For some, “freedom of speech” includes the right to get in the faces, literally, of those you disagree with and prevent them from engaging in legal, celebrated, and sometimes publicly funded health services.

But today, the BC Court of Appeal did not hold up that definition, instead it dismissed the claims that the “bubble zone” around BC’s abortion clinics is an infringement on “freedom of speech”.

The B.C. Court of Appeal ruling on Thursday said that while the right to oppose abortion is constitutionally protected, the purpose of the provincial law to protect vulnerable women and those who provide for their care justified limiting protesters’ rights.

“The purpose or objective of the [Access to Abortion Services] Act is sufficiently important to justify a limitation on the way in which freedom of expression is exercised in an area adjacent to the facilities providing abortion services,” it said.

More details here.

Squarely in the category of “I don’t know what to think about this”. From Boing Boing:

The Victorian Aboriginal Education Association has called for the Australian edition of The Daring Book for Girls to be pulped because it teaches girls how to pay the didgeridoo. The organization says women who play the instrument will be cursed with infertility.

“The section on the didgeridoo was ‘part of a general ignorance that mainstream Australia has about Aboriginal culture,’ the association’s general manager Mark Rose told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

‘We know very clearly that there’s a range of consequences for a female touching a didgeridoo — infertility would be the start of it, ranging to other consequences,’ he said, adding: ‘I won’t even let my daughter touch one.’”

Full article at AFP.

I watched the Republican National Convention last night and the way the term “Community Organizer” was tossed around repeatedly like a condescending insult made me really uncomfortable. And angry. For those of you who don’t know what I’m talking about, Vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin said this last night, in reference to Obama’s perceived inexperience:

“I guess a small-town mayor is sort of like a ‘community organizer,’ except that you have actual responsibilities.”

Isn’t community organizing pretty much what all people interested in social change do at the grassroots level every day? Doesn’t a community organizer “create social movements by building a base of concerned people, mobilizing these community members to act, and developing leadership from and relationships among the people involved.” Isn’t a statement like that a real slap in the face to both Republicans and Democrats alike? To anyone who works hard to make life better for their fellow citizens?

Thankfully, someone summed up why such an insult is a total kick in the teeth far better than I ever could. The always spot-on Jay Smooth of ill doctrine had this to say about the GOP’s repeated attacks on community organizing:

This recurring theme of turning the phrase “community organizer” into some sort of epithet like “communist” or “homo” or something, that’s really despicable. The difference between a community organizer and a politician is that community organizers are the ones who take the responsibility upon themselves to help their fellow citizens without the benefit of a government budget behind them. And go out there every day doing the hard thankless work to make this country livable which is what allows you politicians to be able to go on TV and brag about how this is the greatest country in the world. And for you to go on that TV show and spit in those people’s faces for the sake of a rhetorical flourish is disgusting.

And hearing Obama describe what he believes it to be here, it certainly doesn’t sound like a bad approach.

Choice listserves are abuzz with the news that Stephen Harper and company recently decided to drop the notoriously anti-choice Bill C484 - also known as the “Unborn Victims of Crime” act, which threatened to give fetuses personhood status, as a backdoor way towards repealing abortion rights.

Instead they will draft a new bill that they say focuses more on punishing the person actually committing the crime against a pregnant woman (whoa so wait, did they just admit Mr. Epp tried to punish women more with his bogus bill? Nah, I’m too hopeful.)

It’s only too obvious that this is conveniently coming at a time when an election is looming this Fall, and we know only too well that the Conservative government can’t hide from its long anti-choice roots. They still won’t say anything about their support for abortion rights or do much anything to protect them.

I have to say that it was quite a good reminder this year that we all need to pay more attention to the scary anti-choicers out there and the sneaky ways they try to take away choice for what’s best for our own bodies, but we musn’t rest for too long.

There are a multitude of attempts going on every day that threaten us.

Don’t school administrations ever learn? 12-year-old Amelia Robbins has been suspended after dying her hair pink as a tribute to her late father who died of cancer.

Broadsheet sums it up:

Administrators argue that the dye job is a “distraction” to other students, but with the full support of her mom, Amelia’s choosing to fight the suspension rather than adopt a more conventional hair color. “I don’t feel like I should have to, because i’m expressing myself as an individual. Because they constantly tell us be different, don’t follow the crowd.”

Nice one, kiddo! It’s never too early to start calling out your superiors’ hypocrisy!

According to the CBC, Stats Can is reporting a drop in the number of teens who say they’ve had sexual intercourse at least once.

The decline occurred due to young women. For them, the proportion who reported having had intercourse decreased from 51 per cent in 1996 to 43 per cent in 2005. Among young men, the proportion stayed unchanged at 43 per cent.

There’s also some information in the report about increased condom use.

Sex education seems to be paying off among younger teens in terms of greater condom use, said Alex McKay of the Sex Information and Education Council in Toronto.

The report is based on interviews with about 4,500 teens in 1996, and about 10,000 teenagers for 2003 and 2005. Read more here.

Flint, Michigan has now joined the ranks of several other US states who have passed bylaws that make the the wearing of baggy, sagging, or low-riding pants illegal.

Police chief David Dicks said that wearing pants below the waist is a crime — a violation of the city’s disorderly conduct ordinance — and can give police probable cause to search saggers for other crimes, such as weapon or drug possession.

You could get 93 days to a year in jail and fines of up to $500 for wearing your pants low (a larger sentence than some sexual assault perpetrators are getting these days).

Now say what you want about agreeing or disagreeing with baggy pants, but believing that’s enough evidence to search people thinking they all must be thugs who commit crimes is just asking for racial profiling.

It’s no secret that youth in communities of colour are going to be the ones feeling the brunt of this racist, ludicrous law, and hey, why not since they are already incarcerated at soaringly higher rates than White youth?!

And trust me, I was equally as angry in my Catholic high school when they prohibited low-cut or belly shirts telling me I looked “promiscuous” and could “distract the boys’ education”. I actually believe in freedom of expression and think there are bigger battles we have to wage in this world.

Thankfully the ACLU has threatened to file suit against the city of Flint if this ordinance sticks and is asking citizens who are being targeted to come forward and tell their stories.

Okay, so the RCMP spying on women’s groups in the 1970s isn’t totally hilarious, but the idea of them infiltrating Rita MacNeil concerts to catch potential dangerous feminist elements kind of is.

Witness Canada’s Most Wanted Folksinger, in this photo clearly trying to conceal her identity.

According to recently declassified documents, MacNeil was among a group of activist women the RCMP had under observation due to their feminist leanings - of course, back in the 60s and 70s feminism was only the gateway drug, which was sure to lead to worse things like Communism, hostile foreign takeovers, the complete collapse of society, and so on.

Part of the file also described a feminist conference in Winnipeg as “consisting of about 100 sweating, uncombed women standing around in the middle of the floor with their arms around each other crying sisterhood and dancing.” Kind of sounds like a typical Lesbians On Ecstasy show, actually.

What is maybe most potent to me about this story is that it reminds us of feminism’s potential for radical disruption. I mean, I joke about it, but wouldn’t it be cool if feminism actually did play a part in bringing down patriarchal structures, dismantling (or restructuring?) capitalism, and, well, unravelling the messed-up tangle of societal norms? These women believed it could. And so did the RCMP, apparently. (Though not as much as if men had been in charge - one point the CBC article makes is that the federal police did not treat the women’s groups as as much of a threat as other, male-dominated, movements.)

I actually had no idea that MacNeil was a feminist activist back in the heady days of the Second Wave (she apparently represented the Toronto Women’s Caucus at the aforementioned conference). I guess it just goes to show that subversive elements are often where you least expect them. Go Rita.

Thanks to Ted for the tip.

Sexual harassment okay as it ensures humans breed, Russian judge rules

“The unnamed executive, a 22-year-old from St Petersburg, had been hoping to become only the third woman in Russia’s history to bring a successful sexual harassment action against a male employer.

She alleged she had been locked out of her office after she refused to have intimate relations with her 47-year-old boss.

“He always demanded that female workers signalled to him with their eyes that they desperately wanted to be laid on the boardroom table as soon as he gave the word,” she earlier told the court. “I didn’t realise at first that he wasn’t speaking metaphorically.”

The judge said he threw out the case not through lack of evidence but because the employer had acted gallantly rather than criminally.

“If we had no sexual harassment we would have no children,” the judge ruled.

…

According to a recent survey, 100 per cent of female professionals said they had been subjected to sexual harassment by their bosses, 32 per cent said they had had intercourse with them at least once and another seven per cent claimed to have been raped.”

~from Telegraph.co.uk and Foreign Policy blog