Our Long Municipal Nightmare Continues

The latest RobFuckingFordFiasco is still developing, so maybe I should hold off.

But what the hell? Lookit that picture!

After a bunfest last night sponsored by Canadian Jewish Political Affairs Committee (whatever that is), Sarah Thomson, former mayoral candidate and no fave here at DJ!, posted that photo to her Facebook page with some allegations.

Former mayoral candidate Sarah Thomson says she wants an apology from Mayor Rob Ford for allegedly touching her inappropriately and making a suggestive remark to her at a party on Thursday night.

“He told me he was in Florida and I should have been with him because his wife wasn’t there,” Thomson told the Star on Friday. “I didn’t expect that. Rob doesn’t normally act that way towards women, so I was a little bit shocked and then we posed to get our picture taken and he grabbed my ass during the pose.”

Starting last night and ramping up as I type, all kinds of claims of lies and set-ups and drunkenness and substance abuse are flying around.

Ford's defenders are very LOUD. They're saying Thomson's story changed, she was drinking, Ford was NOT drinking (lookit that picture again), Thomson's out to get Ford etfuckingcetera.

She's being criticized for taking it to Facebook, for not being more discrete, again etfuckingcetera.

In short, she's being trashed.

However this turns out, on International Women's Day, we have yet another example of two seemingly eternal features of the patriarchy.

1. However a woman handles a sexual assault, it's the wrong way.

2. Women lie and can't be believed over men. No matter the circumstances.

Here's Neville Park's tidy summation.

She's well-connected, moneyed, with every privilege; he's widely disliked, history of lying—what chance do any of *us* have? #TOpoli #IWD
— Neville Park (@neville_park) March 8, 2013

Happy International Women's Day. Ford's timing is, as always, impeccable.

Bonus: Right now, Thomson and Daniel Dale of the Star are doing a live online interview. I assume it will remain available at that link when it's over. If not, I'll come back and update.

Added by deBeauxOs - Since Rob Fucking Ford's credibility is at issue, just thought I'd stick this in here, too.

Mayor Rob Ford has angered teachers and parents at the Etobicoke high school where he coaches football — and prompted an investigation by the Catholic school board — with comments the teachers say depicted the school in a “demeaning way that was filled with untruths.”

Read the whole story.


UPDATE (12:45 p.m.) Team Ford is going with Total Mystified Denial. Not She Misinterpreted. Not I Apologize Not That I Did Anything Wrong.

And not only denial. He calls her a liar. As in this gob-smacking sentence.

What is more surprising is that a woman who has aspired to be a civic leader would cry wolf on a day where we should be celebrating women across the globe.

I believe that wolf will come back to bite him on his MASSIVE ass.

Where are the 'prolifers'?

Why aren't they working against pregnancy discrimination?

It's on the rise in Canada.

The number of pregnancy-related discrimination complaints appears to be on the rise, according to the chairman of New Brunswick's Human Rights Commission.

It is one of the most common complaints the commission deals with, said Randy Dickinson, calling the situation disconcerting.

In the past year, the commission has received 141 inquiries from employees and employers and eight written complaints related to pregnancy, he said.

It's up by 50% in BC.

And it never went away in the USA.

Female firefighters required to take pregnancy tests--and test negative--to be hired.

A pregnant truck driver fired after requesting "light duty" work per her doctor's recommendations.

A pregnant sales clerk told to get an abortion by her supervisor.

Stories from the dark ages of working women's history? Sorry.

This is fresh stuff from last month's long overdue hearing by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC). These shocking, blatant attacks on working women are going on more than three decades after passage of the 1978 Pregnancy Discrimination Act, which requires most employers to treat pregnant women the same as other applicants or employees.

Instead, Canadian antichoicers are co-opting International Women's Day to -- surprise! -- protest abortion. *sigh*

In Calgary, where fetus fetishists are already pissing off people with the usual gory pictorial lies stuffed in mailboxes:

[t]hey plan to circulate their postcard featuring a quote by anti-abortion suffragette Alice Paul who said, “How can one protect and help women by killing them as babies?”

Today on IWD they're protecting just the 'pre-born women'. (Click the link; they actually use that phrase.)

You know, instead of speaking up for happily pregnant, post-born women who just want to keep their fucking jobs.

(Consider this my obligatory IWD post.)

Obligatory IWD Post

'Euphoria is not victory.'
-- From an article by Robert Freeman I plan to blog on later.

Today in Tahrir Square in Cairo, fifty* women rallied for women's rights on International Women's Day. I followed pakinamamer and Egyptocracy, women who were there.

They report that they were shouted at, groped, and intimidated. By ordinary Egyptian men.

They left, telling women on their way into the square to forget it.

Egyptocracy said:

Women of #Egypt, we have a long way to go.

She was echoed by anameenana:

Sexism and inequality sadly remain wide spread in #Egypt #Jan25 can NEVER be a success if women remained 2nd class citizens

My feelings on IWD align pretty well with Antonia Z's.

Sorry, but I can't get it up for International Women's Day.

And the Voice on CBC's The Current, who this morning said something like: 'It's International Women's Day. To politicians, cue the empty rhetoric.'

Fuck IWD.

(Ha. Just came here to post this and saw that my virtual roomie and I agree. Again.)

*CORRECTION: Tweeps are now saying the number was around 200.

Are we equals?

Go read Antonia Zerbezias, here. It's where I found the YouTube above, and re-posted it.

We need two versions of this PSA for Canada. I'd cast Kiefer Sutherland, with a voice-over by Kate Nelligan. En français, Roy Dupuis et Sophie Faucher.

BREAKING! Vatican Discovers Washing Machine, Misunderstands Its Significance

As if we needed any further evidence of the Vatican's complete cluelessness, after it endorsed the excommunication of the Brazilian mother and doctors involved in the abortion performed on a 9-year-old girl impregnated by her rapist step-father, today, on International Woman's Day, there's this:

Washing machine brought rights to women: Vatican

VATICAN CITY -- The washing machine has had a greater liberating role for women than the pill, the official Vatican daily said in an International Women's Day commentary Sunday.

"The washing machine and the emancipation of women: put in the powder, close the lid and relax," said the headline on the article in Osservatore Romano.

"In the 20th century, what contributed most to the emancipation of western women?" questioned the article.

"The debate is still open. Some say it was the pill, others the liberalisation of abortion, or being able to work outside the home. Others go even further: the washing machine," it added.

Yes, indeedy, the Vatican goes even further. Into absolute and total irrelevancy.

I stole that delightful photo of Ratso from Antonia Z.

UPPITY-DATE: In the comments, Anonymous provides a link to the article in Italian and says that it is written tongue in cheek. Who among us reads Italian well enough to call bullshit say? Paging LuLu perhaps?

FURTHER UPPITY-DATE: Anonymous provides a working link to the original article in Italian. It's at Free Republic (big surprise).