a
Darkness and light dance. They consume each other. The light does not fade, it flows into the river of your childhood and becomes the darkness once again. You forget the calm of the air, the sound of the river, your father’s hands holding yours. It is all darkness now.
The darkness you have found here is not the depravity of cackling villains you imagined. These are not beings who are strange to you. You know them. You have always known them. The darkness permeates everything. This is not a fleeting moment in human history, this is the
The firmament between this world and an older, darker world has cracked. What floods in isn’t cruelty or callousness: It is
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Opinionated is a rotating column by Halifax writers featured regularly in The Coast. The views published are those of the author.Thursday, November 15, 2018
Sharing nudes: Advice for all the Tony Clements out there
You don’t need to be the Annie Leibowitz of dick pics but some thought goes a long way.
Posted By Leslie Greening on Thu, Nov 15, 2018 at 4:30 AM
On Tuesday, November 7, amid the Ameri- can midterm election results starting to roll in, Conservative MP Tony Clement issued a statement admitting to sharing nude images online with a person other than his wife. This came as no shock to many twenty-something women who quickly took to Twitter to share stories of creepy Instagram behaviour such as late night, deep-dive picture-liking by the Tory heavyweight.
Some light Instagram-perving aside, there’s nothing wrong with sharing nudes on the internet. In 2018, it’s normal and maybe even healthy to own your sexuality, including the confidence it takes to capture a nude photo and share it with another. That said, Tony (may I call him Tony?) is married as well as vulnerable to extortion due to his National Security and Intelligence Committee
I hope he wasn’t just spamming some poor young lady who decided to take advantage of the situation and now may face a whole heap of trouble. Time will tell. Tony says it was consensual. That is really the most important thing to consider when sending a nude picture. Consent is everything.
Ask any woman who has opened her inbox to find a giant, shiny wang glaring at her. It is jarring, at the very least. Without consent, it’s sexual harassment. So, fellas, ask before you whip that wang out. I say
Why do men feel the need to show off their bits? On hook-up sites, men often use their penis as their picture. Sigh. Even worse is when the first message you receive from an interested party is just a big
Here’s some free advice: Take care in sharing what you seem to think is your most attractive feature. Assuming you get consent, take your time in a well-lit area to get a decent shot. No one wants to see your toilet in the background or your white athletic socks halfway to your knees. Honestly, less is more and a sexy picture can show very little. If you are hellbent on showing your dick and can’t even be bothered to take your underpants all the way off at least make sure they’re clean. You don’t need to be the Annie Leibowitz of dick pics but some thought goes a long way.
If the pictures you sent are not as warmly received as you were hoping, don’t go on the defensive or get nasty. Being rude will not suddenly make your penis charming. I like dicks but I’ll be the first to say they are not nice looking. Even nice dicks look funny. So men, get consent and take a decent picture—not some grainy in-the-dark shadow puppet. And if we are to learn anything from Tony Clement, maybe exercise a little bit of discretion with who you share your pictures with. The recipient may not have your best interests at heart.
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Opinionated is a rotating column by Halifax writers featured regularly in The Coast. The views published are those of the author.Thursday, November 8, 2018
Halifax is not Canada’s Black Mecca
In Toronto, the racism we endured was more sophisticated and subliminal. In Nova Scotia, it’s brazen.
Posted By Tundé Balogun on Thu, Nov 8, 2018 at 4:07 AM
Growing up in Toronto we all thought of Nova Scotia as Canada’s Black Mecca. My parents, like so many others, were Black immigrants born either in Africa or the Caribbean. They moved to Canada during the first Trudeau era—moving to Canada’s largest city promised economic prosperity, safety and inclusion. However, our elders had no idea what was in store for future generations. Having “weird” accents and “funny” names meant we were never accepted into Canadian society because we came from cultures that spoke different languages. Our parents’ advice was to get a quality education, be polite and work hard, but after years of being unfairly put in special education, denied employment opportunities and being street checked countless times, we realized that no matter what we did we would never be accepted as “old stock” Canadians.
We felt the racism we endured in Toronto was because we were “new” Canadians, therefore the Indigenous Blacks of Nova Scotia would be treated with dignity and respect. We figured, since Blacks inhabited that province for over 400 years, fought alongside the British in the American revolutionary war and the War of 1812, and fought bravely in the first and second World Wars, not only would they have respect, but a social and economic infrastructure that would reflect their contribution to Canadian society. When I left Toronto for Halifax eight years ago, my family was truly proud, proclaiming I was moving to Canada’s Black Mecca. Slightly jealous, they said I wouldn’t have to endure racial injustice, gentrification or police harassment any longer. On the long drive to Atlantic Canada, I daydreamed of Black economic prosperity comparable to Atlanta, or even Chicago; it didn’t take long to wake up to reality.
The same problems that children of African and Caribbean immigrants faced in Toronto were experienced by families that have been in Halifax for centuries. I’ve seen a police department blatantly enforce street checks on Black citizens at a horrific rate. I’ve seen Blacks have difficulty hailing cabs because of the colour of their skin. I’ve seen large employers face civil lawsuits for their treatment of Black employees. Most disheartening of all, I’ve seen an education system that filters young Black learners into special education, causing a schools-to-prison pipeline.
Feeling an obligation to help my African Nova Scotian brethren, I joined 902ManUp, a group dedicated to empowering Black youth through education, justice, employment and health. It was through this community work that I saw the real reason why Blacks in Nova Scotia are so marginalized. We sat in meetings with HRM staff and advocated for employment strategies that would directly help youth in Black communities, but were dismissed without any thought. Asking for a moratorium on street checks was categorized as an unreasonable request. We were turned down by both municipal and provincial politicians for help with small donations for community events, only to see them show up to eat the cake we served. We helped organize wholesome community gatherings, only to see local media show up and ask about violence.
From education to employment, government and media, Halifax has a blatant culture of systemic racism. In Toronto, the racism we endured was more sophisticated and subliminal. In Nova Scotia, it’s brazen. It’s there every morning to greet you and remind you in its own little way that even if your ancestors re-built Citadel Hill or died fighting in the fields of Normandy, you are Black and Black doesn’t count. Halifax is not Black Mecca. It’s the Mississippi of the North.
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Opinionated is a rotating column by Halifax writers featured regularly in The Coast. The views published are those of the author.
Thursday, October 25, 2018
How I learned to embrace the Halloween spirit
It took me two decades to grow past my Baptist upbringing and treat October 31 as the fun, friendly celebration it really is.
Posted By Vaughn Stafford Gray on Thu, Oct 25, 2018 at 4:42 AM
I celebrated my first Halloween at 22. And since this is now in print, I have to publicly apologize to my God-fearing parents. Sorry, mom and dad, but I am still a good boy.
Growing up Baptist in Jamaica, Halloween wasn’t really a big deal. In fact, it was rebuked. As the end of October rolled around preachers warned of devil worship being dressed up (see what I did there?) as a harmless activity for children. The fear was palpable. And as I grew up, the distance between Halloween and myself grew as well.
Halloween in Jamaica is a funny thing. During the ’90s when I was in high school it slowly began increasing in popularity. There were few costume parties, but these were aimed at expats and the upper classes. Trick-or-treating would be done in a handful of gated communities or along one street in a tony neighbourhood. Rumours about dark arts cults and demonic rituals would mysteriously materialize every October. Whether it was Christian propaganda or the machinations of latchkey children, these rumours just fertilized the taboo fields of Halloween.
When I moved to Canada, I immediately embraced the culture. My wardrobe was suddenly filled with plaid. I shopped at Roots, a lot, perfected making Nanaimo bars and pronounced the second ‘T’ in Toronto as an ‘N.’ However, Halloween was the Rubicon I dared not cross. Then came that fateful day in 2005 when an ex conned me into going to a Halloween party. “We’re just popping in to say ‘hello’ then heading back home.” Stupid, silly me. Full disclosure: I was promised Chinese food and ice cream—the list of things that I would do for both is quite long.
So, there we were at the party. It was a nice group of people. Some went all out on their costumes. Others came as topical puns and a few just went to the costume shop and bought a pre-packed something. I was wearing a multi-coloured striped t-shirt and black jeans. Whenever someone asked me what I was dressed as, I said, “An unwavering Christian.” They thought I was joking. My ex emerged from the bedroom in a costume (one was stashed at our friend’s apartment) and I simply said, “There better be Chinese food and ice cream in there.” Alas. Soon after I was dragged into the bedroom where pieces of costumes from different guests lay on the bed and I was fashioned something festive. I was a hot mess.
However, as I walked around as Fat-Albert-Helen-of-Troy-Mario-Batali-Papa-Smurf-Jafar I began to see that Halloween wasn’t evil. I get where the puritanical lens through which Halloween is viewed by staunch Christians came from. Yes, Halloween has pagan roots, jack-o-lanterns and haunted houses and is a prime time for watching horror films and the witches of Hocus Pocus. But the fear-mongering by the born-again ministers of my youth was a bit much.
Since 2005, I have celebrated a number of Halloweens. Many times I’ve spent months obsessing over costumes. I’ve entered costume contests, put out jack-o-lanterns and handed out candy. One year I was G-Unit-era 50 Cent. Another Karl Lagerfeld. During my lean days, I went once as Achilles from 2004’s Troy. For the last four consecutive years, I’ve been a curmudgeon. Let your imagination run wild with that one.
It took me the better part of two decades to get into the Halloween spirit. This year, as I prepare to attend a costume party dressed as post-Arianna Pete Davidson, I think about what Halloween really is. A fancy dress party that is riotously good fun.
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Opinionated is a rotating column by Halifax writers featured regularly in The Coast. The views published are those of the author.
Thursday, October 18, 2018
Football and Canada’s duty to consult Indigenous nations
The Supreme Court of Canada’s recent decision has changed the rules of the game to favour the visiting team.
Posted By Rebecca Thomas on Thu, Oct 18, 2018 at 4:12 AM
As problematic as football is, with the Washington R*****ns and the Kansas City Chiefs, the game holds a special place in my heart. For those of you who don’t know, my father is a residential school survivor and without getting into the nitty-gritty traumas of his experiences, it left him with a deficit when it comes to parenting skills. Football was the first way we ever connected.
I’d sit on his knee or on the couch beside him and he’d explain to me what
In spite of this loss, the quarterback still gets paid his millions of dollars. The coach lives on to coach another game. It would appear that Canada has the same after-the-fact strategy when it comes to rulings for Indigenous people.
On October 11, 2018, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that lawmakers would not have to consult Indigenous peoples on laws that would directly impact Treaty Rights because it would be too onerous a task. In the court’s opinion, it could slow legislation down to a crawl.
The duty to consult ensures section 35 of the constitution and judicial precedent—set by decades of legislation by the SCC itself—is followed. This ruling essentially says that the Crown is not the Crown in parliament. Or rather, the rules of the game don’t apply if the visiting team is favoured to win.
The financial weight of the challenge will be placed on Indigenous communities to bear—communities that already have funding crises in health care, housing, employment, education and infrastructure. Communities that have had to function with a
We will have to divide up our already meagre slice of funding to cover the court costs of lengthy legal battles. We will have to fight for our rights after-the-fact while damage is concurrently being done by these new laws. However, if we lose the challenge, we lose all the money that goes into those challenges. We lose far more than a timeout and our players don’t get to move on without penalty or consequence because that money came out of an already strapped bank account.
Here’s the thing. It’s really hard to play a game you’ve
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Opinionated is a rotating column by Halifax writers featured regularly in The Coast. The views published are those of the author.Thursday, September 27, 2018
I’d like to tell you about my gang-bang
I'm not ashamed of having a goal, making a plan and achieving a dream.
Posted By Leslie Greening on Thu, Sep 27, 2018 at 4:04 AM
Most people keep their kinks, fetishes, and fantasies private. Understandably! It’s socially taboo to be loud and proud about one’s sexual appetite. If I fantasized about finding the perfect coconut cream pie I might visit different restaurants, write reviews or write a blog. I’d enlist the support of my peers asking if they’d ever had a good coconut cream pie and sample their suggestions. My fantasies are a little spicier than coconut cream pie, though.
When it comes to sex, we go mum. We whisper in the dark to our partner(s) and watch our favourite porn, typically alone. We don’t talk about our fantasies in regards to sex in the same way we do with our hobbies. Sex just happens to be one of my favourite pastimes and I’m not going to hold back anymore. It’s time to make fantasy a reality.
I’ve been a long time fan of gang-bang porn. All of that attention on one sex-crazed fiend has been quite enviable. One woman in charge of that much sexual energy is explosive. And make no mistake, the woman at the centre of it all is in charge. She dictates the terms, the rules, the boundaries enforced. This is her show. The control she surrenders is prescribed exactly how she wants.
I have a fantasy, but what do I do with that? I make a personal ad on the social media site for kinksters, Fetlife. I advertise what I’m looking for, outline some of my boundaries and start taking “applications.” Really, these applications are just interested parties sending me a private message. We chat a bit and I try to get a feel for what kind of energy they might bring to the room. I want an easy-going, friendly, party atmosphere. I’m not a porn star, just a chubby bunny with a fantasy. So that means
The hardest part of planning a gang-bang is curating a playlist. Maybe not. Perhaps it’s the anal training. You’ve got to have that butthole ready if you plan on using it. A ripped anus would kind of put a damper on the evening. No, I was right the first time. It’s definitely selecting a playlist. Can one have too much Portishead?
I’ll tell you what isn’t difficult about planning a gang-bang—the shame. Shame is not going to be a factor in this. There are a lot of reasons to keep one’s kinks private. There are some really good reasons to live out and loud, too.
I’m not ashamed of having a goal, making a plan and achieving a dream. Frankly, I might even be a little bit proud of myself. If I had dreams of white, sandy beaches I’d save up, buy some travel insurance and hop on a plane headed south. You’d be able to see pictures of my adventures on all my social media.
This vacation that I’m planning to dick mountain is far more exciting to me than laying on a beach for a week. My dream might be a little more primal than most, but just because it isn’t the norm doesn’t mean I should be ashamed or operate in the shadows. Maybe if we were all a little more open about our sexual proclivities we would have an easier time having our curiosities and desires satisfied. Wouldn’t that be nice?
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Opinionated is a rotating column by Halifax writers featured regularly in The Coast. The views published are those of the author.Thursday, August 30, 2018
White noise
Letting your guard down to party loud and proud in the streets is a privilege students of colour don’t often have.
Posted By Rebecca Thomas on Thu, Aug 30, 2018 at 4:05 AM
This summer, I was walking along a street in the south end of Halifax with a few pals. As we walked down the tree-lined streets next to houses I couldn’t fathom of ever owning, they started hollering and causing a ruckus. It was late, they had been drinking, I was DD and I immediately felt nervous, uncomfortable and a little scared. I felt like I shouldn’t be there. Was it because I wasn’t lubricated like my companions? Was it my unrelenting straight-edge personality that was getting challenged? Am I too polite? I was left with this feeling for the rest of the night.
I messaged one of the friends who I had driven home and they told me they always feel a little animosity towards the wealthy
In a world of stereotypes, the “drunken Indian” is still a major challenge for Indigenous people even though Indigenous people, on average, drink less than the rest of Canadians. The thought of walking around a wealthy, mostly white neighbourhood, drunk with a bunch of fellow Natives feels ridiculous and unsafe.
I don’t have to reach far to find stories from my POC community who talk about being stopped and carded or pulled over for no reason. The countless social media stories back that up and confirm that safety is our number-one priority. Letting our guard down to carry on is a privilege we don’t often have.
With the return of university students in the coming weeks, I feel for the homeowners that will have to endure late-night parties and noise complaints. They will undoubtedly, at one point or another, have to clean up the red Solo cups tossed in their gardens and pick up the abandoned road beers left on the sidewalk in front of their homes. There will be hordes of young people pushing themselves to see how many beers they can shotgun, shooters they can down and pints they can chug. Then once the bars close and parties wind down, they will have to make their way home or to the nearest place to crash.
But think, just for a minute, about your initial gut reaction to seeing a bunch of young, pretty, white university students, arm-in-arm, carrying on a little too loud in the streets of Halifax. You’ll probably shake your head, think it’s too cold to not have a jacket on and maybe chuckle at the future hangover these kids are going to have. Now think about the same scenario, except change the race of the students in your mind. Make them Indigenous, African Nova Scotian, international students from across the world. Do you still have the same reaction, or do you judge them a little more? Do you cross the street when you see them coming? Do you think about calling the police?
All these students are here for a reason. For the most part, it’s to find out who they are and what they want to do for the rest of their lives. But some of those students have had to overcome numerous barriers to get there and will endure even more to stay.
There will be plenty of people and systems making students of colour feel like they don’t belong. You don’t need to be one of them.
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Opinionated is a rotating column by Halifax writers featured regularly in The Coast. The views published are those of the author.
Thursday, August 2, 2018
The weight
Homophobia, hate crimes and the murder of Gregory Gerald Jodrey.
Posted By Laura Shepherd on Thu, Aug 2, 2018 at 12:12 PM
On August 7, 1993, Gregory Gerald Jodrey of Gaspereaux, Nova Scotia was murdered in Wolfville. Gregory was my best friend and I loved him dearly. Twenty-five years later, the hole remains in my heart and the anvil remains in my stomach.
The bare facts are that Gregor was at the tavern in Wolfville, met a man there, left the tavern, had sex with him, then was found beaten to death beside the railroad tracks early the next morning.
The assailant claimed he panicked after being raped and instinctively reacted with violence. The
The
In 2006, the person who beat Gregor to death received a nine-month conditional community sentence for sexually assaulting an 11-year-old girl. In 2008, they were sentenced to life in prison for the 1999 rape and murder of a 92-year-old woman.
The RCMP officer I spoke at length with during the investigation, upon learning I was an occasional sexual partner of Gregor’s, seemed to regard the entirety of my statement as nothing more than an effort to protect my friend, rather than an earnest effort to tell the truth. He displayed no familiarity with the culture of man-to-man sex in rural Nova Scotia, nor even a recognition that it is a culture. My casual reference to the practice of men buying sex from one another at taverns, for example, was apparently a revelation to him. He kept trying to summarize my nuanced statements with simple truisms—none of which were true, all of which were tropes. He seemed to want evidence that Gregor was a predator. He seemed to need
Gregor, despite being regularly subjected to physical harassment and violence in his community, was not out to his family. In their shock and grief, and their own deep homophobia, they were too bewildered to question the rape allegation. So far as I know, Gregor’s parents just accepted the story.
In the intervening years, Gregor’s murder has been cited academically as an example of lethal homophobic violence and recited in popular journalism as a hate crime. Candles are lit as his name is read at memorial events.
I will never know what happened that muggy night in Wolfville a quarter-century ago. Given the state of Gregor’s body when it was found, this is a mercy to me.
It’s clear to me that homophobia, inherent in the investigation from the start, distorted the facts and skewed the prosecution. Gregor cowered if you stamped your foot. He was physically incapable of perpetrating rape against anyone who resisted. I can’t account for the violence of Gregor’s assailant, other than to assert that rape was not the cause.
Whatever happened between Greg and his assailant triggered the violence, it didn’t cause it or warrant it. That distinction never saw the light of day in court. I have never argued that manslaughter was an unjust verdict, only that Gregor’s murder was an unjust act, and the conclusions of the court an unjust characterization of the man I knew, and likely, the way he died.
I still think I see him, occasionally. I’ll catch a silhouette of a slender guy in a baggy sweater with wispy hair and oversize glasses and I’ll think, ‘Gregor!’ and my heartbeat will increase before the dead weight of memory squelches the thought, leaving me jangling.
There are many things I could wish for, having lived so long without him. What I wish most of all is for the assumptions of those in authority to change—to abandon the default in which the victim of sexual or gendered violence is always to blame, to embrace a nuanced understanding of human relations and the negotiations they entail.
Murders solved with tropes are the stuff of television drama, never real life. The loss of my friend left a hole in my heart, and the process of justice left an anvil in my stomach. Twenty-five years later, I still can’t say which is heavier to bear.
———
Opinionated is a rotating column by Halifax writers featured regularly in The Coast. The views published are those of the author.
Tuesday, July 10, 2018
Coming Out Ministries preys on LGBTQ+ youth through guilt and shame
This is not about godliness, but about power and punishment.
Posted By Laura Shepherd on Tue, Jul 10, 2018 at 11:20 AM
I’m a preacher’s kid and I’m trans. I’m not a believer and I never was but I spent my childhood conscripted into ritual practices, performing a personhood that wasn’t mine, essentially because the family enterprise demanded it. I was expected to be what I was expected to be, not what I am. That I would gravitate toward something else was regarded, in my family, as tantamount to blasphemy. I went on from a childhood steeped in conformity enforced by guilt and shame, to spend over 30 years of my adult life in the closet.
Nobody locked me in. They didn’t have to. I adopted chains of guilt and shame as my own and used them to bind myself, like a trans Harry Houdini, except escaping from them wasn’t part of my act. It took me years to learn how. When I finally found my way out, eager to begin living my life, I was already old.
My birth family still doesn’t believe in transgender people. My presence in their midst does nothing to dissuade them. It’s simply ‘against their religion.’
I don’t get how someone can profess faith in a higher deity, then decide for themselves and others exactly what that deity wants. It begs the question, who’s in charge? What if fears and shames of their own lie between the lines in their reading of scripture? What if we’re all traumatized? What if we’re all holy?
I am still learning how to distinguish myself from my trauma. I got so good at being someone I was not that I believed it, myself. When I look closely at the behaviours of the zealous in faith communities, I see those same traumas reflected. I know where they come from. Trauma—like religion—is nothing, if not a family tradition.
Enter Coming Out Ministries, the travelling troupe of “ex-gay” (read: re-closeted) self-described spiritual ‘leaders’ invited by the Seventh Day Adventist Church to provide conversion programming at their annual camp meeting in Pugwash later this month. Conversion programming means shaming and stigmatizing lesbian/gay, bi/pan, non-binary, trans and questioning youth in a concerted effort to change behaviour by, essentially, combining social exclusion and the trauma it induces with religious practice, like prayer. It has the impact of psychological violence. That it is led by people who once identified as gay is no stamp of approval.
Coming Out Ministries maintains that queer people do not deserve condemnation, so long as they themselves condemn their own identities and expressions. Gaslight thy neighbour. Hate thyself.
Monday night’s public protest at the Grand Parade and the month-long online petition effort that preceded it, reflect community rage. This is not about godliness, but about power and punishment. It’s political. It’s also predatory. We’re talking, at least in part, about the youth of this faith community, some of whom can safely be regarded as unwilling conscripts in the faith, nevermind the program. It deserves to be halted.
As the Youth Project's Kate Shewan said Monday night, this program will cause harm. NSRAP's Susanne Litke called for legislation to outlaw conversion therapy in Nova Scotia and the action at-large called on the church to cancel this program.
If we’re all children of God, any and all conversion programs are child abuse.
———
Opinionated is a rotating column by Halifax writers featured regularly in The Coast. The views published are those of the author.
Wednesday, July 4, 2018
UPDATED: False outrage over this past weekend's Marine Band protest
The only people who should apologize for the events at Grand Parade are the reporters who botched the story.
Posted By Jacob Boon on Wed, Jul 4, 2018 at 11:56 AM
Update: Since this piece was published Shaw has deleted his tweets and web producer/social media manager Andrea Jerrett has apologized to Masuma Khan. Her emailed message is shared below with Khan's permission.
“While CTV Atlantic always strives to report accurate information, in this case, our reporter did issue a tweet with incorrect information,” Jerrett writes on behalf of the CTV newsroom and news director Dan Appleby. “He quickly corrected that information in a subsequent tweet. Unfortunately, some individuals or groups have chosen not to acknowledge that correction. No matter what, the original tweet did not meet our standards and we unequivocally regret the error in our content.”
———
This past weekend, the United States Marine Band walked into a political protest against the very government they represent.
It was largely uneventful and likely would have passed without much consideration except for a series of inaccurate tweets from CTV.
Reporter Ron Shaw twice made the false assumption that Saturday's protesters caused the military band to cancel a planned outdoor concert at Grande Parade.
The marines were “going to play an outdoor show...but refugee issue protesters chased them away,” Shaw tweets.
This is not true, in several important aspects.
First and foremost, there was no outdoor concert planned. While the marines were in town for the Nova Scotia Tattoo, they were only at Grande Parade looking for a group photo. A cursory glance at the Tattoo’s official schedule shows there was no outdoor performance scheduled.
What was scheduled was the
Rebecca Faria’s tweets about the same incident paint a much calmer picture. After confirming the band wasn’t going to perform, she states that some protesters with signs stood next to the marines on the steps. A call-and-response chant about stolen Indigenous land was also led by Masuma Khan.
“And then the marines left,” writes Faria. “We laughed. We cheered. We went on with our afternoon.”
It’s worth noting that the marine corps' official policy says uniforms cannot be worn at any events that further political activity:
“Marines and sailors cannot wear their uniform when participating in public speeches, demonstrations, assemblies, interviews, picket lines, marches, rallies or any public demonstration which may imply service sanction for a cause that furthers personal or partisan views on political, social economic or religious issues.”
Meaning that the band probably couldn’t have stayed at the protest even if they wanted to.
Shaw has still not deleted his original tweets, but he did offer a separate, non-threaded “clarification” to confirm the band was never going to play.
“But,” the reporter took great pains to note, “that doesn’t change the issues or the emotions, whatever side people take on these issues.”
But it does change those issues and emotions entirely because the reality of events is so far from the inflammatory false version first presented.
The localized portion of an international protest against the inhuman abuse of children by the United States government is briefly interrupted by polite American military members who just as quickly leave.
Compare and contrast that against the story of screaming protesters disrespecting brave men in uniform who only wanted to share music with the city they’re visiting.
Nevertheless, the damage has been done.
Shaw’s original tweets continue to be shared—provoking outrage and scorn from easily offended local politicians and angry internet commenters. Those aggressive thugs band together in shaming the protesters while begging for civility towards military guests who are visiting Canada from a country currently committing gross and obscene crimes against humanity
It’s something of a minor miracle that the story hasn’t been picked up more by the right-wing media rebels who normally feast on this sort of inaccurate theatre.
Of course, that doesn’t mean Khan—the most visible person at the protest—hasn’t spent the last few days receiving personal threats for her role in the day's events.
“Since you hate Canada so much why not move to a Muslim majority country where
The truth of Saturday doesn't matter to people who've already made up their minds, but the framing of the story can do a lot to hold back or provoke more intolerance.
During these times of heightened irrational hatred, a special responsibility and care are needed to ensure accurate information gets out.
Otherwise, we cause very real harm to the people choosing to stand up for the safety of others.
———
Opinionated is a rotating column by Halifax writers featured regularly in The Coast. The views published are those of the author.Thursday, June 28, 2018
100 different ways to keep a government secret
The broken freedom of information system has dozens of exceptions, loopholes and bureaucratic tricks available to keep public information out of the public's hands.
Posted By Michael Karanicolas on Thu, Jun 28, 2018 at 4:34 AM
Politicians of all stripes love to talk about transparency. They praise it, they throw around buzzwords like “open by default” or, in the direct words of Stephen McNeil, promise to make Nova Scotia “the most open and transparent government in the country.” None of these promises
The most recent case to hit the headlines involved Dalhousie University, which faced an information request from the Canadian Union of Public Employees about the number of full-time and part-time faculty at the school over the past decade. Although legally required to respond to the request, the rules around how much they can charge are more difficult to enforce. The university demanded $55,000 for the information, claiming that it would take 1,845 hours to complete the request. While the information commissioner has said this is the biggest estimate she has ever seen, it is by no means an isolated case.
Last year, I was contacted by a journalist from Cape Breton who sought expense information for the mayor and five CBRM employees and was told it would cost $42,804.50 to deliver the information. In both cases, the requesters are technically allowed to access the information, but that right is not worth very much in practical terms.
In addition to exorbitant pricing, another common challenge
Even where information is made available, there
And of course, the ability to get your hands on any information about what the government is up to depends on them leaving a paper trail in the first place. In 2016, Stephen McNeil told reporters that when he has to do sensitive policymaking work, he prefers to use the phone, in order to ensure that there are no records that the public might later request. Nova Scotia’s former finance minister claimed that the use of private email accounts was rampant for the same reason. The premier has brushed aside calls from the information commissioner to institute a duty to document, which would require officials to leave an official record of their deliberations.
All of these are hallmarks of a broken system. Accountability and oversight are never
———
Opinionated is a rotating column by Halifax writers featured regularly in The Coast. The views published are those of the author.
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