This is not a royal wedding post

The fact that Kate and William are being globally applauded for being vaguely normal today is a sad indication of the state of the UK, I think.

Clowning around

I’ve always been a fan of titting about, doing ridiculous things and potentially hurting myself; last night, I found my mecca: a place that lets me do all thee.

Centre of Gravity is, for want of a better description, a circus gym. It’s the home of the Zero Gravity circus and as well as doing things like yoga and poi, they hold an aerial arts class, which I attended for the first time yesterday. I used to do gymnastics when I was a kid, and particularly loved the half-hour between classes when we were allowed to mess about on the asymmetric bars, so I was stoked about the idea.

The space itself reminded me of the Red Rattler in Sydney. It had that vaudeville feeling that makes you feel somewhat lawless, and the trapeze and hoops hanging from the ceiling are aesthetically gorgeous.

The class started off with a lot of stretching and some yoga, then some basic acrobatics. This sounds intimidating but in reality is just some very very basic jumps, turns and somersaults (forward rolls to you and me) moving into some that look easy but in fact, aren’t. Then the good stuff started; first, the silks. They’re the big ribbony things that hang from the ceiling, that lithe women inexplicably wrap themselves around in Cirque du Soleil and that Pink made look pretty cool in one of her videos. To me, they looked like the easiest part of the whole operation. They’re not.

Even the most fundamental parts of doing silks, like wrapping your forearms around them and letting take your weight, seriously kills your hands. Obviously you’ll build  fist strngth over time, but grabbing is usually something that you do fairly unconsciously and for your hands to totally cane after  about a minute of doing something is disconcerting to say the least. It gets more difficult with climbs and foot wraps, and I never ever thought I’d be able to inch up a silk as I can’t even climb a rope, and I found the idea of puttig all your weight on a slack rope to be particularly challenging, but the feeling when you get high up, both your feet wrapped in the silk and you do splits in the air is definitely worth the effort!

Even better though is the trapeze. I was most looking forward to this, mostly because of how much I loved the aforementioned asymmetric bars, and I did remember a bit of the stuff we used to do. We hung upside down, sat on it, stood on it, stood on the sides of the ropes above it to create a star shape, swung off the side of it and generally got all giddy about the stuff we were doing. It felt so natural to hang off by my knees, no hands, upside down. I can’t wait to go back next week, if my poor aching-in-every-fibre body will let me.

Oh, and in response to my “I’ve never been able to do a headstand” comment, my awesome yoga teacher friend Steph taught me to headstand in about a second. Win!

Slutwalk Toronto

Back in January, police constable Michael Sanguinetti, while holding a talk on safety to York University students, made a comment that makes me more disgusted every time I think about it. Discussing a speight of sexual assaults, Mr Sanguinetti felt it appropriate to offer this piece of advice: if women don’t want to be raped, they shouldn’t dress like sluts.

Just take that in for a second: if you don’t want to be raped, you shouldn’t dress like a slut. If you do get assaulted, it’s most likely your fault.

It’s not just the audacity of this comment that is so shocking – though stating publicly that victims of sexual abuse probably had it coming is sickening to every woman who’s ever been touched in a club, or hollered at on at the street, and I can’t even imagine what it does to women who have actually been attacked – but it made clear that sexist and misogynistic attitudes are not only tolerated but seemingly prevalent in the very forces that are put in place to deal with this sort of thing. How does a woman report horrific sexual abuse when she knows that the people she must report it to probably think she deserved it?

I’d heard of the first Slutwalk through the U of T professor friend of my boss; this was to be a march through Toronto’s streets to the police headquarters to demand proper training for police officers in how to deal with victims of rape and a whole reorganization of how these attacks are dealt with. I went along to the march expecting to see only a couple of hundred people, and was gobsmacked to see a hell of a lot of people people all milling round, declaring themselves as “sluts”, carrying signs and raring to go.

I had also expected this march to be comprised mainly of women, so the massive male contingent was a pleasant surprise, as was the presence of many older people, of both sexes, also wearing “slut” badges and signs. One couple in their sixties, with their little dog waddling behind them, hit the nail on the head with their home-made sign: it’s not about sex, it’s about ethics.

The vibe was joyous and peaceful while still simmering with anger, and the first speech of the day, by Sonya Barnett, was particularly rousing; in defending their choice to use the word “slut”, she discussed how the word is steeped in the implication that a woman who has sex and enjoys her sexuality is necessarily a bad person who deserves what she gets, whereas promiscuous men are known as “studs” and “playboys” and get a veritable pat on the back from society for boning everything that walks; “Sexual confidence is not an invitation to violence.”

An estimated 3000 people marched through the city streets, chanting, singing, and demanding to be heard. As the march reached the police headquarters, Jane Doe made a particularly impassioned speech. She was the fifth woman raped by the infamous Canadian Balcony Rapist in 1986, and after an 11-year legal battle successfully sued the Toronto Police department for damages, due to her treatment after the fact and her allegation that they had used her as “bait” to catch the rapist. She spoke about the treatment she received, and how she had been made to feel as if she’d deserved it despite being in her own bed behind a locked door when she was attacked. She spoke about having been allowed into the Police sexual assault training classes and was shocked at how substandard they were, and called for the Toronto Police Department to be trained by professional Adult Educators and to eliminate the sexist and misogynistic attitudes that have shown themselves to be present.

It was pretty chilling to hear the stories of these amazing women who’d been violated in the worst possible way and have not only rebuilt their lives but have spoken out to make sure no one else suffers in the same way. The reaction of the huge crowd was very telling – tears in people’s eyes, and men, women and children all calling for something to be done, and for women to be spared the terrible judgment that they face having gone through the worst time of their life.

                                          

The success of the first Slutwalks in Toronto has led to others being organised all over North America: in London (Ont), Ottawa, Yellowknife, Montreal, Vancouver, and even, in the future, New York. Hooray!

Check out more photos here