Photo Credit: Fanning The Flames of Menopause
Femilicious attended a talk that was held at the University of Windsor with Dr. Shahnaz Khan entitled: Veil Talk: Examining the Many Facets.
In an intimate encounter with five very different women in Brazil, India, Jerusalem, and Senegal (narrated by Susan Sarandon with introductory narration co-written by Edwidge Danticat) THE SHAPE OF WATER offers a close look at the far reaching and vibrant alternatives crafted by women in response to environmental degradation, archaic traditions, lack of economic independence and war.
The documentary weaves together the daily life stories of Khady, Bilkusben, Oraiza, Dona Antonia, and Gila who, through candor and humor, infuse their communities with a passion for change.
The women:
By revealing the women’s revolutionary actions THE SHAPE OF WATER offers a unique view of the complex realities faced by these unsung visionaries creating a more just world.
Photo Credit: Banksy Bombs
When it comes to the numbers on violence against women, there's plenty to be alarmed about.
Tanya Mars, a senior lecturer and program supervisor in visual and performing arts in the Department of Humanities at U of T Scarborough, is among the six winners of this year’s prestigious Governor General’s Award in Visual and Media Arts given for artistic achievement. The awards were announced by the Canada Council for the Arts March 25.
“My main interest is to make narratives that put women at the centre as opposed to the periphery. I’m trying to create images, strong images and positive images, of women,” she said in describing her work. “I feel very strongly about being recognized as a feminist, I’m not ashamed of being a feminist and I’m not buying into the backlash of anti-feminism. I think I’ll beat the feminist drum until the day I die. While some of my work my work may not be directly didactic or directly about feminism, I think it is always about making strong images about women.” But she added, “I like to have a healthy dash of humour. So I like to poke fun at my own political dogma and I think it’s important to laugh at yourself. If there were three words that would summarize my interests they would be women, power and humour.”
I missed posting about International Water Day on March 22 but it's not too late to take part in an online action to tell PM Harper 'Water is for people, not profit' (in case you haven't heard, the "new government" is quietly negotiating away rights to our water)
This year, World Water Day also coincides with the International Year of Sanitation. There is a gender aspect to the issue of water and sanitation in large part - thanks to Eco-feminist Action in the 21st Century
Why Care About Water and Sanitation?
This just in: If you're an obscenely wealthy drug-dealing pedophile stem-cell researcher who drives a Hummer and doesn't recycle, you are totally going to hell. Oh please, like you didn't already know.
The Big Book o' Deadly Sins apparently has a whole new addendum and it looks like it ain't just gluttony and lust and murder and hot porn and witchcraft .... The pope and his posse - or, rather, the Vatican's second in command on matters of hell and penance, Archbishop Gianfranco Girotti - have announced seven new deadly sins for a brave new world.
We can only applaud the Vatican for its efforts to uphold and reinforce global ethical standards with numbers 4 to 7:
4. Polluting the environment
5. Contributing to widening divide between rich and poor
6. Excessive wealth
7. Creating poverty
I, no doubt, will be found guilty of 4 and 5 above. Especially at points in my life when, in youthful ignorance, I bought into the media messages to "buy and consume". Efforts to reform myself later in life will likely not absolve me from going straight to hell in what will be an increasingly crowded handbasket.
There are some sins that are still missing:
Note to the Vatican: You want more true sins? Here are a few on my list:
The woman who first brought the issue of spousal abuse to the forefront in Canada presents her memoirs
When Margaret arrived in Ottawa in 1979 she was shocked at the male-dominated culture. Fortunately her leader, Ed Broadbent, was a feminist convert, and most of her caucus members were sensitized to women's rights.
An incident in the spring of 1982 brought spousal abuse to the forefront of Parliament and the nation as a whole. Many male Members of Parliament responded callously to my statement that one in ten Canadian women was subjected to spousal abuse. Television cameras captured their outrageous behaviour and my furious response
As Mitchell tells it,
"On May 12th I rose in the House to raise the urgent need for government action on a serious and widespread issue. 'The parliamentary report on battered wives states that one in ten Canadian husbands beat their wives regularly,' I began. Before I could continue, an uproar of male shouts and laughter erupted, making it impossible for me to be heard. A nearby Tory joked, 'I don't beat my wife. Do you, George?' When the Speaker finally got order, I rose again in fury. 'Madam Speaker, I do not think this is a laughing matter. What action will the Minister responsible for the Status of Women undertake immediately at the federal level to protect battered women?'"
LINK: YouTube - Margaret Mitchell a Champion for Head Tax Families
Today, workers still see the pernicious face of racism on the job, in their communities and in government policies. Recent polls show that as many as 1 in 5 workers feel their employment rights are violated due to racism
Prejudice is the child of ignorance.
~ William Haslitt
Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.
~ Nelson Mandela
In the end we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.
~ M.L.King
Western feminists talk about honor killings and the misogyny of Islam, but hypocritically ignore the legal violence of military occupation.
As feminists and people of conscience, we call for solidarity with Palestinian women in Gaza suffering due to the escalating military attacks that Israel turned into an open war on civilians. This war has targeted women and children,
and all those who live under Israeli occupation in the West Bank, and are also denied the right to freedom of movement, health, and education.
We stand in solidarity with Iraqi women whose daughters, sisters, brothers, or sons have been abused, tortured, and raped in U.S. prisons such as Abu Ghraib. Women in Iraq continue to live under a U.S. occupation that has devastated families and homes, and are experiencing a rise in religious extremism and restrictions on their freedom that were unheard of before the U.S. invasion, "Operation Iraqi Freedom," in 2003.
At this moment in Afghanistan, women are living with the return of the Taliban and other misogynistic groups such as the Northern Alliance, a U.S. ally, and with the violence of continuing U.S. and NATO attacks on civilians, despite the U.S. war to "liberate" Afghan women in 2001.
Women's groups in Nunavut say they are outraged that Levi Barnabas, an MLA convicted eight years ago of sexual assault, was named to cabinet last week.
Barnabas, who represents the High Arctic riding of Quttiktuq, was acclaimed Thursday to fill a cabinet seat vacated by Baker Lake MLA and former finance minister David Simailak.
Premier Paul Okalik has assigned Barnabas the human resources portfolio, as well as made him minister responsible for the Workers' Compensation Board.
The one-time Speaker of the house resigned in 2000 after he pleaded guilty to sexual assault. He was re-elected in 2004.
"I want to see him stepping down and just be a regular MLA," Mary Akpalialuk, the women's co-ordinator with the Qikiqtani Inuit Association, told CBC News on Friday.
"It disgusts me when [an] offender like that becomes a minister."
Akpalialuk said she is tired of seeing some male MLAs out drinking and womanizing in Iqaluit, when they are supposed to be role models.
Okalik defended his newest minister, saying it's a free society and Barnabas deserves another chance.
"Mr. Barnabas has served his time for the crime and also been elected by his constituents, who believe that he had cleaned up his act," Okalik said.
LINK: CBC
F-email Fightback has written previously about the British Columbia Supreme Court challenge where Fathers Rights Activist Ken Wiebe went to trial in his legal suit against "radical feminists" within Status of Women Canada and the Federal Minister responsible for SWC
Well, he lost his defamation suit over a report he said portrayed him as "hate-monger."
Wiebe's name, along with a link to his website www.fathers.bc.ca, appeared in a 145-page research paper titled School Success by Gender: A Catalyst for the Masculinist Discourse, Policy Research.
The report, originally printed in French in 2003 and later translated into English, was funded by Status of Women Canada, a federal agency.
In his statement of claim, Wiebe listed various examples from the report which he said identified him "as a hate-monger and a danger to women" associated him "with racists, extremists, pedophiles, pornographers and terrorists" and asserted he had "committed criminal offences."
Wiebe also said he thinks the report likely cost him a government contract.
One of the examples Wiebe cited was a cartoon pulled from his website with a swastika with the bars altered to look like Fs atop a baby gesturing with its middle finger captioned: "We are all tired of feminaziism. So stop it, OK?"
Women have made less progress towards gender equality in the Middle East than in any other region. Many observers claim this is due to the region’s Islamic traditions. I present evidence that oil, not Islam, is at fault; and that oil production has caused women to lag behind in many other countries. Oil production reduces the number of women in the labor force, which in turn reduces their political influence. As a result, oil-producing states are left with atypically strong patriarchal norms, laws, and political institutions. I illustrate this argument with global data on oil production, female work patterns, and female political representation, and by comparing oil-rich Algeria to oil-poor Morocco and Tunisia. This argument has implications for the study of the Middle East, Islamic culture, the resource curse, and economic development.
More Fem-Links
“While the potential of women is recognized at the international level,” says World Health Organization director-general Margaret Chan, “this potential will not be realized until conditions improve – often dramatically – in countries and communities. Too many complex factors, often rooted in social and cultural norms, continue to hinder the ability of women and girls to achieve their potential and benefit from social advances.”
[ Read the original article at TheStar.com ]
The billboard, on the south side of Oxford Street between Tim Hortons and the Thames River bridge, suggests otherwise. Accompanied by a side view of a pregnant woman's abdomen and a superimposed image of a fetus, it says: "9 months. The length of time an abortion is allowed in Canada. Abortion. Have we gone too far?"
"It's misleading, it's false," said Carolyn McLeod, professor of philosophy and women's studies at the University of Western Ontario.
How Sexism Works
"It was an incredible march in the snow."........About 1,000 protesters march for women's equality along Bloor St. W. in Toronto March 8, 2008, in what is believed to be the largest annual event of its kind in North America.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/ Peter McCabe
Women and men march in Montreal to bring attention to International Women's Day, Saturday.
In Halifax, a crowd of a couple hundred rallied near city hall before marching through the streets with some people chanting, "Women's rights are under attack."
A cry for women's equality sounded through the streets of downtown Charlottetown Wednesday as nearly 100 people marked International Women's Day with a march.
"Women still are not making as much as men, they're not advancing into positions of management and power," said Heidi Rankin of the P.E.I. Advisory Council on the Status of Women.
And in Ottawa, the local chapter of Equal Voice - a non-partisan group devoted to increasing the number of women in politics hosted a speech by Ellen Bravo, author of "Taking on the Big Boys: Or Why Feminism is Good for Families, Business and the Nation."
In Vancouver, a rally took place in a park in the Downtown Eastside, notorious for its drug use and prostitution, and rarely for the strong sense of community found within it.
About 50 people gathered for the International Women's Day protest, most of them from social groups in the area.
In Canada:
“Marry Him: The Case for Settling for Mr. Good Enough,” is featured in the Atlantic Monthly March issue (available online)
A Roguish Chrestomathy , who has cancelled her subscription to the Atlantic Monthly piqued my interest on the article....she wrote:
".....to the director of circulation and reader services at The Atlantic Monthly. Because really, if I wanted to read the witless contumely of sexist trolls, I could do so for free on the Web; I don't need to pay to have the stuff delivered to my door.....
....the burden of Gottlieb’s article, which seems to be that women should abandon romantic views of marriage in favour of more pragmatic ones, and that they should “settle” for whatever sort of husband they can get."
Alternet asks: Why is a publication as prestigious as The Atlantic regularly publishing pieces that perpetuate the most hackneyed female stereotypes?
A friend of Leslie Blume puts it crudely:
"When you opt into a marriage of convenience solely because you want the material support, especially when you admit to being repulsed by the man -- that's low-grade prostitution legitimized by a marriage certificate.........
And furthermore, Gotlieb's argument is unfair to the rest of us women who don't want to be reduced to Desperate Housewives-in-the-making. It shreds our credibility across the board: Emotionally, professionally, and economically. Gottlieb has created yet another ugly division in a generation of women defined not by solidarity but by Mommy Wars and the Opt-Outs-vs-the-Opts-Ins. It's also selfish and presumptuous to impose this worldview on the next generation of daughters, teaching them by example that marriage is based not on emotional commitment but rather by sheerly "market-driven" forces."
Another forgotten study finds that husbands less likely to share housework than live-in boyfriends
"Marriage as an institution seems to have a traditionalizing effect on couples — even couples who see men and women as equal," lead author Shannon Davis, a sociology professor at Virginia's George Mason University,
In all countries, there was a discrepancy in hours of housework among the sexes, with men reporting a mean of 9.41 hours weekly and women 21.13 hours weekly, the study said.
Maybe a better answer is : Live with him: The case for getting more of the housework done?
The latest census data released Tuesday by Statistics Canada suggests:
The census is conducted every five years by Statistics Canada and is based on information filled out by Canadians on May 16, 2006. The data released Tuesday on work and education follows information released earlier on overall population growth, families, age and sex breakdowns of the population, immigration and a look at the country's aboriginal communities.
The Women's Court is a group of Canadian lawyers, law professors and activists who have decided it's time to get serious about women's equality.
Now, what's that huffing I hear?
Must be the great collective scoff from people who think that
a) feminism is a nasty and this is clearly part of its conspiracy; or b) the battle for women's equality is over, and women are, like, so totally equal in this country.
But the scoffing is misplaced.
Sure, most civilized Canadians have a fundamental philosophical belief in gender equality (even if old-school male-chauvinist sexism seems, depressingly, to be on the rise again in our popular culture. And that's another debate). But gender equality is not a fact in Canada's courts, and the repercussions of that implicit inequality are like shock waves in the daily lives of millions of Canadian women.
It's all about substantive equality, says lawyer Diana Majury, professor in Carleton University's law department and one of the founding members of the Women's Court of Canada. "It's a more complicated notion of equality, but an exciting one."
As opposed to "formal" equality, "substantive" equality recognizes the effect on women of their own biology and accumulated social disadvantage, acknowledging that laws and policies can affect them differently than they do men -- and then correcting that imbalance.
So here's what the Women's Court has done.
It's rewritten six key decisions handed down by the Supreme Court of Canada -- decisions with powerful impact, in different ways, on the lives of women. It's looked carefully at the Supreme Court's "because I said so," and, in scrupulous legal detail, asked, "But why?"
It has, in short, honoured the legacy of Nellie McClung and those four other famous women nearly 80 years ago who refused to accept a Supreme Court ruling that women could not be legally recognized as "persons," and fought tooth and nail (and all the way to London) until they were.
So three cheers....
Monia Mazigh spoke to an audience at an International Women's Week event at Nipissing University.
She shared her experiences as a woman, a Muslim and an immigrant to kick off week-long events for International Women's Week.
Status of Women Canada estimates that about one in five women and girls in Canada were born outside the country.
During her speech, Mazigh said immigrants are politically aware when they arrive in Canada, but they're disappointed because they don't feel represented in public service, schools and hospitals.
Tunisian-born Mazigh emigrated to Canada 17 years ago and recalls how her Montreal neighbourhood had 75 immigrant groups all sharing their hopes and concerns about starting a life in Canada, never having to learn French or English and able to go to a doctor who speaks their language.
There is no immediate harm in this, Mazigh said, but they're excluded from the mainstream and the opportunity to participate.
Mazigh's husband was the Syrian-born Canadian who was detained in New York and deported to Syria in 2002 where he was imprisoned and tortured on false allegations of terrorist links.
She successfully pressured the Canadian government to hold a public inquiry into his deportation.
Both received honorary doctorates of letters from Nipissing University in June.
Briarpatch writes that Men’s social conditioning takes a tremendous toll on not just their relationships, but also on their health. Those who want this to change, Calvin Sandborn argues, will have to come to terms with the concept of patriarchy-and with their own emotions.
Patriarchy’s rulebook
From the time he is about five, a boy is told to repress his feelings if he wants to be a “real boy.” In his 1999 book Real Boys, William Pollack identified the four great imperatives that society presses upon boys:
Read the entire story at Briarpatch
Link to previous post on F-email Fightback: Male privilege is like an invisible weightless knapsack of special provisions, maps, passports, codebooks, visas, clothes, tools , and blank checks. The Male Privilege Checklist
In the March/April 2008 issue of Briarpatch the writers embark on a decidedly anti-essentialist exploration of gender politics, covering everything from feminist homeschooling to feminist porn to partiarchy’s harmful effects on men’s health.
From its extraction through sale, use and disposal, all the stuff in our lives affects communities at home and abroad, yet most of this is hidden from view. The Story of Stuff is a 20-minute, fast-paced, fact-filled look at the underside of our production and consumption patterns.
The Story of Stuff exposes the connections between a huge number of environmental and social issues, and calls us together to create a more sustainable and just world. It'll teach you something, it'll make you laugh, and it just may change the way you look at all the stuff in your life forever.
View the GREAT video here http://www.storyofstuff.com/
TEASER #1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dz3tPxUFGbY
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