When the stereotype fits, it can still be weird

Sure, we all joke about it being true, but it’s not. The truth is that not all Canadians are polite people. It’s impossible.

Mathematicians will tell you it’s statistically impossible for 36.3 million people to all be polite. Statistically speaking, some will be crude, some will be crabby and some will be jerks, among other impolitenesses. If you don’t believe math, choose a different area of study; they’ll all tell you the same thing.

Sociologist will tell you about the diverse nature of humans, and also rattle off the statistics proving how the blanket statement has to be wrong — because sociologists are just mathematicians who put people in their data.

Theologians will, I don’t know, lecture about good and evil and maybe tell you that a group of 36.3 million souls linked as a whole only by geographical location within a political boundary can’t all be impervious to the devil, otherwise they wouldn’t need bibles up there.

I don’t care what smart people you talk to, they will tell you the same thing: Canadians can’t all be polite.

That said, I will argue that we should absolutely consider this: Stereotypes have to come from somewhere.

I’m right. Right?

So, we already know that not all Canadians are polite, but we also know they sure make an argument for the stereotype, and the latest evidence that their actions feed that stereotype is that they’re trying to make the money-for-sex industry not insulting.

The other day, I read this actual, real-life headline: “A Sex Doll Brothel Is Coming To Toronto,” and all I could think was that Canadians are so polite they don’t want to dehumanize actual, real-life human women with being prostitutes. They now have eerily life-like stand-ins for that. (Oh, for sure I went to that website.)

In fact, the articles I read, because lots of people were writing about this, said that the Johns using the service would simply have to leave their money, like, in an honor jar on the counter or something and then take an open room.

What?

That’s right. Canadians are so polite they don’t want to embarrass the guys paying to have adult interactions with a life-size doll, so the Johns don’t even have to make eye contact with a human cashier.

Hold on, though. The story of politeness continued, it escalated, even, into some kind of epic tale, or an orgy of cordiality. The Toronto Sun reported the rest of the story.

After the sex doll shop announcement blew up in the news Aug. 27, an uprising broke out among residents and business people in what the Sun called the “bustling neighbourhood” — because Canadians are nice, but they can’t spell correctly — where the rubber-woman brothel was to be located.

In full-Canadian, unbearable-politeness-of-being mode, residents launched a petition drive to halt the grand opening, and a councilman searched the local ordinances until he found a by-law against “adult entertainment” parlors.

Aug. 30, three days after the original announcement, the councilman told the Sun, “Staff spoke with both the business owner and property owner to tell them (this) use would be illegal and the property owner, through a manager, said the lease had been terminated as of yesterday.”

Which means that the business owner already policed himself out of the “neighbourhood.”

Hope you weren’t waiting around for a rousing legal or physical bloodbath of an ending. Nope, sorry. This tale is a classic Canadian dust up.

I told you stereotypes have to be based on some kernel of truth.

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Guess we’ll just have to resort to making fun of the way they talk. What “aboot” the loony, eh? Sorry, Canada, that was mean, at http://www.facebook.com/viewfromthenorth40/.