No place for hate
Re: Hate Attacks Rock Campus, March 13th
I was astonished and absolutely appalled to hear about the recent hate crimes that took place at Hart House. These sorts of events should not be happening or tolerated at the university, period. It has shocked me to watch many students take events such as these, or the recent Strand comics, so lightly. If these are the kind of events that happen after publicly condoning and accepting the Danish and Strand comics, should we not begin to question the reasoning behind our actions?
To hide behind the ideals of “free speech,” “progressive journalism,” or “promoting tolerance” is both cowardice and ludicrous. We cannot ignore the voices of the ever-increasing number of minorities at the university. I hope to see the editors on campus put away their journalistic pride and consider the safety and well-being of the students first.
Lindsay Tsuji
• Regarding the harassment at Hart House earlier this week, it is disheartening to see this thuggery masquerading as something political on campus. Last Saturday’s rally in solidarity with the Danish people was first and foremost a demonstration against intimidation and for free expression. Obviously the alleged attacker missed this point. If these allegations are true, this woman has more in common with the intolerant thugs attacking Danish embassies and threatening that country’s citizens than with those of us who rallied to defend a small democracy against intimidation.
Cam Hardy
• No person should feel afraid to be a Muslim on campus, or to say no to a flyer, or to stand up for their rights. For this reason the harassment of Muslim students last week at Hart House was deplorable, an insult to the maturity of our university. No person should be made to feel ashamed of their heritage.
Likewise, it is unacceptable to deny Danish cartoonists and Canadian newspapers the right to practice the tradition of free speech which dates back to the Enlightenment. If our right as citizens is the ability to speak out, our responsibility is to let others do the same. We must ensure that radicals on campus and abroad do not flaunt this responsibility any further.
Betar Tagar
• The recent attacks on Muslim students on campus are a corollary of broader nascent discriminatory representations of Islam. Some recent opinion pieces from ignorant students printed in The Varsity are also a clear indication of how these attacks are linked to a broader demonization of Islam. Locating Islam within a clash of civilizations narrative constitutes a stale binary that homogenizes Islam into a racist set of presuppositions; indeed, students gleefully consume this abhorrent racism. One only needs to turn on the television in order to be bombarded with representations of Islam as an intrinsically violent religion.
The failure of The Varsity to link these attacks to broader racist representations of Muslims as violent, archaic, and barbaric is offensive and absurd.
Zahir Kolia
• I was disturbed that Monday’s editorial failed to clearly condemn this racist attack outright. It is unfortunate that so many people are ignorant of the fact that Muslims, Arabs, and other demonized communities face racism on a daily basis. Canadian citizens who do not “look” like they are “Canadian” are constantly ordered to “learn the system, learn the language, or go back to your country.” Such systematic forms of oppression need to be directly addressed as what they are-instances of hate, not “debate.”
I’m also confused as to why The Varsity chose to depict Jews and Muslims as mini-Conan O’Briens on the front page of your Feb. 6 edition. Any clarification would be helpful.
Nahed Mansour
Cuckoo candidate
Re: Misconduct allegations plague election, March 13
Never mind the allegations surrounding Saswati Deb. The main issue this: she promised to try to get the university to remove the lowest mark from every student’s GPA. There is no way that a student governor can deliver on this promise-for what it is worth she might as well have promised more sunshine per day! Even if the impossible happened and there was such a policy, any grad/medical/law school which received an application from a U of T grad would just turn around and recalculate the GPA to include the lowest mark.
There is no way that a candidate in an election for a position of such importance should be making such fantastic promises. The most regretful part of this particular electoral result is that students were gullible or misinformed enough to vote for such a platform.
Rob Levan
Sexy sci-fi sistahs
Re: The (sci-fi) beauty myth, March 13
We went to see Ultraviolet last week and it was a wonderful little violent romp in the world of fashion and martial arts. Some stuff got blown up real good. But just like your article suggests, the writing was so bad it was humorous to those in the theatre. We left that cinema feeling hyper from the action but robbed of our time. Jovovich’s character is a mockery of the strong characters mentioned in your article that have become sci-fi legend. Will they ever return?
As if Angelina Jolie wasn’t enough as Lara Croft, an even more voluptuous caricature, Karima Adebibe, has been chosen to take on the role. You know things have gone too far when Angelina Jolie isn’t women enough for nerds. Thanks for standing up for good writing, good characters and real people.
Paul Nazareth
• While Ms. Yao’s opinion piece accurately describes many fetish dolls passing for heroines in today’s mainstream science fiction, she seems to choose the two weakest possible examples of “strong” female characters in Ripley and Sarah Connor.
In order to become acceptable “hero” figures, both are stripped of any sexual nature, and the motivations for their actions are always motherly: the protection of a child. They do not act in camaraderie or noble sacrifice for the greater good.
Motherhood is a courageous and honourable thing that comes with great self-sacrifice, but not all women are mothers, and those women are no less strong or womanly for making that choice.
Regarding sexualization, Ms. Yao seems to go from one extreme to another: that the only way for a woman to be equal to a man is to get away from the sex kitten persona and completely desexualize herself. She fails to notice that the desexualization of Ripley and Sarah Connor are not triumphs, because they become asexual and show no desire. It is a judgment. “Masculine” women do not have sex.
Ms. Yao does say something I absolutely agree with: Battlestar Galactica is a potent source of strong, diverse female characters today. It’s a must see.
Gloria Yip
