In the time leading to the launch of She’s Shameless: Women write about growing up, rocking out, and fighting back, we have been posting excerpts from the book on our blog. To accompany these excerpts we are including some Q&As with contributors to She’s Shameless.

Shaunga Tagore is a self-proclaimed singer-songstress, warrior-poet, gangsta-feminist, extreme-ranter-queen, lover-fighter, soul-sista-diva, who dreams of a world without hierarchies and categories, and watches Buffy in her spare time.

What does feminism mean to you? How did you come to call yourself a feminist?

I am a feminist because I have a lot of hurt inside of me. For most of my life I believed that this hurt – caused by violences such as racism and sexism – was just a normal and natural part of who I am. Learning about feminism, or coming to understand the way systems of oppression impact individuals, groups, or societies, has provided me with a way to make sense of my internalized hurt, to recognize it is there but to realize that it doesn’t really belong inside of me. In that sense feminism is a source of healing. Feminism has also given me a way to think about my privileges, and attempt to take action and responsibility against injustices that I witness in this world I share with others.

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For those in Montreal who are interested in radio, public radio, feminist radio and campus radio, here is an upcoming event that could be really cool. There will be keynote speakers, workshops, and even field trips. I wish I could be there!

The Women in Radio Conference
Thursday, June 11th, 2009
ALL DAY - 9h00-18h30
Hosted by CKUT Radio, part of the annual National Campus-Community
Radio Conference happening June 7-13th.

** Voices from the Underground: Women’s voices, women’s power **
Women in Radio Keynote Presentation by Audrey Redman
Ballroom, Shatner Building (3480 McTavish, McGill University)
Thursday, June 11 – 17:00-18:30

Audrey Redman, Host of Honour the Earth a First Nation’s news and
music program (formerly aired on CKLN community radio at Ryerson
University in Toronto). This lecture is co-presented with
Media@McGill, online at http://media.mcgill.ca.

The Women in Radio Conference (WIR) is a one-day conference held
during the week-long National Community Radio Conference (NCRC). This
year’s NCRC and the WIR conference is being hosted by CKUT Radio in
Montreal. During the WIR, feminist broadcasters and allies come
together to create spaces for greater participation by women through
skill-sharing, visioning and consciousness raising. By prioritizing
the voices of marginalized women, the conference addresses
institutional oppression and discrimination in the campus-community
radio sector. The conference also showcases the accomplishments of
women broadcasters in the sector and holds women-only trainings in
technical broadcasting. For more information and to read some of the
work by women in the sector, please go to http://ncra.ca/women.

WIR takes place in the Shatner Building (3480 McTavish, McGill
University) from 9h00-18h30. This conference is wheelchair accessible
and child care will be provided.

** WIR 2009 Schedule **
9h00-10h00 … Breakfast
9h15-10h15 … Caucuses: Funding Coordinators / !Earshot / Feminist / GroundWire
10h30-11h45 … Workshops: Recruiting Women Music Programmers / Feminist
Ethics / Trans Inclusion / Interview Skills 4 Women
12h00-13h15 … Workshops: Making Sound Art / Older Women in Radio /
Unlearning Patriarchy / Circuit-Bending 4 Women
13h15-14h15 … Lunch
14h30-18h30 … Field Trip: Montreal Street Art Tour & Hands On:
GroundWire Scriptwriting
14h30-15h45 … Workshops: Sexism, Misogyny & Homophobia in Music /
Trans Programming / Who’s in a Name: WIR? / DJ Skills 4 Women
16h00-17h00 … Workshops: Feminist Music Programming / Building a
Feminist Media Network / Station Accessibility for Kids / Documentary
Production 4 Women
17h15-18h30 … WIR Keynote: Audrey Redman
20h00-22h00 … Tara-Michelle Ziniuk Book Launch at Cagibi

To find out more about this year’s NCRC taking place at McGill
University in Montreal from June 7-13th, visit http://ckut.ca/ncrc.php.

I think Rachel Maddow says it all, really.

There is just so much fun to be had with misappropriated phrases.

A couple of months ago I pledged to blog for Ada Lovelace Day, an initiative put forth by Suw Charman-Anderson, digital rights activist, journalist and blogger. The initiative seeks to challenge the notion that women are absent from science by shedding light on women who have excelled in science.

I have chosen to look at some of the achievements and theories of Governor General’s Award winner, U.N. Pearson Peace Medal Honouree, award-winning physicist and metallurgist Ursula Franklin, who has had a formative influence on how I see the world around me. I first read The Real World of Technology when I was 19, taking a class on the anthropology of technology, a course that I had only added to my schedule to fulfill a science requirement for my undergraduate arts degree. The course ended up being enlightening and transforming, mainly thanks to Dr. Franklin.

To go into all of Franklin’s achievements and ideas would require a textbook rather than a blog post, so I will focus only on two areas: her assertion that technology is a practice rather than an accumulation of objects and her theories on a feminist scientific method.

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How much do I wish that the push for a coalition government had gone through last December? Harper’s back in action and his latest proposal has been to quietly usher through budget legislation that would effectively do away with pay equity for women in the public sector, making hard-won human rights into a negotiable issue for the bargaining table.

Basically, for those of us who have a hard time wading through the legalese, the proposed bill introduces some radical changes to current legislation that have profound effects on women in the workforce. Here are a few examples of the kinds of changes proposed:

- The criteria for work value assessment, once based on skill, effort, responsibility and working conditions, now include “qualifications and market forces,” which in addition to being very subjective are more easily argued off the table than hard skills.
- Pay equity will be something that is negotiated at the bargaining table rather than something that should be guaranteed.
- Women who wish to make pay equity complaints must do so without support; in fact, unions who decide a claim is worth pursuing and try to offer representation or counsel will be fined $50,000.
- Complaints will no longer be processed through the Human Rights Commission, but through the third party Public Service Labour Relations Board, supposedly to save time. This Board is a bargaining table facilitator, dedicated to resolving labour disputes, not to preserving human rights.

Women’s equality in the workplace should not be a bargaining chip to be held out or held back by employers. In fact, this sly little bit of the legislation holds no discernible advantage for the country’s flagging economy, so what is the benefit? PSAC is now running a petition and letter campaign to implore MPs to remove the Public Sector Equitable Compensation Act from Bill C-10.

For more information, the following articles are helpful:
PSAC fact sheets and information on Bill C-10 and the proposed Public Sector Equitable Compensation Act.
Judy Wasylycia-Leis takes on the Liberals, whose apathy during the decision-making process has been very destructive.
Treasury Board statement attempting to debunk fears surrounding proposed changes.
Toronto Star article on the underhandedness of Harper’s budget bill gives a good rundown of the issues.

Jennifer Cowan’s debut novel, due to be released in April, follows the journey of sixteen year old Sabine, aka “Bean”, aka “earthgirl“, from her status as a regular kid hanging out with her “grrlz” to her realization of a new, eco-warrior identity. Spurred to action by the wayward and messy leftovers of a Chicken McNugget meal thrown out the window of an SUV and all over her hoodie, Sabine declares immediate and all-encompassing war on the uberconsumerist society which she has until this moment accepted without much question.

Sounds like a fun premise. The execution, sadly, leaves a bit to be desired.

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So Denis Villeneuve, director of the award-winning film Maëlstrom, has directed a new film called Polytechnique. As suggested by the name, the movie is about the Montreal Massacre at Montreal’s École Polytechnique in 1989. Scheduled to be released in Quebec on Friday (and in the rest of Canada later this year), the film is already receiving some mixed reactions.

See the trailer here:

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Last night I received a call from York University asking me for current alumni information (they are one of my Alma Maters) and to talk about “recent happenings at York University”. I told them that after the way the university has treated their striking workers over the last three months, I have no wish to have any affiliation with York University. Here’s why:

After a long and gruelling strike that saw a near complete lack of cooperation on the part of York administration towards CUPE 3903, the Ontario government has elected to legislate the striking workers back to work. Throughout the last few months the local presses have been filled with misconstruction about the strike, students and workers have been pitted against one another, and York itself has been both unwilling to negotiate a fair deal with the people upon whom its reputation and operation is dependent and unaccountable for its own irresponsibility to accommodate its workers. Shame!

Photo courtesy of Alex Pylyshyn.

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Now don’t get me wrong. I was as happy as anyone to see that jerk Bush get into a plane no longer called Air Force One and fly on home to Texas. I am ecstatic that the U.S. has a Democrat as a president again and I am even more so that finally a day has come when a person of color can hold the highest office in that country. Good for you, U.S.A.!

That said….I could have done with a lot less of the church revival at yesterday’s inauguration speech. The inclusion of one homophobic and misogynist religious leader and the notable exclusion of the words of a progressive, queer religious speaker at an earlier inauguration event have made me pause to wipe the pixie dust out of my eyes.

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