Note: Transcripts may contain errors. If you wish to re-use all, or part of, a transcript, please contact CBC for permission. Please check the corresponding audio before quoting in print. Copyright © CBC 2016

The Current Transcript for February 23, 2017

Host: Anna Maria Tremonti

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Listen to the full episode

Prologue

[Music: Theme]

SOUNDCLIP

He drop us at some place and he said you cross this field. You cross the road. You see that field? That light that is blinking over there? That is the border. It’s Canada.

ANNA MARIA TREMONTI: When his asylum claim was rejected in the US, he travelled north sneaking over the Canadian border. One man with a story we are hearing more often right now. With a new directive in the US aimed at forcing all migrants deemed illegal out of that country and a growing international reputation for welcoming the desperate and persecuted, people escaping crises in their own countries are seeing Canada as a destination of choice, even as critics demand a crackdown or a loosening of Canadian rules. In a moment, the public safety minister on this issue. Also today, who gets to be a feminist?

SOUNDCLIP

The word has become so empty because it has been co-opted by Ivanka Trump, by Taylor Swift. So now when somebody says I'm a feminist, it doesn't convey information.

AMT: When a radical movement moves into the mainstream, is that a mark of success or has it been co-opted in the fight for rights? One writer says not everyone is a worthy fighter. Hear that argument in an hour. And fat is a loaded word, full of negative connotations, frustrations, misrepresentations. Sylvia Tara says it is a misunderstood part of our anatomy.

SOUNDCLIP

Fat is not just fat. It's not just a reserve of calories, the way we think about it and it's not something to be gotten rid of at any expense. It's actually an organ.

AMT: The secret life of fat in half an hour. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti. This is The Current.

Back To Top »

Does Canada have a looming refugee crisis with influx of illegal border crossings?

Guests: Jeff French, Ralph Goodale

SOUNDCLIP

You’re good. She’s there. She’s there. Everybody’s there, alright? Just calm down.

AMT: Well, the sound of RCMP officers responding to a family of three adults and one baby as they entered Quebec illegally by walking across the US border on Monday. The RCMP says there have been 1,280 such crossings between 2016 and 2017, up from 424 the year before. Manitoba has also experienced a stark rise in migrant crossings, especially at the small border town of Emerson. There are 671 people in Emerson and it has seen 100 asylum seekers enter—often at night and in the winter's cold—since the beginning of this year. Social service groups as well as emergency first responders say they are feeling the strain. They're calling on government for more help to keep up with the growing demands. Jeff French is the fire chief in Emerson, Manitoba and he joins us now. Hello.

JEFF FRENCH: Good morning.

AMT: What role do you, the firefighters, have in responding to these border crossings?

JEFF FRENCH: Well, our fire department runs a medical first response program. So basically any 911 call that’s placed for a medical emergency in our municipality of Emerson-Franklin that's deemed as priority one, two or three would give you a firefighter EMT.

AMT: Who's calling 911?

JEFF FRENCH: Well, when it comes to the refugees that are coming across, it's going to be themselves via cell phone. We're noticing that they'll call if they come across in a farmer's field, are lost, are cold, they'll call 911 and then due to the cold injury, an emergency call is placed to our fire pagers and then we’ll go out and assist, try to locate these people and get them into a warm place, warm them up and obviously correct any life threats.

AMT: Wow. So you have to literally go out and try to find them because you don't, like you have to search for them out in these fields.

JEFF FRENCH: Yep. Some of the times we do and then other times we get called to the port of entry itself if they've already been picked up by RCMP or CBSA and brought back to the port and then they may, with the customs officials deem that they need a medical assessment or you know they're hypothermic they will place a 911 call.

AMT: So you say hypothermic. What kind of conditions do you find them in?

JEFF FRENCH: You know what, it's mostly cold injury. It's usually minor. We haven't seen anything too severe yet although we've heard of cases where there have been really severe hypothermia or frostbite.

AMT: How many calls are you getting like this?

JEFF FRENCH: Well, I would say right now we're doubled down our calls for refugees. Right now our call volume is about 25 to 30 calls this year and probably 40 per cent of those being for refugees seeking asylum in Canada.

AMT: What time of day do they normally come?

JEFF FRENCH: You know what, we've kind of seen this trend at nighttime. Friday and Saturday nights seem to be trending as well.

AMT: And you're a volunteer force. So you’re getting out of bed and getting out there.

JEFF FRENCH: We’re all volunteer forces. Yeah. Everyone else has a different job.

AMT: And you're a paid volunteer force.

JEFF FRENCH: We're a paid volunteer force, yeah.

AMT: But you don't usually get calls that often though. This is very different, right? I'm imagining that wasn't in your original budget.

JEFF FRENCH: No, it wasn’t in our original budget, that's for sure. I mean this isn’t anything new to us, the refugees coming across. We've been dealing with this for two to three years. We just haven't seen it in these numbers.

AMT: What's it like for you and the others when you come across people who have risked everything? Like what's that interaction like? What's going through your head? What's it like?

JEFF FRENCH: Well, I mean our first priority is their medical well-being. We will do an assessment and try to get them into the warm or cover them up or get them out of the snow. You know and our time with them is very limited. As soon as we get them kind of cleared, CBSA is taking them back for processing right away.

AMT: Yeah. What's the community reaction like?

JEFF FRENCH: I think the community reaction is a little bit, what I can see it's mixed for the most part and it's a bit controversial. But I guess there is a little bit of uncertainty in people walking through the border, walking you know into your town in the middle of the night, as we have to be kind of on guard of all border jumpers whether they're refugees or not refugees. So I think it's just some mixed feelings in town, that’s for sure.

AMT: This is an issue obviously that's being hotly debated by politicians and Canadians across the country. You're seeing it up close. It's part of your work now. What does your community need to meet the demands in these changes now?

JEFF FRENCH: You know if we’re going to see the numbers trending in the upwards—which I think they will be and they have been—you know SCMP is our kind of main jurisdiction or force that takes care of the refugees between port of entries. So you know I guess, personally I live right on the border. My house is pretty close to the border. So I mean you have people walking across through your backyard in the middle of the night. You know I guess RCMP, an increase in RCMP would be one of the things that we'd ask for as a town. Stronger borders. Basically just you know looking out for those border jumpers and getting them help if that’s what they need. If they're refugees, I mean you know or they have the third country rule, which kind of forces them to walk through fields and they're not allowed to walk to the port of entry, if they do walk to the port of entry, they're denied access.

AMT: So yeah, there are other decisions that need to be made elsewhere that are affecting you.

JEFF FRENCH: I think so, yeah.

AMT: But they're coming right through your backyard too. You see them sometimes.

JEFF FRENCH: Yep. They’re coming through my backyard. I've seen pictures online of my swing set in the pictures and you feel sort of bad because I mean there's kids and young girls and boys coming through and car seats. And you know it is definitely heartbreaking to see what's going on. And you know it's not that we don't want to help. We just want to do it in a correct fashion.

AMT: Yeah and it sounds like you need help to help as well, huh?

JEFF FRENCH: Right.

AMT: Yeah, okay. Well, Jeff French, thanks for talking to me.

JEFF FRENCH: Alright, thanks.

AMT: Jeff French, fire chief in Emerson-Manitoba. Well, my next guest is one of the people responsible for ensuring government agencies are adequately addressing the surge in illegal border crossings. Ralph Goodale is Canada's minister of public safety and emergency preparedness and he's in Ottawa. Hello, Mr. Goodale.

RALPH GOODALE: Good morning.

AMT: What can you do for that little team of first responders in Emerson?

RALPH GOODALE: Well, Anna Maria, let me start by just congratulating Chief French and his volunteer first responders at Emerson. And there are other groups like that at other locations like Lacolle in Quebec. They have responded magnificently to an unusual situation. They've responded with skill and compassion and generosity and I think they've really sent a very positive message about what ordinary Canadians are all about. And first responders are remarkable people, including volunteer firefighters across the country and they do a superb job.

AMT: They're swamped though. What can you do for them?

RALPH GOODALE: Well, we're monitoring the situation very carefully, right across the border, right from one end of the country to the other, but obviously at several particular points where volumes have been increasing. Within the Canada Border Services Agency and within the RCMP, they have already rearranged some resources to make sure that they have people available to deal with the situation as it evolves. To this point, they have not identified a need for extra resources. But obviously this is an evolving situation that we're paying very careful attention to. The CBSA, the RCMP, the immigration department, Global Affairs Canada, my department in public safety, we are meeting both at the technical level and at the senior officials level to make sure that we are able to predict as much as you can, humanly possible, what is likely to evolve over the days and weeks and months ahead and to make the planning that is necessary to be sure we're ready for whatever may happen. It's still very early days. The numbers are fluctuating. But we need to treat this with care and seriousness.

AMT: Well, the opposition is calling on your government to do more. Earlier this week, Conservative MP Tony Clement was talking about that. Listen to him.

SOUNDCLIP

Well, I think that we have to make sure that claimants are abiding by Canadian law and that the RCMP have the resources necessary—both at border crossings and in-between border crossings—to make sure that we don't get illegal claimants because that's a huge strain on the system.

AMT: Tony Clement believes the RCMP needs more resources. You're saying they're just rearranging them. Can you offer them more things?

RALPH GOODALE: Well, we are very carefully watching all of this as it evolves. To this point—and this is just several days into this situation—the RCMP has internally re-allocated, as has CBSA, to make sure they've got the people and the other resources necessary to deal with what they're facing on the ground. As the situation evolves, they will make further request resource recommendations to the government. If they do, obviously the government will treat that kind of a request very seriously. When you look at the numbers, Anna Maria, yes they are up this year from last year and over the last three or four years those numbers have been creeping up a little bit every year. But they are nowhere near, at least so far, the higher levels that were experienced eight or 10 years ago. These numbers fluctuate from one year to the next. So the trend is upward and we need to be alert to that. But so far at least, those numbers are below the record levels that would have been obvious in about 2007, 2008.

AMT: But we're still just in February. It’s only the 23rd of February. When you talk about evolution, you talk about as this evolves. What kind of evolution are you expecting?

RALPH GOODALE: Well, that's what our contingency planning is all about. We're taking all of the potential circumstances into account. What could stimulate a greater flow? What might cause the flow to subside? The officials within my department and others are contingency planning for every possibility that they can think of so that we can be ready. And we're also looking at the possible ways to relieve some of the pressure on local communities, which of to this point been those on the very front line. And as they said earlier, they have responded remarkably well.

AMT: Is that really code, Mr. Goodale, for saying you want to know how Homeland Security is going to crack down with this new directive by Mr. Trump?

RALPH GOODALE: Well, the directives that have been issued so far are of a temporary nature. They have beginning dates and expiry dates and the exact impact is not yet fully known or appreciated. So we need to be alert to everything that might change the circumstances here. There's been some international reporting including by CBC reporters of trends in human migration across the Atlantic into Latin America and perhaps moving into North America, that have some indications, at least anecdotally, that there may be some human traffic element at some stage in the flow. That is obviously of concern.

AMT: We do know. We do know from Evan Dyer who's reporting in Mexico on this that people are paying upwards of $12,000 to get themselves from Brazil and up through. We also know that Homeland Security has been directed to hire 10,000 people to enforce the new directive of President Trump. Is there any doubt in your mind that they will start deporting in large numbers and that people who are deemed illegal or think they're illegal in the United States will be coming across the Canadian border?

RALPH GOODALE: Honestly, Anna Maria, we just don't know yet. But we need to be ready. We need to anticipate what circumstances might change and to think this through in advance so that Canada is prepared to respond appropriately. And on that key point, is Canadian law being applied today? Yes, indeed it is. And are we respecting our international obligations under various conventions and our duties at the United Nations? Yes, indeed we are.

AMT: Well, Canadian law, let me just ask you then because Canadian law states if someone comes over from what is deemed a safe third country, they cannot be accepted for an asylum claim and people are coming over illegal crossings because of that. I want you to listen to the NDP immigration critic Jenny Kwan who wants your government to suspend the safe third country agreement. This is her in the House of Commons yesterday.

SOUNDCLIP

The minister of immigration was asked about the American treatment of refugees. And he said, “Nothing has changed.” Nothing has changed? Really? A massive immigration crackdown inside the US. Hundreds of refugees risking life and limb to cross the border. And today, Amnesty International said Trump's fear in scapegoating has increased risks to human rights. All this and another executive order on immigration is on its way.

AMT: Minister Ralph Goodale, is your government considering changing that safe third country agreement?

RALPH GOODALE: We've examined it very carefully. There does not appear to be a violation of that agreement by the United States to the best of our knowledge and information. And it is monitored, Anna Maria, by the UNHCR, the UN High Commission for Refugees. If they believed that the American side of that arrangement was not being properly honoured or fulfilled, they would certainly sound the alert internationally.

AMT: And if they do, will you change?

RALPH GOODALE: We will make our own sovereign decision as a country. But obviously we’ll take all the changing facts and evidence into account. What we should not do, because it would it would have hugely negative implications including for migrants and refugees, is too precipitously just blow up our border relationship with the United States. That's the import of what the NDP is saying and that would be counterproductive. It would damage relations between Canada and United States and it would damage the refugees and the asylum seekers.

AMT: I'm wondering if there is a wider question here on how Canada deals with the flow of migrants around the world right now. We did mention that Evan Dyer is reporting out of Mexico and I want you to hear what he was talking about with the number of people coming from Africa and South Asia and taking the circuitous routes upward.

SOUNDCLIP

Canada has two borders and both of them are with the United States and that puts it in a very privileged position of being able to more or less select who comes as a refugee in most cases. Canada’s sort of geographical immunity is fading away. Migrants are travelling further around the world. They're using new routes and Canada no longer has the luxury to just put out that message and think people aren't going to act on it.

AMT: Mr. Goodale, does Canada have to rethink how it sees itself geographically, sort of untouchable?

RALPH GOODALE: Well, you know we're facing, the world is facing the largest migrations of people probably since the Second World War. More people have been displaced and dislocated. More people are on the move. And no place in the world is immune from that or is somehow isolated or protected from that. We need to make sure that we have the right policy in place and the right resources in place to cope with the impacts upon Canada and to fulfill our international obligations. We also can play, I believe, a very useful global role in trying to set the right kind of international standards and policies and procedures to assist every country around the world. We can't obviously shoulder all of this burden and responsibility ourselves but we can be a model internationally for how these circumstances are dealt with. And so far, Canada has done that very well.

AMT: And where does safety come in on this?

We know there are many desperate people who want to get over the border but there are other people who might want to take advantage of this, who you cannot necessarily track, who have very nefarious plans.

RALPH GOODALE: When people cross the border at irregular points—not at the official border crossings—they are apprehended by the proper authorities, most especially the RCMP, sometimes municipal or provincial police forces, depending on the part of the country, but primarily the RCMP. And then the official process in Canada takes place. They are presented to the Immigration and Refugee Board. They make a determination about their status. If there is criminality in their background, they are not admissible to Canada.

AMT: What do you do with them? Because you can't just pop them back over the US border.

RALPH GOODALE: Then you proceed with deportation proceedings under the appropriate Canadian law.

AMT: Mr. Trudeau and Mr. Trump have a phone meeting today. Is this on the agenda?

RALPH GOODALE: I don't know the agenda for the two leaders but I'm sure they'll talk about all things that are relevant to the Canada-US relationship.

AMT: You’re the minister of public safety. Do you want it on the agenda?

RALPH GOODALE: Oh, I appreciate it whenever my policy areas are under discussion. The two leaders will, I'm sure, give a topic like this one the appropriate level of attention and concern. We have an amazing border between our two countries. It's one of the longest in the world: several thousand kilometres. It's a border that that transports back and forth every day—400,000 people.

AMT: We have to leave it there. We have to leave it there, Mr. Goodale. Thank you.

RALPH GOODALE: All the very best.

AMT: Ralph Goodale, minister of public safety and emergency preparedness. We reached him in Ottawa. Let us know what you think. We are @thecurrentCBC on Twitter. www.cbc.ca/thecurrent, you can send us an email. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti. This is The Current.

Back To Top »

The truth about fat: the body's least understood organ

Guests: Sylvia Tara

AMT: Hello. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti and you're listening to The Current.

[Music: Theme]

AMT: Still to come, the future of feminism. In half an hour, we hear from an activist who says the women's movement is desperately in need of a complete overhaul. But first, I don't think you're ready for this jelly. Unveiling the secret life of fat.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE 1: By drinking freshly juiced vegetables mixed in with some fruits, you’ll finally start to see fat melt away and never have to struggle again on achieving the body you’ve always wanted.

VOICE 2: “I'm not losing weight, I don't eat anything.” What happens is our bodies go into starvation mode.

VOICE 3: This is how to get rid of a big butt to fit into your skinny jeans. The first thing to do is get your cardio up.

VOICE 4: I read more than 60 studies on this and it turns out exercise is actually pretty useless when it comes to weight loss.

VOICE 5: The following presentation does not apply to men and is only for women that want to lose at least 10 pounds.

AMT: Well, the Internet is full of advice on how to lose weight, how to ditch the pesky body fat. But the tips and techniques are often contradictory, simplistic and well, scientifically unsound. Biochemist Sylvia Tara decided to do her own research after struggling with her weight for decades. But instead of looking at weight loss programs, she went straight to the source and started learning all she could learn about body fat. What she found was a surprisingly dynamic organ and a field where scientists are making new discoveries every day. Sylvia Tara is the author of The Secret Life of Fat: The Science Behind the Body's Least Understood Organ and What It Means for You. She joins us from Irvine, California. Hello.

SYLVIA TARA: Hi. Nice to be here. Thank you.

AMT: First of all, body fat is an organ?

SYLVIA TARA: Yeah, that's usually a big surprise for people. And you know I went into this research because I struggle with my own fat and I've decided before I go on one more diet, I'm going to understand everything there is to know about fat. And the real upshot is, the most surprising thing was that fat is not just fat. It's not just a reserve of calories, the way we think about it and it's not something to be gotten rid of at any expense. It's actually an organ, meaning that it releases hormones that our body depends on. So our bones depend on fat. Even brain size is linked to fat. Our immune system is strengthened by these hormones that fat makes. And so it's critical. And we do really have to manage our fat intelligently if we really want to you know have a healthy life and have your body functioning optimally.

AMT: We heard in the clip off the top about someone wanting to fit into skinny jeans. Often that's really where our whole relationship with fat is. It's just about looking better.

SYLVIA TARA: This wasn't always the case. There was a time when we actually loved fat. In America at least, after the Civil War, fat was really treasured and there was even something called the fat man's club where you had to be fat enough to join. As people gained weight, you know this became a judgment. It became not a good thing to have fat anymore. And you know people started dieting and getting very self-conscious about fat and that's really you know with the dieting industry took off. A lot of the presses around the dangers of fat—and there are dangers of fat—but there's other parts of fat where you know it is actually important and you have to think about it holistically.

AMT: Well, when you say you struggled with your own weight, what was that like? Were you looking at people who seemed to be effortless in controlling weight versus what you were going through?

SYLVIA TARA: I think my whole life, even as a child, I could see people eat more than me, exercise less and yet stay thinner. My body has a real propensity to gain fat. Also as I get older, my old tricks weren't working as well. So this is now having health consequences. It's not just about how we look necessarily. And I had to really understand why my fat was stubborn and what's really going to work for somebody like me.

AMT: Because it's almost arbitrary. It looks like those—I might be more like you. I mean we see people who seem to gain it easily and have a hard time losing and then we see other people who seem to be able to eat anything they want and don't have an issue.

SYLVIA TARA: There's a lot of things that play into our fat. Most of the time we assume it's gluttony and sloth and that's why people are getting fatter all the time. And there certainly are a group of people that that is the case. But what I learned too is that there's many ways why fatness varies among people and one is genetics has an important role here. And I talk about populations of people that actually get heavier than the other populations on the same diet. Our gender matters. Women are much more predisposed for fat. Even at birth, girl babies have more fat than boys. Microbiome, the bacteria we have and the viruses, that also affects our fatness level. And age—as we age, a lot of our fat burning hormones decline, like growth hormone and testosterone.

AMT: How much or how little do we know then about body fat?

SYLVIA TARA: I think most people are really—they're gullible. They're susceptible to a lot of different diets. I mean look at the bookshelves on the diets section. You know people want to know that it's fast, it's easy. It won't cause them a lot of discomfort. But I think we have come to a point we have to face the truth because we spend about $60 billion a year on fat and yet the obesity rates are higher than ever.

AMT: Is a little bit of extra weight always bad for us?

SYLVIA TARA: Not necessarily. It depends on where your fat is. And so I tell the story of sumo wrestlers who are a population clearly that is obese, but they actually managed to stay metabolically healthy. And it's because they don't have a lot of visceral fat. So there is subcutaneous fat, that fat right under your skin and then there's visceral fat, which is the fat underneath the stomach wall. And when visceral fat becomes crowded and inflamed, that's what is correlated with diabetes and heart disease. And exercise actually helps fat release a hormone called adiponectin and adiponectin will help guide the fat in your blood to subcutaneous fat where it is safer. And so you know there are people who are fit but fat and it's usually a matter of the amount of visceral fat that they have.

AMT: Well and that brings us to a whole issue of different people's problems with fat. Many of us are fighting too much fat. There is a rare group of people for whom a severe lack of fat is a problem. They have a condition called lipodystrophy and I've got someone I'd like you to hear. Dr. Abhimanyu Garg studies the condition. He's a professor of internal medicine and chief of the division of nutrition and metabolic diseases at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Centre. He joins us from Dallas, Texas. Hello.

ABHIMANYU GARG: Hi.

AMT: What is lipodystrophy?

ABHIMANYU GARG: Lipodystrophy is a variety of conditions which are primarily characterized by selective loss of fat. So some patients may have small amount of fat loss. On the other extreme are patients who are born without any fat on their body—congenital generalized lipodystrophy—and in between, we have some patients where they may lose fat from their arms or legs or from the upper body. Some of these are genetic disorders, whereas some of these occur due to autoimmune diseases where our own body cells, they turn against our fat tissue and destroy it.

AMT: Hmm. How rare is it?

ABHIMANYU GARG: Well, the genetic and acquired autoimmune lipodystrophies are extremely rare. Sometimes we estimate them to be one in million.

AMT: To get an idea of what this can look like, we asked Rachel Daniels. Her three-year-old daughter Alani was born with no fat cells. Let's listen to her.

SOUNDCLIP

When Alani was born, she was all muscle. She's the fifth child that I have, so that's how I knew that she just didn't look normal from birth. She was always hungry. She cried constantly for food. Alani is three years old. She looks like a little bodybuilder. She is not able to have anything that’s a simple sugar, so I do not give her cakes, cookies, pies, ice creams, nothing. Birthdays are special events are pretty traumatic. I purchase and prepare every single meal every single day. She does not eat anything that's preserved out of a can or fast food and never has. And I'm able to maintain her triglycerides at extremely low levels to help protect her heart, her pancreas and a liver that's already fatty.

AMT: Dr. Garg, she's all muscle but some of the health effects of the condition are similar to those of obesity, aren't they?

ABHIMANYU GARG: That's exactly right. In obesity, you can think of it that each fat cell is just like a bucket and in obese patients, that bucket is already full. So if you are pouring excess energy in the bucket, it is spilling over to wrong organs. In lipodystrophies, particularly in congenital generalized lipodystrophy, there is no bucket. They don't have any fat cells to store that energy. So whatever excess energy you’re going to pour, since there is no bucket, it is very easy for that energy to spill over into wrong organs. And so they are born with fatty liver and they are born with a predisposition to insulin resistance, which many saw early in their life with diabetes and very high blood lipids.

AMT: And we also talked to Andra Stratton about living with the condition she has partial lipodystrophy. She's the president of Lipodystrophy United, a group for those with the condition. Here she is.

SOUNDCLIP

I've never really felt full in my whole life. That probably ruled my life, that hunger, particularly as I was growing. In high school, I was so hungry all of the time that I had a constant headache. I was always on edge. I was highly sensitive and irritable and really felt very ashamed of myself because I didn't realize something was different. And so I thought everyone around me was that hungry and just managed it better. That was really tough.

AMT: So that constant hunger. What are the psychological effects you see in your lipodystrophy patients?

ABHIMANYU GARG: So particularly children who have no fat on their body, they have no ability to synthesize the hormone leptin from the fat cells. And leptin interestingly controls our appetite and if you have no leptin, you will be constantly hungry. But beyond that, just appearance. Alani is totally muscular. So when she goes to school, I mean the children may not feel that this child is totally normal and she may face some psychological sequelae of that. Some of the children where their face and neck and upper body loses fat, these patients were recognized by teachers and they have felt that these kids were not being fed right by the parents. They called in the social service. This family was on the verge of losing their child to protective services.

AMT: They thought they were starving their children or something.

ABHIMANYU GARG: Exactly because the child looks so thin from the face. It looks like that they are not feeding them well, whereas these children, they may have even better appetite.

AMT: You mentioned leptin and Andra is being treated with leptin to help her feel less hungry. What's the treatment? What’s it do?

ABHIMANYU GARG: We started a trial 15 years ago, where we thought that these patients who have generalized lipodystrophy, they're not able to make any leptin. And we showed that when you replace this hormone, it causes dramatic effects. Some patients who were taking thousands of units of insulin within four months would come off of insulin.

AMT: What can we learn about fat from looking at those who have lost or do not have fat cells then?

ABHIMANYU GARG: First of all, we can learn a lot about the fat cell biology. What is the importance of fat? And although we are talking about these real conditions, whatever we are learning from lipodystrophies can also apply to patients with common forms of obesity, common forms of diabetes and patients who have fatty liver.

AMT: Dr. Garg, thanks for your time. Interesting to hear what you have to say.

ABHIMANYU GARG: Thank you very much.

AMT: That is Dr. Abhimanyu Garg, a professor of internal medicine and chief of the division of nutrition and metabolic diseases at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Centre. He is in Dallas, Texas. And of course, Sylvia Tara is still with me. She is the author of The Secret Life of Fat. Sylvia, as I listened to him talking about all of this, it reminds me of another example of something in your book—a woman called Layla. Tell us her story.

SYLVIA TARA: Yeah. Layla, really since she was born, she had this unstoppable urge to eat and it wasn't a normal appetite. She actually had more of a pathological appetite. She would break into a locked freezer to eat raw frozen fish and you know no one could really figure this out. And they even put her in a hospital for a while to try to control her eating. It worked somewhat. She started gaining weight slower but she was still gaining weight. Layla's fat wasn't making leptin. And so she had this unstoppable urge to eat. And she was finally able to get leptin and she got injections of it and her appetite diminished in days. And so this child who was destined for early death due to complications of obesity went on to have a very happy normal life. It's the power of fat. It’s you know talking to our brains in a way telling us not to eat anymore.

AMT: And that really is also a lesson in the link between body fat and hormones then.

SYLVIA TARA: Fat is part of the hormonal system. And so you'd be amazed at how much power fat has in your body and because it's important, nature doesn't really want you to lose it. When we try to lose it, it has protective mechanisms. And one is that control on appetite. So when we lose some fat and you know we get lower leptin and our appetite gets higher, our metabolism gets slower and there's a drive to regain that fat back unless you're really armed to fight at the same level as your own fat.

AMT: There's another unexpected cause of weight control issues that you look at. But this one could be much more common than the cases we're talking about. What's the scientific evidence so far on the link between viruses and weight gain?

SYLVIA TARA: Yeah, that's always shocking to people to hear that viruses have a role in fat. But really, that link has been known about for some time. We also associate a virus caused fatness in chicken and canine distemper virus causes fatness in mice. But there is a virus now that they've identified that in humans has a link with fatness. People who have it have about double the risk of obesity and they tend to be more overweight, even if they're not obese. And it doesn't mean you have to be obese because you have this virus. But if you've carried it, you do have to work a little bit harder. And I do talk about a patient named Randy who did carry the virus. He felt really driven to eat. He felt like other people could eat normal amounts of food and not gain weight. If he ate the same thing, he would gain pounds. And he says that I should be able to have you know a cookie once in a while like everyone else does. But in fact, his body could not.

AMT: This started when he was just a kid. What happened?

SYLVIA TARA: He got scratched by a rooster when he was on his family's farm. When he puts it all back together, that's when he remembers that hunger started. He started gaining weight at that point. And through decades, he really fought with this and he tried to reduce but he just had so much trouble. And finally he got to about 350 pounds in his forties. He got diabetes and he was referred to this centre of University of Wisconsin where they did a big education program on fat and he realized that he had contracted this virus. Whether it's transmitted from animals to humans, it's never fully been verified. People have this. It's not as rare as you might think. It might be in about 10 per cent of the population or so. And the people who do contract it through whichever way, I mean it could be transmitted by humans. It could be transmitted through other means. It's not completely known. But they do have a higher likelihood of being fatter unless they take measures to really control it.

AMT: How widely accepted is the link between viruses and weight gain among obesity researchers?

SYLVIA TARA: I think there's still skepticism out there but there's a lot of different studies showing the link between viruses and fat. And you know it's accepted in animals. It doesn't get as much skepticism. But you know to hear that we might not be in complete control as humans, I think people have a hard time understanding that. But I do think that the faster we come to terms with there's other things causing fat than just over eating, it's going to help us manage it better. You know once more discoveries come out about how to control our fat we might have other tools to work with. But for now there's surgery, there's hormone replacement and then there's diet and exercise. And the one I chose to focus on is the here and now with diet and exercise and we can still manage it that way.

AMT: And we're talking about the physical role of fat but how much of weight control is about our minds?

SYLVIA TARA: There's one study that I think shows this well. It's an MRI studies of the successful dieters’ brains. And they have them hold lollipops in their mouth. And what they find is people who diet successfully, they're more excited by food. At the same time the parts of the brain involved in restraint also light up very brightly. So when they see food they want it but they're able to control themselves at the same time. It's like a muscle, our willpower. And so when you take small acts you can actually build on it.

AMT: Randy talks about being in the eating world. You actually say the penny dropped for you when you went out with some friends and your friend orders a burrito and a beer.

SYLVIA TARA: Yeah.

AMT: It was just very unfair in your view.

SYLVIA TARA: That was in college. I was so careful about my weight and you know I did pretty well at you know fitting into clothes and staying healthy. But she was smaller than me. She ate you know a lot of food. And later in life there was another friend and when I asked her what she's going to have for dinner, it's like yeah, you know whatever. Whatever my kids are having. It doesn't really matter. I thought how can it not matter? How do you stay that thin? For me I was really not part of the eating world like Randy says. I always had to be very careful. I eat less than most people do for my size. You know I’m older.

AMT: Tell me a little bit about what you think it is for weight for you. You say genetics.

SYLVIA TARA: You know I’m an eastern Indian and so there's populations of people who, we can't really handle a Western diet necessarily. We gain more weight than other people will on that diet. And you know I suspect you know eastern India, it’s had famine it's been evolved with this thrifty genotype type where we're just more efficient with our food. You know gender. We store it much more efficiently and that's why we have more fat than men and then age. My hormones you know are declining as I enter into my middle ages and so I don't have the same growth hormone, testosterone or estrogen, I used to and that really gives you a propensity to gain weight too. I will have to work a lot harder than I used to in my twenties when it was already hard. And that's what I did and it was successful. But I think unless I knew all this, I don't know that I would have stayed on these diets. I think I would have been looking for the magic bullet like everybody else.

AMT: So can I ask you what you weigh?

SYLVIA TARA: Oh my gosh. So I'm not tall. I'm about five foot three. And right now I'm probably around 114 or so. And I'm not skinny. I do have fat mass.

AMT: But 114 is not heavy for five-three.

SYLVIA TARA: It’s not heavy.

AMT: No.

SYLVIA TARA: That’s right. But again, I’m Asian so I have slender build. I have slender bones. And I’m not skinny either.

AMT: You say you have a will of steel.

SYLVIA TARA: Yes.

AMT: Give us an idea of how that will of steel manifests itself in your daily life.

SYLVIA TARA: For me it almost became this real kind of war with it. I had to understand it and I got mad at it if you will. And so when I get mad at something, things start to happen. And so while I was trying to lose weight, I kept a spreadsheet of what I ate, what time I ate it, what the amount of calories was and when did I start losing weight and when was I gaining weight. And what I learned is that if I stop eating early, I actually start losing weight. More or less I eat between nine and around three-thirty or so. Intermittent fasting actually helps promote the release of growth hormone which is a great fat burning hormone. But that's for me and a diet has to work for people biologically, psychologically and socially. This reaction of lower leptin, higher appetite, lower metabolism, it doesn't go away. And they've studied it for up to six years and find that it's still there. So you have to pick a diet that's going to work for you year over year.

AMT: How many calories did you eat while you were losing weight?

SYLVIA TARA: It was around 1,000 or less. And I kept rationing down. I think I started around 1,500 and went to 12 and I just wasn't losing any weight. And finally when I got to around 1,000 or less, the weight started coming off and it would plateau here and there and I would just give it you know more injections of other things. I started exercising and then that plateaued and I start doing high intensity interval training and then it moved again. So it was just looking at my data and seeing where am I plateauing, where is it losing? And I just worked with it and so it was pretty harsh and it was hard at first. I think I got very hungry at night but it went away eventually. My body got used to this new way of being.

AMT: What do you do when you're invited out to dinner?

SYLVIA TARA: Well, I have dinner now once in a while. I mean certain Christmases and all the celebrations.

AMT: But you don’t have it every night, is what you’re saying.

SYLVIA TARA: Not every night, no. But I can go off and the other thing successful dieters do is when they do go off, they get back on their diet really quickly. And the key is stay on your diet plan at least 80 per cent of the time.

AMT: I'm just going to go back to 1,000 calories or less a day before I get the onslaught of e-mail that says you're being irresponsible and I am too by talking about this.

SYLVIA TARA: So there's all this common, you know this dogma out there, this philosophy about well, you have to eat enough calories to lose weight or you know you can't have sugar ever under any circumstances or all carbs are bad. And you know those platitudes just don't hold true for everybody. And there are people like me and like Randy, you know we're not really part of the eating world. We just have to eat less. It's just the way it is and it's not that we want to. Certainly I would eat more if I could. There are a number of diet programs out there, you know they run it through hospitals where they’ll start somebody on 500 calories a day—800 calories or below is considered very low calorie. And so you know I wouldn't tell anyone to go on a diet without consulting your physician, you know without really checking your own biological profile.

AMT: I think one of the really important things you're saying is that this is much more individual than those who are trying to give us Internet advice and other advice would have us believe. That in fact we actually do have to really be aware of our own bodies. You're not telling us to go on your diet. You're telling us that we need to figure out how our bodies are actually working with the fat that we have.

SYLVIA TARA: That's right. And I think these easy lose fat, one, two three, take these steps—you know it's obviously not working for everyone or we wouldn't have the obesity rates that we do. You know people will buy something. They're all looking for that special herb or special fruit or pill or whatever that's going to help them melt fat without having to feel any hunger, without having to go through any distress. And if you found that, that is great. But I think for most people, at some point we have to face the facts is that it's not so easy to lose weight. You do have to put effort in. You might be uncomfortable once in a while. But if you maintain through that, it actually will get easier over time. But unless you understand what fat is doing in your body, why you feel hungry while you're losing, you're going to be gullible to these siren songs. So you know fat is doing complicated things in our body and we have to understand it truly. Any way we lose it, it's going to have an effect on our body.

AMT: Sylvia Tara, thank you very much for your time. Thank you.

SYLVIA TARA: Great to be here.

AMT: Sylvia Tara is a biochemist and the author of The Secret Life of Fat: The Science Behind the Body's Least Understood Organ and What It Means for You. She joined us from Irvine, California. Well, we do want to hear from you on this. What have you learned about your own body fat? How do you keep it under control? Let us know. Tweet us @thecurrentCBC, comment on this post on our Facebook page. E-mail us by clicking on the contact link at www.cbc.ca/thecurrent.

[Music: Sting]

AMT: Coming up in our next half hour, some women's rights activists are disowning the F word in favour of more radical terms. We are tracking the evolution of female revolution in about 90 seconds. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti. This is The Current on CBC Radio One, Sirius XM and online on www.cbc.ca/thecurrent.

Back To Top »

Why this literary critic rejects modern-day feminism

Guests: Jessa Crispin

AMT: Hello. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti and you're listening to The Current.

SOUNDCLIP

Honestly I think that the girls who say they're not feminists, I truly think they don't understand the meaning of it because if they did, they would understand that all you're saying by identifying yourself as a feminist is that you hope for equal rights and opportunities for men and women. I almost wish it was called like feminism, equalism or something because I think that when people hear the word feminist, they think that it means that women should have more than men or that you have a problem with men or that you're disgruntled or you're angry.

AMT: Well, that's Taylor Swift, celebrity singer and lightning rod in the debate around who gets to be a feminist and what it means to be one. It is a question with new urgency after the election of US President Donald Trump and the emergence of a coalition of women's groups united in their fight against him. But it doesn't mean all feminists are united. Contemporary feminism has many critics—many from inside the women's movement.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE 1: Ivanka Trump recently decided that you know she was a feminist. Feminism means something. Like it's not an empty term. It's not an identity. It's not a T-shirt. You aren’t a feminist just because you believe in equality. Feminism is a lot more than just equality. It's not even about equality. It's about undoing these hierarchies you know that specifically hurt women.

VOICE 2: What feminism means to me is essentially liberation. It's a movement. It's a way for me and other women to be able to live our lives without systemic obstacles.

VOICE 3: The feminism that I sort of try my best to adopt and live by is feminism that is intersectional. So it means that I won't just be liberated as a woman but I’ll be liberated as a brown woman, as a Muslim woman.

VOICE 4: And the common goal is to transform society so that all women are able to do what they want to do. And if that means they want to make a little more money, if that means they want to go to school or if that means they want to be able to walk in their neighbourhoods without being worried about being harassed by the police because they're black. If you talk about the liberation of women as we used to talk about, then we're talking about the liberation of all groups.

AMT: Well, those were three Canadian feminists—the founder of feminist current.com Meghan Murphy; writer and illustrator Hana Shafi and lastly, long-time feminist activist Judy Rebick. My next guest wants to see feminism get a major overhaul. Jessa Crispin is a culture and literary critic and the author of a new book called Why I am Not a Feminist: A Feminist Manifesto. And she joins us from New York. Hello.

JESSA CRISPIN: Hello.

AMT: Why are you disavowing the label of feminist?

JESSA CRISPIN: I think the word has become so empty because it has been co-opted by Ivanka Trump, by Taylor Swift, by pop stars, by you know shoe companies. And so now when somebody says you know I'm a feminist or this is a feminist belief, it doesn't convey information. It doesn't sort of pinpoint what your philosophical viewpoint is anymore, in the way that it used to.

AMT: So how would you define feminism?

JESSA CRISPIN: To me feminism only means that every human being on the planet has as much value as any other human being. That regardless of sexuality, regardless of race, regardless of gender, that there is no hierarchy.

AMT: Okay. And so you mentioned Ivanka Trump and Taylor Swift. We heard her at the top there. Are they feminists?

JESSA CRISPIN: No. [laughs] No. I mean of course, of course they're not. They're both working in their own self-interest. Feminism used to be a political ideology. Ivanka Trump's ideology is money and power and Taylor Swift's ideology is money and power. And so just by the basic definition of trying to live in a society without hierarchy, that's a complete and total contradiction.

AMT: Who gets to decide who is and is not a feminist though?

JESSA CRISPIN: Well, you can call yourself a unicorn. That doesn't make you a unicorn. There is a history. There's a specific history of thought and action and deed—a tradition of feminism, an intellectual history of feminism. You can't just ignore that because it's inconvenient to you.

AMT: Okay. So talk to me a little bit more about the goals of what feminism should be.

JESSA CRISPIN: Well, there's never going to be, I think, just one particular overriding goal, except for the dismantling of systems of oppression. And people of course have different ways of thinking how that might work. But I think the goal is just to remove these hierarchies that say that straight white men have a dominant space in the culture and then everybody is underneath them in varying degrees. Personally I think that there's no way to destroy those hierarchies without also removing or radically rethinking capitalism and our current economy because our economy is entirely dependent on exploitation of the poor and women and the vulnerable in other different ways. And so I don't think that there's any sort of gender justice unless there's also economic justice and racial justice and international justice.

AMT: Well, let's talk a little bit more about the details of that. First of all because you talk about there's a history of thought and action indeed. But there are feminists today who would argue that the history of feminism never addressed all of those things, that it addressed middle class white women. It never actually—

JESSA CRISPIN: Right.

AMT: It wasn't a history to be proud of.

JESSA CRISPIN: Well, it depends on how we decide to remember our history. And so for whatever reason, the sort of mainstream feminism has these idols. Right? So Gloria Steinem of the second wave, which completely ignores the civil rights feminists, which completely ignores the queer feminists. For the first wave, we remember Susan B. Anthony even though she was a racist and pro-life, rather than Victoria Woodhull, who was an abolitionist and a believer and advocate of free love. So I think that the way that we tell our feminist history within the mainstream feminist culture has an effect and that the wilder, the more marginalized figures of the feminist movement need to be sort of rehabilitated in reputation so that we can expand our idea of what feminist history is. But yes, absolutely, mainstream feminism has had a serious problem with racism, with homophobia, with xenophobia and that needs to be discussed. Absolutely.

AMT: You basically, you call mainstream feminism essentially harmless, toothless.

JESSA CRISPIN: Yes.

AMT: Tell me more about that.

JESSA CRISPIN: Well, the goals are not societal change. The goals are, you know there's lean in feminism, where the goal is just to make more money and attain positions of power. There's this kind of pop star feminism where it's just like you know you get to do whatever you want without any sort of self-awareness of the consequences of your actions. And the feminist discourse is now mostly about very surface level things like television shows. You know which television show is a good television show and which television show is a bad television show, and all this sort of focus on pop culture rather than on the actual systemic problems that we're facing.

AMT: You do a lot of reading on this. You read a lot of feminist writers or people who call themselves feminist writers.

JESSA CRISPIN: Yes, of course.

AMT: And what have you found?

JESSA CRISPIN: Well, you know during the first wave and the second wave of feminist writers, there was a goal that was in mind, that everybody wanted to achieve. So in the first wave, it was the right to vote. With the second wave, it was about creating a public life for women. And so the writing and the thinking were on these specific issues and so they had something concrete to fight against and also a way to imagine a way forward for women. Now it's much more vague what the problem is or it's actually it's not so much that it's vague, it's that it's going to be so difficult to make the real societal changes that we need to in order to fully liberate not just women, but all people, that probably we’re not going to see that in our lifetime. Right? And so it's hard then to convince anybody to sacrifice time and energy and effort to remove something that you know maybe three generations from now, there's going to be some sort of benefit from it. And so writing has become very shallow because it's about the moving parts of the system of oppression. You know like representation on television, you know these kind of identity politics issues rather than you know our economic system is in need of serious dire reform.

AMT: And this makes you angry.

JESSA CRISPIN: Yes, of course because it's useless. It's a lot of useless chatter without any real meaning or purpose.

AMT: It's one size fits all.

JESSA CRISPIN: Yeah. You know like the idea of universal feminism—you know all women should be feminists—I don't think that's true. Feminism used to be a radical terrifying thing. You know even 20 years ago, you know I can remember you know people, public figures blaming hurricanes on feminism you know because God's wrath at the dangerous witches of feminism. Like it used to be a really scary threatening thing and it's not now because now it's just a T-shirt and a slogan. And you know Beyoncé is standing in front of the word on stage.

AMT: Now you talk about that there should be discomfort with feminism.

JESSA CRISPIN: Yes, it should make you uncomfortable. For men, men have not—I'm not sure what is going to take for men to notice that feminism happened but they don't seem to have noticed yet if you look at the world. But feminism should make men scared and uncomfortable because they're going to have to examine their unconscious desires and their unconscious ways of oppressing women that they haven't necessarily been aware of in the past. And it should make women uncomfortable because you should understand that by participating, by profiting from this society and the society that is a system of oppression and a system of exploitation, that you are causing harm.

AMT: But would you then be fighting for human rights, not feminism?

JESSA CRISPIN: I don't understand the distinction. I don't understand why there is a difference between these things. The thing that liberates women is going to be the thing that liberates homosexuals, is going to be the thing that liberates the poor, is going to be the thing that liberates Central Europe and South America. The removal of these hierarchies is going to benefit everybody, I think. Maybe that’s a little naïve.

AMT: Okay. Well, let's talk about politics. Did you support Hillary Clinton?

JESSA CRISPIN: No.

AMT: What about the argument that more women in power will actually change things?

JESSA CRISPIN: I don't think that that's true. I mean by what mechanism? The belief in that necessitates a belief that women are somehow more empathetic and nurturing than men, which I absolutely do not think is true. You know that was a lie that men told us to keep us at home raising the kids. Oh no, you're so much more loving. You’re so much better at it. You know you don't want the public life. Like just stay at home. This is your strength. Right. And so I don't think that just having more women in power changes the world. It just has the world with more women in it.

AMT: Okay. Well, you know here in Canada, our Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has declared that he is a feminist. He appointed an equal number of men and women to his cabinet. There are still relatively few women in politics. I have a clip I'd like you to hear. This is Nancy Peckford, the executive director of an organization in Canada called Equal Voice. She works to help elect women to office. Here she is.

SOUNDCLIP

Canada’s political institutions and political institutions the world over are very male-dominated and are certainly rooted in a patriarchal system and the work of Equal Voice is obviously to get far more women elected to those institutions. It's really hard to argue that women have co-opted political institutions in Canada when they remain such a distinct minority in nearly every single one. We have legislatures in Canada with only nine per cent women. At the federal level, it's just 26 per cent of MPs who are women. So there's so much more work to be done. So I don't think we've had the chance to see what a female dominated political institution would look like and how that could truly be transformative.

AMT: So Jessa Crispin, what do you think of what Nancy Peckford says there?

JESSA CRISPIN: I do think it's important to increase representation of women in governments. Like those barriers, I do think it's important to remove them. But without a kind of radical awareness, I don't think that just electing women does anything except for just elect women. It just increases the number of women working in and for the system. The patriarchy has nothing to do with men. Men individually. It's about a hierarchy. So if you have women who are supporting the ultra-rich, if you have women who are working in Wall Street, in Silicon Valley, if you have women who are CEOs and billionaires, that doesn't create a better world. It just creates you know women billionaires acting like the way that billionaires do.

AMT: Well, let me ask you though because you talk about needing to be radical and on the fringe but how much can the feminist movement accomplish if there isn't a critical mass of people who support it? Don't you have to move to a middle? Don't you have to get into that area where you think, where you identify things as co-opted or toothless?

JESSA CRISPIN: I don't think so. When the suffragettes were undergoing torture and hunger strikes and being arrested and beaten by the police, mainstream women's culture was against them. They fought against it. When second wave feminism was happening, mainstream women's culture was against them for the most part, at least the more radical side of them. They wanted money but they didn't necessarily want the societal reforms that a lot of the second wave feminists were fighting for, like the end of marriage.

AMT: I have another clip I want to play and this is Judy Rebick, who we heard at the beginning. Long-time feminist activist in Canada. Former head of the National Action Committee on the Status of Women in Canada. She is reacting to the movement behind the women's march. Listen to her.

SOUNDCLIP

I see what I've always dreamed of, which is you know it's a line in the theme song “Bread and Roses”, is “the rising of the women is the rising of us all”. And what we saw in the women's march was a women's movement that's going to fight for everybody who’s oppressed, for everybody who’s unequal, against all injustice with women leading. And that's always been my dream of what a feminist movement should be and it's the first time I've really seen it happen.

AMT: Jessa Crispin, so help me understand. She sees what she’s always dreamed of and you see your nightmare.

JESSA CRISPIN: I don't think my nightmare but I think you know anybody who thinks that the women's march was some sort of unquestioned good should read the personal accounts by black women, by trans women, by Native American women who were there and saw something different, which was you know the entitlement of white straight women and this very kind of vague sense of what their political goals were.

AMT: You also have a message for men in your book .What is it?

JESSA CRISPIN: Leave me alone and don't talk to me. [laughs]

AMT: Do you really believe that?

JESSA CRISPIN: Yeah. Yes. No. I mean the message for men is that you know since I've been publicly talking about these issues and about the feminist movement, you know you get these emails from men who are like I too, I too have problems with feminism. Like your problem and my problem are not the same problem, fella. Let's not pretend like I respect any of your opinions. You've got to get away from me. And I think that men want to think of the feminist movement as inherently irrational so that they do not have to accept the new reality, which is that they are going to have to give up their power.

AMT: So which men would that be? Who have to give up their power?

JESSA CRISPIN: All the sort of straight white men at the top of the hierarchy, they need to start doing the very difficult work of understanding their place in the culture, their dominance over women, the way that they have caused the suffering of women. But women also need to understand that their desires for men have also cause suffering in them. Our need for them to be strong providers, our need for them to meet certain ideas of masculinity also hurts and does harm to men. And so everybody needs to do the work. It's not just men.

AMT: What you're talking about your ideas, don’t you have to engage people in these ideas?

JESSA CRISPIN: I've done plenty of writing on the subject. They're free to read that. But I feel like women lose a lot of time and energy by hand-holding men who ultimately are resistant to feminist ideas. And I think it's just a black hole that we keep pouring our time into and I don't think it's our job to walk men toward being humans.

AMT: So where do you go with this idea? What do you do?

JESSA CRISPIN: You try to live your life with integrity and live your life by the value system that you have spent a long time rehabilitating from a culture that wants you to value greed and competition.

AMT: I mean essentially you say you need to stay on the radical fringe. But isn't the success of a movement that begins radical and goes mainstream, isn't that part of the success of a movement? Is that you just not accepting that maybe there are people who believe in a lot of what you think is important?

JESSA CRISPIN: Well, the thing is like you know people who say they don't want to make radical changes to the world, I don't understand the world that they see. I don't understand how they can look at the world that we are living in and think oh yeah, this is fine. We don't need to think about the drone wars going on and we don't need to think about you know the pull of the far right worldwide politically. Like you know it will probably all work out in the end. I don't understand that world view. I don't understand how somebody can be that blind as to the amount of pain and suffering in this world and not want to commit your life to trying to change that.

AMT: But is that necessarily feminism? There are men who fight the anti-war fight.

JESSA CRISPIN: But shouldn't it be a goal of feminism to try to make the world better? And if not, then what are any of you doing?

AMT: We're going to leave it with that question. Jessa Crispin, thank you.

JESSA CRISPIN: Thank you for having me.

AMT: Jessa Crispin, author of Why I am Not a Feminist: A Feminist Manifesto. She joined us from New York. Over to you. What do you think it means to be a feminist? What should the goals of the feminist movement be today? Let us know what you think and what were thinking as you listen to her. Tweet us @thecurrentCBC, comment on this post on our Facebook page or e-mail us by clicking on contact at www.cbc.ca/thecurrent.

[Music: Bridge]

AMT: We just want to thank the people who work hard to bring The Current to you.

KRISTIN NELSON: Hello. I'm Kristin Nelson, one of the producers here at The Current. This week, this show was produced by Idella Sturino, Howard Goldenthal, Ines Colabrese, Lara O'Brien, Shannon Higgins who’s filling in as writer this week, Ashley Mak, Sujata Barry, Liz Hoath, Karin Marley, Samira Mohyeddin, Pacinthe Mattar and Willow Smith. Special thanks this week to producer Julian Uzielli and network producers Michael O’Halloran in Calgary, Suzanne Dufresne in Winnipeg and Susan McKenzie in Montreal. The Current’s writer is Peter Mitton. Our web producers are Lisa Ayuso and Sarah Claydon. Transcriptions are provided by Eunice Kim and Rignam Wangkhang. Our technical producers are Gary Francis and Jennifer Rowley. Our documentary editor is Josh Bloch. Our senior producers are Richard Goddard in Toronto and Cathy Simon in Vancouver. The executive producer of The Current is Kathleen Goldhar.

AMT: That's our program for today. Stay with Radio One for q. Artist Carolyn Caldwell and curator RJ Rushmore join Tom Power to talk about their project that replaces ads in public places in New York City with artwork. Well, we had a full house last night in Toronto at our fourth public forum on missing and murdered Indigenous women. This time our focus was on children and youth with the issue of missing and murdered Indigenous women. We'll bring you that show next Wednesday. But we want to leave you with some thoughts today from Rebecca Benson. She is the two-spirit coordinator at Egale, a charity promoting lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans human rights. Here she is talking about her sense of what reconciliation means between Canadians and Indigenous peoples. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti. Thank you for listening to The Current.

SOUNDCLIP

More than canoes?

[Sound: Laughter]

We want canoes and then some. I think we expect—I expect—folks to understand that reconciliation is a two-way street and that like we can't get to reconciliation until we've had the truth part and the truth part isn't over yet. Lee Miracle always uses the analogy of I’ll accept an apology from someone for stepping on my foot but first you have to get off my foot. So I think the fact that you know 70 per cent of the cases in Manitoba of missing and murdered Indigenous women are folks who were in care. And I think the statistic—I heard this from Pam Palmater—is a child a day is taken away from their family in Manitoba. An Indigenous child a day. So today, someone was taken away. Today, what Indigenous person is having a negative interaction with the police? Today, what microaggressions are we experiencing as Indigenous people? What gender-based violence is an Indigenous woman experiencing right now? So I think it's about interrogating those things and realizing that the issue, it's not one thing and it isn't one solution. So I expect Canadians to engage. I expect Canadians to do their work. I expect them to read and I expect them to listen and to be really engaged in thinking about what it is to do work with the Indigenous community in an Indigenous way.

[Music: Ending theme]

Back To Top »

Provide Transcript Feedback

CBC would like to acknowledge the support of the Broadcasting Accessibility Fund.

February 23, 2017 full episode transcript

More Stories Like This