{"id":36551,"date":"2016-12-07T02:00:40","date_gmt":"2016-12-07T07:00:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=36551"},"modified":"2016-12-06T10:31:06","modified_gmt":"2016-12-06T15:31:06","slug":"self-protection-for-women-making-the-carrying-of-mace-and-pepper-spray-a-sex-linked-legal-privilege","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2016\/12\/07\/self-protection-for-women-making-the-carrying-of-mace-and-pepper-spray-a-sex-linked-legal-privilege\/","title":{"rendered":"Self-protection for women – “making the carrying of mace and pepper spray a sex-linked legal privilege”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Colby Cosh<\/a> discusses the proposal of federal Conservative leadership hopeful Kellie Leitch to legalize the use of non-lethal chemical weapons:<\/p>\n

… Leitch\u2019s Thursday announcement struck me as a potentially elegant move in a hopeless chess game. Noting that a large number of women suffer physical violence over the course of their lives, she proposes that Canadians should be allowed to carry chemical mace and pepper spray for self-defence. \u201cWomen should not,\u201d she wrote in a Facebook posting, \u201cbe forced by the law to be victims of violence when there exist non-lethal means by which they can protect themselves.\u201d<\/p>\n

That\u2019s a true statement, no? Leitch does not suggest that the carrying of chemical spray weapons should be a benefit reserved only to women \u2014 she just wants to legalize those weapons generally. Perhaps I am a little more feminist than she is: I would be comfortable making the carrying of mace and pepper spray a sex-linked legal privilege. Hell, I would consider extending it to very small firearms.<\/p>\n

Activists for feminism are continually characterizing the world of women as one of terror, abuse, and uncertainty. For Leitch to take them at their word, applying a tough-on-criminals spin, is an authentic Trump touch. I do not wholly approve of the tactic, but, as much as I think some feminists are attention-hungry zanies, I recognize the kernel of truth in their image of the universe. I\u2019ve never had a close female friend who could not tell of bizarre, creepy, threatening things happening to them \u2014 sights and encounters that, to a male with an ordinary upbringing, seem to have wriggled from the corner of a Hieronymus Bosch painting.<\/p>\n

Leitch got exactly the response she must have wanted from the Liberal Status of Women Minister Patty Hajdu, who blurted that giving women extra self-defence options was \u201cputting the onus on\u201d them, and thereby \u201coffensive.\u201d I find this is an odd way to raise the status of women \u2014 suggesting that if some of them might like to carry a can of mace in their purses, and could even be trusted by the authorities to use it responsibly, they are thereby dupes of the patriarchy.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I also enjoyed Colby’s description of Leitch’s “Trump-flavoured” campaign: “it\u2019s like a bag of boring snack chips with a chemical dash of Southern spice exhaled over it. And I can\u2019t help suspecting that there is something slightly phony about the media panic surrounding her candidacy.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Colby Cosh discusses the proposal of federal Conservative leadership hopeful Kellie Leitch to legalize the use of non-lethal chemical weapons: … Leitch\u2019s Thursday announcement struck me as a potentially elegant move in a hopeless chess game. Noting that a large number of women suffer physical violence over the course of their lives, she proposes that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,9,10,53],"tags":[431,987,471,43],"class_list":["post-36551","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cancon","category-law","category-liberty","category-politics","tag-conservatism","tag-feminism","tag-nonlethalweapons","tag-women"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-9vx","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36551","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36551"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36551\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36552,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36551\/revisions\/36552"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36551"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36551"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36551"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}