Elephant

Apathy is a strange beast. It's a bit like Atheism. It should in fact be a lack of something, and yet it can be very proactive, it can squat in the room like the proverbial elephant. Well, if elephants could squat, which they can't because of the nature of their ankle joints. Also, elephants have four knees, although I'm not sure whether that affects their squatting abilities or not.

I learnt from reading another blog yesterday, that Atheists can be misogynistic. You see what I mean? I had foolishly believed that Atheists must all be forward-thinking egalitarians, because many religions seem to be founded on misogyny. Christianity isn't in fact founded on misogyny, but has been well and truly taken hostage by it. But it seems, that is not the case, and when Atheists come out and are proud, it turns out that the most vocal amongst them are - privileged, het, white, men.
Who knew?

Then there's Apathy. Most Canadians will tell you that they are an apathetic nation. Oddly, most of the ones I know are not in fact apathetic, far from it, but at the same time, I know what they mean.
Whereas in Britain, you have a pressure group for just about everything, by the time I've finished typing this, there'll probably be a pressure group about it, here, it takes a lot more effort to get people to band together to change something.

Even so, it makes me suspicious that the Minister for Immigration and Citizenship has left out of the newly published guide for Canadian residents seeking citizenship, any mention of the history of LGBTQ rights. And, it turns out, he has edited them out. So definitely not apathy there, more like one of the opposites, in this case LGBTQ-phobia.
Unusually for an online paper that allows comments, many of the commentators are condemning his actions, although I suspect from the number of comments deleted by moderators, that the homophobes tend towards expletives and vitriol and have thus condemned themselves.
But there is one, telling little hissy fit,
"i m so sick and tired of these so called " special interest groups". as far as im concerned, you're all a bunch of whiners"
Right, so again, no doubt a privileged white male, because I'm fairly sure he'd think Feminists and ethnic minorities would fall into his category of 'special interest groups'.
Apathy writ large.
Everything isn't alright for a whole bunch of people, but don't upset my day with it.

There's a great post on The Feminist Agenda about how Angelina Jolie is being taken to task by one magazine for not turning her daughter Shiloh into a little pink princess, and as Rachel says, Angelina is the only person who gets blamed for this.