Author: MIL-OSI Publisher

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Karen Bird, Professor of Political Science, McMaster University

Municipal councils rarely dominate national headlines, yet they make decisions that shape our daily lives more directly than any other level of government.

From land use to transit, policing to public health, councils are where competing priorities collide and where communities see democracy up close.

As municipalities across Canada prepare to elect new councils in the fall, it’s worth asking not only who should represent us, but how those representatives should conduct the public’s business once they take office.

One answer is deceptively simple: councils should strive to deliberate well.

What good deliberation looks like

Legislative debate lies at the heart of democratic governance, but deliberation is more than debate. It is the public, reasoned process through which elected representatives weigh competing claims, examine evidence, listen to one another and adjust their positions in light of stronger arguments.

Good deliberation can be measured in terms of specific criteria, including:

• Clear articulation of reasons: Participants explain why they support or oppose a proposal, grounding their arguments in evidence, community needs, or principles of justice — rather than self interest.
• Responsiveness: They engage directly with one another’s arguments and stay focused on the issue at hand. When persuasive counterarguments are presented, they show a willingness to adjust, refine, or even rethink their positions.
• Respectful tone: Disagreement is inevitable — and healthy — but it must be conducted without personal attacks, sarcasm or dismissiveness. Respectful debate rests on fairness and on recognizing that participants’ interests and arguments are offered in good faith and deserve to be taken seriously.
• Decisiveness: Deliberation is not endless talk. It culminates in decisions that are clear, consequential and publicly justified.

American political theorist Jane Mansbridge reminds us that while pluralist democracy is necessarily about competing interests, there is a need to push “beyond adversary democracy” toward a more co-operative model. That can result in people trying to understand one another’s diverse perspectives, search for common ground and justify decisions in terms others can accept.

When these elements are present, elected representative bodies not only make better decisions — they also strengthen public trust. In an era of polarization and disinformation, this kind of democratic practice isn’t a luxury — it’s a necessity.

How well do municipal councils deliberate?

Mansbridge based her analysis on an in-depth study of political deliberations in a small Vermont town, where she attended meetings for almost two years and conducted numerous interviews with residents.

Applying her insights to my own research with colleagues on town hall debates in Canada and New Zealand, we argue that these local bodies can be ideal venues for visible, reasoned and respectful deliberation.

Despite different national contexts, the two countries have similar local government structures, including traditional ward-level elections and “weak-mayor” systems, where the mayor has limited formal authority.

Unlike national legislatures, city councils are also generally small, non-partisan and close to the communities they serve — all features that should enhance the quality of deliberation. Yet this potential is not always realized.

The debates we examined concerned the contentious matter of electoral reforms to add Indigenous voices to city council.

In Canada, Hamilton City Council in Ontario and the Halifax Regional Council in Nova Scotia are the only local governing bodies we know of that have formally addressed the issue — albeit in an exploratory manner. But in New Zealand, the question of adding Māori seats on local councils has been much more widely debated.

Read more:
The Māori ward vote in New Zealand contains important lessons for Canada

New Zealand/Canada comparison

For comparative purposes, we looked at the largest New Zealand cities where the Māori population comprise 10 per cent or less of the electorate, approximating the Canadian situation. Two of the councils we studied (Hamilton in Canada and Auckland in New Zealand) voted against motions to explore or instate Indigenous seats, while four (Halifax in Canada and Dunedin, Tauranga and Wellington in New Zealand) approved moving forward on the issue.

We hand-coded hours of debate using the discourse quality index (DQI), a measure widely used to assess speeches in parliament, while also deciphering substantive themes.

While the content of arguments was similar across all six cities, we found the quality of deliberation differed markedly. On a zero-to-one scale, Hamilton’s city council ranked lowest with a DQI of 0.45, while Halifax topped others with a score of 0.68.

Looking at the speeches of individual councillors, we found that those who opposed Indigenous seats used less respectful discourse than supporters (average DQI 0.43 vs. 0.64), including more polarizing interjections.

Examples included members who shouted at or turned their backs to others, refusing to engage. Some resorted to personal attacks, or accusations of racism and anti-democratic maneuvering.

As one New Zealand councillor exclaimed: “We are throwing elected representation to the dogs.” Another in Canada reasoned that Indigenous people were requesting “to sit at the table without being elected… that’s how I understood it” — even though the motion was merely to study options for bringing Indigenous voices to council.

Quality of online public discourse matters too

Deliberation does not end when councillors leave chambers. How elected members communicate with the public — especially online — now also shapes the broader democratic climate around municipal decision making.

Social media has become a fertile environment for incivility, harassment and toxic exchanges, and research suggests some politicians have learned to exploit this dynamic.

Read more:
Some politicians who share harmful information are rewarded with more clicks, study finds

At the national level, there is ample evidence from Canada, the United Kingdom and many other countries of the heightened impact that digital vitriol has on women, LGBTQ, racialized and Indigenous candidates and office holders.

But reports from Canada, New Zealand and elsewhere suggest the effects of digital harassment may be even more profound in local politics, where the erosion of local news outlets can heighten communities’ vulnerability to disinformation, out-of-context clips and performative antagonism designed to inflame outrage rather than inform.

According to a recent study in the U.K., online abuse is now the biggest deterrent to people serving as councillors.

In response, some are pushing back. The Elect Respect campaign, initiated by Mayor Marianne Meed Ward of Burlington, Ont., is one recent example: it calls out abuse and harassment directed at women in politics and urges elected officials to commit to “respectful debate” rather than personal attacks.

Read more:
‘Quiet, piggy’ and other slurs: Powerful men fuel online abuse against women in politics and media

Similarly, the Association of Municipalities of Ontario has developed its Leading with Respect Handguides that provide practical resources for councils to navigate conflict and build a culture of civility in their workplaces. Initiatives like this highlight the growing recognition that the tone of public discourse is inseparable from the health of local democracy.

A call for more deliberative local democracy

Wherever you live, the next municipal election is a chance to think about what kind of council your community needs — not only in terms of policy, but also democratic practice.

When councillors treat one another as partners in problem-solving rather than opponents to be defeated, they help build the mutual respect and shared understanding that Mansbridge argues are essential for democratic legitimacy.

In a time of polarization and growing online toxicity, the quality of our local democratic conversations may matter as much as the policies they produce. Municipal councils across the country have the opportunity to show that talk matters — and that better talk can lead to better democracy.

Karen Bird receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC).

– ref. Talk matters: How municipal council debates can enhance democracy – https://theconversation.com/talk-matters-how-municipal-council-debates-can-enhance-democracy-278397

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Ummni Khan, Associate Professor, Department of Law and Legal Studies, Carleton University

Pillion is a love story about connection and self-discovery through submission, pain and bootlicking.

It’s not the first film to favourably portray kink or BDSM (bondage and discipline, domination and submission, sadism and masochism). But sympathetic renditions — like the Fifty Shades of Grey phenomena — tend to feature heterosexual couples.

Based on my research into BDSM in film and popular culture, I see Pillion as marking a striking shift in BDSM cinema: a mainstream romantic comedy that features gay men as complex and utterly endearing kinksters.

Sadomasochism in cinema

Earlier films have often framed BDSM as titillating but deviant, a slippery slope to catastrophe.

In 9½ Weeks (1986), a male dominant draws a woman into sex games that soon degrade into non-consent and humiliation. In Basic Instinct (1992), an alpha female lures men into bondage and, occasionally, stabs them with an ice pick.

Read more:
Basic Instinct at 30: the enduring appeal of the defiant femme fatale

In comedy, kinky characters have often been reduced to caricatures. In Eating Raoul (1982) and One Night at McCool’s (2001), kink is associated with sleaze, pathology and violence. In both films, the so-called “perverts” are killed, their deaths staged as punchlines.

A positive spin on perversity

Later BDSM films signalled a broader acceptance of sexual variety. They usually feature a male dominant introducing a woman to whips and chains, while she teaches him to open his heart.

Yet the apparent transgression often resolves in matrimony, as in Secretary (2002) and the aforementioned Fifty Shades of Grey trilogy.

More recently, Babygirl (2025) revised the formula: a married woman’s libido is unleashed with a younger man who, among other things, handles her like a dog. Their affair ends, but it ultimately revitalizes her marriage.

While many viewers found these films sexy and affirming, including myself, they arguably buy tolerance through assimilation. Kink is permitted, even promoted, but only when it settles down.

Kink, homophobia and representing gay men

Kinky gay men have rarely occupied the centre of mainstream film. When they appear at all, it is often as villains.

The infamous male-on-male rape scene in Pulp Fiction (1994) offers a vivid example: the two perps keep a masked, leather-clad “Gimp” on a leash, coding their assault through the esthetics of kink. All three are then murdered by the film’s more sympathetic characters.

By contrast, William Friedkin’s controversial film Cruising (1980) offers a more nuanced portrayal of queer kinky men, even as the narrative is structured around violence.

It follows Steve Burns (Al Pacino), an undercover cop tracking a serial killer who stalks New York’s leather bar scene, a hub of gay BDSM culture. As the investigation proceeds, Burns begins to struggle with his own emerging queer desires. A final murder suggests Burns may now be the killer’s successor, driven by his own sexual ambivalence.

The production sparked co-ordinated, large-scale protests from gay rights groups, who feared it would reinforce homophobic attitudes and even provoke attacks.

Under pressure, the director prefaced the film with a disclaimer that it depicted only “one small segment” of the “homosexual world” and was not meant to represent it as a whole.

Read more:
Queer archives preserve activist history and provide strategies to counter hate

A dark film

While a powerful moment in gay activism, the campaign may have also reinforced a respectability politics that distanced “acceptable” homosexuality from leather culture, promiscuity and public sex.

But Cruising had its defenders. As renowned film scholar and critic Robin Wood argued, “the film’s real villain is revealed as patriarchal domination,” visible in the killer’s abusive father and in corrupt police officers whose cruelty and virulent homophobia permeate the film.

Friedkin also shot scenes in real leather bars and cast members of the leather community as extras, suggesting a more complicated relationship with the subculture it portrayed.

However one reads it, Cruising is a dark film. Forty-five years later, Pillion, which also collaborated with the leather community, places many of the same kinky elements in a much brighter light.

Read more:
Pup Play: Kink communities can help people build connections and improve their body image

Rewriting the script

While Cruising belongs to the erotic thriller tradition, Pillion unfolds as a romantic comedy. Colin (Harry Melling), a guileless, inexperienced man still living with his parents, discovers his “aptitude for devotion” with Ray (Alexander Skarsgård), a gruff leather dom biker who prefers wrestling to kissing as first base.

The opposites-attract trope fuels much of the film’s humour. After their first back-alley tryst, Ray rebuffs Colin’s attempt to spend more time together and walks away. Colin — perfectly polite, even in rejection — calls after him, “Thank you!” It’s funny not because he’s kinky, but because his dogged niceness captures the familiar awkwardness of a post-hookup goodbye.

The films also confront different kinds of discrimination. In Cruising, homophobia is blatant and often brutal. In Pillion, homophobia is beside the point. Colin’s mother isn’t troubled that her son is gay, for example. If anything, she hopes he’ll find a boyfriend. What unsettles her is the structure of his 24/7 relationship with Ray, a form of BDSM in which dominance and submission extend into everyday life.

That tension comes to a head in a memorable dinner scene with Colin’s parents. Ray coolly calls her reaction “ignorant,” casting her discomfort as a form of kink-phobia.

Intimacy and authenticity

In both Cruising and Pillion, kink becomes the catalyst through which the protagonist discovers new dimensions of his sexuality. In Cruising, that awakening is framed through psychic fragmentation. In Pillion, it becomes a story of connection: to a lover, to a community and ultimately to oneself.

In a break from familiar BDSM film conventions, the relationship neither escalates toward violence, as earlier BDSM narratives often did, nor tidy itself into domestic respectability, as more hetero happily-ever-after versions have done.

Crucially, Colin’s submissiveness is not about growing small or effacing himself. Instead, he becomes increasingly able to articulate his needs and assert his own identity.

The one stereotype Pillion does reproduce, however, is the dominant who hides his feelings. Popular culture often portrays tops as emotionally shut down, whether they’re men or women.

In sinister portrayals such as Cruising or Basic Instinct, dominance bleeds into violence. But even in positive depictions, such as Fifty Shades of Grey and Secretary, the dominant character is initially closed-off or commitment-phobic.

Pillion largely repeats this pattern. Ray keeps Colin at arm’s length, strictly dictating the terms of their relationship before gradually allowing him closer — at least for a moment.

Pillion offers something rare in mainstream cinema: a queer kinky love story that neither pathologizes nor punishes its characters, nor ends with a big fat gay wedding. Instead, it combines the sweetness of a romantic comedy with the sexiness of the leather scene, capturing the poignancy of two imperfect people grappling toward intimacy.

Ummni Khan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Kinky caricature no more: How ‘Pillion’ is rewriting BDSM cinema – https://theconversation.com/kinky-caricature-no-more-how-pillion-is-rewriting-bdsm-cinema-276592

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Ian Wereley, Adjunct Research Professor, Department of History, Carleton University

With the recent outbreak of hostilities in the Persian Gulf, the focus of international attention has returned to one of the world’s most important energy chokepoints: the Strait of Hormuz.

Roughly one-fifth of the world’s oil passes through this narrow strait. Its closure, alongside U.S.-Israeli attacks on Iran’s oil infrastructure — including the strategic export hub on Kharg Island — has raised fears of a protracted conflict as fuel prices soar.

Most news coverage and analysis has focused on the immediate threats posed by missiles, drones and mines, and the global implications of the strait’s closure.

But beneath these headlines lies a much deeper story.

For more than a century, Iran has occupied a powerful place in the western imagination, characterized as a volatile region that sits atop one of the world’s largest oil reserves.

Working within the energy humanities sub-field, my research and teaching focus on the early history of oil in Iran and the development of western oil cultures during the early 20th century.

The discovery that reshaped an empire

The story begins in May 1908, when drillers financed by the British-Australian entrepreneur William Knox D’Arcy struck oil in the rugged foothills of the Zagros Mountains in southwestern Persia, known after 1935 as Iran.

The discovery reshaped the region and the global oil industry. In 1909, the Anglo-Persian Oil Company — the precursor to British Petroleum (BP) — was established to exploit the newly discovered oilfields.

Within a few years, the company constructed a 200-kilometre pipeline network and a vast oil refinery and export complex on Abadan Island in the Persian Gulf. The refinery remains the largest in Iran.

From Abadan, tankers transported oil through the Strait of Hormuz to global markets, eventually powering ships, vehicles and industry across Europe.

Iranian oil quickly became central to British imperial strategy. In 1914, on the eve of the First World War, the British government acquired a controlling stake in BP to secure fuel supplies for the Royal Navy, which had recently transitioned from coal to oil under First Lord of the Admiralty, Winston Churchill.

Churchill later described the discovery of Iranian oil as a remarkable windfall for Britain: “Fortune rewarded the continuous and steadfast facing of these difficulties…and brought us a prize from fairyland far beyond our brightest hopes.”

From that moment onward, oil from Iran became deeply intertwined with the industrial and military power of the British Empire.

Read more:
Iran’s history has been blighted by interference from foreign powers

Imagining Persia and petroleum

After the war, BP shifted its focus from military supply to mass consumption, launching an elaborate marketing campaign to shape how British audiences understood Iran and its oil.

During the 1920s, British newspapers carried thousands of advertisements depicting Persian landscapes, history, culture and natural resources.

Among the most striking was the 12-part “Persian Series” in 1925, which paired evocative artwork with stories of British engineers operating in remote and challenging environments to provide fuel for the modern world.

Scenes of jagged mountain passes, desert caravans and ancient religious sites in Iran were juxtaposed with narratives of western technological mastery.

These messages extended beyond print. At the British Empire Exhibition of 1924-25, attended by more than 27 million visitors, BP constructed a full-scale replica of a traditional Iranian caravanserai, combining stylized cultural imagery with displays of modern oilfield equipment.

Persian symbolism was also embedded in the built environment created by BP. The company’s London headquarters, Britannic House (completed in 1925), featured sculptures of Iranian figures in traditional dress, their bodies displayed as captured loot from a distant resource frontier.

In the 1930s, BP further expanded their audience through films about life in Iran, screened for free at trade shows and fairs.

A narrative of commercial conquest

My PhD research describes how BP’s representations of Iran normalized the idea that western societies like Britain depended on energy drawn from the Middle East, and that controlling those resources was necessary and justified.

BP’s interwar marketing campaigns did more than promote its brand of gasoline. They helped construct a broader cultural understanding of Iran, its people and its oil resources.

The Zagros Mountains became the setting for a vast storytelling project about technological and cultural conquest in the Middle East.

Oil was presented as an exotic prize held captive beneath inhospitable landscapes, captured by western oil companies cast as heroic pioneers, and brought back for the enjoyment of British motorists. Oil development was marketed not as exploitation, but as an inevitable component of western modernity.

Meanwhile, Iranians appeared only at the margins, either as labourers or collateral damage in the larger drama of oil. “Gone are the captains and kings,” proclaimed one BP advertisement. “Their citadels are crumbled to dust.”

A century later, the great game for oil continues in Iran

In his 1978 book Orientalism, Palestinian literary scholar Edward Said observed:

“Always there lurks the assumption that although the western consumer belongs to a numerical minority, he is entitled either to own or to expend (or both) the majority of the world’s resources. Why? Because he, unlike the Oriental, is a true human being.”

That presumption has shaped western attitudes toward oil-producing regions for more than a century. In Iran specifically, it has led to a repeating cycle of conflict over its oil resources, with Iranian leaders often characterized as dangerous, unpredictable and greedy.

In 1953, the United Kingdom and the United States conspired to overthrow Iran’s elected prime minister, Mohammad Mossadegh, after he nationalized Iran’s oil industry.

Read more:
How the CIA toppled Iranian democracy

In the 1920s, the perceived dangers associated with Iran were largely environmental: mountains to cross, deserts to traverse and infrastructure to build.

Today, the dangers are far more complex and geopolitical in nature, with risks focused on nuclear proliferation, religious conflicts and disruptions to global markets.

Yet, the underlying logic of the current war with Iran remains strikingly familiar: western military might is being marshalled to eliminate threats and capture the oil western leaders seek to control.

Ian Wereley previously received funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

– ref. The West has long characterized Iran’s oil as a prize to be claimed – https://theconversation.com/the-west-has-long-characterized-irans-oil-as-a-prize-to-be-claimed-278379