Warning: I have had wine.
Jason and I picked up some travel booklets today, one of which was called ‘Bon Voyage, But …’ (Essential Information for Canadian travellers.) On page 9 it starts a chapter called ‘Women Travelling Solo’ where it says:
Our booklet entitled Her Own Way: A Woman’s Guide to Safe and Successful Travel provides information especially for females, including those who travel alone.
So I picked it up too.
It starts off bad …
Now, more than ever, this booklet is a woman’s key to safe and successful travel. Since the first edition was published 10 years ago, the world of women’s travel has evolved. From young backpackers to experienced businesswomen, females of all ages are exploring the planet in growing numbers. They are venturing further and touring, studying and working in more remote and sometimes less secure areas than they once dared.
Could the tone get more condecending?
Why yes!
When doing your research for travel remember to:
Supplement the mainstream media with travel books, newsletters, magazines and websites just for women. They offer an understanding view of the health, safety, cultural and emotional issues experienced by females on the road.
So right away we get patted on the back for ‘daring’ to ‘venture’ out of our fucking kitchens into the big scary world and then told to hold hands in case we get all emotional about it. Because we will. We’re women. Emotional is our middle name.
The first pro tip is about luggage.
It is best to travel light. As a woman alone, you will be far less vulnerable and much more independent if you are not loaded down with heavy luggage and extra bags.
… Try to have at least one hand free at all times.
… Avoid expensive-looking camera bags and other showy accessories, which may mark you as a wealthy tourist.
… Seriously? Is this not information that is useful to ANYone travelling? Plus pretty fucking common sense? And the tone, the TONE! This is not just some silly group or company that has decided to put these stupid tips into book form, this is an officially issued booklet from our Government! It’s got the Foreign Affairs logo on it for fucks sake.
It gets a whole lot worse though. Some of the information is sound, and does specifically concern women, like pointing out that pads and tampons are not always easy to find or cheap in every country. Fine. But that took like what, 1/16th of a page? The rest of the information seems pretty generic. So what the fuck actually fills this 32 page booklet?
Shit like this:
Nancy’s first six months at a foreign university were fascinating, as she explored the beautiful city, got to know her community and improved her skills in the local language. But, little by little, her fascination turned into alienation. Nancy started eating compulsively, negatively stereotyping the local people, and feeling more and more miserable. Even so, she resolved to stick it out – at least for a while. Eventually, she felt much less depressed, regained her sense of humour and only occasionally yearned for home.
Christine was checking her email at an Internet cafe in Barcelona, when a young man sat down next to her and began to chat. As the stranger was leaving, Christine realized that her knapsack, containing her wallet and travel documents, had disappeared. She shouted, “jBasta!” and confronted the thief before he could escape. From then on, she never put her bag down for even a second in public areas.
When Odette met Hassan through an online ad, it was love at first sight. Her family was leery of the cyber-romance, but Odette felt alive for the first time in years. She sold her house, quit her job and cashed in her pension to pay for a move to Morocco. No sooner had she arrived in Marrakech than everything went wrong. Hassan was 20 years older than he had been in his online photo. Wedding arrangements began at once. Soon, Odette was trapped in an abusive marriage and had spent all her finances on an apartment for Hassan, who held her passport and refused to let her leave Marrakech.
Patricia and Laurie were spending Christmas on Phi Phi Island in southern Thailand when the massive tsunami struck. After fleeing up a wooded hill, they squatted for two days without food or shelter. When they returned to the devastated shore, they found that all of their belongings were lost, including their passports and airline tickets. Even so, they reached Bangkok by overnight bus, with nothing but the clothes on their backs, and went straight to the Canadian Embassy. There, consular officials comforted them, advised their families that they were unharmed and provided them with emergency passports. A few days later, Patricia and Laurie were safe and sound back in Canada.
Do I even have to say it? WHAT THE FUCK?!?
As if the condescending attitude wasn’t enough, they can’t just fucking give us women the straight facts. No they have to weave these cutesy little tales that all sound like their coming from our fucking best friends ‘Patricia and Laurie’. That way, when we’re emotionally crippled by a scary situation we wont have to worry about our brains not being capable of critical thought, we can just rely on our fuzzy relationship memory to tell us ‘Hey I remember what Patricia and Laurie did when this happened!’.
Fuck you.
I love stupid little booklets like this. You can just imagine some man (I am fairly sure a man would have written this)thinking, “Awww isnt that cute, the young women are daring to go out in the world, when they should be at home barefoot and pregnant.”(You know I have heard this term quite a bit before, I can understand the pregnant part, but why barefoot? Is that to make it harder for her to escape? While they are barefoot do you scatter broken glass around the exterior of the house?} I have come across lots of pamphlets like this, I always find them amusing in a, “Wow look how stupid some one is to write this” way. I think you should write your own pamphlet, “How to interpret government pamphlets for women without losing your mind because of the stupidity contained within them” by Pixelsnake.
Wowwww. It’s the cutesy stories that really get me. Instead of just saying, “this could happen to you” (which would still suck horribly in terms of the arranged marriage one…), they have to go and make up characters for us. How sweet.
I think a few of my brain cells died from being exposed to that banal, condescending crap.
Is this like, written by someone who writes for Cosmopolitan or something? Was this written and published by the Canadian Government or a travel bureau? Cause I thought you Canadians were so much more enlightened than we murricans.
Wow.
When you first tweeted about this, I thought there might be some good info in the pamphlets. I can think of several concerns specific to women that might be helpful to have info about—-but most would be country/culture specific and, yes, likely there would be corresponding info for men (everything from head covering at the vatican to what countries will not allow women to rent cars to places men are not to speak directly to women they do not know). This stuff is ridiculous shite, though. And the little cautionary stories make me want to smack someone.
(Oh, this is BigHoneyBliss, btw)
Oh, she didn’t mention the passage about “if you take birth control, make sure you take it every 24 hours, don’t get fooled by the time changes!” And yet in the corresponding section in “Bon Voyage, But”, it says nothing along those lines for people taking medication — only to make sure you take extras in case you accidentally stay longer. Because, you see, women don’t understand the concept of time. And they can’t wrap their tiny female brains around time zones.
It’s true that the booklet did in fact include some of those culture specific cautions but it never actually says which countries to watch out for. It just says things like ‘carry a scarf with you where ever you go because some cultures require women to cover their head and face.’ Again the amount of this information is so small that it could have easily been slipped into the regular booklet.
Speaking of the regular booklet, take a look at the difference in the covers alone.
(Sorry for the crappy quality but hopefully you get the point.)
Interesting that when I ventured off from suburban Toronto to university in a foreign land (urban Cambridge, MA) 30+ years ago, there were no such handbooks proffered. Maybe our current paternalistic patriarchal government has got it into their heads that women have become *more* fragile over the years (since we no longer have built up our biceps by milking the cows and/or beating the carpets – neither of which I did in my youth, btw) Or that previously only tough women would dare to travel alone, but now just about everyone is willing to try it, so government assistance is indicated? The possibilities are endless.
(And in those photos of the covers, the “Bon Voyage But…” looks like a modern business*man*, while the woman going “Her Own Way” (with her cute little green backpack) looks like a throwback to the 80s.)
Traditionally, the expression is to keep her “pregnant in summer and barefoot in winter.”