• • Race and Racism
  • Recommended Reading

  Recommended Reading: Table For Four: An Interview With The Girls Behind ‘Sh-t White Girls Say To Latinas’ at Racialicious

  April 4, 2012 • Julia Horel

  Two thirteen-year-old girls are behind the “Sh-t White Girls Say to Latinas” video, and Racialicious has posted an interview with them. Check out these amazing teens:

  AG: How have other students reacted to the video?
  Alison: I could see the guilt on people’s faces when they realized that some of the things that were in this video they had actually said to someone who was Hispanic.
  Rosie: We showed it to one class and, at first, nobody said anything. But then their teacher reminded them about what they’d studied about guilt and race, about how everyone’s said something racially insensitive. And then they opened up, and one girl asked a good question bout why it’s offensive. One of my friends from public school is Taiwanese, and she commented that this is exactly what happens to her–people always ask her if she’s Chinese. I was at youth group, and one of my friends said, “Oh, yeah, I saw your video on FaceBook. It was really good.” I was glad it had gotten around. Another friend’s mom saw it before her daughter did.
  Alison: My public school friends said it was good, but they didn’t put much attention on it because they don’t go to school with many white people. It’s different.

  Read the whole interview at Racialicious.

• • Rape Culture
  • Recommended Reading

  Recommended Reading Round-up: Responses to Ian Brown’s Male Gaze article

  March 30, 2012 • Julia Horel

  Globe and Mail columnist Ian Brown recently wrote a piece in the Globe and Mail called “Why men can’t – and shouldn’t – stop staring at women.” There have been a variety of responses, and we’ve collected some of them here for you. What do you think about the piece? Are there other responses you’ve seen and liked?

  From Kasia Mychajlowycz at Archive Kasia:

  It’s part of male privilege to feel that writing a long feature about what “does it” for you, with no compelling argument, no apparent awareness of the last century of women’s struggle for equality (still ongoing, Wente, it’s STILL happening) or the academic work that sprang from it, merits space in our most august newspaper. It also shows that pandering to male privilege is what wins a paper that label, and the accompanying ad revenues, and is thus acceptable to whichever editor approved this for publication.

  From Miriam Verburg, a satirical response:

  X believes older men need attractive younger women because young women act as a talisman to ward off death, obviously.
  “That’s seems unfair to those less afraid of their mortality,” I point out.
  “And it bites men a lot harder than it bites women, because for some reason, women seem to think the way to fight death is by getting botoxed and filling themselves with poisonous self-hatred, instead of trying to make young men responsible for their triumph over the inevitable tragedy of aging. I’m conscious of it being unfair. But there’s nothing I can do about it.”

  At Jezebel:

  Men can’t help it.
  It’s right there in the headline! That’s how true it is! Whether they want to or not, men CAN’T stop staring at women. Staring is also referred to later in the article as “unavoidable.” That’s just how male sexuality works! Do you really want men to stop doing something that they can’t stop doing? What’s next—women should stop being really really good at laundry?

  From Lizz Bryce:

  It’s the entitlement that pisses me off. “Her body held my interest, but so did her decision to wear a miniskirt on a bike.” What does this mean? Did she wear a miniskirt on a bike because she wanted to be looked at? Did she wear a miniskirt for your pleasure? Did she think, when getting dressed in the morning, that she should dress her body for the express purpose of attracting attention? I have no idea. But the presumption that she did bothers me. Because the follow up to that is that when I get dressed in the morning, I have to think about the attention my clothes are asking for, and I’m not ok with that.

• • Recommended Reading

  Relationship Advice from the National Association of Women and the Law

  February 14, 2012 • Sarah Feldbloom

  

  Just in time for Valentine’s day, the National Association of Women and the Law (with funding from The Law Foundation of Ontario) created an in-depth, accessible resource to help inform diverse women across Ontario about their legal rights regarding money, relationships and the law. It includes relevant information for those entering into happy relationships, and leaving problematic ones. You can take a look at the online manual, as well as a series of podcasts available in English and French right here: http://www.nawl.ca/money, and here: http://nawl.ca/fr/argent . This campaign was put together by radical design studio The Public, captained by Shameless’s Editorial and Art Director Sheila Sampath. Podcasts were produced by Shameless Web Producer, Sarah Feldbloom.

  Stay tuned for news on our upcoming spring/summer money issue, with more information on negotiating finances both in and out of relationships!

• • Queeriosities
  • Race and Racism
  • Recommended Reading

  Recommended Reading: The Shit Girls Say meme: friendly prejudice, but prejudice all the same

  January 17, 2012 • Julia Horel

  We have lots of thoughts about the “Shit Girls Say” meme (unfunny) and about the “Shit X Says to Y” meme (in many cases, poignant). We’d like to refer you to Thea Lim’s piece at the Guardian for some reading:

  What’s friendly prejudice? The most common defence of racism is: “But I didn’t intend to be racist.” This response relies on the idea that if we didn’t intend to offend someone, then their feelings can’t possibly be hurt. The Shit X Says to Y videos are delightfully validating because they show that those with the genuinely lovely intentions of being your friend and seeking commonality with you can still be rude and hurtful.
  

  Check out the whole article here.

  If you have other articles to recommend on the topic, please leave them in comments.

• • Indigenous
  • On The Job
  • Recommended Reading

  Recommended Reading: International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers

  December 18, 2011 • Julia Horel

  Yesterday (Saturday, December 17) was the International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers. From the Incite! Women of Colour Against Violence blog, we recommend Indigenous Peoples in the Sex Trade: Speaking for Ourselves.

  This piece was also recommended reading in supplement to our piece on Indigenous Sovereignty in the Fall 2011 issue of Shameless.

  The piece is best read as a whole and not in excerpt, so go check it out!

• • Anti-violence
  • Media Savvy
  • Recommended Reading

  Recommended Reading: Fist-of-Cuffs: A response to ‘Toronto, City of Sissies’

  December 12, 2011 • Julia Horel

  Jeff Perera is a friend of Shameless, founder of the Ryerson University White Ribbon Campaign chapter, event director of TEDxRyersonUWomen, the only TEDxWomen event in Toronto, and co-director and curator of the annual discussion-focused “What Makes a Man” White Ribbon Conference at Ryerson.

  Along with being an all-around fabulous person, Jeff has written a piece in response to a hateful piece by the National Post’s Christie Blatchford that asserted the Toronto is a city full of “sissies.”

  Every one of us was meant to embrace our whole, full humanity. Yet, enforced ideas of what being a man is leaves every boy and man wrestling to supress themselves. We are raised to value an unattainable standard, and devalue anything ‘less than’, which is any aspect of our humanity labelled ‘feminine’. Men are left feeling they are not given permission (from others or from our own self) to discover our handcuffed array of emotions. Denying or forced to deny sides of our self, we are the walking dead, numb and emotionally illiterate. This leaves us numb to the very fact of the gun pressing on our soul. The sound of the resulting trauma inflected on the world is muted by a silencer, but the impact resonates like an endless echo of gunfire on women and men worldwide.

  The result is fathers who have been home everyday of their children’s lives yet could not be more distant. The result is men who would rather die than go see the doctor, and so they die. The result is boys being called ‘faggots’ or Christie Blatchford’s preferred term: ‘Sissies’.The result is heterosexual boys face homophobic bullying because they don’t fit the narrow mold. The result is men and young men trapped in endless cycles of substance addition to suppress what they aren’t emotionally able to deal with. The result is young men who won’t back down, no matter what. The result is men who are ready to die over a pair of shoes which they value more than their very own lives. The result is men with disabilities made to feel a heightened level of inadequacy. The result is guys who rather approach women with aggression and violent bravado because they cannot compute vulnerability. The result is severe impacts and financial costs to our Healthcare systems. The result is LBGT communities facing a denial of their right to existence, nevermind equity. The result is women in Canada and across the world subject to devaluation, discrimination and subsequently all forms of violence.

  Read Jeff’s amazing piece in its entirety here.

• • Body Politics
  • Recommended Reading

  Recommended Reading: Ask Lesley: How Do I Stop Hating My Body?

  October 25, 2011 • Julia Horel

  Note: we know about the diversity of opinion on the merits or lack thereof of the revitalized xojane.com, and we’re just going to leave that alone. This is a recommendation for this particular article.

  Emily asks: “Do you have any advice for getting from a place of body-loathing to body-loving?”

  And Lesley does, because she is awesome:

  I DO. I can actually erase those five pounds entirely with one simple suggestion: Get rid of your scale. No scale, no five pounds. PROBLEM SOLVED.

  Of course there’s more to it than that, and she expands upon this glib suggestion. And, as she does just about every time she hits publish, Lesley says something about the constant work and struggles that come with fat acceptance that makes me think she lives IN MY HEAD:

  Part of me, you understand, still wants to see my weight. It’s the part that liked the obsessive need for control, the part that felt satisfied when I went so long without eating that I began to tremble and drift and blink. That part of me wants to be weighed, to be beaten with the number that will ruin my day and possibly even send me into depression for weeks. It wants me to see that number and get me thinking, “What have I eaten today? I should not eat anything more today. I should not eat anything tomorrow. The following day, perhaps I will eat half a bagel. Then I will go out and buy a scale and weigh myself again.”

  Read the whole thing here.

• • Body Politics
  • Recommended Reading

  Recommended Reading: “Hostile clashes dominate women’s conference”

  July 19, 2011 • Julia Horel

  Three of your Shameless staff attended the Women’s Worlds conference held in Ottawa on July 3-7. You can find notes from the first day here, and more will be forthcoming; we need to debrief about our experiences after the first day and will then share our thoughts with you.

  In the meantime, check out this article from Xtra Ottawa about the strong anti-sex work agenda that emerged at the conference. This anti-sex work bias alienated and disturbed us and many others, although our experiences varied.

  The week’s schedule included numerous panels arguing, from various angles, to end global prostitution. This movement, more commonly associated with an earlier generation of anti-pornography, anti-sex work feminism argues that sex work is inherently exploitative of women, further entrenching patriarchal structures.

  In comparison, the pro sex work groups at Women’s World were small in number. Groups like Prostitutes of Ottawa/Gatineau Work, Educate and Resist (POWER), Toronto’s Maggie’s and Montreal’s Stella work as sex worker advocacy groups arguing for the option to choose their occupation, safer working conditions and harm reduction strategies. Together they support groups like Sex Professionals of Canada (SPOC), which has made significant grounds in arguing for decriminalization in Canada.

  The chasm between the two groups became obvious at the Women’s World multi-media exhibit, “Flesh Mapping: Prostitution in a Globalized World” which attracted much attention among media and conference delegates and marked a strong prohibitionist ideology throughout the conference.

• • Body Politics
  • Recommended Reading

  Recommended Reading: Challenging Genital Shame with the Red Tent Sisters

  June 1, 2011 • Julia Horel

  Friends of Shameless, the Red Tent Sisters, have a great post on a book that challenges the notion that genitals should fit a particular aesthetic.

  One way to combat this distorted view of women’s bodies is by utilizing resources like the self-published book, I’ll Show You Mine. This photo essay of sixty women’s vulvas is edited by Wrenna Robertson in response to her concern about the increase in labiaplasty popularity. Each woman was photographed in exactly the same conditions (lighting, etc) and the photos are shown in the book in true-to-life size and color. On her website she writes the following: “It is up to us, as women, to recognize the artificial shaping forces that have led to so many of us feeling that there is something unpleasant or wrong with our genitals. Our bodies are beautiful and diverse. Let’s learn to celebrate that!”

  While the book focuses mostly on images of cis women, there is one woman who identifies as trans, and a few people who have chosen not to be binary gender-specific.

  You can read the rest of Kim’s post here.

• • Body Politics
  • Recommended Reading

  Recommended Reading: Live Once, Juicy

  April 7, 2011 • Julia Horel

  This post from Shaunta at Live Once, Juicy has my head spinning all over.

  I’ll be honest. I really struggled with buying that the statement “fat is unwanted” is a myth.

  I mean, fat is clearly unwanted, right? Few people really, truly want it, and in my mind as I was thinking this week about the wanted-ness of fat, I was startled to find that when I tried to think about people who might actually really want fat it was really difficult.

  Yep. This is one I really had to unpack and take a look at, if only so I could understand my own reaction to the idea.

  Do I want my own fat? I am getting more comfortable in my own skin. I’m getting more comfortable with having a body that doesn’t conform to the beauty myth. And it doesn’t make sense to wonder what I’d do if given the choice to be thin, because I won’t ever be given that choice any more than I’ll ever have the choice to be short or have blue eyes.

  I’ve been “into” fat acceptance for three and a half years, and this is the first time I’ve read something in the blogosphere that has made me seriously consider whether, somewhere in this lifelong process, my fat might be not just accepted, but wanted. Shaunta doesn’t claim to have it figured out, either, which is one of the great things about the fat acceptance community. We’re all at different points, but it’s a journey regardless of where we are.

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