Poles Apart (35 page)

NOW
was headquartered in a rather nondescript, ten-storey building with architecture best forgotten from the middle of the last century. Save for a couple of modest architectural grace notes around the front entrance, and I do mean modest, and just two, the most generous physical description one could offer before entering the realm of hyperbole and exaggeration was “concrete quadrilateral.” I paid the driver and stepped out, my breakfast still where it belonged, but my butterflies agitating for eviction if not ejection.

I was right on time as I stepped into the elevator and punched the button for the third floor. The receptionist looked up as I entered suite 300.

“Good morning. May I help you?”

“Um, yes, thanks. I believe I have a meeting with Shelley Hunter at 11:30.”

“You must be Everett Kane,” she said after consulting her computer screen.

“I am, indeed.”

“I’ll take you down to her office.”

I followed her through a massive array of open-concept cubicles, bordered by offices along the windows. It was a seriously hopping and happening place. It would have been obvious to even the most cynical observer that there was a lot of work going on in that office. Made sense. There was a lot of work to do.

Her office door was open at the far end of the third floor. The receptionist stuck in her head.

“Your 11:30 is here. Everett Kane?”

“Thank you, Susan,” the voice said. “Come on in, Mr. Kane.”

I nodded thanks to Susan as she made her way back to the front, and I walked into the corner suite. Shelley Hunter had been head of
NOW
for the preceding five years. A lawyer by training, she is widely considered to be brilliant, tough, relentless, and an outstanding communicator when protecting, pursuing, and promoting equal rights for women. She wore a grey business suit, the kind with pants, and an open-necked white shirt. She had shortish, sandy-coloured hair and classy black-framed glasses that deepened her intellectual vibe. She wore a slight smile, almost as if she was not sure what to make of all of this – probably because she was not sure what to make of all of this.

“Hi, I’m Everett Kane. An honour to meet you, and very good of you to see me on such short notice,” I began.

“Shelley Hunter. My pleasure. I’m glad I was in town. I’ve been
on the road a bit lately. Anyway, you come with the blessings of Beverley Tanner, one of my favourite forebears, one of my heroes. I’m sorry her health is a little fragile.”

“Yes, but her spirit and mind are as vibrant as ever. I feel very fortunate to have met her, and now to count her among my friends. In a way, we’ve become co-conspirators in a little initiative of mine.”

“Please, have a seat,” she said, waving me into a chair before her large desk. “Coffee? Water?”

“Neither, thanks. I’m fine.”

“Well, now that we’re settled, how can I help you?”

“Did Beverley give you any indication as to what I wanted to see you about?” I asked, even though I knew the answer.

“None. Despite my best efforts to pry it out of her, she was insistent that you were the only one to enlighten me. So I have no idea what this is all about, just that someone I respect greatly has asked that I meet with you.”

“That’s what I thought. Okay, then. Well, here goes,” I said, taking in and then releasing a big breath. “Are you familiar with a relatively new feminist blog known as
Eve of Equality
?”

“Are you kidding? I think there are very few feminists in the world with high-speed Internet connections who do not know about that particular blog. I read it religiously. It’s great stuff.”

Then she seemed to catch herself.

“Wait. Are you about to tell me that Beverley Tanner is the author of that blog? It makes perfect sense now.”

She looked up and shook her head as if she should have guessed long ago.

“Um, no, that’s not it. What I was about to tell you is something slightly more difficult to believe. I was about to say that … okay, here we go … that, um, I am actually the author of the blog. I guess you could say that
Eve of Equality
is short for
Everett of Equality
,” I said, letting it hang there for a moment, between us. I wanted to give her a chance to mull it over. She didn’t mull for long.

“Look, Mr. Kane, you’re the fourth person this week and the second man to claim to be the author of the
Eve of Equality
blog.”

“You’re kidding? Others have come forward? That’s outrageous. I’m offended. I’m sure Beverley would be offended, too. I can assure you that while others may claim to have written those posts, I’m the only one who has.”

“Well, it sure helps that you’ve arrived here bearing Bev Tanner’s stamp of approval, but I’m afraid I can’t just accept your word on it, especially when she said nothing to me about the blog.”

“Okay. I get that. I can understand your skepticism, given that I’m, you know, a man, and all. And that, as a species, we do have some baggage when it comes to equality issues.”

“A little baggage, yes,” she replied.

“Right. I know it seems a little far-fetched. But bear with me and I’ll try to make my case. Would you mind if I used your computer for just a moment?” I asked. “You can watch everything I do.”

She thought about it for a moment and then rotated her laptop so I could reach it, but we both could still see it. I immediately called up the blog and logged into the back end of WordPress, revealing all the posts and the comment moderation mechanism.

“Okay. So you’ve gotten into the blog. How do I know you haven’t just hacked your way in? It’s happened before. Other sites have been compromised. Maybe you’re an ace hacker?”

“Believe me, I’m not nearly geeky enough to hack into anything more complicated than a wet paper bag. Maybe this will help.”

I proceeded to log into the EofE Gmail account and Twitter stream. It was unlikely that I could have hacked into all of these relatively secure platforms. Then I moved back into WordPress and showed her the draft post waiting to be finished and posted. I turned the screen toward her and described the draft post in considerable detail, including phrasing I could remember as I’d agonized over portions of it.

She sat looking at the screen, nodding her head slowly. The pause between us lengthened almost to the point of discomfort.

“Okay, I’m starting to feel more comfortable that you are who you say you are, but I’m not sure we’re quite there yet. Where did this all start and what else can you do to establish your feminist bona fides?”

“Well, it started at university in Ontario. I’m Canadian. Well, I have dual citizenship. It started when I was active in the national
student movement. As you probably know, there’s a strong feminist strand in the student movement.”

I thought for a moment, and it paid off. I then turned back to her keyboard and typed in the
URL
for the
Globe and Mail
archives.

“As I’m sure you know, this is Canada’s national newspaper,” I said as I navigated through the archives, using the site’s search engine and filters.

I soon found what I was looking for and clicked on it. A photo opened on the screen from an International Women’s Day rally on Parliament Hill in Ottawa from all those years ago when I’d been heavily involved with the Canadian Federation of Students. There I was, on the riser, in front of the microphone, my fist in the air, my mouth open in the midst of exhorting my brothers and sisters. I was surrounded by fellow activists, all of them women.

“There I am at the annual Women’s Day demo calling out the government on reproductive rights.”

“It sure looks like you,” she said.

“I’m glad you think so. I was afraid you’d ask me to recreate that demented expression on my face to convince you. It’s really not a good look.”

“I know that look. I’ve been to my fair share of demos. Just looks like passion, to me,” she said, looking from the photo, to me, and then back again. “You haven’t changed that much.”

“Well, it wasn’t all that long ago.”

I then opened a new window and worked Google to pull up a few more photos and an article about me in the
Sudbury Star
from around the same time. It was a story about a women’s issues workshop for men I had just led at Laurentian University. The guy in the photo did not have his face scrunched up in rage, so it looked quite a bit like me, only younger. I think Shelley was impressed. But I had one more card to play.

I opened my Google Adsense account on her laptop and scrolled through to my revenue summary page for the
Eve of Equality
blog. Again, only the blog owner could gain access to this very secure site.

“Because the blog has been so popular, thanks largely to Candace Sharpe’s lightning strike, I’m earning more money from online ads than I’ve ever earned as a freelance writer.” I moved the cursor so that it was directly under the big dollar amount paid out for the previous month.

“You might have seen my post a while back when I announced there would be a modest level of advertising on the EofE site to help offset the not inconsiderable and still-growing hosting fees.”

“I do remember that. And I also remember what else was written in that post,” she noted.

“Right. You mean my pledge to donate half the Google Adsense revenue to
NOW.”

She nodded. I reached into my pocket, pulled out my wallet, and extracted a cheque I’d already written for the first month’s donation. It was not a small cheque. I handed it to her.

“I didn’t have time to certify the cheque,” I explained. “I don’t even have a bank down here in the U.S. yet, so it’s on my Canadian
account. But if you deposit it, I guarantee the cheque will clear.”

“Holy Hannah,” she gasped. “Well, I must say, this is very generous, but …”

“Ms. Hunter …”

“Shelley, please,” she said.

“Shelley, this contribution and the donations I’ve pledged in the future are not tied to any help you may be able to offer after I explain my current dilemma. If nothing comes of our conversation this morning, the cheques will still arrive for however long the blog continues to generate ad revenue.”

“Again, that’s very generous,” she said. “Okay, so let’s assume that I now believe I’m sitting in front of the youngish man who just happens to be the anonymous creator of one of the most popular feminist blogs on earth – and I’d say I’m feeling pretty secure about that now, based on what you’ve shown me – just what exactly is your so-called dilemma, and how can we help? As you can imagine, we’d sure like you to continue blogging. We don’t come across many men holding your views, let alone promoting them so effectively to such a large audience.”

I told her my tale of woe. I spoke for the next nineteen minutes straight, without interruption. I was getting better at telling the story. I took her through the whole thing, from the time I’d arrived in Orlando to help with Dad’s recovery, right up to that moment sitting in her corner office at
NOW
. I covered it all. I left nothing out. I probably told her far more than I needed to, including my short-lived relationship – if you could call it that – with
Megan Cook. I spilled everything. It felt quite cathartic to have the whole adventure rush from me like a whitewater torrent, even if it was before a complete stranger.

We sat in silence for a few seconds again when I’d finally stopped talking. She was shaking her head slowly as she processed my little odyssey.

“Mr. Kane …”

“Everett, please. My father is Mr. Kane, and it doesn’t even suit him.”

“Everett, I’m flabbergasted. I don’t know what to say. That is one extraordinary story. Did you call the police?”

“I thought about it. I even reached for the phone a few times. But in the end, it just felt like it would degenerate into a simple case of my word against Bennington’s. And I didn’t think that would get me very far.”

“Probably not,” she agreed. “Tell me again why it’s so important for you to remain anonymous as the blog’s author?”

“Well, it might be a moot point now, but I just don’t think it’s right for a man to be at the pointy end of the women’s movement. It’s not a man’s place.”

“Why? We need men on board if we’re ever going to achieve
real
equality and not just
legislated
equality.”

“Yes, I know. That’s what Beverley says, too. But men run everything else in the world. That’s the whole problem. Men should not have a prominent role in the women’s movement. It should always only be supportive, ancillary, secondary. Besides, when it
comes out that a man is – that I am – the Eve in
Eve of Equality
, the driving message in the blog posts will be lost.”

“Maybe for a short time. But that can be managed. And while I understand your point about a man on the front lines of the women’s movement – believe me, I do – I think that can be managed, too. When it becomes known that you write the blog, you could shift your focus to that all-important space where men and the women’s movement come together – and they must come together. You can then write freely as a man committed to gender equality, concentrating on what supportive men can do to serve the cause. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

“You mean I could shift gears on the blog to embrace my membership in the male species, begin to write for men, but still focus on gender equality.”

“Precisely. So there’s no longer any masquerade, pretence or obfuscation. Then it’s all above board, but still staunchly feminist.”

I turned this over in my mind. It might just resolve my central concern, provided we survived the initial revelation and transition.

“But I now seem to have tens of thousands, even hundreds of thousands, of subscribers to the blog, and I suspect that all but a handful are women. Won’t they feel betrayed, or at least offended, when they discover the truth? Won’t a lot of them just stop reading?” I asked.

“Some might. But if we, and I mean
we
, handle it all skillfully and sensitively, I bet your readers would understand, and many would stay on board.”

“Hmmmm. I just wish I knew how this was all going to play out,” I sighed.