The Stampede Threesome: Sexism, Social Media Shivarees + Social Tipping Points

Many of the tweets in reaction to the men are congratulatory, calling them "heroes," doing something "decent," while those referring to the woman are insulting, calling her a "slut" or "whore" with no values.

There I was, just trying to read a thoughtful piece on the problems with policing in Toronto by my friend Andray Domise when this headline catches my eye:

Catching Up With the Woman From the Calgary Stampede Threesome at Her Strip Club Debut

I can't say I've ever been to the Calgary Stampede, but somehow I doubted that anything featuring a threesome would be part of the official agenda.  My curiosity was piqued enough to see what was going on.

The story that emerged - and I'm surprised I didn't hear of it first on Twitter, where I spend an inordinate amount of time - was of a woman and two men who had consensual three-way sex in a somewhat public space.  Someone saw it, was disgusted and to properly express their disgust in a 21st Century way, filmed and posted video of the act that caused them such discomfort.

No more the "look away, kids" mentality of our parents - when we see something we feel is out of tune with our social norms, we take the story viral.  We'll come back to this later.

The bias with which the Stampede Threesome (Stampedesome?) story has been portrayed online and what that says about our male-centric society has been much discussed.  Men are encouraged, even celebrated for being sowers of seeds where as women, society's nurtures and child-rearers, are shamed for being sexual creatures.  How exactly men are supposed to sow if fertile fields are closed to them remains one of those social paradoxes that we tend not to explore.

Of course the shaming of women isn't limited to sexuality (which is regularly a substitute for social power) - it applies to women displaying any non-demure behaviour.  Another recent case in point - Imperator Furiosa.

Furiosa - Charlize Theron's character from Mad Max: Fury Road has been viscously and virally attacked for hijacking a movie whose title references the male hero.  Apparently, she's part of an insidious feminist conspiracy to undermine masculinity, a forcibly planted female lead in what's supposed to be a boy's movie.  

Written and directed, mind you, not by a feminist auteur like Ava DuVernay, but by the same dude who has sheppearded the Mad Max franchise from the beginning - George Miller.

What's the connecting thread?  Society's men call the sex/hero shots and someone has altered the rules.  And the macho men, they don't like it.  They feel threatened.  It's like the Muslimification of the Western world, only worse, because this time it's their own women undermining man's natural role as roost-rulers and power-wielders.

Meanwhile, Alexis Frulling - the lady at the centre of this story - has done a remarkable job of crisis management (own the story from the outset, ensure your own narrative is well-told and widely-circulated).  More than that, she seems to have done a pretty good job of turning an avoidable moment of infamy into an entrepreneurial opportunity.  There's strip dances, sex tip videos, etc, etc. She could probably do well with a line of merch, too - the ways she could continue to reap benefit from her 15 minutes are endless.

If Frulling were a guy, she'd be given props for ingenuity and seizing an opportunity.  She's a woman, though, so instead the whole incident is being framed as a manipulative publicity stunt (still no mention of the men involved, mind you).

The fact that this 20-something (manipulator!) beautiful (Delilah!) woman (whore!) has become a magnet for social castigation from a vocal segment of the population isn't surprising.  Same thing happened to Jennifer Lawrence, although her source of sexual infamy was intended to be private; the same thing's happening to Steph Guthrie for fighting back in a way that would, again, be celebrated as tough political winning if she was a man.

It's a well-established social phenomenon best represented by the shivaree, an ancient custom intedned to force social outliers to conform to societal norms.  Instead of pots and pans, though, these mass-shamings now take the form of viral campaigns, like #DuffyPickUpLines or #TellVicEverything.

Mike Duffy and Vic Toews, mind you, are/were supposed to be social elites, defenders of tradition, etc.  They were shamed for abusing their position, whereas Fulling is being castigated for stepping beyond the prescribed bounds of acceptable female behaviour and nudging into males-only territory.  

Castigated by a vocal few, though - hardly the majority.

Back to the Andray Domise article that kicked all this off:

Without a highly visible outcry that shames the Board into adopting changes, the work done by police to increase transparency and reduce fatal encounters often amount tohalf-baked and widely criticized measures. 

Highly visible.  Shaming.  What he's calling for - what #BlackLivesMatter or any of the related campaigns around young black men killed and young black women abused by police represent - is a shivaree, public pressure for behaviour modification.  

It's what any protest seeks to accomplish, really; forcing the shapers of public norms (ie policy) to get more in line with the public (or a subset of the public) mood.

Gay marriage is another example of this, with even corporations getting on board.

You may note something of a trend-line connecting the dots here.

Yes, Alexis Frulling has many vocal online detractors, but she's also got a lot of supporters who are equally turning on the societal norms that punish women for doing what men get celebrated for (while still being told to be more like men when it comes to breaking the glass ceiling in work or politics).

Society used to be a lot smaller - homogeneity and cultural standards were easier to universalize through shaming efforts such as the shivaree.  By and large, though, those smaller societies had more standardized social roles, too - roles that limited people to certain constraints that may not have reflected their individual capacity.  Marriage was limited to men and women, holidays were Christian affairs, men - particularly alphas - dominated in the boardroom, the bedroom and in the House of Commons.

Society has changed; the needs of society have changed.  We've collectively outgrown the standards of the past which actively impede economic and social success.  What we need always comes second to what makes us comfortable, though - which is especially true on the macro scale.  As traditional society and the failings of our political, economic and social systems and norms fail a growing percentage of the population, though, the scale is tipping from efforts to maintain the status quo (shivarees) to calls for systems disruption and more equitable social standards (protest).

Perhaps Alexis Frulling is the perfect metaphor for this tipping point; the passive, minority partners in our social relationships are weak and passive no more.  

The time of top-down messaging and social norm-defining is over.

We're into three-way conversations now, and the usual suspects are just going to have to get used to sharing the marketplace of power.

Steph Guthrie, Meet Gord Perks

We expect stoicism from people in power, not tears and tied tongues.  Flaherty's supposed to be able to answer any question.  He's supposed to be measured, or angered, or dismissive, as required.  But his friend is going through something no one knows how to handle, and it was all he could do to struggle through a sentence or two.

Politics is a blood sport, or so they tell us.  So, what do we know about blood sports?  They inflict wounds, for one; you can make a lot of money if you cling to the notion of being the last man standing, but what are you left with?  Brain damage, physical injury - an fractured shell and all the trials that come with it.

Jim Flaherty has dished out his fair share of political poison, full-well knowing he'd receive his hits in return.  He was playing by the standard rules of the game; they die, or you die, in ad infinitum.  

But Flaherty is also a man who has faced unexpected and undeserved adversity in his life.  He soldiers on, because there's not much else any of us can do - on our own.  

Are we, though?  On our own, trying to live up to survival-of-the-fittest model, putting the health of the economy before (or at the expense of) the people it is meant to bolster?

Here's Steph Guthrie:

If we want more gender diversity in politics, we need to understand that a) a good politician can come equipped with a wide variety of character traits, not all of them about cutthroat aggression and cold calculation, and b) there is immense diversity within genders and no trait is "naturally" masculine or feminine - we choose to understand and value traits in these binary ways, and if we want, we can choose to change that.

Gender diversity, ethnic diversity, etc. and so on - what we want, if we really believe in democracy, is representation of the population.  That doesn't mean a narrow selection of financial policy targets or a tug-of-war between binary partisan views; it means a true reflection of the various lineages of our country and perspectives that inform them.

You don't get there through anger; in fact, anger gets you the exact opposite; entrenched views, dehumanization of The Other and a tendency to ridicule and attack rather than listen and contemplate.  

Now for Gord Perks:

I want to ask you to count to 10.  When you are angry at your government, remember that quick, anger-fuelled solutions usually make problems worse.  When a neighbour expresses anger over a real or pereceived failure of the government or public servants, speak up and remind them that so much of what holds our society together depends on those same public servants.  They work to make sure that we have the comforts and community we all enjoy.  When government does not solve the social problems that bring suffering to neighbourhoods, resolve not to grumble but instead to learn, participate, and organize for a better government.

This hasn't been the way we do politics for some time.  In fact, politics is about seeking out and attacking opponents before they even think about lining up at the starting gate.  Politics-as-usual isn't very democratic, is it?  Which is why our democracy crumbles.

To the elbows-up practicioners of War Room politics, I say this is the end.  Hold your breath and count to ten.  Feel the earth move?  

It doesn't mean the sky will fall; in fact, like with any birthing pains, it means new horizons lie just beyond vision.

Don't be afraid.  As the walls come down between us, we'll realize there's more than just blood between us - and together, we will stand tall.