Saturday 7 June 2014

Sex, Marketing, and Boys' Business

The Stephen Harper government has just brought out its new bill on prostitution which is getting criticsm from many quarters.  A compromise between all-out legalisation and complete outlawing, the Conservative caucus was apparently told. 

Well, maybe.  I haven't looked at the bill carefully, but I do see is that the selling of bodies is rampant in Canada as elsewhere.  This is the weekend of Formula 1 Grand Prix and there are all kinds of weird things going on.  A neighbor had her purse stolen in the cafe of a downtown department store, there was shooting at a night club near us that is usually very respectable.  And on Thursday the Femens were out, denouncing the event as an example of male egos run rampant. 

One of the things I thought would happen after the great wave of women's accomplishment that began in the last quarter of the 20th century was a downplaying of sex appeal as a female weapon/trap.  That has not happened, as witness the short short that high school girls around here are wearing and the deluge of suggestive selfies on the Net.  So I give the Femens credit for turningn the paradign on its head.  They're looking good in many senses of the term.

You listening, boys?  Or just looking?

(BTW, to put the shooting in perspective, a man was killed, bringing the number of murders in Montreal to nine for this year.  Last year when there were 28 in all on the island of Montreal, 11 people had been killed by this point.)

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