Our beloved Thea Lim over here at Shameless has not yet departed to the United States and will grace us once more before she goes with her intelligence, brilliance, and general feminist awesomeness this Sunday at the Toronto Rape Crisis Centre/Multicultural Women Against Rape for their monthly Feminist Activist Herstory Forum!

If I weren’t in the US myself, I’d be there! So I hope you can be!

Here are the deets:

Date: Sunday, January 4th
Time: 2-3:30pm
Where: 17 Phoebe St, The TRCC/MWAR Centre (Just northeast of Queen and Spadina)

This is a FREE event open to all and includes snacks

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Julia Schopick from The Keeper, Inc. was awesome enough to leave us a comment in a recent Shameless Women post to let us know that they’ve put together a page on their site to show the average environmental and financial cost of using tampons.

“It gives a terrific visual representation of the amount of WASTE that is created by ONE WOMAN’S disposable menstrual products in one month, one year, 10 years, and 40 years (the menstruating lifetime of the average woman)!

Please take a look. I think you’ll agree that these photos are real eye-openers. If only more women would realize how much waste they are foisting on the environment when they use disposable tampons and pads.”

Check out how much waste is produced in just one year:

courtesy of The Keeper, Inc.

Think that’s a lot? You won’t believe how much waste is produced in 10 years … OR 40! Make sure to check out the comparison pics (with info) here.

For an alternative to tampons, you can find out more about the awesome products that The Keeper, Inc. has to offer that are “economical, efficient, comfortable, and environment-friendly”.

Thanks for the tip, Julia!

Today, December 17th is the International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers.

Several different events are taking place across Canada.

What will you be doing to commemorate this important day?

In ‘Enough, Already’ Globe and Mail columnist Judith Timson discusses the cover of January’s O magazine, where a now “fat” Oprah stands before the freakishly slim Oprah of yester-month(?). I don’t know how quickly Oprah’s diet yo-yo is currently going but seasonal weight changes seem to be the norm for anyone with a media empire.

Timson makes the point that if weight obsession makes the cover of O in a month where economic downturns, the first African-American president in history and senate scandals are but a few of the big issues, maybe Oprah’s “body problem” isn’t that important?

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Disheartening news from sex worker rights collectives across the country. But the fight must go on.

Official press release from Pivot Legal Society, in conjunction with the Montreal Coalition for the Rights of Sex Workers:

MONTREAL SEX WORKER RIGHTS GROUP DENOUNCES
BC SUPREME COURT RULING THAT DENIES SEX WORKERS’ HUMAN RIGHTS
Monday December 15

Today, the BC Supreme Court refused to hear a case brought forward by a group of sex workers from the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver (“SWUAV”) who are attempting to challenge the prostitution laws using the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

Lainie Basman, of Montreal’s Coalition for the Rights of Sex Workers says, “This decision is incredibly disappointing. The B.C. Supreme Court had the rare opportunity to hear a critical claim by sex workers that Canada’s Criminal Code endangers their safety and violates their fundamental right to equality. Outrageously, the Court has chosen to close its doors to one of this country’s most marginalized and oppressed groups.”

Joe Arvay, a lawyer working on the case alongside Katrina Pacey, of Pivot Legal Society, says, “The government’s argument that the Court should recognize as plaintiffs only those sex workers who are presently active in sex work or who are presently facing an actual prosecution is neither sound law or good policy.”

Big ups and kudos go to my colleague Alison Lee, manager of Good for Her in Toronto, on writing a kick-ass feature for the November/December This Magazine on The New Face of Porn, and how a new generation of feminists are reclaiming porn, both as consumers and producers.

Here is her fabulous self talking about her work at the store for This:

I think we go back and forth all the time with the argument about sex positive feminism, what it really means, and how we can practically apply the tools we hear in theory while living out there in a world that is downright prejudicial on so many levels.

For example, I myself struggle with believing the whole “hypersexualization” school of thought because I’m an advocate for choice and self-determination (i.e. I don’t just believe in the decriminalization of sex work, I believe people can and do choose it and deserve more than basic human rights) I look at colonization and remember that we need to take the power back.

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By saying this and other cleverness and truths about the abhorrent Genocide Awareness Project, reposted at RH Reality Check:

The sexism in their viewpoints is mind-boggling. To them, Black women are the poor dupes of the abortion rights movement, lacking agency and decision-making of our own. In fact, this is a reassertion of Black male supremacy over the self-determination of women. It doesn’t matter whether it is from the lips of a man or a woman. It is about re-enslaving Black women by making us breeders for someone else’s cause.

I am reminded of the comments of Shirley Chisholm, the first Black woman in Congress, who dismissed the genocide argument when asked to discuss her views on abortion and birth control:

“To label family planning and legal abortion programs “genocide” is male rhetoric, for male ears. It falls flat to female listeners and to thoughtful male ones. Women know, and so do many men, that two or three children who are wanted, prepared for, reared amid love and stability, and educated to the limit of their ability will mean more for the future of the Black and brown races from which they come than any number of neglected, hungry, ill-housed and ill-clothed youngsters.”

For the record, SisterSong rocks my socks.

If you are in Ottawa, be sure to drop by tonight for Safe Sex in the City! All proceeds are benefiting Canadians for Choice.

Yours truly is also performing spoken word!

Yesterday I published in The Globe and Mail a feature that is very close to my heart: an exploration of vulvodynia, severe and often debilitating pain at the opening of the vagina. (If you find the story locked to paid subscribers on the Globe site, you can see the full text on my website here as well.) It was once dismissed as a psychiatric condition - and still is by many uninformed physicians - but now doctors and scientists are finally uncovering the real, biological secrets behind this strange and sad condition.

I had never heard of vulvodynia until a few years ago, when an editor asked me to look into it for a story on medically unexplained symptoms. What I learned broke my heart - not so much the fact that so many women are in pain, but that so many are turned away by their doctors without answers - or, worse, told they are crazy. If the condition affects an estimated one in six women at some point in their lives, and if 60 per cent of them decide not to seek treatment - and of those who do seek help, they have to consult three or more physicians before a proper diagnosis (if they get one), then how many women are suffering in silence right now? How many women have been sent to shrinks and told it was “all in their heads”?

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