I write this blog as a response to the Jiam Ghomeshi Facebook post, https://www.facebook.com/jianghomeshi?fref=ts, the Toronto Starr article  http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2014/10/26/cbc_fires_jian_ghomeshi_over_sex_allegations.html and the many articles and comments  spawned by them. I take it as an opportunity to look deeply at our culture and put forward some questions to ask ourselves.

We often talk of objectifying women, how deep does our objectification go?

objectify –  present as an object

What do we mean by ‘object.’

object –. anything that is visible or tangible and is relatively stable in form.

Now I ask you, does that sound like a woman?

It does describe something that we would purchase, shop for, want to own.

Did our consumer culture come first or did expecting women to be ‘visible or tangible and relatively stable’ come first? Did you think it was funny when ‘relatively stable’ was put with ‘sounds like a woman?’.

Can you feel the difference of how woman live on the inside of themselves vs. how they are treated from the outside? Can you feel it in yourself?

Are you aware of the manipulations women do to themselves in order to feel, safe, loved and employable? Sure, make-up, hair and wardrobe but also inflections in their voice, pleasing, scanning for the boundaries of ‘where is safety’, ‘where is rage’, ‘where am I’.

Are you asking a woman, who inhabits the greatest biological design ever evolved, you know the one – the one from which you emerged from, what she thinks about the world, what she would like to invent, what her philosophy of life is? Or are you too busy thinking about what to say next or how to get what you want from her or maybe glancing around for someone who will give you a better sexual hit or maybe advance your career?

If we are objectifying women are we then objectifying what they produce from their bodies – children? Are children being raised to fit into the culture at the expense of fitting into themselves first?

Are you a woman who has been raised in a political/cultural/religious/artistic culture that has been built on the ideas of men and sit around criticizing and judging other women instead of developing your own ideas to help evolve us out of this mess?

We need your voice. Men need it, children need it.