This past week, 21-year-old Jean Wharf (pictured above) was thrown off of a Greater Vancouver skytrain, allegedly for wearing a “Fuck Yoga” button on her bag. When the skytrain police asked her to remove the offending button, she refused and was told she could not get back on the train. People everywhere are in an uproar, including Vancouver’s Arts and Culture magazine The George Straight, claiming that this is a terrible violation of the right to free speech and is an example of heinous and unfair censorship.
The Straight reports:
The B.C. Civil Liberties Association has taken up her cause and filed a complaint with the office of the police complaint …
… commissioner, arguing the button is protected by the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
It’s being widely reported as an incident of censorship, though some news outlets doing so can’t even bring themselves to print the F-word.
Well, thank God the B.C. Civil Liberties Association is busying itself with an important cause. And how dare those pussy newspapers not print the “F-word.” The Straight, you see, is hip and cool because its banner picture has not one, not two, but THREE uses of the F-Word. My stars, how progressive.
Naturally, the Straight calls for us all to take up arms against this terrible oppression and wear “Fuck Yoga” buttons on buses and trains until this Civil Rights outrage comes to an end.
As the head of the BCCLA puts it:
Wearing a button doesn’t break the law. Transit’s approach opens it to ridicule. What about books that contain the F word that people read on the bus? What about clothing or shopping bags from FCUK? What about people who say the F word while talking in a normal speaking voice to a friend on the bus or SkyTrain?
First of all, FCUK, as clever a little ackronym as it is, isn’t the dreaded F-word, so that argument opens itself to ridicule. Secondly, everyone seems to be missing the point. This girl wasn’t kicked off of the Skytrain for wearing a Fuck Yoga button. She was kicked off of the skytrain for — wait for it — fare evasion. When she was pulled off the train for not having a ticket to ride, the police officer issued her a ticket and told her she could reboard if she took off the pin (she, of course, told him to “Fuck off.” At least she’s consistent). But he could have thrown her off for the fare evasion itself — or, you know, the verbal assault. This isn’t about censorship, it’s about theft.
But let’s get to the real issue at heart. Why does Ms. Wharf so despise yoga? In her own words:
I wear it because so many people are doing yoga, but very few of them know why,” Wharf told The Sun in an interview. Yoga has been so industrialized that people have forgotten its purpose as a beautiful, ancient meditative practice.
First of all, unless machines are now doing yoga for people, you mean commercialized, not industrialized. Second of all: who cares? This is the thing everybody hates about the punk/hipster “movement” in general: it’s a group of self-indulgent, lazy people who complain about everything because they have no real cause. Wharf hates people who do yoga? I hate people like Wharf who are every bit as much a part of a commercialized community as the purse-dog-carrying, water-bottle-clutching, expensive-yoga-pants-buying women she is bitterly fighting for the right to protest against. And honestly, you want to talk censorship? At least be grateful we don’t live in Arkansas.
Perhaps I sound riled up, but frankly there is so much going on in the world that protecting this girl’s right to wear an offensive button with an empty, pointless and selfish meaning is such a waste. The BCCLA needs to find better things to do with its time.
What’s your take? Should she have been asked to take off the button? Is this a censorship issue?
The transit officer was on a power trip. He’s just as much of an ass as Emo chick. Hope she doesn’t go cut herself now…
All that scene is a hazard to navigation.
I would question whether there is actually any law about the display of offensive words in public.
I too suspect that the officer was just power-tripping a little.
It was entirely reasonable to throw her off the train, but entirely dumb to make an issue of what she wore.
Unless there is some bylaw of which I am unaware.
That said, it’s also dumb to phrase this as some great big fight against the man. I don’t think her motivation behind the pin is even worth hearing.
Offensive language is prohibited on the skytrain itself.
I think F*ck always falls under obscenity laws, but most of the time it’s not enforced. So yeah, using profanity in public is illegal but only if someone is being a cock about it.
Theoretically, swearing in public can be illegal and considered disorderly conduct. It’s not something that anyone in their right mind would enforce on public property if it’s within reason (a “Fuck Yoga” button is within reason). I can say with almost 100% confidence that the officer in question would not have asked this girl to remove her button if she hadn’t committed a crime. Sounds like she was disrespectful, and probably rubbed the officer the wrong way leading to the request to remove the button.
Not a violation of free speech, but rather put a self-entitled idiot in her place.
I know that on the city buses here, there’s a list of conduct expectations on every bus, including a prohibition against profanity. Obviously people swear, but as long as they’re not being too loud or swearing at another person, no one tends to care. I can’t really comment on the possibility freedom of speech violation in this case because I have no idea what Canadian laws say about it.
We don’t have the right to freedom of speech up here. We have the right to not be offended..
I liked yoga before it was popular….also, I liked it before it even existed.
you’re a LOT older than I had previously thought…
Lol, it’s all of the yoga I don’t do.
I could care less about yoga,but I’m all for yoga pants!!!
I am from Vancouver, and I do believe it was brought to attention that she swore at the officer who kicked her off. She had also previously been kicked off for not paying the fare.
I meant to say she swore at him before he had kicked her off! oops.
I’m more offended by you calling punk girls such as myself “self-indulgent, lazy people who complain about everything because they have no real cause.” Thanks, Zelda Lily. I thought feminists were against making sweeping generalizations about large groups of people.
Yeah, cool lets insult the girl because of her ideas and the way she dresses.
I’d love the author of this to meet a bunch of actual punks girls who are also activists and tell them what she thinks of them.
I’ll insult her because she has no class,and doesn’t respect that some ones little kid will see her bullshit button. Punkers need to grow up and realize that getting offensive doesn’t mean your avant-garde and intelligent,quite the opposite!
Socially active punks, in my experience, are annoyed by the “loud, have nothing to say, make the rest of us look like assholes” punks too.
So I’m pretty sure if the author of this article told them how she felt, they would agree to a certain extent and explain what they do that makes them different than the self indulgent little snots that run around in giant boots and mohawks because they think it pisses off society.
You sometimes annoy the shit out of me by the way you look to be offended anytime somebody has a negative opinion of a counter culture movement adherent.
We get it, you’re a super cool punker girl and nobody understands the movement, and how dare anybody add to the discrimination this group faces.
I have no desire to sit here and list my punk credentials, but rest assured, I got ‘em.
I’ve personally been involved with a Seattle homeless teen shelter run by punks.
And most of them have enough reading comprehension to understand that the author of this post was not insulting the girl for the way that she dressed.
The insult was directed at the masses of lazy little shits that sit around and bitch about what “society” is trying to do to them without actually having any fucking adversity to overcome.
If the hardest part of your existence is that you’re not allowed to be a fare jumper who shows her disdain for the lack of respect being shown to the ancient practice of yoga, you’re a whiny little bitch.
Regardless of sex, hair color and dress style, that makes you a whiny little bitch.
And that is one of the least punk rock things I’ve ever heard of.
A real punker would have cursed, spit on the guy, and tried to fare hop the next train. Not hire a fucking lawyer. My God, what the hell has punk come too?
Now I’m really upset…
Um, aren’t ideas the first thing we should insult someone for? I mean, we can question the insults in the first place, but if we’re going to insult someone, the appropriate point of attack IS the ideas in which a person chooses to believe. I also think clothing that a person *chooses* to wear is fair game, but ideas are entirely appropriate..
There is no claim that ‘punks’ are “self-indulgent, lazy people who complain about everything because they have no real cause.”
But there certainly ARE some people who label themselves as ‘punk’ who ARE “self-indulgent, lazy people who complain about everything because they have no real cause.”
And that’s the accusation here.
And feminists aren’t against making sweeping generalizations about large groups of people. Feminists, like most other large groups of people, are too diverse to be all for or against something like that. :)
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If it is as the article says then that woman is a terrible person. She doesn’t pay the fair, then the police officer is nice enough to allow her to ride for free, but she tells him to fuck off because of her lame ass pin? What else is commercialised? Hair dye, offensive pins, leather jackets? I don’t see a damn motorbike around so she can go fuck herself.