Thursdays According to a French Fry: Epic History People

Hello! I must apologize. I have neglected my blogging duties for the past couple weeks. I can only offer the excuse of a history exam one week, and being distracted by my newfound love for the pairing Naomi/Emily from Skins the next. I shall now attempt to make up for it. I humbly present my post.

So, this week, we're going to talk about an epic historical person you may not have heard about. A woman named Hypatia.

Actually, there was a movie made about her:

(Rachel Weisz as a really smart woman in Egypt. Well, that's a new one.)

Now, despite what the IMDB page would have you believe, the main character of the movie is Hypatia. The story follows her life from when she taught science (the movements of the stars) to men in Alexandria, to the burning of the library of Alexandria, through the rise of Christianity, and finally to her death. It also shows her discovering the idea of a heliocentric model of the solar system (for those of you who don't know, "heliocentric" means that the planets orbit the sun). Now, it would be really, exceptionally cool if that were true. But it probably isn't. However, the real things Hypatia did were still pretty amazing.

(We don't really know what Hypatia actually looked like. This is a photograph of an actress who played her in a theatre production.)

For one thing, she was a scientist. Her father, Theon, taught her mathematics, science, astronomy, literature and the arts. In itself, that is amazing. Women didn't exactly have the same opportunities in Roman Egypt as woman do today. They had some freedom, but were generally expected to be wives. Not only was Hypatia educated, but she taught men about all she learned. She wrote on mathematics and astronomy, and may have invented a couple awesome things (like the plane astrolabe). In essence, Hypatia was a really amazing woman, born before her time.

Unfortunately, her scientific abilities were her downfall.

Hypatia had a fair amount of political influence, particularly over the Prefect of Alexandria, Orestes. Orestes was a pagan (although it's possible he was Christian), like Hypatia, and was in conflict with a man named Cyril, who was the Bishop of St. Mark. Cyril's mission was to rid Alexandria of non-Christians. Orestes and Cyril butted heads, and Hypatia was caught in the middle. A rumour was spread that she was the one obstacle preventing Orestes and Cyril from reconciling.

And one day, while riding her chariot through the streets of Alexandria, an angry mob pulled her out, stripped her naked, beat her and scraped the skin from her bones with shells (or shards of pottery). She died, and her body was torn to pieces, then burned.

It is thought that with Hypatia's death, so too came the end of science in antiquity. She was an incredible woman, who loved science and knowledge, and ultimately died for it.

If you want to find out some more details about Hypatia's life, you can google her, or go to the sites I used to make this post:

http://www.womanastronomer.com/hypatia.htm
http://womenshistory.about.com/od/hypati1/a/hypatia.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypatia

I would also really recommend the movie, Agora. It is currently one of my favourite movies, and it's a great story.

Thursdays According to a French Fry: On Coming Out

Hey Kids!

As you may have gathered from my introduction (unless you inexplicably believe Heather is a boy's name), I am gay. I suppose, technically, being a woman who finds other women hot, I am a lesbian. However, I have always referred to myself as gay, so whatever. I reserve the right to choose my own society-given label. Thank you very much.

Anyway, the point of this is that I am gay, and that lots of other people are gay. However, a lot of these people are young and in the closet. And the thing is, a lot of the stories on the internet are absolutely terrifying to hear for a young person who may be considering telling their parents they prefer a person with the same plumbing as themselves. Getting kicked out, losing friends, suicide, what have you – I know I was scared to come out. But I did, and I am so much better for it.

So, here is my story.

The first inkling that I may have a slightly different sexuality than most people came when I was about 11 or 12. To be honest, I'm not sure. You see, around that time, people were starting to get crushes. The girls were atwitter about boys and the boys were busily pulling the girls' pigtails. However, when I looked at boys, I felt nothing.

Nada.

Niet.

I didn't have crushes on anybody. No boys, no girls. 19-year-old me would have wondered if perhaps I was actually asexual (which means, for you lot who don't know, that I wouldn't have any sexual desire at all). But 12-year-old me came to the terrifying conclusion that perhaps I was a lesbian.

A lesbian. To my pre-teen ears, even the word sounded horrible (Sadly, this is actually what led to me referring to myself as gay, and not a lesbian, later on). I was scared. I was so, so scared. I don't think I can begin to explain to you the utter terror that gripped my body at the thought. Thinking about it now...to be honest, I almost want to cry. No child should ever feel that fear. In fact, no human being should ever feel it. I was already different enough, I thought, I was quiet, shy, sarcastic to a fault sometimes, and I liked to read more than anyone I knew. In this one thing, why can't I be the same?

So I pushed it away. I pushed it down. Sitting on my school bus, staring out the window, I decided that no matter what, I would marry a man. I would fall in love and have sex with and marry a male human being. I couldn't be gay.

I decided all of this at the age of 12.

Now, before I continue, I should let you know that my family is quite the possibly the least homophobic people you will ever meet. No, really. Even back then. My aunt is a lesbian. Some of parents' best friends were gay. It was never presented to me by my parents as something that was wrong. I cannot imagine what it would be like if your family wasn't accepting of you. Because all of my fear stemmed from society. I was scared because heterosexual was the norm. That is what society teaches kids. It is still teaching that. Every time you hear the phrase “gay quota” to describe a TV show that has reached its “maximum limit of gay people because god forbid there's more than two.” Or “That's so gay” to describe something stupid. “Faggot,” “dyke,” all of those kinds of words. They hurt, and they hurt kids who are questioning their sexuality so much more.

All of that, however, is for another day to rant about.

My decision to remain rainbow-free came with a few interesting results. The first being that I forced myself to have a crush on my best friend at the time. That didn't last however. He was my best friend, and that's all I saw in him. Second, there was guy when I was in the seventh grade. At 13, I picked him as my next crush victim. I forced myself to like him. So well, actually, that I might have succeeded. At the time, I celebrated internally because I honestly thought I had a crush on him. And who is to say that I didn't? Sexuality is fluid, after all.

Then I met Sally (For the record, actually, I'm changing all these names, just in case).

Now, this is interesting. Sally is currently a very, very good friend that I don't get to see very often. At one point, she was my best friend. She is also the first girl I had a legitimate crush on. Now, I have no idea whether or not she will read this. And if I had my choice, she would never find out about my crush on her. Even with the name change, she's smart enough to figure it out. But I can't in good conscience leave her out of this story, because she is such an integral part to me finally, finally accepting who I am. So, Sally-you-know-who-you-are-right, if you are reading this...I am sorry. I feel like I've betrayed you slightly by never telling you this (though honestly, I wonder if you suspected. You always were good at telling if someone liked you), however please understand that your friendship has been so, so important to me, and I just couldn't risk losing it, even if I didn't have those feelings anymore. Please know that now, in the present, I think of you as a sister, and I am truly over any romantic feelings I had for you. Also, I suppose I should thank you, because you did help me come to terms with my sexuality, though you didn't know it at the time.

I met Sally when I was 15. She had moved to our school a year before, and then was in the same class as me in the ninth grade. She was friends with my two best friends at the time, and she was sort of adopted into our group. There is no defining moment when I realized I liked her. Not that I remember, anyway. I remember hearing her sing for the first time and being mesmerized. I remember fighting my feelings for her tooth and nail. I remember lying to her when she asked me if I liked anyone. And I remember accepting that she was the one I had a crush on. Again, there was no defining moment. My heart beat faster when I saw her, I stumbled over my words in front of her (at least, I thought I did), and I thought her the most beautiful girl I had ever met. I had never felt anything like it before, and after a while, I just had to accept that I was not only attracted to her, but that I was very deeply in like with her.

I figured I was bisexual at that point. And I decided to keep it to myself. All through Grade Nine, I said nothing. Eventually, she became one of my best friends (puts a twist on the old falling in love with your best friend thing, eh?), but the feelings didn't go away. In fact, at the beginning of Grade 10, I remember being somewhat of a bitch to her, something she called me out on rather quickly (I'm sorry!). I have learned, since then, that when I'm truly crushing on someone in a major way, it's for a long time. In fact, there have been three girls in total that I've had huge crushes on. I think of them as the Big Three, because I've had smaller crushes on other girls, but nothing like those. So, the crush lasted for a while. Longer than I like to admit to myself, honestly.

All through this time, though, I was learning. I found this wonderful thing called fanfiction. Specifically, femslash. For those who don't know, femslash is when two women from a particular TV show, movie, or book are paired together romantically. And upon finding myself flustered and somewhat turned on after reading a...raunchier fanfic, I decided that there was no doubt I liked girls. I also found, through these fanfics, a group of other women who liked women. And it seemed like there were a lot. Out of all the things that made me feel like it was OK for me to be gay, I think the fanfic is what helped the most – it showed me that I wasn't alone. That these feelings I had were normal and that it was going to be OK.

And that brought me to Grade 11. Caught up in a whirl wind of what I can only refer to as drama that year, I found my liking of Sally slowly diminishing. She was becoming, instead, simply my best friend. In chemistry, the two of us would often sit together, even though our assigned seats were not. I would just draw my chair up to her desk. It became the norm.

But I still hadn't quite shed my crush. And one day Sally wasn't in chemistry. So I found myself sitting next to my friend Julie.

I fully believe that in another life, Julie was a politician. Or some kind of Roman Orator, a la Marc Antony. She has the ability to convince people to do things, and to get information from them. Fortunately, she uses this ability for good. Or at least in my case she did.

“So, who do you like?” She asked me.

I rolled my eyes and gave the same bullshit answer I gave anyone who asked.

“No one,” I said wearily. “Honestly.”

“I don't believe you,” she said flatly. “Who is it?”

“Seriously. No one.”

“You're lying! Who is it?”

“Even if I did like someone, I wouldn't tell you.”

“What!? Why?”

“Because you would just sit there and make fun of me.” Truthfully, I was scared she would simply reject me. Julie and I used to have debates about religion when we were 14, she being on the religious side and me being on the “well maybe but eh I dunno” side. More specifically, we once had a debate about gay marriage, which she said was undeniably wrong. Fortunately, her views have since changed.

“I won't. I promise,” she said. “Please tell me?”

“No.”

“So you do like someone!”

“I didn't say – whatever, I'm not telling you who it is.”

“Tell me! Please?” She begged. “Come on, just tell me who it is.”

I refused to meet her gaze, choosing instead to look at my chemistry work. Tears were starting to build up in my eyes.

“Heather?” Julie's voice sounded vaguely concerned.

I looked up at her. She was slightly taken aback at my pained expression.

“Heather, seriously, why is it so hard to tell me?” She asked, voice lowered.

I turned to face straight ahead. And with that, I said the most difficult words I have ever said in my life.

“It's not a boy,” I whispered, and tensed, waiting.

There was a long, long, long moment of silence. So long. I didn't dare look at her, waiting for the inevitable backlash, the moment when she would quickly get up and walk to sit with someone else, the horribly disappointed look she would have -

“Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh,” Julie said. “So who is it?”

From that day forward, Julie became my confidante. I really hope she knows how much she helped me through those months, because they were exceedingly difficult. Finally being able to talk to someone about these feelings I had been having was amazing. My self-esteem skyrocketed that year. I had never felt so much like myself. I could finally just be who I was around someone without worrying about revealing too much. You see, any of my friends will tell you that I am girl crazy. Watching movies or TV shows, I am always the one to go “Oh, she's hot.” But I couldn't do that before Julie. I couldn't talk about who I found hot and who I didn't. It was incredibly liberating. I hadn't realized how much of a weight it had been, lying to everyone around me. And here I was finally free.

Well. Kind of.

At Christmas, I finally came out to Sally. To this day, she is mad that I didn't come out to her first, because “I'm your best friend! What the hell, Heather!” But I hope this provides some insight into why I didn't. As it was, when I finally told her, she grinned, kicked me in the foot, and made an “awwww” sound. For some reason people find it cute when they discover I have sexual or romantic feelings. It's like I'm some sort of animal that has learned to fetch.

When school reconvened, I told my other best friend, Joanne, to which she replied: “Oh, OK.”

All that was left was my parents.

I was driving home with my Dad when I let it slip to him. We were discussing school and my friends, when I let slip the crush I had on Sally. I looked at him fearfully. He said nothing.

“You do realize what I just told you, right?” I asked.

He shrugged. “I wasn't sure. You could have just had a minor girl crush.”

That was the most ridiculous thing I had ever heard. I'm sure it happens, but I mean, I knew by then that I really, definitely liked girls.

“No,” I said. “I like girls.”

“OK,” he said, and glanced at me. “You have to tell your Mom too. This isn't something you can just leave with me.”

“Will she be OK with it?” I asked.

“She should be - well,” he hesitated. “She's a littler more conservative than I am. But honestly, honey, you'll be fine.”

My Dad is super liberal. Like, “What do you mean, people still think being gay is wrong?” liberal. So by saying my Mom is slightly more conservative than him, he may as well have said she was the leader of the NDP.

So when I got home, I went upstairs to face the music. She was in her bathroom, putting on make up.

“Hey Mom?” I said.

“Hi, honey!” She replied, smiling at me.

I leaned against the doorframe to the bathroom and crossed my arms, trying to look nonchalant.

“So, um,” I searched for the right words, and finally gave up. “I like girls.”

She looked up at, one eyebrow raised and slightly confused smile on her face.

“Do you think?” She asked (this was not said sarcastically. It was an honest question).

“Yeah,” I said. And laughed. “I'm really sure.”

“Well, OK,” she nodded.

We then proceeded to start joking around rather loudly. Downstairs, my Dad suspected a disaster and raced to the bottom of the stairs to listen. My mother and I found him standing there five minutes later, looking petrified.

“What?” I asked.

“I heard yelling,” he said. “Is everything OK?”

“Yeah,” I smiled. “Everything is fine.”

I was lucky. I am still lucky. When I came out, I had an incredible support system of friends and family. They love and accept me for who I am, and they always will. I know how amazing that is. I am so happy, every day, that I can talk freely about being gay to my family and my friends. But I know that not everyone has that. I wanted to tell this story because a lot of coming out stories are negative. I just wanted to show that sometimes it isn't. And to those who couldn't have this, who know that they're parents would kick them out or reject them if they came out – well, someday, someone is going to come along who will love and accept you for who you are. I'm sorry it isn't your parents, and who knows? Maybe one day they will come around. But I know, I just know, that someday your Julie will come along. Someday there will be people who you can talk to, someday you will fall in love, someday it will get better. If there is anyone out there considering suicide, or hurting themselves, please, please, stick around. This world we live in is amazing. There are some terrible people in it, but there are also so many absolutely wonderful ones. I don't want you to miss it.

Thursdays According to a French Fry

So, it has been decreed that Thursdays shall be my domain, much like Tuesdays are Limey's. Here I shall post whatever the hell I want - Stories, poems, things that happened to me during the day, photography, random awesome internet things. Whatever! It's my day and I'll do what I like with it. Including completely forget that I'm supposed to post something, which is what happened today. I have a mid term tomorrow! I had to study.

So I'm going to use you guys as guinea pigs for my studying.

Today, we shall have a Very (very) Short History of Canada, according to Heather.

Part One: The Beginning of Time, The Fur Trade, Colonization, and The Jesuits, Oh My!

Before I begin, I would just like to point out that I'm a first year university student. I'm not a professional historian. So, if you're looking for a source of information for a project or something, GO SOMEWHERE ELSE. I'm trying to be accurate. But I make mistakes. So, after that disclaimer...on with the show...

Basically, a really, really long time ago, there was a big bang and oh hey, the universe was created. Fast forward several billion years, and suddenly we've got a tiny backwater planet in a tiny backwater solar system on the edges of a vast, incomprehensibly huge universe. On this planet, there was a landmass that came to be known at The Americas.

With me so far?

The first people to occupy Canada are now known, appropriately, as the First Nations. They are a pretty cool, extremely varied people. On the west coast of Canada, they had semi-permanent communities, art, and a hierarchical society - all the wonderful markers of fledging society about to spread its wings. In the prairies, they were a bit more egalitarian. Their lives were based on movement, and responsibility was shared by everyone. In the East, there were both egalitarian and hierarchical societies. They grew corn, beans and squash (a triad known as The Three Sisters). The fact they had agriculture is actually quite interesting, because it meant that they couldn't move around as much. They still managed it though, as their culture was a mixture of settlement and migration.

As we can see, the First Peoples had a pretty thriving culture before any European intervention. Then, this guy called Christopher Columbus arrived on the scene. He was a regular asshole, enslaving and killing a lot of Natives, but he only gets a mention in the story because he got to the Americas first. Specifically, South America. Canada's tale has more of a French Twist to it.

In 1534, Jaques Cartier found himself surrounded by Native Americans in canoes waving furs in his face. They were extremely eager to trade. And that is exactly what they did. Cartier's voyages found him going inland, which the natives were initially quite happy about. Communities even traveled inland to him in order to trade. However, that changed when they found their sons and daughters being kidnapped, as well as Cartier consorting with the their rivals.

The fur trade, however, flourished. It depended almost entirely on the First Nations, since they were the ones who hunted and processed the furs. In exchange, they wanted guns, kettles, axes, and things like that. The French, however, decreed that not just anyone could trade. They couldn't have relations with their new neighbours souring after all. So they gave the monopoly of the Fur Trade to a few companies, with the caveat that they would promote settlement of New France and conversion to Christianity of the Natives.

In the 1600's, Samuel de Champlain established the first permanent settlement in Canada - a place called Quebec. Through him, the French were able to trade with the First Peoples who surrounded them, and create alliances. These alliances were made through exchanges of men, who would go and live with Native Tribes, thus learning enough of the language and culture to act as interpreters. However, this also meant that the French found themselves caught up in disputes between tribes. They would go on raids with their new Allies in order to solidify the relationship, which, of course, made them new enemies in the process. Unfortunately, these enemies were the Iroquois, who were a fairly tough people.

Eventually, the French Crown got its shit together and decided to try to colonize this huge mass of land they now liked to think they owned. Unfortunately, the vast majority of people who made the voyage to New France were either convicts, slaves or indentured servants. For those not in the know, an indentured servant was someone who had some work to do for a master, but only for a certain amount of time. About half of them up and left when their job was done. They weren't allowed to marry, trade or have any fun while they were there, so it's not hard to see why they decided to leave when their service was up. Some did stay on as farmers, however. And the military regularly dispatched troops to the new colony. So, now, there was a lovely cache of young, unmarried men who probably didn't really want to be there.

Send in the women!

No, really, that's what happened. The French Crown collected together orphaned or otherwise dispossessed girls and sent them off to New France, promising to pay their dowry. They were know as Les filles du roi, which means "daughters of the king." Many of them were married off within two weeks.

The guys that stayed behind to be farmers ended up engaging in a kind of feudalish system, where they worked lots of land sub-granted out to them by seigneurs. However, it was illegal for them to do individual trade with the Natives. And thus, the Coureurs du bois ("Runners of the wood") were born. These were young men who were not necessarily meant to be trading, but would go out there anyway, learn the Native language, and build relations with the Natives. This caused some concern because A. it was illegal, B. Time spent with the Native Peoples meant time spend away from working on their farms, and C. it also meant time away from the Church. Because, well, those Natives were most certainly not Christian were they?

This time, the French sent in the Missionaries.

The first were known as the Recollets. They didn't have much luck. The Natives tended to be a migratory people, so you had to be willing to move around with if you were going to convert them. That's where the Jesuits came in. These guys were extremely committed to the cause. They went to live with the people they were trying to convert, willing to adapt to their ways of life in order to convert them to Christianity. They did seek to eventually completely settle the Natives down, creating settlements for them. However, as it turned out, conversion to Christianity became less of a complete rejection of the First Nation culture, and more of an integration. Elements of Christianity were included in the same marriage and burial rituals, as well as kinship structures. Conversion was extremely important to the French. Champlain actually only agreed to trade guns for furs to the Wendats if they accepted Jesuit priests, and the only people who could use them were those that actually converted.

Remember the Iroquois? Well, these guys were a tough lot. They were eventually responsible for the destruction of Huronia (The Wendats). The Iroquois were involved in something called The Mourning Wars, where they would go on raids of enemy tribes. Generally, they weren't all that bloody, and women and children who were captured were even adopted into the tribe. Men, particularly the wounded ones, were often killed, but there weren't a lot of casualties - that is, until guns happened. You see, the Dutch established a colony in New York, and they weren't picky about who they traded with. When the League of Peace (Five Native Nations that had agreed to not fight each other) got a hold of these in the 17th century, the attacks on Huronia escalated. They had been asked to join the League repeatedly, and declined. The attacks eventually led to the Huron people dispersing about the Great Lakes, forming new composite peoples. This all was facilitated by the European guns.

And that is where we shall leave Canada for now. This is slightly longer than I intended, but I hope someone found it interesting. I would also like to say, before anyone decides to yell at me: I AM TOTALLY OPEN TO BEING CORRECTED. The wonderful thing about history is that it starts conversations, so if anyone notices something I did wrong, please tell me!