Reheated (109)

You see, when your preferred candidate loses an election, what you really need is some channelling of ancestral spirituality. As opposed to say, a sense of proportion. And so, Ms Ixty Quintanilla lists some “spiritual practices” in order to enable fellow feminists to cope with the unutterable trauma that is their lives.

Suggestions include Call On Ancestors – which is to say, the dead – and Burn Herbs Mindfully. The latter is surprisingly fraught with complication, as we’re told, emphatically, that we must avoid setting fire to white sage and various endangered plants, and that it is “vital to recognise and respect the ancestors of the land you stand on.”

Other recommendations are more prosaic – feeling the breeze, watching trees grow, and, er, pushing up against said trees. No, I don’t know either. But apparently, if your psyche has been exploded and rendered unto dust by the election of someone other than Hillary Clinton, you should immediately find a tree and push up against it. It’s the feminist way.

However, if breeze-feeling and tree-pushing should fail you, more drastic measures may be required. And so readers are reminded to Protect Your Energy. Specifically, “Light your candles, burn your sage, charge your crystals.” It’s unclear whether the sage we’re being told to burn is the same sage we’ve just been told not to burn under any circumstances.

It’s once again time to hack our way through the deep artistic underbrush of Sandrine Schaefer. Specifically, her 2012 performance piece Ambulation, in which Ms Schaefer presents her buttocks to the world and shifts her weight from heel to toe, while her shoes emit the sounds of her “travels in Mexico.”

It’s strange just how often this “intersectionality” business looks an awful lot like a caste system, in which a person’s standing and moral significance, and their ability to take part in discussions, is determined entirely by their race and gender, and other attributes over which they have no meaningful control.

Assistant manager Bree Dobler boasted, “We are proud to have a Diversity in Changerooms Policy in our centres,” adding that patrons are welcome to use showers and changing facilities “where they feel most safe.” The ironies of this statement apparently passing undetected. “Everyone’s gender identity and expressions are valid,” Ms Dobler insisted. “Our goal is to create an inclusive environment where everyone feels respected and valued.”

Readers will note that the word everyone is rather heavy with connotations and does not seem to include women and girls who aren’t overly keen on the intimate proximity of big, creepy men. Even if those big, creepy men are wearing sparkly bikinis intended for children.

Ms Dobler was keen to remind the unnerved ladies that the pool does provide the option of “single stall washrooms or changerooms for patrons… [who] want to maintain more privacy.” In other words, women and girls who would rather not shower in front of big, hairy perverts can always retreat and surrender territory to the aforementioned big, hairy perverts.

Women and girls, you see, being a lower priority.