Don't Do This To Me!

A recent entry on CBC.ca's This Is That blog tells such a convincing story it had so many people, including myself, wondering if it were true.

Their post "Quebec Lowers Drinking Age" apparently reports that the Canadian province of Quebec is lowering the legal drinking age from 18 to 14.  And if a 12-year-old "child" is accompanied by parent(s), they are also allowed to legally buy and consume alcohol in public.  Even though this article seems outrageous and downright false, seeing it on CBC.ca tricks people into thinking otherwise.  But upon farther research, you will (hopefully) realize that:

a) Quebec's legal drinking age is still 18, because;
b) the slogan for the "This Is That" blog is "We don't just talk about the issues.  We fabricate them."

What boggles my mind is that a trusted source such as CBC has a "spoof" section on their website, leading so many people to believe in and trust their false stories.  I am so easily fooled that even though I highly doubted the "legit-ness" of contents in the article, I was lead to believe it was true just because it was on CBC.ca.  After googling "Quebec lowers drinking age" to find other, legitimate sources announcing this weird decision, I was presented with the reactions of other people believing it were true, and then learning that it was all just a joke.  So I do feel kind of better about falling for it myself.

But still, I hope it doesn't happen again.  Though I highly doubt that too.

A Huge Secret to Keep

A story about a secret has been in the news a lot recently.  But unlike other how most secrets get exposed when it gets too much attention, this secret is still a secret.  For now.

But what is the secret?  Storm's gender.

A couple's decision to not announce the gender of their newborn child was enough to produce an article in the Toronto Star, and then another follow-up article, including reader's comments and reactions to the couple's choice.

I am not saying if I agree or disagree with the parents' decision, but I do acknowledge that for them to have even conceptualized this idea of keeping their child's gender a secret, gender-based sterotypes must have gotten out of hand.

Of course, sterotypes saying such things as only boys liking cars and blue and girls liking dolls and pink are nothing new.  In my (limited) experience, these sterotypes were not enforced like the law, and if a little boy liked playing with dolls, then fine.  Sure, there would be some questions, but it would mostly be accepted.  Gender bias I've seen around me is not too serious.

But I never thought of how other people are affected by this.  I suppose that there are those bullies at school when young people are learning who they are and their sexuality who make those people's lives the worst couple years they will ever experience.  It is a problem when people (or a person) is not accepting of someone else based on how they do or do not confrom to society's norms.  What also seems to others as simple teasing may be taken a whole other way by the person on the recieving end of their "taunts."

Gender-based bias can, at times, be devastating, and it is a big enough problem in society for the parents to keep the sex of their newborn child a secret from most people around them.