October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month. What better way to celebrate than by becoming better acquainted with your own personal pair?

Not sure where to begin? Check out this introductory ritual:

Create Some Atmosphere
Find a quiet place by yourself, or hey – invite some adventurous friends over, eat thematic cupcakes and turn it into a “Love Your Boobies” party!

Cupcakes at Come As You Are’s Erotic Arts and Crafts Fair. (http://www.eroticartsandcrafts.com/fair.html)

Take a few moments to breathe deeply and tune in to yourself.

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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!

Challenge of the week: assert a boundary.

It was a rough weekend and the new week isn’t any more smooth.

I decide to just take care of myself and let the crises in my life sort themselves out. I order the medium instead of the default small. I let the dishes sit over night. I get a massage.

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I am so very happy and completely thrilled to announce that my home territory of Akwesasne now has a fully loaded, all purpose, sex store!

Located on the New York side of Akwe, Totem Pole Novelties opened in January of this year and since then has become a booming, not to mention pleasurable, business! From the hottest erotica to the most salacious how-to DVD’s, Totem Pole Novelties has all your sweet spot needs whether you are going it solo, upping the ante on a long-term partnership, or just looking to have some safe and sexy fun.

I had a chance to visit this week and can tell you first hand that this is the place you want to be to get an up close and personal view of how some amazingly strong individuals are breaking taboos and taking back ownership for pleasure on the reservation to get to the best end result possible: empowerment.

It is so important that we in the Native community remember the power we used to honour in our sexuality and celebrate all of who we are, including our right to enjoy sex! We have so many teachings that support this that are too often forgotten and are instead, thrown into hypersexualized media.

Show them some love on their Facebook group or hit up their website and congratulate these brave Mohawks for keeping it real!

One of our readers, Danielle, was outraged enough by Catherine’s post about a ridiculously over-the-top anti-condom poster, that she was inspired to create this pro-contraception t-shirt:

Who says we can’t fight back and have a sense of humour about it?

Check out Danielle’s blog here.

This week Shameless was lucky enough to catch Jessica Valenti, author of Full Frontal Feminism and founding editor of Feministing, while she was in Toronto this week. Here’s what she had to say.

Tell me a bit about the new book [He’s a Stud, She’s a Slut, and 49 Other Double Standards Every Woman Should Know].
The new book basically came about because a lot of the response I got from Full Frontal was that what resonated with people, especially with younger women who didn’t really know anything about feminism or never had taken a Women’s Studies class, was the everyday inequities, the kind of everyday discrimination that all women face but don’t necessarily think about under a feminist framework, like the pay inequalities or the stud/slut double standard.

So I was talking to my editor and we were like, “Wouldn’t it be cool to do a double standard book, almost like a sexism handbook so when you’re out at the bar and someone says something ridiculous and sexist you can pull it out and be like, ‘That’s totally sexist and here’s why and here’s something you can do about it.’”

And also with Full Frontal Feminism obviously “feminism” was in the title and it did reach out to a lot of women who didn’t consider themselves feminist, so this one we went super commercial and marketable and didn’t put “feminist” in the title so we thought we could subversively get more women into it and then hit them with the message once they were in the book. Sneakiness was the general theme of the book idea.

(more inside…)

Canadians for Choice Toronto crew at the International Women’s Day rally

Yep, it’ll be a full six months that we are celebrating the 20th anniversary of abortion legalization in Canada tomorrow, June 28th!

20 years and 6 months ago, Dr. Henry Morgentaler won the Supreme Court of Canada case striking down the abortion law that criminalized women who exercised their inherent reproductive rights.

And since it’s Pride weekend in Toronto, what better way to go out and PARTAY for our bodies to be with whomever we want, than to honour and remember the hard-fought battle that now legally guarantees women the right to choose what we want to DO with our bodies in Canada! (Actually accessing abortion services and quality of care though is a whole other story, you need look no further than at the 2006 REALITY CHECK report we did at Canadians for Choice to see that.)

We are one of the few nations in the world with no legal restrictions on abortion, and we should be damn proud that choice is an important matter generations young and old are continuing to fight for. It’s estimated that approximately 80,000 women die every year around the world due to complications from botched illegal abortions.

It’s been one helluva year defending choice in this country that I’ll actually detail when my latest Rabble article comes out soon, but for now I’m going to march with Pride this weekend that I live in Canada, and that I’m pro-choice.

(We’d love to have you join us at Canadians for Choice marching at the Dyke march, click here for the Facebook listing!)

Some Shameless self-promotion, I’ll be doing an interview on CIUT Radio 89.5 FM in Toronto this Thursday, June 26th in regards to the 20th anniversary of abortion legalization this year and what this means for young activists involved in the pro-choice movement now.

I’m on at 9:40 a.m. You can listen live here.

Wish me luck!

So now that I’ve crossed the border back to my friendly, eccentric home in Kensington Market, Toronto (although not for long) I’m having some pensive reflections on the awesomeness that is the ACLU Minnesota and Wisconsin that I had the honour of discovering at this year’s membership conference.

A 24-hour bus ride to and from Washington D.C. and shared hostel saw both our groups intermingling and activisting to the max. Most of us didn’t know each other and I can safely say now that in just four days we’ve not only learned a lot, but been sincerely inspired and greatly moved by each other’s presence and being.

I heard tales of prejudice, realities of oppression, and musings of forward-thinking by these brilliantly tuned-in young people. Interesting nights out coupled with ridiculously fun “truth-telling” games were the recipe for some of the best activist times had by all.

I want to thank all the participants for their honesty, candor, and all-around amazing selves that definitely made this trip an adventure I’ll never forget. We write off the US too often in Canada for the backwards policies that obstruct their international image and forget about how much good work is going on there by determined people like these who are refusing to give up and fighting back for what they believe is right.

More partnerships can be made across our borders and we’d be crazy not to remember that the extreme U.S. right-wingers have a direct affect on Canada (ahem, Bill C484, no-fly list anyone??) This is a great example of how we can get together and make change happen, even if it’s just amongst ourselves.

It’s important to recognize when cool young people you’ve just met are inspiring you, that’s definitely news I want to hear more often.

Anyone do that to you lately?

The “best group” as named by attendees of the 2008 ACLU membership conference!