Exciting news from the world of contraception today: the Toronto Star reported that the morning after pill will be available on drugstore shelves in Canada, which means it will be available to any woman who needs it, and women won’t have to request it from their pharmacist, which can often mean invasive, embarrassing, or judgmental questions, or even outright refusal.

Click here for some of this blog’s most recent thoughts on emergency contraception.

On Monday, May 5, a bilingual panel discussion called “Women and Radio in Canada”/ « Les femmes et la radio au Canada » will be held at McGill University in Montreal, featuring a range of women from academia and the world of radio, Shameless favourite Patti Schmidt (CBC Radio 2).

The panel with explore the challenges of radio in the 21st century, the differences between working in French or English in this milieu, historical contributions of women to radio, the role of women in the industry, and the contributions of minorities. They will also share a few trade secrets of the trade and anecdotes.

A complete program can be found here.

Participants: Colette Brin (Laval University), Kristiana Clemens (CKUT, 90.3 FM), Annie Lessard (RockDétente, 107,3 FM), Christine Maki (McGill University), Andra McCartney (Concordia University), Lise Millette (103.3 FM), Thomasina Phillips (The Monster, K103.7 FM), Gertrude Robinson (McGill University), Kim Rossi (CHOM, 97.7 FM), Patti Schmidt (CBC Radio 2, 93.5 FM), Gregory Taylor (McGill University).

Presented by the McGill Institute for the Study of Canada
Monday, May 2, 2008
Thomson House Ballroom, 2nd Floor, 3650 McTavish, 1 p.m.

RSVP to genevieve.bonin at mail dot mcgill dot ca

Last week I got a notice from my Rogers, my internet service provider, informing me of changes they’re making to “better serve” my online needs. The big change, of course, is putting a cap on my “usage allowance,” which means they can charge me more for my internet use, depending on how much I download. Bell is also limiting the amount of content Sympatico subscribers can download.

This isn’t just a corporate ploy to get people to pay more for their connections – this is part of a disturbing move by ISPs to change the way the internet works. What we have come to know and depend on as a space for the seemingly-free flow of information, connecting people around the world, is beginning to reflect the stronghold media conglomerates have around other means of communication, including newspapers and broadcasting, which means the kind of content we can access online, just like the kind of content we can access from the mainstream media, will be limited.

(Of course, the internet is not a perfect place: access is limited to those who can afford it, and the most highly-trafficked sites are still those owned by bottom-line driven major corporations. Still, the potential the internet holds for democratizing communication is critical).

This latest move is part of the struggle over neutrality, which has become a big issue for media activists in the United States.

Here in Canada, the Campaign for Democratic Media is leading the charge in trying to stop what they call “the throttling of the Internet and the strangling of our choice.” They argue that internet service providers have the potential to fundamentally change how we are able to use the internet if their efforts at limiting downloads aren’t stopped.

As the Campaign writes in a statement:

Using the… ‘traffic shaping’ principle, the companies can steer subscribers to their own content, or content produced by affiliated companies, and away from that offered by competitors — including the public broadcaster. For example, some Internet users who recently tried to download CBC’s The Next Greatest Prime Minister on Bittorrent were told it would take hours to do so.

Apart from public broadcasters, this could one day have serious implications for alternative and independent media, such as this blog you’re reading.

You can get involved in the campaign here or join the Facebook group here. Also, check out this insightful article on the issue.

For those of you in Ottawa concerned about the state of child care in this country, the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives is hosting an event on Tuesday you should check out.

From the press release:
Multinational child care corporations, including Australian giant ABC
Learning, are moving into Canada. Corporate-run child care will damage
high-quality, community-based non-profit early learning and child care
–and threaten the future of a pan-Canadian system.

Learn more and find out what you can do at this free event. (more inside…)

The Ryerson Student Lecture Series is bringing masked feminist avengers The Guerrilla Girls to Toronto on March 6!

The Guerrilla Girls are a group of anonymous women who assume the names of dead female artists, don gorilla masks, and use humour, graphics and clever campaigns to take on sexism, racism, and corruption in art, film, and culture. This will be the Girls’ first performance at a Toronto university.

Thursday, March 6
7 p.m., John Bassett Theatre at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre
FREE (ticket info here).

On Tuesday, Feb 12th, at 7 p.m., Kanahus Pellkey of the Native Youth Movement will be in Toronto talking about how the upcoming Olympics in Vancouver is impacting Indigenous lands, and how people are mobilizing around this issue.

From the event’s email (location of the talk and contact info below):

With the 2010 Winter Olympics scheduled to occur on unceded Coast Salish, St’at’imc and Squamish territory in two years, the spectacle surrounding them continues to wreak havoc on Indigenous people, poor people, and the Earth.

“By them choosing to have the Olympics here, it’s opening up our land, our sacred sites, our medicine grounds,” says Kanahus Pellkey. “We want
investors to know our land is not for sale.” Pre-Olympic fever occupies
the province of BC, and the economic excitement has massively accelerated gentrification and the building of highways, resorts, and condos. The construction of infrastructure for the 2010 Olympics itself is adding to extensive destruction of traditional homelands of the local Indigenous peoples.

(more inside…)

The National Inuit Youth Council, Pauktuutit Inuit Women of Canada, and the Ajunnginiq Centre of the National Aboriginal Health Organization (NAHO) are looking for Inuit youth between the ages of 13 and 30 who are interested in working on issues of safe sex among Inuit youth.

Inuit youth from Nunavut, Inuvialuit, Nunavik, and Nunatsiavut regions are invited to attend a Pan-Arctic Sexual Health Conference in February 2008. Selected youth will participate in a workshop that teaches them how to:
• create and deliver research projects in their communities
• teach other youth about safer sexual practices
• work with the three National Inuit Organizations.

How do you qualify?
You need to be willing to do the following:
• look around your community to see what kind of sexual health information exists: for example, is there visible information about how to have safer sex, where to get testing, treatment, and counselling?
• write down what you find
• report your findings at the Pan-Arctic Sexual Health conference (we can help you here).

If you are interested, please contact Jesse Mike or Qajaaq Ellsworth,
National Inuit Youth Sexual Health contact: sexualhealth@niyc.ca.

Deadline: January 15, 2008, more info here.

Robert Pickton was found guilty on six counts of second-degree murder, for the deaths of Sereena Abotsway, Andrea Joesbury, Mona Wilson, Georgina Papin, Brenda Wolfe and Marnie Frey, all of whom had disappeared from Vancouver’s downtown eastside between 1997 and 2001. He will be back in court to face 20 more first-degree murder charges.

The missing women story — and the fact that it took police so many years to act on the disappearance of dozens and dozens of women – has been really horrific. I haven’t followed the trial closely, but since the verdict I’ve been trying to find some insightful feminist analysis (anyone have any good tips of where to look?).

What I did find was an interesting piece by Jessalynn Keller, who interviewed three women journalists covering the trial to find out why mainstream coverage was unable to reveal the major issues that swirled around this case: ongoing and systemic violence against women, racism, and poverty. “Why is it,” she asks, that “media coverage of the case still so reflective of dominant cultural stereotypes of women, violence, sex and race?”

She makes a very good and important argument:

“The issues seem to cloud when [the women journalists] try to articulate these values through a mainstream media lens. They see their power residing primarily in practical journalistic decision-making such as language choices. The result is feminism light - news content without the conceptual tools or framework to help readers see and understand the structural challenges the Missing Women faced, the role of feminism historically and the continued struggle of many women in Vancouver today.”

The major problem, it seems, is that feminist politics don’t jive with the (somewhat problematic) principles journalists are supposed to uphold: objectivity, accuracy, facts. It’s interesting to see how journalists working for large newspapers and wire services try to negotiate the limitations placed on them, particularly when it comes to language choices.

There are also some moments that drive home the structural problems we face, particularly the way in which sex work is regarded in the mainstream media. Because the women missing from downtown eastside are poor, racialized, sex workers or drug users, they were depicted in a much different way than, say, Kristen French and Leslie Mahaffy, who were murdered by Paul Bernardo and Karla Homolka. The names of the women Pickton murdered are not household names, and I wonder if they will ever be.

The month of December means zillions of end-of-year best of lists. On that note, I’m working on a little project with Media Action to compile a list of our own and need your help, dear Shameless bloggers and readers. We’ve had wide-ranging discussions over the past year on the horrifying, idiotic, mean and often hilarious ways in which women have been portrayed in the media: depictions of motherhood (from Demi’s artful pose on the cover of Vanity Fair to the attacks on Britney Spears), the sexism in beer and booze ads, issues of race, violence against women, shallow judgements of female gamers, and the list goes on. On the other hand, we’ve celebrated a lot of things in pop culture: Tina Fey, Veronica Mars, Joss Whedon, Natalie Portman and her math skills.

What, in your opinion, have been the best and the worst things about women in the media and pop culture of the year? If you could call out media producers on something, what would it be? What inspired you to deliver them a high-five for an awesome representation of women or girls?