Campaign 2015: New Twist on "No Country for Old White Men"

It's almost over, folks. The longest, and dare I say, dirtiest election campaign in Canadian history will soon be toast.

I'm not going to speculate on the outcome -- I'm barely hanging on to my sanity as it is -- but I thought I should provide a round-up of the campaigns from a prochoice perspective.

We all know that Harper is the worst prime minister ever but he's been particularly awful for women of all sorts, and of course even worse for Muslim, Indigenous, and other minority women. Here's Shit Harper Did's look at his record, titled: "Shush baby! Just look pretty. 17 ways the Conservative government has controlled you like a terrible boyfriend."

The 2011 campaign had its bozo eruptions on the misogynist front, but Harper managed to maintain his tight-lipped "my government will not reopen the abortion debate" mantra.

And the stenographers we laughingly call the mainstream media mostly reported just that.

This time, though, there has been a little more attention paid to the most basic of women's rights, abortion. (Call me old school feminist, but if we don't have control of our reproductive lives, all the pay equity in the world means squat.)

Press Progress published a totally predictable list of 86 CON anti-choice candidates.

All the usual suspects are there with a couple of wee twists.

Blogger Robert Jago has been digging into the online lives of CON candidates and found some interesting stuff. We reported on one of his finds, religious nutbar, antichoice homophobe Toyin Dada.

He also found Saskatchewan's Michael Kram in a literal cover-up of his extremist views, which the CBC ran with.

No MSM was interested in Toyin, though.

Another minor bozo eruption occurred when old comments by Manitoba candidate "Professor Popsicle", Gordon Geisbrecht, made the news. Supposedly a scientist, he equated the number of abortions to "a 9/11 every day."

None of this is surprising, really.

What's new this time, is the explicit statement by Justin Trudeau that the "Liberal" party would no longer tolerate antichoice voting by its old white farts. This caused a stir among the fetus freaks who responded with gore and hyperbole in its No 2 Trudeau mission.

What was more interesting to us was the double-plus good rating given by Campaign Lie to London-Fanshawe Liberal Khalil Ramal from his time as an Ontario MPP.

He apparently promised never to act on his misogynist and homophobic beliefs and that made it A-OK with the "Liberals."

Another poser, though, came from the chest-beatingly prochoice NDP who are also running a anti-abortion, anti-same-sex-marriage candidate, K.M. Shanthikumar.

He too said: "Hahahahaha. Only blowing dog whistles for my peeps" and that made it peachy-keen with the NDP brain trust.

Among the grassroots, in addition to the gore-fest of No 2 Trudeau, the underground gas line marker gang got on their bus for what they styled Life Tour.

These efforts resulted in a couple of local news stories in antediluvian Saskatchewan, here and here.

But overall, abortion has not played much of a role in this election.

WHICH IS AS IT SHOULD BE in a country with a long-established and proud record of upholding women's rights to bodily autonomy.

And while we're pleased that an organization with a bit more reach than the Abortion Rights Coalition of Canada or bloggers like us found some time to publish a list of avowed misogynists, we're rather concerned that both PROCHOICE parties, the NDP and the Liberals, are allowing antichoice homophobes to run.

Both candidates, we note, are from visible minority groups and presumably are expected to have some extra clout in those communities.

So, the take-away: the prochoice parties are saying quietly: we don't really expect (targetted) minority groups to assimilate to the law of the land when it comes to women's rights.

Because, as everyfuckingbody on the planet knows -- women's rights are always negotiable.

Or, as we said before, Canada may be "no country for old(stock) white men," but it seems it's fine for New Stock Men.