B-word raises issues

Editorial

Norman Spector, a political commentator and a former Canadian ambassador to Israel, shook things up last week when he launched a tirade of invective against Liberal MP Belinda Stronach.

"I think she's a bitch," Spector said, during a talk show on Vancouver's CKNW radio station. "It's as simple as that. And I think that 90 per cent of men would probably say she's a bitch for the way she's broken up Tie Domi's home and the way she dumped Peter MacKay. She is a bitch."

There are a few issues here. For one, whatever unproven allegations surround the marriage of hockey player Tie Domi, whose wife's divorce claim cites Stronach as a co-respondent, nobody knows the reality behind that conflict but the Domis themselves. Likewise Stronach's break-up with former boyfriend MacKay, who is now the foreign affairs minister. The parting of ways coincided with Stronach's departure from the Conservative party for a Liberal cabinet post.

While Spector cannot possibly know enough details to comment on Stronach's relations with MacKay or Domi, the b-word itself raises more issues. This word is loaded for a range of reasons, most significantly because it dehumanizes women by equating them with dogs. It is also a distinctly anti-female word.

Civility of discourse is a crucial concern in Canada. In the debate over the Middle East, which has featured Spector in a leading role at times, Jewish Canadians have struggled to encourage a degree of respect and decency that has been endangered as some activists clamor to heap the most vile language and unfounded accusations against Israel. Spector is well aware of the threats to civil discourse by ill-chosen language. Yet he apparently waded into this discussion heedless of this concern.

Moreover, the specific nature of the b-word is such that it is, like a racial epithet, powerful in part because it presumes a complex of characteristics that are deemed to be exclusively female. That is, there is no equivalent word that has the same impact in dismissing and denigrating men. This is the phenomenon that gives power to racial epithets as well. The power of the word can be understood only to those who are its target.

Beyond this, the use of the term is particularly egregious in the political realm, where enormous efforts have been made in recent decades by political parties and by non-partisan groups to increase the representation of women in elected office. The nature of politics requires participants to engage in strong, conflictual, adversarial interactions. Men who play this game well are rewarded. Women, in many cases, are dubbed bitches. Spector, who has been around Canadian politics for decades, knows this, as well as the particular challenges women face in public life. He knows better.

Should he be fired? Our sense of free expression says he should not be. But our natural inclination is to oppose whatever he supports and to cease listening to him as a legitimate voice on issues of importance. Should he ever run for office, we would not support him.

On the other hand, there is something to be said for transparency. Plenty of people have odious personal views and prejudices. Better, it could be argued, to be aware of them than to have them go unexpressed and unchecked.

The news of recent weeks should have led Spector to a degree of a greater introspection before he used a derogatory term like "bitch." In the Vancouver area in recent weeks, we have seen three brutal attacks on women – two of them fatal. Farther afield, the Amish school shootings in the United States were an act of the most violent, unspeakable misogyny. At the very least, this reality should have given pause to anyone inclined to use disparaging, dehumanizing language towards women.

In these pages, we have frequently warned of the power of language to incite people who may have a bent toward violence. In these cases, we have focused on hateful language against Israel and Jews. Now, we have an incident where a leading public – and Jewish – commentator engages in language that degrades and dehumanizes a woman, or women more broadly, and we must condemn this with the same force.

Whether dehumanizing words could have a direct impact on justifying or increasing violence remains a question that, like any human behavior, is not directly quantifiable. But it certainly doesn't help.

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