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Image courtesy of Soulpepper.
The Boar recently sat down with Jim Warren, director of UW Drama’s Fall ‘09 production of The Government Inspector written by Nikolai Gogol. Warren is a veteran Canadian theatre professional especially renowned for his work in clown and physical theatre.
Sukhpreet Sangha: What brought you to be a guest director for UW Drama, both now and when you directed Tartuffe in Winter ‘08?
Jim Warren: Gerd [Hauck, department chair]. We met in ‘95 at U of T when I was teaching there and he was an associate professor. I had actually just finished directing The Government Inspector at George Brown and bumped into Gerd at Soulpepper. He asked me to come direct at UW. I try to go to a school once a year, if possible. But it can be a bit tricky to schedule.
SS: Why is it important to you to work at schools so regularly?
JW: The process time for a production is often longer. It also forces me to articulate and clarify stuff that you do instinctively, professionally. To question the process, and it works as a great reminder of where my process came from, initially. The need to be teaching, as well, means that I need to be clearer about what I want and why. There is also an emphasis on process in the school environment that professional theatre doesn’t always have.
SS: Is it also a bit about giving back, from the expertise you’ve gained through all of your professional work?
JW: Yeah, I think altruistically it is that too. Saying this is what I’ve learned… In case it’s any use to you. The more diverse palette of ideas that students can have the better off they’ll be. So I think it’s great for institutions to bring in guest professionals.
SS: How do you navigate working with students versus typically working with professionals and the potential difference in standards present there?
JW: How I work is not any different. I operate the same way that I would normally. Dealing with casting, there aren’t many shows that don’t call for an older character; you have to make an adjustment for what you’re trying to get at. I still try to look for the quality of the person: how well they can relate to the feelings of that character, who is best suited to play the role and the age… The emphasis becomes more about what the students’ experience is than on me as a director. I’m more concerned with what they’re getting out of the experience of working on the show than focused on areas of my work professionally.
SS: What is it about The Government Inspector that continually draws you to it, especially considering that you’ve worked on it multiple times now both professionally and with students?
JW: I’m always interested in that balance of exposing real and serious issues through comedy. The point of this play is to expose the idiocy of human behaviour. Things said through comedy can have more lasting effect than a serious play. Things can be said about human behaviour in a less earnest way. There is always a distinct point-of-view or satire or exposing of an issue or something to that effect in the best comedies; they try to shake things up. And this play is classic that. And very, very accessible I think.
SS: What do you think is the current relevance of this play?
JW: The fact that it’s set in 1830’s Russia and that the same corruption is still present today. Our choice to keep it relatively in period makes that clearer. It shows the elements then and their reflection now. It’s also a rather storied play that is constantly reinterpreted. People revisit this play often. The characters are fantastic to play; it will continue to turn up.
We did some adapting of this translation ourselves. Took out some Britishisms. Added some extra “idiot”s. When in doubt, say idiot. We adapted the opening; all of the changes were specific to this company of actors and this production. This play has such a history of extreme adaptations so we didn’t feel too disrespectful. Others have changed a lot more.
SS: Could you comment on the dramatic change in tone at the end of the production?
JW: The hope is to not make them caricatures. It was always intended for there to be a serious tone and consequences to these characters’ actions. The people’s situation is desperate. Government officials experience corrupt enjoyment at the expense of all else. Gogol always intended for there to be a fear running throughout the play; he always said there should be a sense of consequence and seriousness to the comedy. That is always a tricky balance to achieve with this play. I don’t know if we achieved it or if there’s an overbalance to the comedy. So even through the comedy we were trying to thread in that mean-spirited tone.
UW Drama’s production of The Government Inspector continues through November 21st.
The dispute over the ownership of the Haldimand Land Grant, near Caledonia, Ontario, stretches back to 1841 when the Chiefs of the Six Nations allegedly agreed to surrender the land to the Canadian government, to be sold on their behalf.
In February 2006, plans for the immediate commercial development of a portion of the disputed territory – what later became known as the Douglas Creek Estates – sparked a confrontation which has yet to be resolved. The problems raised by the land claim are certainly complex, requiring, as Dalton McGuinty frequently stated, efforts to achieve a “long-term solution.” The situation was further complicated by the conflicting pressures for the provincial government to, on one hand, take an active role in resolving the conflict, and on the other, avoid pursuing aggressive policies like those which have been blamed for the death of Dudley George during the 1995 Ipperwash Crisis.
However, the government failed to recognize that short-term developments such as changing attitudes of the Native protesters and the non-Native inhabitants of Caledonia could have a significant effect on the “long-term solution” that it sought.
The provincial government’s failure to change its approach to resolving the conflicting claims contributed to a build-up of tension and ill-will that led to the events of May 22, 2006 in which Six Nations protesters occupied the construction site and severely impeded the resolution of the issue.
Some historical background is necessary in order to understand the conflict. In 1784, the Six Nations were allowed to “take possession of and settle” the Haldimand Grant, which consisted of approximately 385,000 hectares along the Grand River in return for their support of the British during the American Revolution. This amount was reduced to 111, 000 hectares in 1792, and in 1845, land which had allegedly been ceded, or passed over to the government, was sold to third parties.
The source of the debate which would arise over a century later, and which would erupt into open conflict in 2006, was the exact nature of the Six Nations’ concessions to the Crown. In 1841, the Six Nations council authorized the government to dispose of all lands not set aside for a reserve and to invest the money for them. In 1844, forty seven Six Nations Chiefs signed a document that purportedly transferred these lands to the Crown. One group of Six Nations members objected to the transaction at the time, arguing that the council had been “deceived and intimidated,” and called for the land to be leased rather than sold.
On the basis of these documents the Canadian government would later claim full legal rights to the land while the Six Nations would maintain that the documents were not legitimate and that their land rights to a 10 km-wide area of land along the Grand River had therefore never been surrendered. The matter resurfaced in a 1995 “accounting suit,” which maintained that the government had failed to deliver the proceeds from these sales to the Six Nations. Obviously, the matter of the Haldimand Grant had been on the radar for several years. However, it was not until early in 2006 that the question of the legitimacy of the 1841 and 1844 agreements would assume critical importance.
In 1992, Henco Industries purchased a company that owned 40 hectares of land that had once been part of the Haldimand Grant. In 2005, it registered plans to develop a subdivision on what it named the Douglas Creek Estates. Six Nations members vehemently protested the development, arguing (based on a repudiation of the 1844 document) that the title of the land had never left the possession of the Six Nations.
On February 28, 2006, four months after elected chief David General had warned Henco Industries and the Liberal government of the potential negative effects of constructing the subdivision, six protesters from the Grand River Territory Reservation “erected tents, a tepee, and a wooden building” on the construction site. They were joined by approximately forty others, and all remained on the construction site, in defiance of a Superior Court order requiring them to vacate the land by March 22.
At either 4:30 or 5:20 on the morning of April 20, spurred by demands by the non-Native residents of Caledonia that the protesters vacate the site, the OPP conducted a raid, arresting sixteen protesters. Within five hours, hundreds of protesters from the Grand River Territory Reserve had re-established themselves on the construction site, while inhabitants of reservations across Ontario and Quebec demonstrated in support of the Six Nations’ land claim.
The OPP raid, and the resulting escalation of tensions, prompted the first changes in the stance of the provincial government since the beginning of the affair. Prior to this development, the provincial government had maintained its policy of focussing on, as Dalton McGuinty phrased it, “the long-term issues.”
On April 20, David Ramsay, the minister responsible for aboriginal affairs, responded to Conservative John Tory’s accusation that the government had done nothing to prevent the escalation of tensions by stating that the government had initiated a “process of exploration,” which entailed all of the involved parties “negotiating and discussing the land claim issue and the accounting claim that came from that” in 2004.
However, despite the fact that the government had information pickets on the Douglas Creek Estates since the autumn of 2005, and despite the fact that Chief David General had alerted the government to the potential consequences of the construction, an independent inter-ministerial committee was not established until the Six Nations protesters occupied the construction site. Furthermore, negotiations involving senior government officials did not begin until April 14. Following the OPP raid, the provincial government, the federal government, and the Six Nations council began negotiations.
By April 22, each party had agreed to appoint a representative, within two weeks, who would be authorized to negotiate the land claims issue. On April 30, David Peterson, the former premier of Ontario, was appointed to address the immediate problems in Caledonia; on May 3, Jane Stewart, the former Minister of Indian Affairs, was named the official representative of the provincial government. Finally, on May 17, the Ontario government imposed an indefinite moratorium on construction at the Douglas Creek Estates.
As part of a study on Canadian social policy, The Boar’s Assistant Editor In Chief, Angela Gaetano sat down this past winter with NDP International Trade Critic, Peter Julian, Member of Parliament (Burnaby-New Westminster, British Columbia).
I don’t drink beer, I don’t like hockey, and I’m really not the biggest fan of maple syrup. “Traitor!” I’m sure you must be thinking. What could I, a non-toque-wearing, non-chesterfield-owning, non-flannel-donning turncoat have in common with the rest of you Canadians?
When I left my house to attend Ralph Nader’s lecture for WPRIG’s 35th anniversary, I wasn’t expecting to interview him. I didn’t really know much about his politics or his work, aside from the fact that he was involved in social action, and that he apparently gave good speeches. Upon my arrival at my office prior to the University of Waterloo campus, I found out that I would be interviewing the American consumer advocate, independent Presidential candidate, and inspiration for the Public Interest Research Group (PIRG) movement, and spent the next 2-3 hours listening to him and other speakers address issues of civic engagement while receiving research notes derived from a mad-Googling conducted by my trusty Boar Manager, Paul Matheson. Over the course of the evening, I began to realise that Nader’s themes of corporate influence in the civil sphere had ties with the content of the longer analysis piece that I was developing for this issue — “Blurring Borders?” on page 18 — with a focus on students as actors in our nation’s social policy development. In our encounter, outlined below, Nader addressed these issues and commented on the state of civic engagement on university campuses.
Gaetano: Are there ways to combine sound corporate fiscal policies and effective social and environmental policies? Can capitalism and social justice coexist in a democratic society?
Nader: Well, only if it costs more to pollute than not to pollute. Then they internalize their costs and put the technology in. But right now [corporations] could use our air, water, soil as their private sewers with minimal costs. So we have to up the ante so we force them to internalize the damage that they’ve done. Costs internalizing. And then, they’ll say “well, it’s cheaper to put in recycle, put in scrubbers, you know, put in modern technology…
G: Would the same sort of theory apply to social welfare as well, say perhaps if corporations were forced to put in health care benefits?
N: I think it should be full government medicare insurance, full choice of doctor, hospital, and private delivery under cost and quality control.
G: In your opinion, are Canada and the United States moving in the same direction in the fields of social and environmental policy, or apart?
N: [Laughing] Well, let’s hope Canada continues not to mimic the U.S.’ downward drift. [...] most people in the United States are losing ground. Eighty per cent actually make less now than the workers in 1973, adjusted for inflation. And, there are more people who are uninsured for health care than ever before. So, we don’t want Canada to parallel this. We want Canada to keep ploughing new ground of humanitarianism for its own people so that we can refer to Canada as an example when we’re pushing to reverse bad directions in our country.
G: Do you think that you’re making progress in the United States to move toward that?
N: Well, not under Bush-Cheney and a compliant Democratic party that is very cowardly and goes along with Bush-Cheney or doesn’t stop Bush-Cheney. Yes, they could’ve stopped him on the war in Iraq, or the tax cuts for the wealthy — they had a filibuster of power in the Senate, but they didn’t do it.
G: If you could boil it down, what, in your opinion, would be the integral components to a civics skills course at Waterloo?
N: It would be three layers. One is learning the history of successful civic victories and how they did it, because that’s why we have what we like about our respective countries. So, learning the history. The second is to learn about the tools of democracy; that is, how do you use the freedom of information act, how do you put on a good news conference, how do you build a coalition — all the bread and butter. How do you disseminate voting records to a large number of voters efficiently about members of parliament. And the third is to build a civic personality and that can only be done by field work – actually looking at a problem in justice in a society, like here in Waterloo, and putting the knowledge that you can acquire in a university setting to bear on it. And, push it through to completion. And, if you graduate, you finish the course, it’s just passed on to the students who follow you. So, it could be a consistent vision for justice, something like that. That way, you really learn how to overcome discouragement, demoralization, burnout. How to give credit to other people. How to keep renewing yourself. How to have your last mistake or defeat be your best teacher. That’s a civic personality.
G: Is the university, particularly here at a very strong CO-OP university, a corporate entity, a civic community, or some sort of combination of the two? And how does that impact our role as students in civic engagement?
N: Well, it should be a cooperative entity, a community. As long as it allows itself to be commercialized, the unique contributions of the academy or the university in our society is subordinated, twisted, distorted. Like, in the universities in the U.S. they have partnerships [...] which shapes the curriculum according to commercial priorities.
G: Are you aware of the connection between RIM and the University of Waterloo?
N: No.
G: There has been some controversy over whether these [connections between UW and corporations such as RIM and Microsoft] have been influencing education, particularly in the choices of what software to use in computer engineering classes or programming classes. Do you have any comments to say about corporate influence on institutions?
N: All corporate university contracts should be put online [...] so the students, faculty, citizens, voters can examine them [...] And that should be a goal of the students. It’s already in electronic form, so put it online. In the States, there’s a movement where the state governments are putting contracts that they make with outside firms online. Indiana has started to do that, and we’re trying to get the federal government to do it. This is a major change. You know, half of what these governments do are outsourcing or contracts for goods or services [...] That is one way to start the ball rolling. So it becomes the subject of scrutiny and inquiry.
G: With the university being run as a business, what kind of an incentive does the university as an institution have to encourage us to be civically engaged?
N: Well, running it as a business has two meanings, one is running it efficiently [...] and there’s nothing wrong with running it efficiently. [...] But, the important thing is to keep, in a supreme position, academic values. For example, academic science is different than corporate science. And, as long as universities cut deals with companies, they’re subordinating academic values to corporate science. Corporate science is secret, academic science is open. Corporate science is not often well peer-reviewed, if at all, because it’s secret, proprietary. Academic science is peer reviewed. Corporate science uses [...] influence in Washington, academic science doesn’t have that kind of political influence. Corporate science has commercial goals for products; academic science may want to do more [...] for civic benefit, not just for making more profit. There’s a collision, and the more universities succumb to commercial partnerships, the more academic science will be distorted, or subordinated, or replaced by corporate science on campus.
G: If I were marketing civic engagement to the University of Waterloo, saying, “you should have a civically engaged student body,” what concrete benefits should I be marketing to them? What should I be saying will benefit them?
N: [...] they’re gonna want to do something about [their city, province, country], and if they don’t know how to do it, they’re gonna grumble and swallow the grievance. That’s not a very good quality of life. But if they know the skills, they can anticipate, foresee, forestall, or if it confronts them as a festering problem, they can go after it. [These problems could include] contaminated water, [...] crooked politicians, [...] wasted tax dollars. All things that people you know can understand.
G: What advice would you give WPIRG, and Canadian students as a whole, for the next 35 years?
N: [To] strengthen WPIRG and make it have more roots with students. Try to get course credit for students working on WPIRG projects, who lend themselves to intellectual rigor and social value. Connect with the province more, [...] is there are a lot of PIRGs, but they don’t connect with each other in the province. And then, make a national PIRG to focus on Ottawa the way the PIRGs in the United States have a US-PIRG in Washington [...] it’s very important that they have a national group, especially when they have such a wonderful person as Duff Conacher who heads Democracy Watch, dwatch.ca, for those who want to know more about how a group focuses on building democracy, building and strengthening democratic institutions.
There are certain moments that will never escape the controversial and mysterious air surrounding their place in history. From Cleopatra’s alleged asp-assisted suicide to the grassy knoll behind JFK’s assassination, there are historical turning points that will forever be shrouded in mystery. As the mother of one of the greatest rulers of the last millennia, alleged incestuous witch and seductress, innocent prey of a lascivious king or infamous coquette, and supposed cause of the English reformation, history has many faces for Anne Boleyn.
Born in either 1501 or 1507 (the latter is more largely accepted due to the birth date of her daughter, Queen Elizabeth, and because a 1501 birth date would have made her relatively old by fifteenth century standards to be birthing a first child) and executed in 1536 for adultery, incest, and treason against her husband King Henry VIII, her name has resonated through history, ripples of controversy surrounding her marriage, miscarriage, and death have crossed five hundred years, and now play out in the pages of historical journals and online academia. Henry VIII’s departure from the Catholic Church to marry Anne and divorce his Catholic Spanish wife, Catherine of Aragon, sparked gossip and controversy so enduring that it continued to haunt Anne even after rumour, court intrigue, and suspicion fueled the fire that lost her her head. And although Henry VIII is notorious for his six wives, none rival Anne in her infamy, timeless allure, or contemporary popularity.
Although never far from the realms of pop culture, the Tudor dynasty, but especially Anne, has made a recent resurgence into the collective consciousness in recent years thanks to the popularity of various historical non-fiction and fiction books, but espeicially the series The Other Boelyn Girl and its subsequent movie, as well as Showtime’s popular historical drama, The Tudors. So when, exactly, does fact blur into fiction? How does history become just a story?
While The Tudors does have innumerable historical oversights (For starters, Henry was a very distinctive redhead and definitely not as viral as he appears in the show), I found the portrayal of Anne strikingly intriguing, and I set out to determine whether she was the mastermind, cause, catalyst, or victim in the power hungry scramble that saw her quick rise to, and even faster descent from, power that left us with one of the greatest leaders the Western World has ever known. While meandering through various journal articles and books alike, a perturbing trend soon became clear — even close to 500 hundred years after her death, scholars still cannot agree whether she was a saint, a sinner, or some equally confusing combination of the two.
Starting in the late 1980s until much more recently, several contrary, and even directly confrontational, articles and books about the life and untimely demise of Anne Boleyn appear in several prominent historical journals, each with its own unique perspectives of her rise, fall, and everything in between. From the staunchly revisionist to the overtly feminist, countless perspectives restructure the narrative to fit their framework, creating a plethora of histories similar to an array of unlabelled canned soup: you’re never really sure what you’re getting, but it all seems to go down the same.
There are several major plot points of Anne’s life that are generally accepted, although the more specific details are as hotly contested as the events that led to her decapitation. As stated before, Anne was likely born in 1507 to the ambitious Thomas Boleyn and his wife Elizabeth. Her older sister Mary, born sometime around 1500, and her younger brother George formed a tight-knit group, who may have proved mere pawns in their father’s dangerous power-hungry game; however, although most historians agree that Mary was rather placid and easily manipulated, there is much debate as to whether Anne and George were active or passive players in their father’s schemes. All three were well educated, and Anne spent much of her younger years abroad…
…First, she spent most of her adolescence in the household of Emperor Maximilan’s daughter, Archduchess Margaret, who had been married and widowed three times before settling in the Netherlands, where Anne was one of her ladies-in-waiting. It was here that Anne was first educated, but her impeccable French was mastered later in the court of Francis I. Anne’s proponents and detractors alike agree that it was here that she morphed into, as historian David Starkey puts it in his book, Six Wives: The Queens of Henry VIII, “the perfect, quintessentially French, coquette.”
Once Anne returned to English court in either late 1521 or early 1522, the real controversy began. There is little doubt that, at some point, Anne had a romantic affair with the poet Thomas Wyatt, but whether that went beyond the regular strictures of courtly love is easily contested. It is also certain that, at some point between her return to England and the commencement of her romance with Henry VII in 1525 or 1526, she was engaged to Henry Percy, who as a member of court needed the King’s permission to marry. This was swiftly denied — which many historians see as proof of the King’s already growing affections.
Again, both her fans and foes admit Anne was coy with the monarch in the beginning, resisting his advances and refusing the position of “head mistress” which had been filled by two official predecessors. Perhaps because she had seen her sister become “the whore of England” after an affair with Henry, or perhaps for her own, or her family’s, ploys for the crown, she managed to keep Henry on tenterhooks until he agreed to wait until he could either annul his marriage or divorce Catherine. But, as R.O. Bucholz and Newton Key write in their book, Early Modern England, “Regardless of his feelings for Anne or her ambitions, these were, by 1527 at least, already moving the king toward his drastic solution. What he needed was not a mistress but a new queen, a legal consort, young enough and strong enough to bear him a legitimate male heir. Thus, irrespective of Henry’s or Anne’s amorous inclinations, to achieve his goal he needed a divorce.” Indicating that, while Anne may have played her cards right in becoming the prospective new Queen, in reality Henry was already well-aware of the destruction that Catherine’s supposed infertility could inflict on his dynasty and legacy.
It is romantic to think that Anne single-handedly brought about the English Reformation with her coquettishness and French manicured charms, but in reality too many other political factors were in play for this popular assumption to be the case. Like contemporary politics, the Tudor court and Modern Europe were too complex to be simplified to such an extreme. That being said, Anne may have had some hand in the Reformation in so far as she undoubtedly sympathized with the cause, but the idea of Protestantism, were still too new for her to even have privately considered herself one. During her daughter’s reign, a lot of propaganda was written — including an account by John Foxe that some historians follow — regarding Anne as a staunch reformer, even a martyr for the Protestant cause. The majority of this proves false, but it does provide insight into how easily her myth has been skewed, and her influence inflated, throughout history.
Following the prolonged, convoluted, and complicated divorce between Henry and Catherine that eventually resulted in the execution of several of Henry’s top advisors, including Cardinal Wolsey and Sir Thomas More, the schism from Rome, and a new chapter in English history. The details of the divorce are too complex to elaborate on here, but throughout the process Anne goaded, guided, and beguiled where necessary. At one point, she infamously accused Henry of wasting her time, honour, and youth by essentially chasing rainbows.
Approximately seven years after their affair began, an already pregnant Anne Boleyn and Henry VIII were married in the spring of 1533. She was soon coronated, and birthed the future Queen Elizabeth that September. Although the sex of the child, which had been consistently and predictably foretold to be a boy, was a disappointment for both parents — one hoping to affirm her status, the other his legacy — the child was still taken as a good sign of Anne’s fertility.
Between that time and Anne’s execution on May 17, 1536, almost no two historians agree on any one sequence of events. The nature of her personality and role in her ascent to the crown are debated enough, but the cause of her execution , her innocence or guilt in the debasing charges brought before her, and the cause of her falling so out of favour with the King are nearly impossible to pin down. It is known with certainty that between giving birth to Elizabeth and the beginning of the accusations against her, Anne miscarried twice. There are conflicting accounts, but it is widely accepted that the latter of the two miscarriages was of a deformed male fetus, which some historians attribute with Anne’s fall.
In Early Modern England, a deformed fetus was considered a sign of the devil, and the King, as not only Head of State but also the newly appointed Head of the Church of England, could not be associated with such an atrocity. For many, this is what is believed to have caused the investigation and condemnation of Anne. However, others claim that the reports of the fetus are exaggerated, and that Anne may have been more complicit in the charges of adultery, incest with her brother, and treason against the King than many would like to believe.
Some historians even argue that the charges were part of an elaborate political intrigue. Be it a Catholic plot to regain control of the throne or Henry’s close advisor Thomas Cranmer’s elaborate power play, the conspiracy theories that swirl around Anne’s condemnation are almost as elaborate as those surrounding Area 51. Regardless of the origin or validity of the accusations brought against her, she and five men — including her younger brother George — were executed for adultery and treason. But even before the sword cut the air behind her neck, the first whispers about the validity of her execution began.
Greg Walker sums it up best in his article, “Rethinking the fall of Anne Boleyn,” when he writes, “[I]n fact none of the grand and emotive themes evoked to explain her fall, the debates over the dissolution of the monasteries, the machinations of factions, the manoeuverings of foreign policy, or the miscarriage of February, can be shown to be responsible for the queen’s death. At most they predisposed the king to be more responsive to the accusations of adultery when they came. Anne’s fall, as what follows will suggest, was the result of a witch-hunt of a metaphorical rather than a literal kind, and as such it was horrifying enough, without the need to embroider it with superfluous supernatural elements.”
The story of Anne Boleyn has become swaddled in myth and mystery, but even as time progresses she cannot escape the historical bonds that make her Madonna or whore, martyr or adulterer. However, when examining her life, it must be kept in mind, as one of her more radical biographer’s Retha Warnicke writes, “The sex and gender bias of early modern society was, of course, pervasive and ubiquitous. Prescriptive works instructed women to confine their activities to domestic and family matters. […T]heir male contemporaries judged women’s worth by their chastity, silence, piety, obedience, and household efficiency and accused them of being garrulous, materialistic, and driven by lustful intentions.
“While neglecting to allow for gender bias in the archives, many scholars have also credited the biased observations of early modern authors who wrote their accounts long after the women were dead.”
Warnicke implies that any history of Anne based in primary sources or similar accounts is immediately flawed due to the overtly patriarchical nature of the era — a rather bold statement, but one that perhaps provides the best explanation of the muddy and uncertain accounts of her life. She lived before even the pre-cursors to the pre-cursors of suffrage, and the accounts of her world are appropriately skewed — just as any document is influenced by the era in which it was written. So, the story of Anne must be taken with a grain of salt and an awareness that the biases of her contemporaries due to her gender alone make it nearly impossible to take their versions literally.
Inarguably intelligent, flirtatious, and occasionally brazen, Anne’s infamous doe eyes and pale skin may have brought her attention, but she held it with her wit. Had she been born a few centuries later, she may have become a world leader; but in her era, a woman who even attempted to assert herself and control her fate was playing with fire all too readily. She often feared fulfilling an ancient prophesy of an English queen being burned at the stake — a fate she just barely avoided when Henry granted her the relative luxury of decapitation.
For Anne, it seems her downfall may have been less a result of her fateful miscarriage, and more due to the era in which she was born. Whatever her true character, be it coquette, victim, witch, or pawn, even the best accounts we have of her life are too steeped in the beliefs of her time to ever paint an accurate portrait of Anne Boelyn.
I recently spent an evening taking care of my fourteen-year-old and seven-year-old cousins. The cable was out, so lacking any inventive child-entertainment strategies, I marched them down to the local video rental store and let them pick out anything with a reasonable rating. They picked out a tween-comedy vehicle for Disney starlet Ashley Tisdale entitled Picture This. In the movie, Tisdale’s character, a high school senior, gets asked out by the hottest boy at school, overcomes all sorts of challenges to make the date, including his scheming, jealous girlfriend, a grounding from her father, and studying for upcoming school exams, and then debates whether or not to go to “the clock tower” with him — where school legend proclaims that he will “deflower” an unsuspecting girl. Part of the character’s dilemma was about leaving with him at all, and what her classmates would think of her after assuming she had had sex with him.
I’ll leave out the film’s conclusion to avoid spoiling it for you, but the plot described so far is very interesting because of the stereotypical gender norms it presents: women valuing a man’s attention over other goals, female sexual naivety, the male as a sexual aggressor and initiator, the understanding of the perception that a man and woman leaving a party alone together is a common element in the widely socially acceptable sequence of events that leads to sexual intercourse, and the existence of potentially negative social consequences of female sexual behaviours.
With multiple decades of feminist scholars, artists, and protestors arguing for gender equality and a renegotiation of societal gender roles, it seems that many traditional expectations for gender-specific behaviours, particularly in sexualised situations, remain intact. A study by David J. Bergen and John E. Williams, published in the research journal Sex Roles in 1991 examined male and female stereotypes in 1972 and again in 1988. They concluded that over the sixteen years between trials, that stereotypes regarding typically male and typically female psychological traits (such as perceived levels of ability to self restrain, act rationally, and act in social interactions) remained distinct and changed relatively little. With results like these, it could be argued that I shouldn’t have been surprised at the conventional gender roles portrayed in Picture This, as it seems that stereotypical views of men and women have been with us for a long time and are slow to change.
Although the content of gender norms may vary between cultures, for example, between the predominant North American, East Indian, and South-East Asian cultures, almost all human societies prescribe sets of different stereotypical traits and behaviours to different genders. Although widely varying opinions exist regarding the approval of the existence and content of these norms, there seems to be a general agreement that these norms act as cognitive and social “short cuts.” Norms, whether they are helpful or harmful, allow us to form expectations of what people are like and how they will act. For example, North American culture widely supports norms of female irrationality and male aggression. With these expectations, it is common to attribute a woman’s emotional distress to her gender, such as in cases of blaming tears on hormonal fluctuations around menstruation.
Conversely, it is far less acceptable for men to cry in most situations. It is also common to expect men to be aggressive protectors of stereotypically weak submissive females, as illustrated in many movies wherein male protagonists “defend the honour” of their female partners by fighting off any number of goons. By providing us with expectations of men and women’s behaviours, norms help us to develop route series of behaviours or “scripts” for common social situations. Consider, for example, the common male experience of “watching the game;” grabbing a chilly beverage, grunting at each other, hooting at goals and booing at referees. Although this caricaturized portrayal of male bonding may not apply to all men, it is a fairly well accepted social script, and is presented in many t.v. commercials, shows, and movies, including 90s sitcom Home Improvement, more recent series such as Everybody Loves Raymond and King of Queens, and scores of contemporary beer advertisements. If they have come to accept and utilize this script, some men may find themselves awkwardly confused as to how to proceed in situations that deviate from it. The familiar is cozy, and, in some cases, deviations from accepted norms may be discouraged to keep everyone comfortable in their expectations of events. Consider, for example, poor Al in Home Improvement, who was often belittled by the hyper-masculine Tim for exhibiting stereotypically female traits and behaviours such as emotional sensitivity and a desire to talk about his feelings.
Such behavioural scripts operate largely unconsciously in multiple social situations, and sexual encounters between women and men are no exception. An example of this is the script that prescribes a general order to the escalation of heterosexual mating behaviours: kissing precedes fondling, which precedes oral sex, which precedes penetrative intercourse. Traditional sexual scripts in North America, and in many other cultures, also include prevailing gender norms that support the idea of men as sexual initiators and aggressors in both dating and sex. Although things appear to be changing, a woman asking a man out is still seen by many as the exception in heterosexual dating, rather than the rule. North American traditional sexual scripts are somewhat adversarial in nature, also including “…the woman as the gatekeeper of sexual activity (i.e., she decides how far sexual activity should advance), and the man as having a higher sexual drive,” explain Heather L. Littleton and Danny Axsom, in a 2003 Sex Roles article on the implications of sexual scripts in university students.
Unfortunately, some scholars believe that the widespread acceptance and application of these traditional scripts may, in some cases, contribute to horrendous consequences. Littleton and Axsom continue, “Several aspects of sexual scripts may contribute to sexual assault. For example, the idea that men should initiate sexual activity and will often have to use multiple strategies to overcome women’s reluctance or refusals may lead men to feel justified in using verbal coercion or physical force to obtain sex.” These writers do not indicate that they feel that traditional sexual scripts are an excuse for rape or other forms of sexual assault, nor do they advocate the argument that all men subscribe to traditional scripts or these lines of thought, but only suggest that these gender norms may allow for the ideas of “seduction” and “rape” to be confused, and thusly contribute to the cognitive processes that allow for the perpetrator’s self-justification of sexual assault.
If this argument seems far fetched, consider the prevalence of the phrase “no means no” in cautioning adolescents to make sure that all sexual behaviours are consensual. Why would as simple a term as “no” require additional explanation — unless our culture contains norms which some people interpret to mean that, in some situations, “no” may be just a bump on the normal roadmap to “yes”?
Littleton and Axom’s argument is a somewhat extreme example of the negative implications of unconsciously adhering to a behavioural script, particularly in sexual encounters; however, if you consider comparably less frightening sexualised situations, it is easy to think of examples of how traditional sexual scripts can negatively affect anyone. For an example, consider the average consensual stint between the sheets…
As the 2006 edition of the psychology textbook Understanding Human Sexuality explains, there is a prevalent North American stereotype that prescribes that “…males are expected to be ‘sexperts’ and to take responsibility for both their own and their female partner’s sexual pleasure and orgasm.” With expectations like these, it wouldn’t be unreasonable for men to experience some performance anxiety and, subsequently, a related reduction in pleasure during sex.
Additionally, consider the implications of the North American norm that “females are expected to be sexually naïve”. The same textbook goes on to say, “Thus, they may be afraid to share their sexual preferences with their partner out of fear that he will take this as evidence they have had many sexual partners (something that is evaluated negatively in women).” Keeping this in mind, it isn’t hard to see how gender norms can prevent not only men, but also women, from having sex that satisfies their own unique needs. Going on about how gender norms may prevent women from communicating their specific desires to their male partners, the authors of Understanding Human Sexuality postulate, “They also may fear that their partner will think they are criticizing him for not being the sexpert he is supposed to be.”
The expectation that women have few sexual partners is not paralleled in the predominant North American culture by a similar restriction for men. While women who have had many lovers are seen as “sluts” and shamed, men with the same sexual patterns are seen as sexually victorious “studs”.
This double standard can have detrimental effects beyond the obvious stigma against women with numerous partners. For example, consider situations where women are reluctant to give full sexual histories to nurses and doctors, limiting the professionals’ ability to make well informed medical decisions, and also, situations wherein perceived female promiscuity is responded to with aggressively punitive measures. For example, some cultures have norms which allow females who have pre-marital sex to be viewed as punishable “whores”; on their website, Jane’s Due Process, a legal resource and advocacy organization for pregnant teens in Texas, publishes first-hand narratives of young women who have been beaten and otherwise abused by parents and other people in their lives for becoming pregnant.
Whether you conceptualize them as efficient mental short cuts, subconscious stereotypes with potentially harmful consequences, or some blending of the two, all of the North American gender norms discussed thus far have one thing in common — they draw a distinct line between what is acceptably “male” and acceptably “female”. This black and white thinking places gender into only two, very separate, categories. Although this separation –as visible through the proliferation of segregated washrooms, clothing departments, magazines, television networks, sports teams and social groups, etc – may be the most prevalent view in North America today, it is not the only way of understanding gender — other cultures and subcultures have different norms.
Many North American Native cultures include persons called “two spirits”. These individuals can be either anatomically male or anatomically female (that is, having the biological traits of either sex), while expressing a gender (the social role often associated, especially in the colonizing European cultures, with anatomical sex) that is neither male nor female, but rather, a third (or more) gender(s) that mix traditional “male” and “female” traits. In fact, Terry Tafoya and Douglas A. Wirth, authors of the chapter “Native American Two-Spirit Men” in John F. Longres book, Men of Color, report that, “Of the over two hundred Native North American languages spoken today, at least two-thirds have terms, like nadleeh, that describe other genders beyond male or female.” Two spirited persons include biological men who fulfill traditionally female roles, and vice versa. McGill University’s “Project Interaction”, a social service initiative that “..is committed to the health and well-being of gay, lesbian, bisexual and two-spirited (glbt-s) people, their families, communities and allies”, reports that, historically, in many Native American cultures, being two-spirited “…meant that this individual had the ability to see the world from two perspectives at the same time. This greater vision was a gift to be shared with all, and as such, Two-spirited beings were revered as leaders, mediators, teachers, artists, seers, and spiritual guides. They were treated with the greatest respect, and held important spiritual and ceremonial responsibilities.” (Please note the distinction between gay, lesbian, bisexual, and two-spirited — an anatomical woman who is two-spirited is not considered to be homosexual if she chooses to partner with a cisgendered woman, who is both anatomically and gendered female).
Although two-spirited individuals were widely accepted within their own cultures, European colonizers, whose cultures supported dichotomous “male” and “female” gender roles, were not tolerant of Native American gender multiplicity. Tafoya and Wirth go on in Men of Color to report that, “… in 1513, the Spanish ‘explorer’ Balboa referred to these different Native biological men as ‘sodomites’ and let loose his dogs to rip them apart and kill them…This was the period of the Spanish Inquisition where it was normal to kill or maim individuals whose beliefs or practices were different from established Catholic orthodoxy.”
This persecution is not unlike that which confronts many trans men and trans women, who, like Aboriginal two-spirits, also blur the traditional line between male and female with gender roles that are viewed by the dominant North American culture as inconsistent with their anatomical sex. For example, consider the July 2008 killing of twenty-year-old Angie Zapata, a trans woman, in Colorado. The Associated Press reported that the accused, Allen Ray Andrade, “…told investigators that Zapata performed oral sex on him, but would not let him touch her…Andrade later grabbed Zapata’s crotch area, felt male genitalia and became angry…He told investigators that he took a fire extinguisher off a shelf, struck Zapata twice in the head and thought he ‘killed it.’”
Unfortunately, both the historical violence toward Native two spirits and the brutal murder of Angie Zapata illustrate the negative consequences of strictly dichotomous gender roles that do not allow for any blending of male and female roles. Although Human Rights organizations have made some headway in changing societal views of trans gendered people, individuals who deviate from these traditional views are still often met with widespread oppression and violence from a society that that does not allow for their gender identities.
Where, then, do these strict North American gender norms come from? Some have argued that they flow from naturally occurring biological differences. For instance, take the argument that posits that the high sex drive and sexual initiative that characterizes the prototypical man is due to high levels of testosterone in males, a hormone that has been linked to aggressive behaviours. These theories, simplified, suggest that gender norms are just the expression of pre-existing biological differences: our bodies are different, therefore we behave differently, and our roles are different.
Others oppose this view by suggesting that gender norms are learned primarily through socialization.
Social learning theory hypothesizes that we learn how to be “male” or “female” by copying the behaviour of men and women around us; when we act in socially acceptable ways, our gender-normative behaviour is supported by praise and acceptance, and we continue doing it. For example, when parents react well to their sons play fighting, the young boys learn to repeat that aggressive behaviour, internalizing it’s value. This theory suggests that “boys will be boys” after all, as long as somebody cheers them on. When, on the other hand, we act in socially unacceptable ways, discouragement from those around us may teach us to extinguish behaviours that contradict prevailing gender norms. Take, for example, situations wherein young girls explore their own genitals and/or engage in masturbation as children. In such cases, the gender norm that demands female sexual naiveté may lead parents to tell their daughters to stop, that “down there” is “dirty”, and that “nice girls don’t do that.” This type of discouragement may deter girls from this type of behaviour, ingraining the related gender norm, and perhaps producing some shame in the woman’s mind in connection to sexual expression and enjoyment.
Some sociologists posit that in addition to the behaviour of individuals around us, macro structures such as language, other social symbology, and the media also support our learning of gender norms. In support of these ideas, consider the example of the word “pussy,” which is used to describe someone cowardly, weak, and submissive, as well as to describe the vagina, possibly reinforcing gender norms of the less aggressive female. Also, consider the symbolism of “boy” and “girl” colours: although green or yellow may be increasingly used to colour gender neutral baby blankets and other accesories, pink blankets and toys are still used to welcome baby girls, while blue is often still reserved for little boys. This colour segregation draws a clear line between “boy” and “girl”, emphasizing the two genders as distinct. Toys continue to teach and reinforce gender norms throughout childhood, as certain toys, say soldiers and tanks, are often assigned as aggressive “boy” toys, while others, say dolls, are seen as nurturing “girl” toys.
The media, in addition to marketing toys in these gender-normative ways, also contributes to the development of gender norms in other ways. As we have seen in the examples of beer commercials and shows like Home Improvement, the media also reinforces gender norms by making fun of characters that deviate from them, (like our poor, sensitive friend Al), and by positively reinforcing prototypically “female” and “male” roles, such as in the afore-mentioned movie, Picture This. In all these ways, socialization, both on the micro and macro levels, contributes to the development of gender norms in children.
In between biology and socialization in this nature versus nurture debate are socio-biological theories that argue that gender norms are the product of both biology and socialization. These theories contend that there are undeniable physical differences between men and women, but that it is not these differences alone — but rather, how they are perceived and interpreted — that create gender norms. Take for examples, stereotypes of male emotional strength and female emotional weakness. A sociobiological theorist might suggest that because male bodies are, on the average, larger than female bodies, and therefore generally stronger, we cognitively link “male” with “strong” and carry that association – whether accurately or not — into situations that have nothing to do with physical strength. This could explain the gender norm that, in emotionally charged situations, men are expected to be strong and stoic while females are expected to be weak and temperamental.
Sociobiological theorists argue that many gender norms are constructed this way. Consider, for example, the stereotype of male aggression and initiation in dating and sex. It is not hard to connect the dots between physical strength and aggression, and within a sociobiological framework, between males’ greater average physical strength and the social perception of them as sexual aggressors. As we have discussed, these, and other gender norms, can play out rather significantly in the bedroom.
Regardless of where your opinions fall in the biological versus socialization debate, and whether you think of gender norms as helpful cognitive and social shortcuts, dangerous stereotypes, or a bit of both, it is easy to agree on one thing: they are generalizations. Very few of us are society’s prototypical male or prototypical female — Rambos and Barbies are rarely encountered in real life.
Unfortunately, when we are confronted with new people and social situations, we often unconsciously apply these sweeping generalizations to individuals — all of whom are unique and different. Not every woman is submissive, and not every man is aggressive, in fact many of us may be aggressive sometimes and submissive others, regardless of whether we’re an Angelo or an Angela.
Likewise, each sexual encounter is different; although the traditional sexual script may say otherwise, penile penetration is not the end goal of all hetereosexual sexual encounters.
When it’s all said and done, old gender norm jokes can be inverted — after sex, some men may want to chat and cuddle while some women just want a sandwich, switching up traditional expectations of women valuing emotions in connection to sex more than men do.
As the example of Aboriginal two spirits show us, the line between male and female, and what is appropriate for both, may be much blurrier than predominant gender norms would lead us to believe.
Since life doesn’t fit nicely into what society declares as “normal”, it is important to re-examine the gender norms that we ourselves prescribe to, and to be aware of when we may be applying them inappropriately in our own encounters. As discussed, doing so can lead not only to plain-old bad sex, but also to dangerously misunderstood medical histories, oppression, and, in some cases, violence and death.
In conclusion, if while reading this article, you presumptively assumed that you are too intelligent, too educated, too aware, or too “progressive” to make the mistake of blindly applying gender norms, answer this question:
What gender did you assume my cousins were?
In the inaugural issue of The Boar (Winter 2008), contributor Tim Alamenciak took readers to the front lines of the war between the Church of Scientology (CoS) and the internet-based protest group Anonymous with his article, “Anonymous vs Scientology”. Since then, Anonymous has kept up the fight.
Returning to the site of their February 10, 2008 protest across the street from the Kitchener branch of the Church of Scientology (CoS), a group of masked Anonymous members gathered on May 10th to contest what they consider to be underhanded responses to outside criticism by the CoS. A 23-year-old McMaster University student* and Anonymous member present described the CoS’ strategy as a “…policy of attacking their critics…” with responses ranging from “…smear campaigns to faking bomb threats to protesting outside of people’s personal homes.” The McMaster student went on to reference the example of Mark Bunker, an outspoken critic of the CoS and former media coordinator for the Lisa McPherson Trust, an anti-Scientology organization. On his website, XenuTV.com, Bunker claims that the CoS has responded to his criticism by setting up a “…webpage to smear [his] name” and by interrupting the filming of “an interview with two dentists who were trying to obtain a large refund from Scientology.” Bunker’s site goes on to explain, “Scientology hired two off -duty police officers who arrested [him] for trespassing even though [he] was on a public sidewalk.”
Echoing Alamenciak’s comments about an apparent respect for religious freedom within the Anonymous movement, the McMaster student stated, “[The CoS’] religious practice, no matter how wacky it seems, doesn’t bother me at all — all religions are a little bit wacky, so that’s not a problem. But I think, if you’re going to be a religion, if you’re going to be out in the public, you have to be able to accept the criticism that people are going to throw at you.”
On the topic of criticism of the Kitchener protest, the McMaster student was lighthearted, saying that, “…we’ve had a few problems with the merchants. They seem to think we’re affecting their business. I don’t see how that is true, and I apologize to any of them if that’s what’s happened. But, I’d say we’ve increased business because we’ve actually made [customers] go to the opposite side of the street where [merchants’] stalls were.” He also mentioned that a few people had yelled at the Anonymous protestors and called them “terrorists,” and he furthered that he believed the use of that term was popular in the CoS’ anti-Anonymous arguments. Consequently, he also believed that those Consequently, he also believed that those individuals might have been associated with the CoS, although he could offer no proof.
Although, as Alamenciak noted, the CoS is notorious for “…shying away from talking to the press…”, a young woman involved in marketing for the Church’s Kitchener branch welcomed inquiries on the day of the protest. Priscilla, who declined to give her last name, made a brief statement about the protestors just across the street from the office, saying, “Just mostly from my observation, they don’t really understand or know what we’re really about; but they do have the freedom of speech and freedom of opinion, and so they can say whatever they like. But as long as people want to come here and find out the truth, find out for themselves, we’re fine with that.” In keeping with Priscilla’s desire, another woman at the Kitchener CoS office approached this reporter at the end of the interview with a copy of a CoS informational DVD, outlining Church beliefs, practices, and programs like Narcanon. This second worker, unlike Priscilla, declined a recorded interview.
Anonymous similarly encouraged people to look into the issues themselves, and even prepared their own information packages to hand out to interested parties — brochures outlining their qualms with the CoS. While handing out these brochures and waving at passing cars, the protestors were already discussing their next demonstration, designed to highlight another of their multiple criticisms of the Church’s practices, and scheduled for the same location on June 14th to draw attention to what Anonymous members feel is the CoS’ unfair treatment of its employees.
When the date rolled around, the masks were back, and the war waged on.
The Boar sincerely apologizes for the following oversights and mistakes in the first issue:
1. The photo on page 13 was taken by Kristina Urquhart.
2. Due to a technical error, the jumps between pages in the story “Anonymous vs Scientology” were incorrect, and the pages should read as follows:
p.p. 22-23: Cowan said he usually calls Scientology a religion because there are too many negative associations with the word “cult.”
p.p. 24-25: Anonymous’ interactions with the Freezoners demonstrates their cited goal to take down the Church of Scientology specifically, not to prevent people from practicing Scientology. It is the structure, not the faith that is the subject of Anonymous’ attacks.
Editor’s Note: To clarify the first statement, it should be noted that in his interview with The Boar, Professor Cowan stated that Scientology, sociologically speaking, fulfills the criteria of a “religion,” as well as the criteria of a “cult,” with both terms being value neutral. Expanding upon this point, Cowan said, “I usually err on the side of saying it is a religion because it’s just too hard to get people away from the negative connotations of ‘cult’. “
The Boar apologizes for any confusion or misunderstanding caused by our errors, and extends a special apology to Professor Cowan with thanks for his co-operation on the “Anonymous versus Scientology” article.