The “Off Our Backs” column rotated among four women writers – Susanna George, Dina Zaman, Tan Beng Hui, Sheryll Stothard – and was handled by one of the Megazine’s editors Kean Wong. And it was only when one of them failed to send in their contributions that I was asked to make my contributions to what as a feminist column.
In this last minute assignment I decided to take up the topical question of a Rottweiler called Le Roq which had killed an elderly women, the question of rehabilitation and the links made to male violence. It might be that my suggestion that there might be elements in male culture worth redeeming, or the specific examples taken from the bric a brac of a pub or just the poor choice of words that earned a rebuke from one of the regular columnists. After all it was meant to me a space of feminists.
Rennie’s House of Oxtail – closed after Rennie Klassen’s widow, Trudy passed away – was a classic pub of its kind. If its interiors were documented it would tell the story of the permissible sexism of a time. A time long gone. In my column I try to describe the space with its unashamedly sexists posters and bawdy jokes. My punchline being the joke: “My wife ran away with my best friend, I sure miss him.”