THE MANITOBA HUMAN RIGHTS COMMISSION STRIKES AGAIN. Only this time, not on behalf of a discrimination-free society, but in favor, it would appear, of one segregated on the basis of gender.
Claudia Wright, head of the MHRC, attended a female-only conference on the media, and participated in one of the workshops, despite her acknowledgement of the fact that the Manitoba Human Rights Act prohibits sex discrimination. Talk about sending in the fox to guard the chicken coop.
The event was put on by the Manitoba Action Committee on the Status of Women and Media Watch, groups which at least heretofore had been opposed to sexual segregation. But according to conference organizer Lynne Gibbon, men were excluded because a number of male journalists had already been interviewed on the subject of the media.
Evidently, the male reporter who had tried to cover a weekend session, but was told to leave, was not one of those who had “already been interviewed.” Ms. Gibbon went on to explain that this occurrence “was an attempt to include women rather than exclude men.” Put that in your pipe and smoke it, male, chauvinist pigs of the world.
Nor did this bit of illogic exhaust the explanatory powers of the women’s movement. According to one Debbie Holmberg-Schwartz, managing editor of Herizons (sic), a national women’s news magazine located in Winnipeg, the decision to exclude men was a form of affirmative action: “It’s really important that women catch up in this field, and of course the logical place to give them opportunity is at a women’s conference.”
Can anyone imagine the response of the Manitoba Human Rights Commission, and all others in the human rights biz, had a group of male white Anglo-Saxon protestants used a similar line of argument to justify the exclusion of females, or gays, or native peoples, or handicapped persons, or francophones, or indeed, any other group favored by current prejudices?
The double standard, so long reviled in Canada, would appear to be alive and well, at least in some parts of Winnipeg.
_____________________
Alberni Valley Times (Port Alberni, British Columbia), May 16, 1985.