No F-word Blog Award :-(

It's okay.....we're just having a moment here.....some great blogs won....er....um....no....we didn't even make it to the "runners up" list.....(heavy sigh)

It's all good (sniff, sniff).....we would like to thank our nominators.....red jenny and godammitkitty........You both ROCK!!

Keep on bloggin' in the free world!!

'Most important struggle' is gender equality: Lewis

War, poverty and even the spread of disease can be traced back to gender inequality, both in Canada and abroad -- and solving the problem starts with teachers.

That was the message from Stephen Lewis, the speaker, activist and politician who addressed the Waterloo unit of the Ontario English Catholic Teachers Association during a professional development day at RIM Park yesterday.

Lewis's talk comes on the heels of a safe schools conference this week in Toronto where school board officials admitted teen girls increasingly see sexual violence as normal.

A recent report from the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health found that as many as a third of Grade 9 girls in Southwestern Ontario have experienced sexual harassment or assault.

In some places, like Eastern Congo, rape has become a strategy of war.

Pre-2008 Budget - Women Call For New Budget Priorities

Women across the country are calling for new government priorities that reflect the realities they face, not the Conservative cuts to programs that have characterized government action in the past year.

"Budgets are all about choices," says Pamela Cross, Director of Advocacy and Public Policy for YWCA. "The federal government can choose to continue down the same destructive path that favours cuts to critical programs and funding of questionable wars, or it can choose balanced funding that responds to real needs of Canadian women and their families."

Women Are Being Left Out In The Cold

It is clear that Canadian women are being left out in the cold by the federal government's current strategy. Instead of choosing more of the same approach that ignores the well-known realities of women, the Harper government would do well to finally set the kind of budget priorities that would deliver substantial benefits to Canadian women and their families:

• Affordable housing. With 1.5 million Canadian households (many with children) at risk of homelessness, the time for a National Housing Policy with supporting federal funding is long overdue.
• High-quality, affordable, accessible child care. Over the last three years, more than $2 billion in federal child-care funding has flowed into a virtual accountability void. Less than 20% of Canada's children and families have access to regulated early learning and child care services. Fees have gone up and families are struggling to find care for their children in the current patchwork system. The government must restore multi-year federal funding for childcare through dedicated capital transfers to community-based, not-for- profit childcare services to assure that child care is available for all children and families that need or want it.
• Accessible post-secondary education. Unmanageable student debt risks making post-secondary education a luxury that is out of reach for most women. In addition to restoring and increasing federal funding transfers to the provinces, this budget must clearly articulate a plan for moving Canada's expensive and unfair student loan system to a grants-based funding formula.
• A commitment to women's equality. Increase Status of Women Canada's budget to $50 million and the re-open regional offices and improve training of government departments on gender-based analysis. Increase funding to the Women's Program at Status of Women Canada to provide grants to women's organizations that provide research and advocate for women's interests. Appoint a Gender Equality Commissioner to ensure that Canada fully upholds its equality commitments under domestic and international law.

This government refuses to acknowledge the heavy costs of tax cuts and military spending. By cutting taxes, bankrolling a war and funneling public funds into debt reduction, the Harper government is choosing family instability, homelessness, student debt, and gender inequality in Canada. It is no wonder that there was a 9.5% "gender gap" in the Conservative vote during January 2006 election - women do not trust Conservative priorities.

It's time !!

It's time for women's voices to be heard and for families to become the true priority in government spending - what's good for women is good for everyone.

Founded in 2006, the Ad-Hoc Coalition for Women's Equality and Human Rights is a group of over 25 regional and national women's organizations that have come together to monitor and advocate for federal government leadership on gender equality in Canada.

Disponible en francais
For further information: Cathy Tilsley, The Ad-Hoc Coalition for Women's
Equality and Human Rights, (613) 355-7842

Water, Women and Workers: sources of life

“Water, Women, Workers: sources of life” is the theme of this year’s PSI campaign, starting on International Women’s Day on 8 March and ending on World Water Day on 22 March. The campaign includes a focus on climate change and sustainable development. It will highlight the importance - especially for women - of quality public services in health, water and education.

The campaign’s key messages are on:

• the negative impact of water privatisation, which disproportionately affects women;
• the influence of climate change on clean water supplies and sustainable development;
• universal access to safe water as a human right;
• and a call for governments to publicly own and manage water supplies.

Read the excellent newsletter

2 Minute Action for Pay Equity and Weekend Fem-links

This year, 2008, is the 20th Anniversary of the Pay Equity Act. The Equal Pay Coalition is mounting an Ontario-wide campaign to bring public and electoral attention to the need for Ontario’s pay equity system to be revitalized, strengthened, and adequately resourced and enforced. The Coalition, with its broad-based membership of trade unions, community and social justice organizations and business and professional women’s organizations represents over one million Ontarians.

As 2008 draws near, many Ontario employers are ignoring their obligation to pay women fairly. It is once again necessary to take action to ensure the promise of pay equity – a fundamental human right – is kept. Ontario women, without exception, are entitled to be paid free of the discrimination that pays them less than men


2 Minute Action for Pay Equity

Send a message to the Ontario government today
Sign the Equal Pay Coalition petition

Weekend Fem-links

• Last year, the CBC asked its viewers to vote on the greatest Canadian invention of all time. Among the fifty items on the shortlist were the pacemaker, basketball and the alkaline battery. Yet, the item that ranked higher than all of those three was the humble Wonderbra. Why did more Canadians vote for the Wonderbra than for the pacemaker?
• An interview with Harsha Walia, a Vancouver based social activist involved with refugee rights and women's issues in the Downtown Eastside.
• Heather Mallick writes about religion leaking into the House of Commons with a weird private member's bill (unborn victims of crime act) backed by religionists and the Globe and Mail online poll asking whether Dr. Henry Morgentaler should get the Order of Canada for his abortion rights triumph. (Readers slipped Heather a Knights of Columbus mass e-mail urging members to hasten to the website and vote against it, which they did.)
• Since 1990, more than 80 Nova Scotia women have lost their lives due to violence. The deaths of 33 women came at the hands of intimate partners, forever silencing their voices. The time has come to end their silence. Silent Witness Nova Scotia is a group of organizations and individuals working together to raise their voices. See this new website: Silent Witness
• Some doctors in Canada are denying pap smears to women citing religious objections. You read it right: doctors are using their personal morality to further restrict a women’s right to equal health care. (Cited in an essay written by Peggy Cooke - recent winner of Canadians for Choice’s essay submission contest that answered the question “Why is a pro-choice Canada so important?” ) For more information on pap smears visit this page.
• 62 per cent of women surveyed said they worry about the likelihood that they or their partner might need to go into a nursing home, assisted living facility or require care at home in the future - Only 49 per cent of men share the same concern
• Women more likely than men to look for health information on the web
• Females characters are sexualized, put down, or just plain absent in the shows your kids are watching. Where Are All the Girl Ninjas?

"I Want To See Jane" Campaign

Geena Davis, with the help of USC Annenberg School of Journalism professor Stacy Smith, began research to assess portrayals of males and females in children's media.

On January 30 and 31, 2008, at the University of Southern California, under the auspices of the Geena Davis Institute on Gender and Children in the Media (GDIDM) she presented the findings at a forum for studio heads, writers, educators and students.

Stacy Smith, who introduced the data at the forum, summed up the Geena Davis Institute's results in three succinct points:

• Gender imbalance reigns across the media. Examining 15,000 individual speaking characters across the rating spectrum of G-, PG-, PG-13, and R-rated films, Smith and the GDIDM discovered that males outnumber females nearly 3 to 1 in movies; male narrators outnumber female narrators 4 to 1 (83% to 17%).
• System wide, when females are presented they are shown in a hypersexualized way. Studying 4,000 female film characters, females (from animated girl puppies to grown human women) were more than 5 times more likely than males to be shown as adornment or sexually enticing and three times more likely to be dressed in sexually alluring clothing.
• The highest concentration of this imbalance is in animated films and G-rated programming, where parents might assume their children are safest.

The Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media doesn't want any Jane to grow up believing she is only worthy of sidekick status. That's where the I Want to See Jane Campaign for girls and women comes in. Women worldwide are asked to create a video.

Read the Official I Want to See Jane Campaign Guidelines
See the videos on YouTube

Women Dishing Up Pie

Over at Molly's Blog: Carrying on a fine Canadian anarchist tradition that dates back over three decades Calgary activists have been "pieing" assorted political members of the "Axis of Evil" over the past few years.

• In 2003 Chris Geoghegan managed to throw a pie in the face of then-premier "laughing Ralph" Klein. Unfortunately the pie wasn't whiskey flavoured and Ralph was not amused. Thirty days in the slammer!



• Last year two Calgary anti-poverty activists decided to revive this fine tradition. On July 9, 2007 Lily Phan attempted to pie Premier Ed Stelmach at his annual stampede breakfast in protest over his inaction on the issues of poverty and homelessness. The attempt failed as she was wrestled down by the Premier's bodyguards. She still awaits trial on charges of "public mischief" and "assaulting a police officer". The basis of the latter charge is that a small amount of the pie topping was smeared across an Alberta Sheriff's uniform during the arrest. No sense of humour here for sure.
  
• On July 12 another anti-poverty activist, Donna McPhee, managed to pull it off, pieing Calgary Mayor Dave Bronconnier with a chocolate cream pie. Last February 15 she was sentenced to 30 days in jail (ah, that precedent !) for mischief. Previous charges of "assault with a weapon" were dropped. It seems it was too hard to get a conviction on charges of holding a "weapon of mass delection".

Donna will be spending her 57th birthday (on March 4) in jail, and the Calgary Anarchist Black Cross is currently organizing direct jail support for her, including donations to her canteen fund and transportation for visitors to the jail.

OMG - We made it to the final round!!

F-email Fightback made it to the final round of voting in the F-Word Blog Awards!!

For the Group Blog category

http://acreativerevolution.ca/phpQ/fillsurvey.php?sid=41

and for the Best Canadian Feminist Blog category

http://acreativerevolution.ca/phpQ/fillsurvey.php?sid=38

Voting is on Friday February 22 - Saturday Feruary 23 !!!

American debate on race and gender surreal and so insular

Kavita Nandini Ramdas (president and CEO of the Global Fund for Women, the world's largest foundation solely committed to advancing women's rights) writes in the Nation:

As a feminist whose daily work focuses on the challenges facing women outside the United States--particularly those living in poverty, in war zones and under extreme patriarchal control--I think these conversations have a surreal quality. They are surreal because they are so perfectly American in their insularity. What is alarmingly absent from our conversations and arguments, even as they allude to race and gender, is any sense of how our
decisions affect the well-being of people across the planet--not least the status of women, 51 percent of us, who are being treated with appalling brutality around the globe.

There is something profoundly wrong when a conversation about qualifications to be President of the most powerful nation in the world ignores the reality facing most of that world's inhabitants.......

Women in the developing world are not reassured when they see Madeleine Albright standing next to Hillary Clinton. They have not forgotten that this former Secretary of State, when questioned about the death of more than 500,000 children as a result of sanctions against Iraq, responded that the price had been worth it. Most would prefer a President tough enough to say that Iraqi children matter to her as much as American children and that she would use the awesome power of the presidency to ensure the safety and well-being of all the world's children.

N.L. status of women minister blasts Hearn for making joke about fat wife

Speaking at a conference in central Newfoundland last weekend, Hearn joked about a sign posted by a phone booth in Ireland when the country still used pounds for its currency.

"Direct line to heaven, leave 300 pounds," Hearn said. "One of my buddies was over there and he left his wife."

Joan Burke, who also serves as the province's education minister, wasn't in attendance and didn't hear the joke, but said she was offended by it nonetheless.

"I think we've got a clear example here of a government that does not respect women," Burke told reporters Thursday.

LINK: Full article at Canadian Press

Harper waking up to his party's gender problem, Equal Voice says

The Harper Conservatives, traditionally neglectful of women and their issues, plans to go a-courting.

Polling data is unequivocal; Harper is paying for this gender skew.

"Canada now has fewer women in Parliament than most of Europe, parts of Africa and the Middle East," Equal Voice says.

This puts Canada 47th in an international ranking of women in national parliaments, behind countries like Eritrea, Bulgaria and the United Arab Emirates. (Interestingly, that great bastion of democracy and equality, the U.S., is in 65th place.)

Countries that feature greater gender equality in their politics -- Sweden, Finland, Rwanda -- tend to have specific mandates or targets for the inclusion of women, Equal Voice says. They make a special effort

LINK: Still In Shock 2007

Federal Court quashes PSAC pay equity complaint against CPC

The Federal Court of Canada has added a new chapter to an epic, 25-year human rights case, overturning a $150 million pay equity award granted three years ago to thousands of Canada Post employees across the country.

In 1983, the Public Service Alliance of Canada (PSAC), which represented clerical workers at Canada Post, filed a human rights complaint against the corporation, saying it paid lower wages to the mostly female workers of its clerical section, than to the mostly male workers in its operations section.

The union wanted Canada Post to pay $300 million in back wages to about 6,000 current and former workers, most of them women.

So began a long and bizarre legal saga that came to a head in 2005, when a tribunal of the

• Canadian Human Rights commission finally upheld the discrimination complaint but ordered Canada Post to pay only half the amount in back-pay the union had asked for.
• Canada Post appealed the matter to the Federal Court, which on Thursday quashed the tribunal's order.

In his judgment, Justice Michael Kelen has harsh words for the tribunal, saying there was little evidence of wage discrimination based on gender.

He said the tribunal "unreasonably ignored the factual reality" that the largest group of women at Canada Post were the 10,000 women working at non-clerical jobs inside the operations group, where the pay was better.

But the judge reserved his most critical words for what he called the "unreasonable" length of the human rights case - 10 years of investigation, followed by almost 12 years of hearings - even referring to Charles Dickens to illustrate his point.

PSAC believes there are good grounds for the union to appeal this latest decision. The union is currently consulting with its legal counsel and a final decision will be made soon about filing a request for judicial review with the Federal Court of Appeal.

Photo find of the week

February 21, 1958 - 50 years for the peace symbol

Pacifists and war protesters all over the world wear peace signs on shoulder bags and jeans jackets. But only few know what the symbol really means, and where it came from.

Exactly fifty years ago British designer Gerald Holtom created what would become the international peace symbol. On February 21, 1958 the Royal College of Art trained artist designed a logo for the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, the start of the British peace movement.

At its basic level, the design combined two letters from the semaphore alphabet of flag-signalling, N (flags at eight and four o’clock) and D (flags at six and 12 o’clock), to indicate nuclear disarmament. A circle signified the earth.

But to Holtom, who had been a conscientious objector in the Second World War, there was more to it. “I was in despair,” he later wrote, “deep despair. I drew myself: the representative of an individual in despair, with hands palm outstretched outwards and downwards in the manner of Goya’s peasant before the firing squad.”

LINKS: HappyBirthdayPeace
LINK: Common Dreams

Sudbury ceremony - missing women

Savannah Trudeau often doesn't feel safe when she's alone and, as a young aboriginal woman, those feelings are justified.

Hundreds of First Nations women - including about 30 in Ontario - have been murdered or simply vanished in the last few decades.

It's a statistic Trudeau, a 20-year-old from Wikemikong, finds frightening.

"It makes me think I have to have somebody there beside me at all times in case something goes wrong," Trudeau said. "I kind of feel scared walking downtown, not just in Sudbury, but anywhere."

Trudeau was one of about 75 people who rallied Thursday afternoon at Memorial Park to raise awareness and remember women who have been murdered or gone missing.

LINK: Sudbury Star

P.E.I. fighting for economic improvements

The Working Group for a Livable Income is a coalition of community organizations such as the Cooper Institute, the P.E.I. Advisory Council on the Status of Women and the Federation of Labour.

These organizations made pleas for change in employment standards from the viewpoint of the poor and lower income earners of P.E.I.

Thousands of Islanders work for low wages and are not protected by collective agreements like those that offer benefits, guaranteed pay raises and overtime pay to union employees.

Over 55,000 workers on P.E.I. are not protected by unions. Their working conditions are regulated by the provincial Employment Standards Act and Regulations. This legislation has not been changed or updated in 10 years, despite ongoing changes that occur in other provinces and jurisdictions

LINK: The Guardian

F-email Fightback nominated for a Canadian F-word Blog Award!

We've been nominated for a Canadian F-word Blog Award! Please visit A Creative Revolution for and wish us luck!

First round voting begins Friday, Feb. 15.

http://www.acreativerevolution.ca/node/596/

This Week's Interesting Links

The federal budget is expected to come out at the end of February and the BCGEU believes Canada should invest in health care, child care, seniors care, and pharmacare.

NUPGE encourages you to send the Finance Minister your thoughts and ideas about why child care services are important for children and families and Canada’s economy through an online consultation on this website here.

Supreme Court denies adoptive mother maternity leave Birth parents continue to receive 15 weeks more leave from work than adoptive parents

A new report from the European Union looks at the representation of women and men in decision making positions in politics, the economy, and public administration throughout Europe.

Women often like municipal politics because they are local and non-partisan.

A recent report released by the management consulting firm Rosenzweig & Company found that the number of women in top executive positions has decreased from 37 to 31 over the last year

The generally accepted numbers are that one in every 67000 males is transgendered, or a woman inside a man's body

Justice Minister Rob Nicholson has flatly rejected calls to decriminalize prostitution and dismissed as a non-starter a Vancouver group's hopes of opening a "co-op" brothel in time for the 2010 Winter Olympics to provide a safer working environment for sex-trade workers.

Weekend ...hangin' ....this is what I "clicked"...

February is violence prevention month in New Brunswick

Is there a connection between the pop cultural fixation with unplanned pregnancies and the teen birth rate?

Alberta's dubious distinction of having the highest rate of domestic violence in Canada.

Three Calgary Muslim women have filed a human rights complaint against a local imam

The Bouchard-Taylor Commission's Hijacking of 'Gender Equality'

And so…….Jodie Foster finally came out?

An attempt to crack the woodchuck glass ceiling as reported previously on f-email fightback

A new report documents the effects of Manila's ban on contraception.

Hillary hatred finds its misogynistic voice A quick summary of sexist attacks on Hillary Clinton.

Hundreds of Afghan women gathered to protest the kidnapping of an aid worker.

New research shows women in India are not only more likely to donate a kidney, they're less likely than men to receive a kidney transplant when they need one

Stereotypes of men as beer swilling, emotionally stunted brutes more brazen than stereotypes of women?

Ever wonder how the word “slut” oppresses women”?

Ever answered the heterosexual questionnaire?

The re-emergence of that awful poster that says ‘1 in 3 reported rapes happen when the woman has been drinking'. ……..would be more accurate to say 3 out of 3 rapes occur when the woman is in the company of a rapist

Family Violence Is All Around Us

Family violence is all around us.You can help stop it. We can help you find the right things to say and when to say them.

Advertising Agency: SERVE, Milwaukee, USA

Creative Director: Gary Mueller

Art Director: Brent Goral

Copywriter: Ross Lowinske

Photographers: Scott Krahn, Dale StentonPublished: 2007

Groundhog Day - female Marmota monax want gender parity!

February 2 - Groundhog Day - For years, the world of early spring harbingers has been an old boys' network dominated by Punxsutawney Phils, Wiarton Willie, Shubenacadie Sam and Buckeye Chucks

Massachusetts legislators want the gender bias to change.....Ms. G (that's short for Groundhog), a 4-year-old woodchuck from the Massachusetts Audubon Society's Drumlin Farm, has been nominated to be the state's first official groundhog. If approved by the Legislature this year, she would be the first female groundhog in the U.S. to hold such a title

While some say the political climate in the U.S. seems right for a female woodchuck, others saythere is a natural reason that the shadow-seeing had traditionally been left up to the males. Male woodchucks are the early risers of winter, driven out of hibernation by their desire to mate. Females, on the other hand, hang around their dens awaiting gentlemen callers.

Stereotypes aside - Gertie, Gracie and Woody have blazed the trail for you Ms. G - you go girl!!

What about the 2008 Predictions you ask?

• Wiarton Willie (Canada's most well-known groundhog) NO SHADOW - early spring
• Shubenacadie Sam (Nova Scotia) NO SHADOW - early spring
• Balzac Billy, Balzac, Alta - NO SHADOW - early spring
• Watson Willow from Watson, Sask
• Manitoba's Merv in Oak Hammond Marsh, Man - SHADOW - forecasting six more weeks of winter
• Woody (is a female) from Howell, Mich - agreed with their Canadian counterparts - NO SHADOW - early spring
• Gen. Beauregard Lee in Georgia - agreed with their Canadian counterparts - NO SHADOW
• Pennsylvania's Punxsutawney Phil - lone voice of dissent. He spotted his shadow, forecasting six more weeks of winter.
• Buckeye Chuck in Ohio - NO SHADOW - calling for an early spring
• Malverne Mel from Malverne, N.Y., on western Long Island - NO SHADOW - calling for an early spring
• Staten Island Chuck, in New York State. NO SHADOW - calling for an early spring

Rumours abound that Gertie, the resident Groundhog at Wildlife Prairie State Park, decided she had not seen her shadow and thus Spring is just around the corner. Park officials say Gertie has about a 70% accuracy rate. And at Lakeview Museum this morning, Gracie the Groundhog, also did not see her shadow and predicts an early Spring. Both Gertie and Gracie have been ignored by the media in favour of their ,male counterparts - if you have any further information - please send to Ms G - perhaps she could form a women's committee?

And can someone call Michigan and talk to Sister "Woody"?

(Groundhog emerges from males' shadows," City & Region, Jan. 31).

UN-involved in Africa ?

Last February, the Senate Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Trade released a report that alleged Canada, and CIDA in particular, has made no notable or lasting impact in Africa after 40 years and $12 billion of aid efforts.

According to unrepentant hippie, in the US, a congressional battle looms over increases and amendments to the $15 billion AIDS program focusing primarily on sub-Saharan Africa. Desperately seeking a legacy that involves saving rather than snuffing out peoples' lives, Bush wants to double spending, the Democrats want to triple it — everyone's on the same general page, for a change — so who's the dissenting voice? If you guessed "pearl-clutching fetus fetishists", dingdingding!

Man No Longer Needed for Reproduction?

The University of Newcastle team that has achieved the feat (creating sperm from the bone marrow of a woman) is now applying for permission to turn the bone marrow of a woman into sperm which, if successful, would make the method more practical than with embryonic cells.

It raises the possibility of lesbian couples one day having children who share both their genes as sperm created from the bone marrow of one woman could be used to fertilise an egg from her partner.

Link - via Environmental Graffiti

Scientists Created Sperm from Bone Marrow of a Woman: Man No Longer Needed for Reproduction

Sentenced to death: Afghan who dared to read about women's rights

A young man, a student of journalism, is sentenced to death by an Islamic court for downloading a report from the internet. The sentence is then upheld by the country's rulers. This is Afghanistan – not in Taliban times but six years after "liberation" and under the democratic rule of the West's ally Hamid Karzai?

Here in Canada (according to MacKay) before Canada and its allies invaded, the Taliban controlled republic, MacKay said, human rights did not exist, especially for women, who were not allowed to vote or participate in government.

MacKay said. "And here's a shocker. There are more women sitting in the parliament of Afghanistan than in the government of Canada."

And here's ANOTHER shocker MacKay! Human rights still don't exist under your buddy Karzai!

LINK: BBC
LINK: MacKay - WTF?

Please don't lose control...

Men in Czech Republic consume the most beer in all of Europe. Unfortunately, the beer changes many of them into agressors upon arriving home. In order to stop this domestic alco-violence they redesigned the trademark beer mugs of their client Bernard Brewery to preventatively warn its beer drinkers to not lose control over their drinking.

Advertising Agency: EURO RSCG Prague, Czech Republic

Creative Directors: Dejan Stejnberger, Filip Kukla

Art Director: Ales Pokorny

Copywriter: Filip Kukla

Designer: Anna Barton

Released: November 2007

I did not come to feminism for hatred...

Posting this quote below because it's worth saving - it is found in a post at Alas! A Blog regarding recent, much-disparaged thread on I Blame The Patriarchy which turned into a reprise of feminist arguments over transsexuality. The long thread provides many examples of feminist anti-trans arguments, as well as (thankfully) many feminist rebuttals. Here's my favourite rebuttal:

I did not come to feminism for hatred;
I did not come to feminism in order to use my power and privilege as a white, middle-class, cisgendered (*) woman to oppress a group of people more oppressed than myself;
I did not come to feminism in order to set up new hierarchies or take up the role of oppressor.
I came to feminism because I believed, and continue to believe, that as part of anti-oppression activism, feminist theories and philosophies can offer ways of being, thinking and relating which could make life better for all of us, whether we identify as men, women, or something else altogether.

* Cisgendered is a term meaning, roughly, “not transsgendered or transsexual.”

Pollution killing 6,000 Canadians every year

You see, the emissions that come out of the tailpipes of our cars and the smokestacks of the oilsands and power plants are bad for our health, as well as the environment.

Every year, there are about 6,000 deaths in Canada due to short-term exposure to air pollution, according to the Canadian Heart and Stroke Foundation's Report Card on Canadians' Health, released this week.

And 69 per cent of those deaths come in the form of cardio and cerebrovascular disease (heart attacks, strokes, etc.). Despite those figures, only 13 per cent of Canadians have made the connection between air pollution and cardiovascular disease.

Soundbites..

Femimism 101 links to posts addressing particular points of feminist theory and activism, tied together by the fact that they included memorable soundbite rebuttals:

Jill (Feministe):

Deni’s argument is that prostitutes can’t be raped because they sell sex — which is kind of like saying that merchants can’t be robbed because they sell goods.

Richie (Crimitism) on women’s alleged power over men via dressing provocatively etc:

you can’t simultaneously be in control and be victimised as a result of the exact same thing.

Entangled (commenting at Shapely Prose):

I find it shameful that people expect genetically heavier people (or people who have had a change in metabolism due to illness, medication, or past cycles of starvation and plenty) to exist in a state of semi-starvation for their entire lives just to reach someone else’s judgment of what they should look like.