As a long time fan of the website Scarleteen, I’m part of 20 to 30 000 visitors this site boasts every day who are looking for real, unbiased, raw information on sex, sexuality, and everything in between. That’s quite a feat for not having any major organization behind them, public funding, or having ever done any advertising.

I’m proud to announce that I, along with an amazing roster of fellow activists, teachers, and just general people in the sexual know-how will be taking part in Sexuality in Color: Writing Outside the Lines at Scarleteen.

It will be a series focussing strictly on people of colour writing about sex from their perspective, and giving voice to the myths, realities, and racism that still permeate the sexual health world.

Heather Corinna, editor (and owner!) of Scarleteen who is White, hit the nail on the head by saying:

Even if you have no personal experience yourself being of color, or don’t talk to people of color in your life about these issues, statistics alone make it very clear that race (and, more to the point, how different races are treated and valued) and our perception of race changes things.

HIV and unplanned pregnancy has hit women of color harder than white women, for instance. Contraceptive and sexual health access can often be tougher for those of color. Being gay, lesbian or bisexual can play out differently being of color and in communities of color. I can see all of those things in the work that I do.

I can read about all of those things in journals or newspapers. I can certainly feel empathy, compassion and upset about racial imbalances… but what I can’t do is acutely feel and experience those things the way my brothers and sisters of color do and can. That’s not a minor quibble: it’s major.

We’re just gearing up to get going, so be sure to stop by later this week and onwards to check us out!

A big thank you goes out to all of you who attended Global Choice? Abortion, Access, and Reproductive Rights last night, and special thanks to our fabulous Shameless editor Megan, amazing RABBLE.ca activista Michelle, and directors of the Abortion Democracy and The Coat Hanger Project Sarah Diehl and Angie Young who actually paid their own way to be there.

I’m not alone when I say that everyone’s eyes were opened a little wider last night when looking around the world at abortion rights and the realities of choice. Some facts that were highlighted include:

-The 80 000 women who die each year around the world due to complications from illegal, botched abortions, and the 50 000 who retain major injuries.

-The fact that there is only one provider in the state of South Dakota, whose citizens will again vote this Fall on making all abortions illegal except in the case of rape.

-That Europe isn’t always the dream getaway destination if you are thinking of terminating a pregnancy. In Ireland and Malta a total ban exists, and in Poland abortion is allowed only in exceptional circumstances (life-threatening situations, fetal deformation or in case of rape).

-Although abortion on demand was legalized in South Africa in 1997, 99% of providing hospitals and the only two community health care centres that do provide are situated in the highly urbanized province of Gauteng (meaning you are SOL if you are black, poor, and living in a rural area. Oh wait, that’s like a good majority of the country!)

If you missed the screenings in Toronto, there will be screenings tonight in Montreal and Wednesday in Ottawa.

Hot damn, I’m proud to be pro-choice!

I’m a little late on posting this, but with all the hub-bub and media overkill everywhere, we all know what date I’m talking about.

Only this time, it’s not in America, but in Chile, and the roughly 50 000 people who were arrested, tortured, several murdered, and whose democracy has since been stolen away. Not to mention the more than 2700 people who have been killed since September 11, 1973 in Chile, opposing the US-lead military rule in their country, who overthrew president Salvador Allende to put an Army Commander-in-Chief and dictator into power.

Tito Trico over at the Guardian has an awesome article where he asks; Were the lives of those killed at the World Trade Centre more valuable than the innocents murdered in Chile’s US-backed coup? that’s definitely worth a read.

I won’t say much else but to ask you all to remember those who you think aren’t front of mind on this day.

I know I’m also commemorating my own people, the Mohawks, and the generations of our families who helped build the World Trade Centre (among other landmarks like the Empire State Building and much of the New York City Skyline), some dying over the years, but all rarely given our due for these historic contributions.

You be the judge on who gets to be remembered.

A League of Their Own is one of my all-time favourite movies. I relished every moment of it, from women kicking ass in baseball, to the sultry Madonna pushing the envelope in sports (something I could always personally relate to!), to the oh so strong and beautiful Geena Davis who just kept carrying it on her own way as the best damn player in the league.

On my way back from the United States this time around I couldn’t pull the all-nighter drive I usually do so I can have the next full day to work, so around 2:45am my sagging eyes looked for somewhere to pull over and came upon the exit off 49 South in Wisconsin for Racine.

Racine??!! As in, the Racine Belles from A League of Their Own?!

Yup, it was indeed, so if I was going to pick any random town in the good ole US of A to rest up for a few hours, it might as well be this one!

Racine was part of several midwest towns who formed the original All American Girls Baseball League, which also included the Kenosha Comets, the Rockford Peaches, and the South Bend Blue Sox. The organization formed in 1943 to keep the sport of baseball going when the men went away to war.

I always liked girls playing baseball better anyways.

A few years ago I wrote a piece for This Magazine on the important role campus/community radio stations have played in the lives and activism of feminists. The piece isn’t available online, so I’ll just cut and paste my general point.

Campus/community radio has long been welcoming to women and their views, especially considering the limited access feminists have historically had to mainstream media. Campus/community radio has been an important platform for feminists to engage in discussions rarely heard on mainstream airwaves, tackle important women’s issues and give underrepresented female musicians a presence. It’s a vital outlet in the face of mass media that is becoming increasingly hostile to feminist ideas and generally perpetuates narrow, stereotypical ideas about gender.

That said, I’d like to draw your attention to the horrible situation over at CKLN, the campus/community based at Ryerson University in Toronto. Over the past few months, many programmers and hosts that have been at the station for years have been shut out by illegitimate station management in an effort to make the station commercial.

Among the lists of cancelled shows is Radio Cliteracy, an important and bold feminist talk show, as well as Frequency Feminisms and Honour The Earth, which have been removed from the Sunday grid. So far, over 30 volunteers have been dismissed from CLKN without warning and without cause, including many LGTB, First Nations, psychiatric survivor programmers, women of colour and a trans person.

Luckily, people have been fighting to get back into the station and onto the airwaves with pickets, and by organizing meetings and a website. They need our support, so please do what you can to spread the word about keeping campus/community radio open for all.

There has been much outrage over the Harper government’s quiet cuts to Canadian arts funding.

In the case of the PromArt program – a grant that enables artists to travel abroad to perform, show their films, or promote their books – the cuts weren’t made so quietly. Toronto band Holy Fuck received a lot of media attention, their name evoking the reactionary nature of the government’s assessment of who has been getting (arguably a small slice of) taxpayer dollars.

But it’s not just a band with a swear in its name or lefty journalists like Avi Lewis and Gwynne Dyer who’ve received money, although, as many have suggested, artists’ politics might indeed have something to do with the Conservatives’ budget slashing. Recipients of PromArt have included ballet companies and other high-art performances, which makes the cuts even more confusing at a time when “culture” is increasingly used by governments around the world to attract investment dollars for business development.

The discussions over the arts cuts have directed some attention to the role culture plays in our lives and the often precarious careers of people who make the art and culture that are the base for campaigns like Toronto’s Live With Culture, for example.

Here’s a sample of what people have been saying about the arts cuts, including the always insightful Heather Mallick.

If funding, sustaining and promoting Canadian art and culture is important to you, then take a moment to send an email to your MP. Here’s an action alert from the Council of Canadians with background info and directions on how to send a note of protest.

On September 3, Fuse, a magazine of arts and politics, is hosting a town hall meeting to talk about the impact of cuts to arts funding. Details here.

Several friends and colleagues of mine took part in this inspiring and necessary conference in Saskatchewan whose title “Missing Women: Decolonization, Third Wave Feminism and Indigenous People of Canada and Mexico” says it all.

Travel and work conflicts prevented me from being there physically, but I can tell you that I’m emotionally shaken and stirred by the good work that has come out of it, which you can read about here.

I’ve always personally tried to make it a priority to highlight the strong matriarchy that exists in so many of our Indigenous nations. We were the FIRST feminists which is often forgotten in a lot of mainstream feminist dialogue, and it’s a shame especially when you consider what’s happened to many of the women in our communities today.

More than 500 Aboriginal women have gone missing or been murdered over the past 15 years and we have the highest rates of sexual assault and domestic violence against our women than any other race. However what we need to be focussing on now is the things that are happening to prevent these statistics and what we are doing in our communities ourselves to effect positive change.

Where we’ve come from is this strong, ancestral lineage of woman-power culture. Sadly we’ve now arrived at is this consistently prejudicial place where many of us wonder whether, if any of these victims were White, would people care more or do more to seek justice?

A youth patch for the quilt of hope by the Minnesota Indian Women’s Sexual Assault Coalition

I recently saw this sign walking out of an interstate road stop.

I was one of three lone persons of colour in the place and when we walked by, stopped to look at it, made some snarky comments that included shock and dismay, we turned around. Staring back at us were “suspicious” faces (that’s what they uttered) who looked us up and down, looked back at the sign, and then turned to each other with a “well what should do we do now?” kind of sentiment.

What does this all mean? You tell me.

(I mean, I always thought that the real threat of terrorism was right here at home, with the Conservatives, antis, racists, and other oppressors, but hey, that’s just me).

I have to give a loud and proud shout-out to Anti-dote, the amazing Multiracial Women’s and Girl’s Network, since I just got done talking about doing more programming with them.

If you’ve never heard of Anti-dote, mosey yourself on over to their website and check out their fabulousness. Not only do there need to be more opportunities for those of us in communities of colour to exist in safe spaces where we can just be our authentic ourselves and talk about the ongoing issues so many of us are facing, but growing up in this multi-layered racist, classist, and otherwise oppressive world is still a tough thing. Anti-dote has circles of aunties, grandmothers, and sistahs who provide the familial mentorship we all need to carry on and just be!

They are based in Victoria, but hey, it’s all about unity across lands right? So let’s join in and keep these kinds of circles going!