Friday, July 5, 2019

The two lost years of Pandora

(Pandora was a Halifax feminist publication that was taken to the Human Rights Commission in the early 1990s for discriminating against a man. This is an account I wrote after the hearing for the The Canadian Forum.)

In March of 1992, the Nova Scotia Human Rights Commission announced a decision in favour of Pandora, a Halifax feminist publication, which had refused to publish a letter written by a man.

"I am satisfied on the evidence before me," wrote the adjudicator, lawyer David Miller, "that women as a group have been and are disadvantaged and unequal in our society by reason of sex... It follows, accordingly, that a disadvantaged group may undertake a programme or activity which has as its object the amelioration of conditions of disadvantaged individuals or classes of individuals including those discriminated against on the basis of sex even if that results in distinctions being made with respect to the advantaged group...

"I am also satisfied that Pandora is an activity which has as its object the amelioration of conditions of disadvantage to women based on sex. I am also satisfied that Pandora's policy of maintaining Pandora as a single sex newspaper is reasonable for the purpose of ameliorating disadvantage."

In the mainstream media, paternalistic pundits all sang the same tune: right decision, wrong reason. All agreed that Pandora has a right to set her own editorial policy – although, they added, all publications owe it to their readers to publish a wide spectrum of opinion. Many of them were unable to comprehend the view that Pandora does publish a wide spectrum of opinion – all written by women.

But this was not an issue of freedom of the press. Indeed, throughout the Human Rights Commission hearing, Pandora made it plain that the only issue was the need for women-only spaces as one way of working toward equality.

The beginning

This story begins in the spring of 1990 when Pandora ran an article about child custody. Halifax resident, Gene Keyes, phoned the newspaper to ask if he could write a letter in response. He was turned down because of Pandora's clearly stated editorial policy: "...Pandora reserves the right to publish only letters that fall within the guideline of our editorial policy; letters must be written by women and be woman-positive; we do not accept material that is intolerant or oppressive."

Alas, Gene Keyes was no ordinary reader. During the '80s, he had been through a bitter custody battle, which he'd lost; he was a well-known fathers' rights activist. He defines himself – and the media were always satisfied to accept him according to his own definition – as a member of a disadvantaged group: divorced fathers who are discriminated against by the justice system. (The facts don't bear him out. In our country, most child custody is settled amicably between two parents. In disputed cases, fathers gain custody in over 50 per cent of the cases.)

In June of 1990, Gene Keyes filed a formal complaint of sex discrimination with the Nova Scotia Human Rights Commission against Pandora Publishing. Although there was an attempt at conciliation, no agreement could be reached. Incredibly, the Commission decided to proceed with the case.

Pandora

Pandora cannot accurately be called a "newspaper" although it does, indeed, publish some news. In general though, it's a publication by, for and about women which asks its contributors to share their experiences and their realities with their sisters; it makes no claims to "objectivity" as the mainstream media do. It asks its women readers to become part of the publication – to write to Pandora as if they were writing to a friend.

And indeed, there is a feeling of sisterhood in Pandora, a sense that the paper is a shared activity and that the struggles described are collective, not individual. If a single mother writes about living in welfare poverty, she doesn't expect to hear someone hissing, "get a job!" If a teenager writes about incest or a grandmother writes about fear on the streets, they feel the security of a community which will understand and help.

It wasn't like that at The Hearing.

The Hearing

The Human Rights Commission hearing against Pandora was held on five cold days in January of 1992. The adjudicator, David Miller, was male. The Commission's lawyer, Randall Duplak, was male. Gene Keyes, representing himself, was male. And the system was, most certainly and unmistakeably, male.

It was an adversarial situation of cross-examinations and rebuttals. There was always the feeling that if a witness slipped up and said the wrong thing, fingers would be pointed, heads would roll.

There was something surreal about seeing this little feminist newspaper forced onto the defensive by a hierarchal, authoritarian system that she had no part in making.

To make her case that women are a disadvantaged group in our society, Anne Derrick, Pandora's lawyer, called 18 witnesses including a feminist historian, sociologists, experts on media, and past and present members of the Pandora collective. All but one of the witnesses were women. (The Pandora women appeared under pseudonyms; when the news of the hearing hit the mainstream media, death threats began showing up on their answering machine.)

After the hearing – and before the decision – some of the women wrote in Pandora how they felt about what had happened:

"...My special relationship with Pandora as a small women's-only community was torn as I watched and experienced male definitions and bureaucracy invade our thoughts, opinions, experiences and policies. We were no longer operating on our own ground, but became vulnerable to the rules of those who were defining the agenda of the inquiry. I wished I could just jump up and scream out, `this is crazy and we're not going to take it any more...'" one wrote.

Another wrote: "...Because women have been, and are, deliberately excluded from the development of the texts and practices of the underpinnings of this society (law, medicine, religion, business etc.), we have been silenced and oppressed. Sheltered spaces such as Pandora give us a safe place to birth our own agenda, teach it, nurture its growth until we someday send it forth a mature adult who will stand beside the texts and practices to have an equal say in society..."

Still another wrote: "...We danced with the system, to their rules, in their ballroom. It was damned uncomfortable, frustrating and tiring, but we survived, elegantly..."

The aftermath

Anne Derrick, Pandora's lawyer, says this case never should have proceeded, but as it did, it becomes a very important case and decision.

"The Commission tries to downplay the importance of the case," she says, "but it is the first time in Canada such a decision has been reached. It has much broader implications than most people have considered; not only women but all other disadvantaged groups in society will be affected by it."

Derrick was not particularly surprised at the outcome. "I felt the choice of this adjudicator gave us the prospect of getting this decision. I felt he had the ability and the intellect to grasp the arguments."

Having said that, she's also not persuaded that the Commission learned anything from the hearing.

"The response we've had from the Commission about what happened after the hearing makes me say, `they still just don't get it.'"

The day after the Commission's decision was announced, Derrick and a coalition of Pandora's friends called a news conference to demand an apology for the language used by the Commission's lawyer in his final written argument. He called Pandora women and their expert witnesses "hysterical man-haters," "radical extremists," who presented arguments "beyond reason and sanity." He said the paper did not represent women but only lesbians. He noted that the witnesses for Pandora did not take their oaths on the Old or New Testaments, the Koran, or any other of the many holy scriptures provided, but were affirmed.

Women's groups and individuals rallied in defence of Pandora and her witnesses but the Human Rights Commission has been unwilling to deal with the inappropriate language used by their lawyer and considers the case closed.

Most people would agree that part of being oppressed means that you have been defined by someone else. For women, these definitions not our own, have been very dangerous, not to say life-threatening. Women have been told that sexual harassment is flattering, that rape is just good sex preceded by a struggle, that being battered is our own masochistic fault.

Pandora, still as wise but now much poorer, is back to providing a safe space for women to work on their own definitions; back to challenging those oppressive structures that are responsible for these two lost years.

And finally, Pandora is back to being by, for and about women – this time, with no arguments.

Sharon Fraser is a Halifax journalist. She testified on behalf of Pandora as an expert witness on media.

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