Livre d'Or

A troupe of all but naked burlesque dancers is a novel way of protesting that feminism is good and violence against women is bad. Actually, when I saw them my first thought was, guys, it's 7 degrees and raining, you really need some more clothes. My second thought was, oh, it's supposed to be "sexy". Only subsequently did I realize that they are meant to be part of the feminist demo that the college is running today.

When I first saw posters advertising the event "Demonstration about violence against women", my response was a bit, meh. Even the most sexist of chauvinists is not going to be in favour of violence against women, and having a protest about it is not going to convince the few psychos who are pro-violence. Recently, the posters with more detailed info have gone up and apparently the full title is a "Day of feminist protest about men's violence against women and children". That really put me off, because lumping women together with children as vulnerable people that one has a duty to protect doesn't seem to me to be a particularly feminist way of regarding the issue.

The girls with nipple tassles and thongs dancing in the rain with more enthusiasm than skill haven't really changed my mind on this. Violence is bad, duh. Demonstrating to that effect seems singularly pointless, and dividing up violence according to the gender of the victims is possibly even counter-productive. In as far as feminism is about working against anti-women violence, I am pro-feminist (as any sensible person would be). But if feminism is about devoting one's resources to methods that are likely to be totally ineffective, then even if the cause is worthy, I can't be bothered.

There were quite a few couples on the tour with us. OK, fair enough. But there were also two girls, an anglophone Canadian and a French Canadian, who I was 95% convinced were together. But they were doing the very careful not touching thing, and I felt so sad for them, surrounded by all these straight couples who were happily snuggling up together. And I really wanted to tell them, well, there's at least one person here who accepts you.

But I didn't know how to say it tactfully, without offending them if in fact they turned out not to be a couple. The fact that I was one of the people doing the blatantly het thing didn't make it easier. Does anyone have any suggestions as to the etiquette in such situations?

It's somewhat depressing that the situation should exist in the first place though. Even if I was wrong about these particular girls, it's a very likely occurence that a same sex couple, travelling with a group of strangers, would feel obliged to hide the fact that they were together.