But you know where I first heard of abuse by police? That’s right, in British Columbia, by Mounties….

*sighs* Yeah, Canada has its own issues. Maybe occasionally they’re a bit different from our southern neighbours (we hate on First Nations and East Indians more than Black people! so advanced!!), but we’re still screwed up like all the other humans on this planet.

Perhaps I should look up Rita MacNeil on YouTube.

Damn, I’m disappointed in the Mounties today.

“Slovenly” “Drab” Unkempt” “Slatternly” “Blowzy” –many adjectives come to mind to describe most women who wear jeans.

and:

But usually these women are alone and don’t look happy. Often they look angry and confused. Usually they are talking on a cell phone or listening to their ipod.

Really, it’s just awesome. I’m sorry I ever wore a skirt.

In fact, she was being unashamed of her person or experiences in country music long before k.d. lang made it cool, but for some reason, Rita MacNeil’s name never comes up when we think of radical women musicians. It’s not just a generational thing—the same people who don’t know from Rita MacNeil have heard of, say, Johnny Cash, and are familiar with his political songs.

Kind of makes me think of Gerda Lerner’s comments in The Creation of Feminist Consciousness, about how women’s knowledge has historically been lost to subsequent generations,* so that women thinkers wound up unable to metaphorically stand on the shoulders of giants who had gone before, but instead had always to reason their feminist thoughts from first principles. k.d. lang, who is admittedly awesome, was hailed as this amazing, unashamed musician for doing her thing, and Rita MacNeil is relegated to vague memories of a CBC television special.

* Because women lacked access to education and therefore the means to record their knowledge and thoughts, because those few women who have been able to write haven’t addressed topics that the predominantly male custodians of knowledge deemed important enough to preserve, because women were kept isolated from each other and out of colleges and libraries so that they were unable to discover what other women were thinking and writing, and because women’s role, as defined by men, didn’t allow them a lot of leisure for thinking)