With the same moderation changes that resulted in a torrent of hate speech and disinformation on X now set to roll out on Meta (Facebook, Instagram, Threads) it was time to pull up stakes and spend time places that respect facts and people instead. As for what you can expect at Meta moving forward:

 Users are now allowed to, for example, refer to “women as household objects or property” or “transgender or non-binary people as ‘it,’” according to a section of the policy prohibiting such speech that was crossed out. A new section of the policy notes Meta will allow “allegations of mental illness or abnormality when based on gender or sexual orientation, given political and religious discourse about transgenderism and homosexuality . . . The policy also now allows for content arguing in favor of “gender-based limitations of military, law enforcement, and teaching jobs.”

 

I've already left Facebook (and Twitter/X before that) and am currently in the process of packing up my Instagram account. Many of my favourite photographs from 2007 to the present have moved to Flickr. My final day on Instagram will be January 19th. 

 

Here are some other places you can continue to find me:

✮ Bluesky: caramartin
✮ Spoutible: CaraCKMartin
✮ Mastodon: mstdn.ca/@ckkellymartin
✮ Tumblr: ckkellymartin
✮ Flickr: ckkellymartin
✮ Goodreads: C. K. Kelly Martin

 

 

Once Bluesky's photo-sharing app Flashes is available I'll post photos there too. And of course there are always my websites:

www.ckkellymartin.com
www.caramartin.ca
www.justlikeyousaiditwouldbe.com

You can find up to date links to the social media networks I appear on at each website. 

The Sweetest Thing You Can Sing should be arriving in Canadian bookstores within the next week or so and I'm excited at the thought of encountering it out in the real world. It's a strange but good feeling when the characters and situations that had previously only been living in your head (and Word document file!) leap into the outside world.

To celebrate the book's release I'll be doing a blog tour that starts at the end of the month. I hope you'll stop by somewhere along the way! You can click the banner for details regarding when and where I'll be.

Meanwhile, during the last few days one of the stories the media has been buzzing about is the leak of nude photos of several famous Hollywood actresses. These kinds of "leaks" don't just happen to famous women, and they shouldn't happen at all. They're a violation, a crime. But in response to this crime, ridiculous articles like this one from Fox news advising stars who want to take nude photos with getting hacked to never upload them online or, better yet, use a Polaroid have sprung up.

Why not go a step further and advise women never to be naked in the first place? And definitely not to have sex! Because if it's discovered that any of us are 1) naked under our clothes, complete with female bodys parts and 2) engage in sexual activities—well, then it's open season. It's our fault simply for being women in the first place!

Roxanne Gay sums the problem up in her Guardian article, "This is what we must remember. Women cannot be sexual in certain ways without consequence. Women cannot pose nude or provocatively, whether for a lover or themselves, without consequence. We are never allowed to forget how the rules are different for girls. I suppose we should be grateful for this latest reminder."

Time Magazine offers this logical analysis of the victim blaming: "So why are people so quick to point the fingers of blame at the women who are victims of the hack? It’s likely because it’s easy — far easier than blaming a culture that nurtures this kind of misogynist attack — and also because it makes people feel safe."

While many people (including Seth Meyers) are well aware that blaming the women whose privacy was criminally invaded is unjust

culturally, we continue to face an enormous problem. One that all women potentially face as large segments of society cling to damaging double standards. This is partly what The Sweetest Thing You Can Sing is about as main character Serena and several of her friends fall afoul of the thin line of acceptable sexual behaviour they are supposed to display as girls. Actually, instead of thin line we could more accurately call it an impossible line, one where you can garner negative attention for being considered attractive as well as not not attractive enough, one where sexual acts are encouraged and cheered one one hand and then condemned, the girls taking part in them termed sluts and hos, on the other.

A study published in the Journal of Children and Media in June found that adolescent boys judge teenage girls whether they sext or not, calling teen girls who send sexts “insecure” or “slutty” and  and labelling ones who don't as “stuck up”and prudes. Meanwile "boys were virtually immune from criticism regardless."

How do you discover your authentic sexual self in a culture that's not-so-secretly hostile towards you, glorying in dictating and policing your sexual behaviour in the most illogical and—now public—of ways? This is one of the challenges facing young women today. Prejudices of the past mingling with ominpresent technology.

We can help girls and young women by letting them know we're on their side, that there is nothing shameful about their naked bodies or sexuality, but that who they share those things with should always be their choice. That means instilling these same values in boys—respect for girls as their equals— again and again and again until they, and we all, have incorporated them to the point that things like revenge porn, slut-shaming and sexual bullying become rarities.

I'm heading off to the airport in about four hours (and afterwards will be mostly offline for the next two weeks while away) and didn't intend to write a blog entry today. Then, thanks to writer Neesha Meminger, I read the following article in The Telegraph: 

* Honest sex scenes in books will stop teens learning from porn, Malorie Blackman says 

Malorie Blackman, young adult writer and newly-appointed children's laureate for the United Kingdom told the British newspaper, "I was reading an article three weeks ago where this teenage girl was saying everything her boyfriend knew about sex he knew from porn. He was brutalising her, because that's what he thought sex was about from watching online. It made me angry and it made me sad. I thought well, this is exactly why we need not just sex education in schools but also books that tackle the subject of relationships and your first time. Otherwise teens and young adults will get their information from somewhere and in this case it was getting it from porn. I would rather my daughter read about a loving sexual relationship in a book—whether it works or whether it doesn't—but in that context, than getting her information from innuendo and from porn and the rest of it."

I'm mentioning Malorie Blackman's stance because as a young adult writer this subject is something I've given a lot of thought to over the years. Shortly after I began writing for teens I also began haunting comprehensive sex ed website Scarleteen to delve into how teen sexual relationships and issues had changed since I was a young person. I also read and continue to read as much other information on young people's sexuality as I can—studies, articles, books like Dude, You're a Fag: Masculinity and Sexuality in High School, Getting Off: Pornography and the End of Masculinity, and Female Chauvinist Pigs: Women and the Rise of Raunch Culture.

There have been some great strides made in Canadian society since I went to high school in the eighties. I never saw a pregnant girl at my Catholic High school the entire time I was there. No one felt free to be gay and out either. Unwed pregnancy and homosexuality were generally things to be shoved into the closet. Since then gay marriage has been legalized in Canada and several other countries, and we've been moving away from vilifying pregnant teenagers. There's still progress to be made in these areas, but at least we're heading in the right direction.

However, there are other areas of society where this is not the case. One negative thing my generation didn't have to deal with as teenagers was the ubiquitous presence of hardcore pornography based on cruelty and the humiliation of women and girls. Those hardcore materials existed, yes, but not within easy reach and unlimited access twenty-four hours a day. The much more common pornography of the day was pictures of naked women in Playboy or Penthouse magazines, exponentially tamer stuff than the majority of pornography accessed over the internet today.

There is evidence that suggests the developing teenage brain is especially susceptible to some of the long term effects of pornography. A recent Toronto Star article called Is pornography changing how teens view sex? cites experts who believe the use of porn among teenagers is impacting their notions of normal sexual behaviour and their views on women.

But first of all, what is pornography like today?

"In a 2010 analysis of 50 randomly selected adult films, researchers found high levels of verbal and physical aggression. Of the 304 scenes analyzed, 88 per cent contained physical aggression, including spanking, gagging and slapping, while nearly 50 per cent contained verbal abuse, particularly name-calling. In most cases, the men were dominant and the women almost always responded neutrally or with pleasure. Only 10 per cent of scenes contained positive sexual behaviour."

Adolescent sexuality expert Maree Crabbe's documentary Love and Sex in an Age of Pornography interviewed 70 young Australians as well as LA-based porn performers. In the documentary, veteran porn performer, Nina Hartley, says extreme, sexual "circus acts" have become mainstream and Imre Pager, "who performs as Anthony Hardwood since 1997, says there's been a shift from 'lovey, dovey sex' to 'one girl with four guys' who 'just take over and . . . destroy her'."

"Physical aggression depicted in pornography includes gagging, choking and spanking," Crabbe says, yet "a viewer doesn't see the target reacting to the aggression, they see a woman who likes being choked, gagged and hit...Porn not only routinely portrays gender stereotypes and unequal gender relations, it says that they're sexy."

Meanwhile a study of male undergraduates found that "nearly a quarter of them admitted they had acted sexually aggressively on a date, causing their date to cry, scream or plead." While official rape statistics are down in the U.S. there is some evidence to suggest that this may be due to shifting perceptions about what constitutes rape. "Almost 75% of women whose experience meets the legal definition of rape don't recognize themselves as victims. In the same survey, one in 12 men admitted to acting in ways that met the legal definition of rape or attempted rape, but 84% of them said what they did was "definitely not rape."

Robert Jensen, author of Getting Off: Pornography and the End of Masculinity asks the question "If contemporary porn shows scenes that are cruel, degrading and violent to women, how does that affect the perception of those who are raping and being raped? Do they become more accepting of acts that would be deemed rape years ago? It could be that porn is shifting the way we even understand the term rape."

A three year long 2011 U.S. based study of 10-15 year-olds showed that those who watched violent X-rated material were six times more likely to self-report sexually aggressive behaviour. In the United Kingdom The National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children reports that the Number of sex offences by people under the age of 18 has risen 38% since 2009/10. Claire Lilley, policy adviser at the NSPCC said: 'We hope our findings will ring alarm bells with the authorities that this is a problem which needs urgent attention…While more research needs to be done on this problem, we know that technology and easy access to sexual material is warping young people's views of what is normal or acceptable behaviour."

Here are some quotes from fifteen and sixteen year-old British teenage girls I pulled from a 2010 article about teenage boys and internet pornography:

* "Boys just want us to do all the stuff they see the porn stars do. It's as if we have to pretend we are in a movie. They want us to dress like porn stars in sexy underwear, have bodies that look like porn stars, and sound and behave like them too when we are alone. That's why we like to have our friends around us now."

* "It makes me feel so unhappy to be even asked about this stuff by a boy. So I try not to be alone with a boyfriend any more, to have a third wheel whenever I can."

* "I wish my parents would say I'm not allowed to be home alone with a boy. I wish they'd say boys aren't allowed in my bedroom. They make this big deal about 'trusting us', but that's not helping me. They have no idea what goes on, and I'm too embarrassed to tell them."

* [My boyfriend] even starts talking as if he's in a movie. Suddenly, when we are being intimate, he'll say something that he must have heard in a porn film. For example, he'll call me a 'bitch' and use dirty language that he'd never use normally. It's awful. It's so obvious he's copying his actions from watching porn."

There are, of course, other articles and studies that refute hardcore pornography's influence on teenagers. One that is often referred to is a recent study which looked at 4,600 people 15 - 25 living in the Netherlands and concluded that only between 0.3 percent and 4 percent of the sexual behaviors in question could be attributed to pornography use. If the United States, Britain and Canada were on a par with the Netherlands regarding sex education and positive attitudes about sexuality, I might agree that internet pornography's influence on young people in these countries would be similarly limited. But in my own province of Ontario, where sexual harassment at school is rampant, the sex ed curriculum is fifteen years old (shameful!).

So as things stand I'm in agreement with the article Talking to Teens about Pornography over at Everyday Health. It points out that the Netherlands, is "leaps and bounds ahead of the United States when it comes to sex education. They have a dramatically lower teen birth rate, as well as a lower abortion rate and a lower incidence of STDs. Much of this can be attributed to their behavior regarding sexuality. While our country still struggles to keep comprehensive sex education in schools, students in the Netherlands feel safe discussing sex openly with their teachers and parents. Rather than viewing sex as dirty or shameful, they tend to take a more open and positive view of their bodies and sexuality. It's a distinct cultural difference and one that should be taken into account when discussing this study and pornography, because for many American teens, pornography is all they ever learn about sex."

As hardcore pornography isn't likely to disappear or shift away from negative images anytime soon, it's crucial that parents and schools provide young men and women with good progressive sex education, allowing them to cope with the hardcore messages and images they're inevitably exposed to (average age of first internet porn exposure = 11), and countering those with information on what a genuinely positive sexual relationship should look and feel like. We can't inoculate teenagers against the negative impact of pornography with an injection but the Netherlands study shows that we can accomplish that result with sex education and healthy societal views on sex. Like Malorie Blackman, I feel young adult literature has a responsibility here. It can and should play a role, reflecting realistic sexual experiences, both good and bad and thereby allowing teenagers to process aspects of the experiences before they are ready to engage in sex themselves. If you are writing young adult books that don't fade to black when it comes to sex scenes and if you're handling those scenes with honesty, without being exploitative, and neither glorifying sex nor demonizing it, you are already personally my favourite kind of YA writer. But more importantly, you're helping empower young people who are living in a highly sexually charged culture.

Yes, I've stolen the title of a Billy Bragg track for my heading here. Any excuse to mention Billy Bragg! I haven't been to a Bragg gig since 2009 (the last time he was in Toronto) and find myself very much in withdrawal lately. So before I really get started pull up a chair and enjoy some Billy Bragg philosophy & music with me:

Young Bill on The Tube singing A New England in 1983

Waiting for the Great Leap Forwards with 2011 Lyrics

Interview and music clips from the Rapido show in the early 90s (sadly his comment on "the failure of capitalism to deliver the fruits of society to the majority of people" is ever more relevant)

Three of the greats—Michael Stipe, Natalie Merchant & Billy Bragg—perform Hello in There by American country/folk singer-songwriter John Prine back in 1990

Valentine's Day is Over

You'll notice, if the song Valentine's Day is Over is new to you, that Billy's singing it from the point of view of a survivor of domestic violence.

If you want to talk about it well you know where the phone is/
Don't come round reminding me again how brittle bone is

Thank you for the things you bought me thank you for the card/
Thank you for the things you taught me when you hit me hard/
That love between two people must be based on understanding/
Until that's true you'll find your things/
All stacked out on the landing, surprise, surprise

Clearly this is not a love song in the traditional sense, although it is very much a song about self-worth. I have to wonder if the girls and women who were tweeting things along the lines of I'd let Chris Brown beat me any day in the run-up to the Grammy's would get that or if domestic violence is just a joke to them? Because I remember those pictures of Rihanna after Chris Brown punched her in the face and to me there's nothing funny about that, or about being willing to swallow toxic cultural messages that say if you're powerful and rich enough (not to mention male) you can treat women however you want and still get invited to play at the Grammy's.

A brief reminder, in the form of a police statement, of the abuse Chris Brown committed against Rihanna:

A verbal argument ensued and Brown pulled the vehicle over on an unknown street, reached over Robyn F. with his right hand, opened the car door and attempted to force her out. Brown was unable to force Robyn F. out of the vehicle because she was wearing a seat belt. When he could not force her to exit, he took his right hand and shoved her head against he passenger window of the vehicle, causing an approximate one-inch raised circular contusion.

"Robyn F. turned to face Brown and he punched her in the left eye with his right hand. He then drove away in the vehicle and continued to punch her in the face with his right hand while steering the vehicle with his left hand. The assault caused Robyn F.'s mouth to fill with blood and blood to splatter all over her clothing and the interior of the vehicle.

"Brown looked at Robyn F. and stated, 'I'm going to beat the sh-- out of you when we get home! You wait and see!' "

This is what you're saying you're cool with, girls. And what the Grammy's is saying they're cool with.

Of course there were also people who were extremely upset about Chris Brown being invited to perform at the Grammy's:

* "It is absolutely unacceptable that someone who is known to have perpetuated violence against a woman has been so uncritically welcomed and promoted by the music industry."

—Feministing

* "Chris Brown twice? I don't get it. He beat on a girl ... Not cool that we act like that didn't happen."

—Country Star Miranda Lambert

* “We – the grown-up influencers in this country, the people with platforms and with educations and with power – are allowing a clear message to be sent to women: We will easily forgive a person who victimises you. We are able to look beyond the fact that you were treated as less than human, that a bigger, stronger person decided to resolve a conflict with you through violence. We know it happened, but it’s just not that big of a deal to us”.

—Sasha Pasulka, 'I'm not okay with Chris Brown performing at the Grammys and I'm not sure why you are'

* "All along, the business, Brown himself and just about every celebrity who's had anything to say about Rihanna and Chris Brown have treated the assault as a private domestic matter - or even, most creepily, as just one dark element of a star-crossed romance. The outright condemnations have been few. When it comes to partner assault - and when it comes to attitudes about women in general - big parts of the music industry seems to lag the rest of North American society by at least a half a century."
—Vancouver Sun

However, seemingly there were not enough irate people to convince the Grammy's Chris Brown had no place on their stage. I didn't watch the awards but I understand he was "welcomed with wild applause and a standing ovation."

I thank the people who publicly voiced their opposition to Chris Brown playing at the Grammy's, but if we want to reach a pointed where something like this doesn't happen again, and where our culture quits producing young women who say they're willing to be punched bloody by a celebrity, and where one in four women isn't physically abused in her lifetime, those of us—both male and female—who see domestic violence for the evil that it is and not something to be joked about or ignored, need to make a hell of a lot more noise. Speak up for your daughters, your friends, your sister, yourself. Valentine's Day is over.

The following post is inspired by one I read on YA author Jill Murray's blog last year about gender and reading. In it she did some very cool unisex cover designs for her books Break On Through and Rhythm and Blues. I've been meaning, ever since I read her post, to create my own more unisex covers.

Personally, I bristle at the idea that people are drawn to certain design types based on their gender but advertisers and marketers make a living out of trying to hem people in and shrink them down to size. They attempt to define us with their visions of masculinity and femininity because if they can convince us who we are, they can also convince us what we need to buy in order to be that guy or girl.

There's a common belief in YA publishing (pretty much the same one we see at play in Hollywood movie making) that guys don't want to read about girls. It's insulting, to say the least and who's to say how true it really is or how true it would be if entertainment wasn't so often designed and packaged with that sexist belief in mind? The ideas constantly put across by advertisers and mass media are that guys like fast cars, team sports, tech gadgets, shoot-em up action in their entertainment, hate shopping (except for fast cars, tech gadgets and shoot-em up entertainment), love beer, are sex obsessed but mostly uninterested in intimacy and are emotionally one-dimensional. Girls, on the other hand are portrayed as innately nurturing and communicative, ruled by their emotions, obsessed with romantic love, shopping, fashion, 'pretty' things in general and anything related to the home and cooking.

And so L'Oreal Vive for Men and Axe put their products in a black bottle they think exudes a masculine look while chocolate bar Yorkie even goes so far as to proclaim on the package 'It's not for girls'. Meanwhile practically anything marketed to woman and girls (we're talking telescopes to frying pans to the game of Monopoly) is released in a pink edition as though anyone with ovaries has a deep and natural affinity for the colour. Pink's become a sort of marketing shorthand — girls, this is for you.

The publishing industry, having figured out teenage boys don't read much (though again, who knows why? Is it because it's ingrained in them by society that this activity isn't for them? How can we ever say what they or anyone would naturally be drawn to when we're bombarded by gender pressure messages from the moment we're born?) chiefly focuses their marketing efforts on girls. Publishers (with added pressure from chain Booksellers) don't rely on pink to gender code their products the way many other industries do but they definitely do gender code YA covers and more often than not those covers are designed to appeal to girls (more on that here) in a monolithic way.

No doubt this coding does sell a certain numbers of books but the problem is that in aiming for a certain kind of reader, a cover can alienate others. Like guys and girls who feel that coding has marked that book as being not for them, albeit in a subtler way than the Yorkie bar!

I like to think of my books as potentially appealing to readers of any gender yet I've read, not infrequently, reviews or Internet commenters mention that while they believe boys would enjoy I Know It's Over or My Beating Teenage Heart, for example, they probably wouldn't pick them up in the first place because of their covers. In the case of I Know It's Over a writer friend passed on direct comments from a sixteen-year-old boy she knew who, after reading the book, said it was awesome and that he had several friends who should read it but that he knew they'd be worried about being seen with the cover.

Firstly, I hate the fact that teenage boys feel their gender is so strictly policed, by each other as well as by much of the rest of society, (if you want to know more about that read Dude, You're a Fag: Masculinity and Sexuality in High School) that it stops them from picking up certain books. Hate it.I hate gender policing in general because it limits all of us.

Secondly, although I'm fond of my book covers I can also see that while they may attract some readers, likewise they'll discourage others. So I've run with Jill Murray's idea (before I was published I used to regularly design mock covers for my stuff) and have re-imagined the covers of all my books to appeal to a different audience, chiefly, a more unisex one but also perhaps more literary in nature (maybe I'm having delusions of grandeur?). You'll notice I've avoided faces (faces on covers are a pet peeve of mine) and people in general and have instead concentrated on mood. Have a look and see what you think. Do these alternate covers make the books feel like different entities than the current covers suggest? Do they make you more interested in the books or less?

A few weeks ago I was over at my local shopping mall and dropped into the Coles to look for a book as a Mother's Day gift. The display I spied near the front entrance was just like a thousand other teen books displays you'd currently see in bookstores across Canada and the United Stations, which is to say that the novels gathered there looked almost indistinguishable from each other. Most of them had some pretty young white girl (or part of her anyway, a big enough part that we could recognize her as an attractive young white woman), usually not doing much of anything, on the front.

Covers like this seem to very nearly be a default in YA publishing these days and in some ways I'm a little hesitant to be critical of aspects of this trend because we live in a culture where female stories generally don't get put on the big screen, for example. Hollywood doesn't believe young men (who they feel are their main ticket buyers - erroneously I may add because MPAA stats from 2010 show that women and men go to see movies in equal numbers) want to see movies about girls and women and consequently are very reluctant to produce many. Women can be eye candy in films, sure. They can be girlfriends, wives or peripheral characters but movies that feature a woman in the lead role are few and far between. A 2008 study that tracked women on screen and behind the scenes in the top 100 grossing films from that year found that males vastly outnumber females in speaking roles. Of 4,370 speaking roles, only 1,435 ( 32.8%) of those roles were female. Girls aged 13-20 were also hypersexualized in films at a rate of 39.8% vs. only 6.7% for boys.

The Geena Davis Institute has researched gender inequality in media aimed at young children and those same issues exist there too. “For every female character there are three male characters in G-rated films. In group scenes, fewer than one in five characters are female.” Their research also showed that when female characters do exist in media, "most are highly stereotyped and/or hyper-sexualized", with female characters in G-rated films wearing virtually the same amount of sexually revealing clothing as those in R-rated films.

So in that light the publishing notion that a young woman can sell a story without being a sex object seems positive. However, many of these covers feature young women that could be (and probably are) fashion models which is one problem (isn't even the fashion industry trying to veer away from the idea that a girl needs to be be a size two to represent them?). Another is that there's a marked lack of diversity on display. Where have all the teenage boys gone? Where are all the black and Asian girls? And does making novels look like carbon copies of each other really help sell them? Really? Really?

In my opinion ideally a book cover should give potential readers a hint about the story inside, not just offer a snapshot of a super idealized version of the main character or his girlfriend. When I say the 'story inside' I don't just mean the plot but the tone of the novel. Is it wistful? Funny? Tragic? Off the wall? A cover should illustrate what's unique about a book, rather than seeking to make it look generic.

Admittedly, I've heard my own publisher say that bookstores want girls on the covers of my books (seemingly even when they're actually as much, if not more, about boys!). But I have trouble understanding the big chain stores' dedication to this default. It seems a little like running a café where the manager has labelled every dessert as New York Cheesecake (because hey, cheesecake is popular!), although when a customer's order arrives at their table they may well find it tastes more like key lime pie or a banana split. Wouldn't this irritate the customers who were actually expecting cheesecake? And what about the people who were hoping for something other than cheesecake but don't realize key lime pie and banana splits are on offer because the manager has placed all their eggs in the cheesecake basket?

As an illustration of the cheesecake issue, here are two different covers of a warm, original young adult novel about loss, friendship, family and memory. It's a book with three dimensional characters that I greatly admired and was sorry to say goodbye to.

The first cover is the U.K. one and obviously takes its inspiration from an airmail envelope. It looks extremely creative and dynamic, like a story that we haven't read before. Something fresh and original. On the other hand, when Broken Soup was later released stateside it was with a cover that didn't reveal a thing about the book's feel or contents. Voila today's default cover. Is it an attractive cover? Yeah, sure. It looks just fine. But I'm not sure what would make someone pick up this book rather than the one next to it on the shelf unless they already knew something about Broken Soup (which, incidentally, everyone who is into YA should read because Jenny Valentine is an amazing writer).

Now of course I'm not saying there shouldn't be any attractive white girls on YA covers because there are some extremely creative, individualistic looking covers featuring just such people. But I am saying it doesn't make sense to have any one single default template for book covers because it does novels a disservice by suggesting they're telling the exact same story in the exact same way. It makes it seem that if you don't want to read that similar story again and again maybe there's just not that much out there for you read, which I don't happen to believe is true (although unfortunately some terrific YA books may not have made it into your nearest chain store if their covers or subject matter don't blend in well with the rest).

I realize there are trends in publishing and the popularity of the current default cover is bound to fade and be replaced with some other default in time but it would be tremendous if we could bulldoze the idea of putting together generic covers entirely and allow designers some room to, you know, be creative. This is supposed to be a creative industry, no?

Having said that, there are still teen books out there that have managed to avoid the current generic default cover trap and I want to show off some of my favourite such covers from the last couple of years. Each of the below covers links to the author's website or blog and at the briefest glance gives you a clue what it would feel like to read the stories contained within. Vive la différence!

Shame on the two Canadian sportcasters (Alain Goldberg and Claude Mailhot) who made homophobic remarks about figure skater Johnny Weir on French-language sports channel RDS last Tuesday and Thursday. The duo later offered an on-air apology and the sports channel gave the following statement: “All discriminatory statements, or those appearing discriminatory, have neither a place in society nor in media.”

So, yes, there's been an apology but that doesn't erase the ugliness of the words or their impact, not strictly on Johnny Weir who seems tough enough to take it (although I wish he didn't have to be) but cumulatively on the other boys and girls out there who might take societal gender policing messages to heart and be less daring, less themselves because to be true to oneself so often seems to mean facing off against a world of intolerance.

When Access Hollywood's guest correspondent Dorothy Hamill read the small-minded comments to Weir he responded by saying, “Every little boy should be so lucky as to turn into me.” Agreed. We should all be as unafraid to be our genuine selves as Johnny Weir is!

I love, love in this clip from his TV show Be Good Johnny Weir, his advice to a young female skater having trouble with her jump that, "I was a taller girl too once and I had to learn to be comfortable with having longer arms, longer legs, everything."

You don't have to be good, Johnny, but stay brave. Stay gold!

There's been much controversy lately about CBS's decision to air an anti-choice commercial from Focus on the Family during the Super Bowl tomorrow. While CBS has no problem with an anti-choice message being promoted on their air-waves (hell, they even helped craft the ad!) they nixed a commercial for gay dating site ManCrunch.

CBS says the ManCrunch ad didn't meet network standards. Two consenting adults kissing in a not particularly racy way doesn't meet network standards? Isn't that the key ingredient that soap operas are made of? In fact, CBS made television history in 2007 when their soap As the World Turns became the first to broadcast a kiss between two men on daytime network TV—and then the first to show a male couple post-coital.

So what happened to progress, CBS? Oh, what an ugly mess of intolerance and paternalism!

But here's a commercial that's message I can totally get behind—check out professional football player Sean James and Olympic gold medalist Al Joyner speaking up about “trusting women with their own choices” in response to the upcoming anti-choice Super Bowl ad.

Some abortion stats & info:

* “Legal restrictions on abortion do not affect its incidence. For example, the abortion rate is 29 in Africa, where abortion is illegal in many circumstances in most countries, and it is 28 in Europe, where abortion is generally permitted on broad grounds. The lowest rates in the world are in Western and Northern Europe, where abortion is accessible with few restrictions.”

* “Nearly half of pregnancies among American women are unintended, and four in 10 of these are terminated by abortion.”

* “Where abortion is legal and permitted on broad grounds, it is generally safe, and where it is illegal in many circumstances, it is often unsafe. For example, in South Africa, the incidence of infection resulting from abortion decreased by 52% after the abortion law was liberalized in 1996.”

* “A broad cross section of U.S. women have abortions:
—56% of women having abortions are in their 20s
—61% have one or more children
—67% have never married
—57% are economically disadvantaged
—88% live in a metropolitan area
—78% report a religious affiliation”

* “An estimated 20 million unsafe abortions occurred in 2003, 97% of these in developing regions...Nearly half of all induced abortions are unsafe, putting the lives and health of women at major risk. Each year, about 70,000 women die due to unsafe abortion and an additional five million suffer permanent or temporary disability.”

Read yet more abortion facts from the * Guttmacher Institute.

Read sex ed site Scarleteen's article * Abortion—what it is, how it happens, what it feels like, how to deal—in plain type.

I've been busy with non-writing stuff lately and not able to post as often I'd like. But before busy times sweep in again I want to link to some recent Internet coolness, like the below video I saw discussed on the About-Face blog.

* Little Sophie, with the help of her mother, criticizes the intense pressure women face to be beautiful. “Why do you want to look like someone else?” she asks. “Do you want me to grow up wanting to look like someone else?” In fact, that's what alot of businesses want. It makes it easier to sell women (and men too) stuff they don't actually need and we should all be doing what we can to fight those negative influences. Good going, Sophie! You and your mom rock.

There's more coolness over at the ever-awesome Scarleteen sex ed site where fabulous Scarleteen founder Heather Corinna has penned an article called:

* Love the Glove: 10 Reasons to Use Condoms You Might Not Have Heard Yet. Teenagers aren't the only ones who should read this! There are plenty of young people who are smart about safe sex and plenty of adults who are dumb about it. Here's a peek at the article:

#2. Because barebacking isn't as cool as you think. I've been having a sense of déjà vu lately when hearing some hetero girls say they're "not into condoms" with a wink and a grin, or that they, unlike those other girls who use condoms and who they tend to frame as killjoys, are willing to go without condoms, in this way that rings of trying to aim for a certain social status by being the one willing to risk health and life... From my point of view, what I see in these cases is a young woman having some big esteem issues and who seems to feel it's worth it to risk her life and health for a temporarily increased sexual appeal. While our sexuality and our sexual relationships can support our self-esteem, they tend to be poor places to try and get self-esteem, especially if our sex lives involve a habit or precedent of not caring for ourselves and inviting or allowing others to treat us without real care.

And how about that #5: Because it feels good! Yep, check out the article if you want to find out why...

* You know how when people trot out that ol' adage “sex sells” they're more often than not talking about sexualized images of women being used to hawk everything under the sun? Yeah, well, it turns out that when it comes to movies, at least, that saying is BS. Melissa Silverstein over at Women & Hollywood has written about a new report that refutes the “sex sells” myth. The study, which was recently published in the Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts journal, analyzed 914 mainstream Hollywood films released from 2001 - 2005 and found that “sex and nudity do not, on the average, boost box office performance, earn critical acclaim, or win major awards.”

If anything, too much hard-core action could actually hurt a film's performance. On average, the less sex and nudity, the higher the gross. The more sex and nudity, the lower the gross — by approximately 31 per cent.

"All in all, it appears that sex may neither sell nor impress. This null effect might suggest most cinematic sex is in fact gratuitous," write the authors.

"It is manifest that anyone who argues that sex sells or impresses must be put on notice. At present, no filmmaker should introduce such content under the assumption that it guarantees a big box office, earns critical acclaim, or wins movie awards. On the contrary, other forms of strong film content appear far more
potent, either commercially or aesthetically.

 * Finally, you might well already know that Somalia-born, Toronto-raised hip-hop artist K'naan has the official World Cup 2010 tune (speaking of the World Cup, I'm still pissed that Ireland was robbed of a spot!) with a remixed version of Wavin' Flag. This song is an instant classic. One of those songs that get better every time you listen to it. Let's take a few minutes to soak up the inspiration...

TV depictions of violence against women have risen dramatically in just the past five years (while violence that occurred irrespective of gender only increased 2%.) Depictions of violence against teenage girls increased by an alarming 400% in that same period. Those findings, by a Parents Television Council report, note that the portrayals of violence against women, especially young women, "with increasing frequency, or as a trivial, even humorous matter, the networks may be contributing to an atmosphere in which young people view aggression and violence against women as normative, even acceptable."

Recently a public pro-rape Facebook group composed of students from a university in Sydney was uncovered (and subsequently shut down) in the sports and recreation section. The commander of the NSW Police sex crimes squad, Detective Superintendent John Kerlatec, said when operational, the Facebook page - tagged ''pro-rape, anti-consent'' - was ''inciting people to sexual violence''. In Richmond, California last month a fifteen year old girl was gang raped and beaten for more than two hours while twenty men and boys looked on, laughing and snapping photos. In the province of Ontario studies have shown that sexual assault against girls at school is so common that it's seen as the status quo.

This is the kind of atmosphere our young girls are growing up in. Hostile. With so much violence (or threats of violence) directed at them and shown to them in the form of entertainment that it's become an unhappy normal. Is it any wonder then, that a survey of Boston teenagers last winter reported that 46% felt Rihanna was responsible for the violent attack Chris Brown committed against her and 52% said both were responsible, despite knowing that Rihanna's injuries required hospital treatment?

As well, young women today are relentlessly bombarded with media messages that tell them their worth is rooted in being attractive, that their life's ambition should be to exist in a state of hotness twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. Much of the music industry glories in showing women purely as sex objects—and flawless ones at that. If you're unaware of the airbrushing that goes on in video, this article in Uplift Magazine is an eye-opener.

Obviously we need a hell of a lot more media out there ready to take girls' wellbeing into account and counter the overwhelming negativity (hooray for organizations like PinkStinks and About-Face!). And we need to fight to hold on to the good stuff like seven year old New Moon Magazine (100% advertising free) which is dedicated to lifting tween girls' aspirations, increasing their power, and giving them an outlet for their unique perspectives and voices. Unfortunately, New Moon has been hit very hard by the current recession and will have to close at the end of December if we can't help them out financially. I know it's a challenge for many of us to find extra money to donate to worthy causes during this economy, but take a look around a quick look around at the toxic media universe and you'll realize how important this is.

New Moon says you can help by:

" Sponsoring memberships for libraries, schools and programs serving low-income girls. It's quick and easy to sponsor one, ten or 100 girls - every dollar matters!

" Buying memberships for all girls 8-14 that you know. Our holiday special saves you 50% after the first order.

" Telling everyone what you value about New Moon. Link to us, and follow us on Facebook and Twitter and share with your FB friends and Tweeps."

Here's their donation page. You might also want to read about the "safe, secure and advertisement-free social network" they've created for girls 8-12.

Truly, New Moon is awesome. Let's help keep it alive for all the amazing tween girls out there.

I've been thinking a lot about bias, intolerance and hate lately. I've been thinking about:

* the racism and sexism Sonia Sotomayor has faced in being a U.S. Supreme Court nominee — the ludicrous idea that, unlike Sotomayor, white men carry no cultural or gender bias (read The Republic of T's blog on the Vulcan Standard for more on that) and are therefore uniquely able to be objective.

* the completely vile racism and sexism levelled at President Obama's eleven-year-old daughter Malia by posters on the Free Republic blog.

* Bloomsbury's attempt to white-wash the cover of Justine Larbalestier's YA book Liar about a black female protagonist.

* the results of a U.S. research project on how gender and race affect customer service perception.

These are all items I've read about during the past week or so and are ugly evidence of the deep toxic attitudes our culture holds about who is competent, who is worthy.

The Oklahoman apparently saw nothing the matter with running a cartoon captioned “Fiesta Time at the confirmation hearing” which featured Sotomayor strung up like like a piñata and with a rope around her neck suggesting lynching, a group of elephants lined up in the foreground to beat her with sticks. Recently posters on the Free Republic blog deemed eleven-year-old Malia Obama "a typical street whore" and "ghetto street trash" for wearing a peace-symbol shirt. And U.S. publisher Bloomsbury decided to stick the face of a white girl on a book about a black one with the teen novel Liar.

With controversy brewing about the decision author Justine Larbalestier decided to blog about her opposition to the cover and also stated that:

"I have been hearing anecdotes from every single house about how hard it is to push through covers with people of colour on them. Editors have told me that their sales departments say black covers don’t sell. Sales reps have told me that many of their accounts won’t take books with black covers. Booksellers have told me that they can’t give away YAs with black covers. Authors have told me that their books with black covers are frequently not shelved in the same part of the library as other YA—they’re exiled to the Urban Fiction section—and many bookshops simply don’t stock them at all."

Sadly, the publishing business and consumer bias against books with black characters on the cover seems to be in line with a societal bias in favour of white (specifically white male) doctors, bookstore clerks and golf store employees.

According to a paper that will be published later this year in the Academy of Management Journal a study examining customer service ratings for a health maintenance organization, golf courses and a mock bookstore found that “customers anonymously reported lower satisfaction with service from women and minority employees performing at the same level and offering the same service as white male employees.”

The researchers showed “female and minority (mostly Asian) physicians were consistently rated lower than white male doctors providing the same services. In fact, the more the female and minority doctors tried to provide better service, such as being available to patients, returning patients' emails and taking time to talk, the worse they scored.”

The bookstore and golf course research demonstrated a similar bias in favour of white males. Golfers gave lower ratings to “courses that employed high percentages of women and minorities, even when productivity and quality of the facilities were the same.” In the bookstore the scripts and behaviour of actors playing bookstore employees never varied yet people “gave the female and black male bookstore employees significantly lower ratings than the white male employees.”

I believe that with the current controversy over Justine Larbalestier's book, Bloomsbury will soon change their minds and ditch the white cover they'd planned for Liar. I think this controversy will also help deter publishers from white-washing books in the future. That may not automatically make them sell better but I have to believe that change is cumulative, and that the more we consciously challenge our own ingrained attitudes, and the more judges who don't fit the white male mold sit on the Supreme Court, and the more black characters we see on book covers, that the less likely someone will be to call an eleven year old African-American girl 'trash' or think a talented doctor is somehow less than because of the colour of his or her skin or an extra X chromosome.

I'm currently working some stuff out on page 182 of The Lighter Side of Life and Death and I think my computer has some kind of virus as Internet Explorer won't open certain websites that Firefox has no issue with but this video on anti same-sex marriage sentiments from Shoot The Messenger NYC was too funny not to post.

A Storm is Gathering:

Here's the real ad from the National Organization for Marriage, which, as you can see, is just as absurd. You can read about the lies this ad tells at End The Lies.org.

Last week lesbian and gay couples in Iowa and Vermont won the right to marry but right-wing groups are mounting a campaign to reverse the decision in Iowa with a constitutional marriage ban. If you want to stop the next Proposition 8 go to the Human Rights Watch campaign and send a message “thanking Iowa's leaders and urging them to resist right-wing pressure.”

* Tell Iowa's legislative leaders to stay strong – and stop the next Prop. 8!

And now I better go update my anti-virus software.

or
Skipping Double Dutch With A Y Chromosome

“When I was born, they looked at me and said,
'What a good boy, what a smart boy, what a strong boy.'
And when you were born, they looked at you and said,
'What a good girl, what a a smart girl, what a pretty girl.'

We've got these chains that hang around our necks,
people want to strangle us with them before we take our first breath.”

— What A Good Boy, Barenaked Ladies

I have to admit I cringe a little every time someone says, "It's a girl thing" or "It's a guy thing." Unless we're talking about menstruation or prostate glands, the phrase feels like a claustrophobic generalization, one of those subtle little things that help keep people hemmed inside pink or blue boxes. And then there are the articles that profess to tell us "What Men/Women Want." Huh? *All* of them? Is humanity really that easily pegged? Certainly the advertising industry and its clients are happy to define us in this ridiculously simplistic XX and XY way. If they can convince us who we are, then they can also convince us what we need in order to be that man or woman. Ka-ching!

But that division—manly things, female things—is a fiction. There are women and girls who prefer pursuits (careers, hobbies) that have traditionally been considered male and vice-versa. Girls can be tough. Guys can be sensitive. Girls can be techies and guys can be fashionistas. Girls can be competitive and guys can be nurturing. It should go without saying, right? But as a society we're still hung up on old ideas. We're living in a time that likes to think of itself as progressive but still largely defines people in terms of pink and blue. Hell, it was practically just yesterday (and no doubt there are people who still believe this) that society believed boys were naturally better at math than girls. Who knows how many women have been persuaded that they likely won't succeed at math oriented careers because of these ideas? And how many men have avoided more 'feminine' careers because of attitudes evidenced in the Nike ad on the right (printed in the latest issue of CMYK magazine)?

Yep, that's right. It actually says “raise a champion” (not a loser ballet dancer son!). Heaven forbid if on top of raising a ballet dancer son, your daughter becomes an auto mechanic! How would you ever live down the double whammy shame?

But thankfully there are people out there who see through the whole gender as binary pretense and have the guts to be themselves, even when that means facing down social pressure and/or bullying.

Thanks to Feministing, for pointing me in the direction of this New York Times article on fifth grader double dutch competitor ZeAndre Orr.

ZeAndre was often harassed at his Brooklyn school for joining the Jazzy Jumpers team ("At any given practice, there can be as many as 60 jumpers. Of those, only two are boys.") and was even kicked down the stairs on one occasion. Even his mother's initial reaction to ZeAndre joining the team was, “Oh, no, Double Dutch is for girls!”

However, ZeAndre wasn't easily dissuaded. Last month he performed at the Holiday Classic Double Dutch Competition at the Apollo Theater. Holding his trophies in the lobby afterwards, a beaming ZeAndre said: “This was my time to shine.”

ZeAndre's story reminded me of a Shameless Magazine article by sixteen-year-old Trevor Dunseith in which Trevor discusses the common (incorrect) assumption that he's gay because he happens to like knitting, the colour pink and isn't a sports fan. It also reminded me of nine year old Nova Scotia girl Lydia Houck who sought to attend a boys-only summer day camp which included activities like fishing, hiking and golfing (meanwhile the only camp created specifically for girls was called "Glamorous Girls" and featured spa visits, manicures and pedicures).

Thanks to ZeAndre, Lydia, Trevor, and the family and friends who support them in their efforts to show their authentic selves to the world. You all make it that much easier for other young people to do the same.

Following their example, together we can strive to create a society where happiness, health and having respect for others is paramount—and labels and constraining expectations (whether they be based on gender, race, sexual orientation etc.) can be relegated to the past.

Brooklyn's Jazzy Jumpers:

***Update***

According to CMYK’s publisher, Curtis Clarkson, the "Raise a champion" ad isn't actually Nike's. “The 'advertisement' is actually the work of an art design student.” Nike had no part in its creation. Read more details here.

So far the Republican election campaign in the States hasn't featured a puffin pooping on Barack Obama's head (if the current Canadian election is a mystery to you, click here to read about the Conservative party's puffin antics) but they're certainly experts in deceit and distortion. For instance, Senator McCain would have us believe his support for U.S. troops has been unwavering but in fact, "John McCain has voted no over 10 times on pro-veteran and active service member issues such as healthcare and body armor." Check out some of the bold-faced lies the McCain campaign has been telling both about Obama and McCain's own record:

And Palin is no feminist(except in the 2+2=5 1984 sense.)

"While Sarah Palin was mayor of Wasilla, Alaska, the police department was charging rape victims for their own rape kits." According to former Alaska Governor Tony Knowles, "There was one town in Alaska that was charging victims for this, and that was Wasilla." (*Alaska's rape rate is double the national average.) Wasilla Police Chief Charlie Fannon was a Palin appointee and given that the population of Wasilla is less than 10,000 people, it's highly unlikely she would've been unaware of this practice.

Sarah Palin doesn't believe in abortion, even in cases of rape and incest. (A report by the Center for American Progress found that "a significant correlation exists between childhood sexual abuse and teen pregnancy. An estimated 60% of teen girls’ first pregnancies are preceded by experiences of molestation, rape, or attempted rape. In one study, between 30 and 44% of teen mothers were victims of rape or attempted rape, and up to 20% of girls were pregnant as the direct result of rape.")

But at the same time Palin is unsupportive of pregnant teens (other than her own). Earlier this year she "used her line-item veto to slash funding for a state program benefiting teen mothers in need of a place to live."

In the words of Gloria Steinem:

“Palin...opposes just about every issue that women support by a majority or plurality. She believes that creationism should be taught in public schools but disbelieves global warming; she opposes gun control but supports government control of women's wombs; she opposes stem cell research but approves "abstinence-only" programs, which increase unwanted births, sexually transmitted diseases and abortions; she tried to use taxpayers' millions for a state program to shoot wolves from the air but didn't spend enough money to fix a state school system with the lowest high-school graduation rate in the nation; she runs with a candidate who opposes the Fair Pay Act but supports $500 million in subsidies for a natural gas pipeline across Alaska; she supports drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Reserve, though even McCain has opted for the lesser evil of offshore drilling.”

McCain & Palin voice their anti-choice views:

Presidential Vice President nominee Palin also appears to take issue with the idea of intellectual freedom, something Time Magazine, The Boston Herald and The New York Times have written about and blogs such as Finding Wonderland: The WritingYA Weblog and AS IF! (Authors Support Intellectual Freedom) have picked up on.

Shortly after becoming mayor, former city officials and Wasilla residents said, Ms. Palin approached the town librarian about the possibility of banning some books, though she never followed through and it was unclear which books or passages were in question.

Anne Kilkenny, a Democrat who said she attended every City Council meeting in Ms. Palin’s first year in office, said Ms. Palin brought up the idea of banning some books at one meeting. 'They were somehow morally or socially objectionable to her,' Ms. Kilkenny said.

The librarian, Mary Ellen Emmons, pledged to 'resist all efforts at censorship,' Ms. Kilkenny recalled. Ms. Palin fired Ms. Emmons shortly after taking office but changed course after residents made a strong show of support.

To find out more about why countless female voters don't want Palin anywhere near the office of Vice President check out the Women Against Sarah Palin blog.