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• • In My Opinion...
  • Media Savvy
  • On The Job

  Brigette DePape: A Page with Chutzpah

  June 8, 2011 • Meg Pirie

  This past Friday, June 3, a young page stood during the Throne Speech and held up a homemade sign that read ‘Stop Harper.’ After this event, Brigette DePape promptly released a well-written, concise press release (you can read it here), denouncing the Harper Government’s divisive politics as destructive to Canadian youth and contrary to Canadian values.

  Here’s the gist: Brigette DePape is 21 years old and an activist. Originally from Winnipeg, she is a graduate of the University of Ottawa in International Development. She was a participant in the Canadian Senate Page Program and is now banned from Parliament Hill. Following her unprecedented act of civil disobedience, she is the subject of polarized debate.

  There have been claims in mainstream news outlets that this was nothing more than a self-serving stunt; that DePape was looking for fifteen minutes of fame.

  Well, I think that’s garbage. This sort of petty angst speaks more to the media’s own hypocrisy than some purportedly misinformed page. As one Globe & Mail commentator pointed out in this article, nothing was said about the attack ads that Conservatives ran against former Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff. But all of the sudden, when a bright, assertive, left-leaning young woman points out that our electoral system allows for a ‘majority’ government with 40% of the votes, she’s labeled an opportunist. Actually, she is organized, intelligent, and thoughtful. She cares deeply about her community and what will happen to the environment, post-secondary education, and the public sector after an unbridled Conservative tenure.

  (more inside…)

• • In My Opinion...
  • On The Job

  A Challenge of Parliamentary Proportions & Ruth Ellen Brosseau

  May 10, 2011 • Meg Pirie

  Well, originally I was going to write about organizing collectively and ‘watching the clock’ strategies, especially in unstable, low-wage situations with moderate to high degrees of surveillance, but then the Conservatives were re-elected with a majority and, well … I had a big cry.

  Nevertheless, there were some exciting events during this election: the well-organized, enthusiastic, youth-driven vote mobs that sprang up across the country; the highest number of women ever were elected as MPs; and a significant number of youth and first-time MPs won seats and will be headed to Ottawa.

  Change is a wonderful thing, especially when it comes to a Parliament replete with—quite literally—old, white, straight men. That we get to to be part of what is hopefully the beginning of broader political engagement … well, for me, that’s the silver lining to Harpocracy.

  That said, sexism and classism abound, especially where Ruth Ellen Brosseau is concerned.

  Brosseau was elected in the francophone riding of Berthier-Maskinongé, beating Bloc Québecois incumbent Guy André by roughly 6,000 votes. Much of the derision at the hands of mainstream media outlet has honed in on the following: she failed to campaign in this riding leading up to the election; she does not speak French; she took a vacation to Las Vegas in the middle of the campaign; she does not live in her riding; she is an assistant manager at a restaurant; she was accused of electoral fraud; she is 27; she is a single mother.

  (more inside…)

• • In My Opinion...

  Are You FOR REAL?

  April 29, 2011 • Diandra Jurkic-Walls

  Even though one of the identifiers I use for myself is “first-generation” and if I were asked to check an “ethnic-background” or “racial heritage” box on the census I’d choose white, in the land I come from we capitalize Aboriginal and First Nation. And their communities aren’t “Indian reservations” or referred to as “tribes” (unless, of course, that’s how certain communities have stated they want to be identified as by us colonizers): they’re Capital “N” Nations. Unfortunately, the Feminism in the land I come from is also capitalized with a big fat “F”, and that’s a problem.

  I know in my heart of hearts that I’m not the only white person dealing with knowing that current discourse around race as it intersects with patriarchal/hegemonic modes of theory and action (such as the above-mentioned Capital F Feminism) is just not happening. But when faced with calling out Feminism on not being able to DEAL with race like so many that have come before, I have felt kind of alone, and if only because most recently I’ve started to get it more and more.

  I will always be so humbly honoured to have been part of Feminism FOR REAL and have made a conscious effort not to say very much about my involvement or to go hog wild looking for attention (because me being white means this isn’t JUST about me!). Sure, I got Jian to mention it on Q, but I felt like at that point someone (white) had to say something. You see, Feminism FOR REAL hit bookshelves around the same time that Margaret Wente said we didn’t need Feminism any more and that an adolescent girl was gang raped in Texas. Sure these are big stories, front page of the patriarchal media and referred to by Feminist bloggers almost as often as you’ve heard the words Charlie and Sheen strung together in a sentence since this side of Valentine’s Day.

  Despite all the Feminist broohah surrounding International Women’s Day and the incredible launch for Feminism FOR REAL in Toronto, and the incessant tweeting going on, the big Feminist blogs have yet to comment on the text. Feministing. Bitch. Bust. The F Bomb. Feministe. Zip. Nadda. I’m not here to speculate about why they haven’t yet tackled Feminism FOR REAL, just wanted to say that I’m disappointed that there wasn’t any representation or recognition from the presumed-heavyweights on this text. These blogs should have been on it (new, feminist “theory” text in a sea of mainstream texts = GOLDMINE for nerdy Feminists) and maybe could have given FFR some room to exist as a book about Feminism (because that’s what it is) instead of being “just” a book about race and all the otherness in the shadow of Capital “F” Feminism (even though that is also what it’s about).

  Feminists and Feminisms have a responsibility to the movement and to our comrades to sit with the discomfort and weaknesses and to storm through the hard stuff to figure it out. By denying contemporary racial hierarchies in Feminism or society “at large”, or even just ignoring the issue at hand by not being invested in it in the first place, Feminism is making a grave mistake. The “movement” will just continue to be represented as a white upper middle class women’s (aka FEMALES-only; exclusive of other identities) movement, when the point where you intersect with however you define Feminism is tenuous, ever-changing, and so rewarding and ridiculously FRUSTRATING all at the same time.

  If you have a blog or access to a venue where anyone will listen to you deal with the storming of figuring out your role and my role as continuous colonizers (or your experience being colonized or seeing someone else being colonized), this is your call to arms! Write about the book if you’ve read it, write about the snippets you’ve read,
  or just write about what it means to be a feminist (if you identify as one) and what it’s like to be in the shadow of the Feminist monolith and golden rule.

• • Arts
  • Bibliothèque
  • In My Opinion...
  • Race and Racism

  a love letter to feminism (for real)

  March 2, 2011 • Shaunga Tagore

  cross-posted on www.shaungatagore.com

  I feel blessed and honoured to be a part of the anthology, Feminism for Real: Deconstructing the Academic Industrial Complex. (Also see the follow up event here!) Not only because it gave me space to put down in print and solidify forever my XTREME-RAGE-AGAINST-GRAD-SCHOOL, but for many other reasons as well. As editor Jessica Yee has stated many times, including in the book, it is not a “hate-on” feminism or academia. To me, it is exactly the opposite: in deconstructing all the things that feminism far too often tends to be (ie. oppressive!) what’s revealed is a love for all the beautiful and powerful things feminism is and can be FOR REALZ. I think that one of the reasons it means so much to me to have been a part of this project is because of where I realized my tumultuous relationship to feminism has brought me.

  I’ve had my (un)fair share of emotionally intense, be-all/end-all uber-dawson’s-creek-stylez dramatic love relationships. And feminism is right up there with them. when i first met feminism it was like fireworks and stars exploding in the sky. It was passionate, energetic and exciting - the kind of all-out love where you would gladly spend all night awake talking online, confessing your undying love for each other. “Truly Madly Deeply” by Savage Garden playing in the background on repeat. (You might have noticed by now that yes, I was once a teenage girl growing up in the late 90s.) It was like the kind of relationship that gives you the oxygen you didn’t know you were missing.

  (more inside…)

• • In My Opinion...
  • Queeriosities

  Response to Teen Youth Suicides: Does it really get better?

  October 5, 2010 • Julia Caron

  Many of you have probably heard of the It Gets Better project which was created last week, in response to the tragic suicides of 6 gay teens. As someone who is queer and has worked for queer youth organizations in the past, this obviously piqued my interest. Unfortunately it didn’t take more than two or three videos for my cynicism to kick in…

  The first question that popped into my head upon watching was: Will watching videos of queer adults telling you being a gay/lesbian/queer teenager sucked, but becoming an adult will be awesome! and great! and super! and put an end to your suicidal thoughts? The reality of the situation is: it doesn’t always get better. From Dan Savage’s column:

  Today we have the power to give these kids hope. We have the tools to reach out to them and tell our stories and let them know that it does get better… But many LGBT youth can’t picture what their lives might be like as openly gay adults. They can’t imagine a future for themselves. So let’s show them what our lives are like, let’s show them what the future may hold in store for them.

  It sounds really nice and hopeful and all, but personally? Growing up has not magically made my queer teenage anxiety and depression issues go away. In fact, the responsibility of adulthood, the complication of my own identity has often made matters worse. In all honesty, I’d probably feel a lot more fucked up if i had completely bought into the idea that everything would automatically “get better” without me having to work at it, just by virtue of graduating high school. To this day, I still struggle with a lot of self-hate, and a lot of internalized oppressive attitudes to do with my gender identity/presentation, sexuality, class, and many other facets of my identity (and for the record, i’m privileged by a lot of these systems of oppression). I constantly have to work at not spiraling down into serious depression. But (thank goodness) I’m not alone. A lot of my adult queer friends, of various genders, races, abilities, and classes have a lot of the same issues. Finding a community (in the flesh and online), going to gay events, and starting to write all helped in different ways. But even all of these great things combined do not negate the fact that homophobia, which triggered these young people to take their own lives, will not disappear without a fight.

  

  And fighting is hard. Just because it didn’t “get better” does not, by any means, mean you should kill yourself, but what it does mean is that you have to be prepared for reality and resist the oppression you see happening around you, in whatever way you can. We have to recognize that there is a fight to be had in the first place. The reality of the situation is that we have to at the very least acknowledge that we live in a world where homophobia, transphobia, sexism, classism, ableism, and white surpremacy are all alive and well at work in many different ways before we can begin to dismantle those systems. We have to recognize that even privileged folk like middle-class white gay adults are still fired from their jobs for being gay. We have to acknowledge police brutality (trigger warning for link) against queers. We have to acknowledge the acts of violence perpetrated by both institutions and individuals against (disproportionately) poor queer and trans people of colour. We have to acknowledge the role that allies and the bullies play in this system, and reach out to them, too.

  And we have to find more concrete ways of fighting back against these systems. In my opinion, the It Gets Better project does none of these things.

  My biggest problem with this project is the fact that some people struggle with many different kinds of mental health issues and need access to different resources than a simple YouTube video can offer. Making these universal blanket statements that “it got better for me, it will get better for you” denies the multiplicity of experiences and identities that make up our queer communities. Dan Savage claims the genesis for this project is his simple desire to have been able to have had a conversation with Billy Lucas before he committed suicide to tell him it gets better. To me, and to friends of mine who work in suicide outreach, this is just a bit too simplistic. Maybe the videos would help, but maybe finding a queer therapist would help too. Maybe finding a zine, a book, a website that talks about your experiences. And for some kids, maybe starting an anti-homophobia group in high school. Maybe trying to rattle the cage rather than just sit and wait for it to pass, with the hope that things “will get better.” To simply tolerate high school as a shitty time isn’t enough for me, and it isn’t enough for queer teens either.

  

  Let me finish by stating that the It Gets Better isn’t a terrible project. People like myself who are raising these concerns are not to create diviseness within the queer community, but rather attempting to call attention to the fact that this doesn’t address the complicated aspects of homophobia. Having these stories online is great, but we can’t lead ourselves to believe that it is enough, just like wearing a red ribbon during the AIDS crisis in the 80s and 90s was not enough. It can be part of the solution, but only if we remember that there is a fight to be had. I’d like to think that that fight could be won with webcams and stories, but realistically I know it’s going to be a bit more complicated than that.

  It Gets Better project on YouTube
  Defending Dan Savage’s It Gets Better Project
  does it really get better? by Not That Kinda Gay
  We Got Your Back project
  October 20th: Spirit Day

  an unedited, angrier version of this rant is available here.

• • Body Politics
  • In My Opinion...

  To Know or Not to Know? That is the Question.

  May 13, 2010 • Diandra Jurkic-Walls

  In just under 2 weeks I’m going to be having a baby. I’ve resisted blogging about it here because while having children, child rearing, parenting, birthing, and all the facets tied up with it (consumption, children-in-the-world, industrial capitalism, gender dynamics, etc) are Feminist issues, I’m still on the fence as to where I stand regarding my feminist experience and the whole “having a baby”-thing: I just haven’t felt I have anything really coherent or “new” to add to the literature.

  But, my opinions and responses to my experience slowly trickle in and form, often in response to people’s reactions/comments or responses to parenthood/motherhood/birthing in the media and government policy.

  There’s a big “to-do” going on out here in BC about ultrasounds and the recent addition of policy that will require a $50 fee from expectant parents to find out the sex of their fetus. Basically, in BC it was hit or miss if you could find out from an ultra-sound technician what your fetus’s sex is. We wanted to find out the sex of our fetus primarily to have an answer when we were/are consistently inundated with the question, “what are you having?” (sarcastic answer, “a baby?”). And then feeling pressured to say which way you’d prefer (“I don’t really care as long as their not a facist”). And then having to endure people’s gendered biases like, “Girls are so much harder than boys”. But, at both of our ultrasounds the technician (same technician both times) wouldn’t tell us (“we’re not allowed to tell”) and made us avert our eyes of the screen. Neither of these things disappointed me or frustrated me, as the medical system + pregnancy is all new to me, so hey, whatever, it’s got 4 limbs, a beating heart, and kidneys! Success!
  (more inside…)

• • Eco Speak
  • In My Opinion...

  Health risks: Parabens in beauty products

  March 19, 2010 • Jenna Owsianik

  What’s in your make-up kit? And how many of those beauty products do you use in a day? Give or take a few products, my usual morning regime involves body lotion, tinted moisturizer, mascara, hair mold, and sometimes bronzer or eyeliner if I’m feeling so inclined. I wouldn’t be surprised if a lot of other women, particularly young women, also reach my daily average.
  

  

  What concerns me is that most beauty products contain parabens, a type of preservative used to extend the shelf life of cosmetics and prevent them from developing mold. But, what concerns me more are recent studies suggesting parabens may pose human health risks.

  Originally posted on TheThunderbird.ca. Read the rest here.

• • Eco Speak
  • In My Opinion...

  In search of safe beauty products

  March 17, 2010 • Jenna Owsianik

  

  Picture from flickr user kuuipo1207

  
  The living’s green and pretty in Vancouver, again named “the most liveable city in the world.” Just about every cosmetic product comes in a greenwashed or health-friendly option: there’s paraben-free lotion, deodorant without aluminum, and nail polish sans formaldehyde! I’ve spent a year trying to pick safe, personal care products that work, and I’m still confused about which ones I should avoid.

  Sarah Dickson, the body care buyer at Capers Whole Foods Market in Kitsilano, puts it to me simply, “I’d like to be able to eat all my make-up if I had to.” Our bodies absorb most of what we put on our skin, and we can’t always break down that material she explains. If it’s not safe to eat, don’t put it on you is the idea.

  The problem is many people don’t understand the meaning of the often hard to pronounce substances found on long ingredients lists, let alone their potentially harmful effects.
  
  Originally posted on TheThunderbird.ca. Read the rest here.

• • In My Opinion...
  • Shameless Wire

  Mammoliti’s Curfew: Misguided and Ineffective

  February 10, 2010 • Cate Simpson

  Shameless Wire, our new training program for young journalists, is in
  full swing. Over the next few months, we’ll be publishing a number of
  guest posts by Wire participants. This first series responds to
  Toronto city councillor and mayoral candidate Giorgio Mammoliti’s
  platform, which calls for a city-wide teen curfew.

  by Diana Faria

  City Councillor Georgio Mammoliti thinks that we need a curfew for Toronto’s teenagers. Mammoliti is wrong. He is also making way too many assumptions about teens, implying that we are all irresponsible, that we all need this.

  We probably shouldn’t be taking Mammoliti seriously anyway – after all, his platform includes a casino and a red-light district in downtown Toronto, and giving bylaw officers guns. Strangest of all, Mammoliti argues that a curfew would reduce the murder rate. That is ludicrous. To quote Statistics Canada, “in 2008, 55 youth aged 12 to 17 were accused of committing homicide.”

  Does he realize that with Canada’s population at 30 million and growing, having only 55 youths accused of committing murder is extremely small? We can clearly state here that youth homicides are both rare and unusual. Statistics Canada also points out that “80% of solved homicides were committed by someone known to the victim.” The main problem does not lie in strangers on the street, attacking other strangers at random.

  If the problem is that teenagers are murderers, as Mammoliti seems to believe, than why not focus on the biggest problem, which is gang violence, instead of trying to label every teenager by making a curfew? In 2008, gang violence was on the rise. Why didn’t Mammoliti look at those statistics before trying to force a curfew on every teenager, peaceful and violent alike? Of course there are teens out there who are lost and confused, some even involved with gangs. But most teens do not need this curfew, and Mammoliti should leave them alone.

• • In My Opinion...
  • Shameless Wire

  Mammoliti’s curfew: A good idea in theory

  February 10, 2010 • Cate Simpson

  Shameless Wire, our new training program for young journalists, is in
  full swing. Over the next few months, we’ll be publishing a number of
  guest posts by Wire participants. This first series responds to
  Toronto city councillor and mayoral candidate Giorgio Mammoliti’s
  platform, which calls for a city-wide teen curfew.

  by Rachel Lee-Thomas

  Given the chance, some teenagers are practically nocturnal. We stay up late. Some of us stay out to odd hours of the night. Some drink alcohol, abuse drugs, do whatever they want on the darkened streets. Georgio Mammoliti, a city councillor and mayoral candidate, wants to put a stop to this - he thinks that we need a curfew for teenagers. He believes that it would help to decrease the crime rate.

  On some levels, I do agree with Mammoliti. Having a set curfew for teens under a certain age would really help to keep them safe. The curfew would keep youth off of the sometimes dangerous streets, and into a hopefully safer environment. One of the things some teenagers do when they are out alone at night is experiment with drugs and alcohol. If teens are wandering outside, under the influence, it can be pretty dangerous. While teenagers are out in the streets having fun, their grades are suffering. If students were to be inside after a certain point, they would have more time to focus on school work.

  If teens were inside at night, they might be a lot safer. While it’s true that teens can still drink and do drugs indoors, it’s a much safer environment than being alone outside. But it’s going to take a lot to get teens to listen. A curfew is a good idea in theory, but in the real world, it would be almost impossible to implement.
  
  Unfortunately, these rules and restrictions would make most teenagers angry. Teenagers don’t want to be babied. We want to feel as adult and independent as we can. If teens are told that they must stay inside after a certain time, they might feel a need to rebel. The demand for fake IDs would increase. Teens might be more willing to pay for a fake ID, figuring they need it to stay out late. But owning ID would then give them the power to do all sorts of other things, from buying alcohol to going to clubs.
  
  Overall, I feel that a curfew is a smart idea. It would keep teenagers safe, and in line. Their grades could improve, and there might be less crime. But realistically, it would never work in today’s world. Once the boundaries are set, most teenagers will find it almost thrilling to bend around the rules, and stay out anyway. It would take a lot to ever get this law off the ground.

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