It is a new year, and after a much needed break I am back to blogging only to find without any surprises that we are still living in a sex negative world.  The most current story right now is about the woman in Delhi who was gang raped and murdered by allegedly 5 men.  Upon reading this story, the outcry from the populous about woman’s rights and how when the father reported his daughter missing the police tried to sluff it off as her just running off with a friend.  Why are woman’s rights not equal in status around the world to men.  How can we possibly have a conversation and movement towards the sex positive if we are not even equal with men?

I wrote previously about how we need to stop debating woman’s bodies in politics.  And that is true in North America, we should no longer debate the do’s or don’t s surrounding what woman are allowed to do to keep their own bodies safe, and operating in the most sex positive way that works for them.  We are individuals who should be free to choose, especially once the age of consent is reached.  However, I reluctantly admit that there are a multitude of third world nations that need to start debating.  They need to debate to start recognizing woman and their bodies as actual beings and not mere property.  As something to derive pleasure from and not fear and hatred.

Over the Christmas Break I read a book called “Nine Parts of Desire: The Hidden World of Islamic Women” by Geraldine Brooks, and it absolutely opened my eyes to a few things that I tried really hard to ignore.  I did not believe that this mentality of female hatred affected me, however more and more I am finding that there is a direct correlation between how I am treated by men of middle eastern dissent in my own country and how they view woman.  On New Years Eve I was ignored by our cab driver who only wanted to interact with E.  As luck would have it, it was my turn to pay and the cab driver was noticeably upset that he had to accept payment from me.  At the time this did not seem such a big deal to me, but that is part of the problem.  That I myself, am taking an apathetic response to being treated as less than a man by an individual who is working in Canada.  There is no reason that I should accept being treated as unequal, and yet whenever it happens my first reaction is shock, then I say to myself that they just do not know any better and let it slide.  And the reality is that with that mentality nothing changes.