had the good sense to applaud that.
“And dressing like hookers reinforces that!” Spike added.
But then, “We have the right to dress however we want!” someone in the crowd insisted.
Yes! Jane thought. Even if you’re an office temp. Because god knows, she was sick of not getting assignments because she wore sensible shoes.
“But you also have the responsibility to consider the message you’re sending,” Spike replied. “If dressing like a hooker isn’t an invitation, what is?”
“The word ‘YES’.” The other woman on the stage still had the mic. “Clearly spoken, voluntarily. Anything else is just a ‘maybe’.”
“Oh, I like that,” Jane said.
“Except that it ignores the communicative value of non-verbal signals,” Spike muttered.
“And anyway what’s wrong with having sex with more than one person?” Jane asked as they walked back to their car, bookless. She’d obviously leap-frogged backwards a bit. Spike didn’t mind. She’d kind of collapsed in the middle of a cartwheel.
“Men are willing to support only their own biological offspring, so if a woman has sex with anyone other than him, he’ll never know which of her kids are his.”
“Oh, right. I forgot for a moment that men define everything.”
“No, wait a minute,” she said a moment later, “we have paternity tests.”
“Emasculating. To have to have one done.”
“Ah. Better to shame the woman for perfectly acceptable behaviour.”
They got into their car.
“Did you know that spouses are the leading cause of death for pregnant women in the U.S.?” Spike asked as she turned the ignition. “That is, men who make women pregnant then kill them for being pregnant.”
“Maybe they’re thinking they weren’t the one who made her pregnant.” While Jane thought about the grammar of what she’d just said, Spike considered the implication.
“So better to just kill the woman than get a paternity test,” she said.
Jane thought about that. Because it was way more interesting than grammar.
“They want us to be sluts,” she said. “And then they kill us for being sluts.”
4
Half an hour later, they parked on a side street off Rue Saint-Denis and walked a couple of blocks to Sophie’s Croissant Café. Now they both really needed chocolate.
“Women have no idea,” Spike said as they walked, already trying to figure out how the SlutWalk Moment of Truth had gone so wrong, “how much men fail to see them as anything but sexual.”
Jane agreed. “Though, to be fair,” she said, “most men see themselves that way too. Physical strength, financial wealth”—she looked around her—“visible underwear—they’re all just proxies for sexual prowess.”
“Wow,” Jane said as soon as they entered the café. Scattered throughout were a dozen little tables, all white marble and gold filigree, each with two little chairs just as ornate. Jane walked toward the first grouping, fascinated with the intricate detail. It was so … baroque. Spike drew her attention upward then, to the three chandeliers, all crystal and gold and somehow lace. Jane circled each one, absolutely amazed.
They claimed a table, eventually, in the corner by the window. A bit private, a bit watch-Montreal-while-we’re-here.
Jane struggled with her high school French to place their order. Two plain pain au chocolat, one for her, one for Spike, then another one, with chestnut cream, for her, and two cups of tea. She was perfectly aware that the waiter’s English was probably much better than her French, but she wanted to make the gesture. It was appreciated, judging by the smile playing in his eyes. Either that or she’d ordered a horse in a hat.
“So,” Jane opened, “we really need to figure out what we think about SlutWalks.” They’d avoided the issue to date. Like many second-wavers, they’d assumed the young fun femme faction would become fringe, not mainstream, feminism.
“Yeah,” Spike said.
She waited until their tea and pain au chocolat was in front of them. And Jane had taken her first bite. No point in starting before then.
“I blame Beyoncé,” she said. “Remember that one song she does, while behind her, projected on the backdrop, are quotes from—actually, I don’t know—”
“Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.”
Spike stared at her, surprised. Well, not really. But still. “How do you know this stuff?”
Jane shrugged, and took another bite of her pain au chocolat.
“Anyway, one of the quotes is something like ‘Girls are raised to see each other as competitors, not for jobs or accomplishments, but for the attention of men.’ And while it’s projected, Beyoncé struts across the stage clearly primped for the attention of men.”
Jane nodded. “It’s like those ads for pick-up trucks, where the greenhouse-gas-emitting and fracking-motivating, hence groundwater-contaminating and land-destroying, truck drives through pristine forest over clear streams against blue skies.”
Spike stared at her again. This time because she didn’t know what was more impressive about Jane’s statement, its content or its form. “Yeah. It’s like that. Exactly.”
Jane grinned. Then continued. “There’s a complete disconnect. It’s as if Beyoncé is utterly oblivious to the contradiction between …”—she searched for the accurate pairing—“the medium and the message, no, the appearance and the reality, the action and the consequence—”
“Or she is aware of it,” Spike suggested, “and she’s just using—whatever sells.”
“Feminism sells?” News to her.
“Superficially. The appeal to equality, power …”
“Ah. Well, I suppose that’s encouraging …”
“Or not. What’ll happen when Beyoncé’s fans discover that she was right about the end, but horribly mistaken about the means?”
“Mistaken about the means or mistaken that there is a means? To that end.”
“The latter.”
They imagined liberal feminists becoming radical feminists. En masse.
If only.
Then, since Jane had
