Ontario Feminist Blogs

I found this quote on the Tyra Banks Show website after hearing it prior to commercial breaks while watching her show the other day. Obviously a guilty pleasure of mine!

Are you a teen or a young woman who’s being physically abused by another young woman? If you want help dealing with your abusive relationship, SUBMIT BELOW.

Please only submit if you are willing to appear on “The Tyra Banks Show”.

If it were not for the last line I would send in a request for assistance just to see what happens. If anyone is more brave than I please let us know the results. (See my theory below about what is and is not happening.)

However, my question is, why would someone in an abusive relationship want to come on national television for “relationship advice”. See the difference this time is that the relationship is between two women. Sigh!

Clearly two women cannot experience really be hurting each other the way a heterosexual couple can experience domestic violence. There must not be gendered roles and they must be equally matched physically. REALLY?! Of course not!

So why is the first step not to refer these young women to domestic violence shelters or women’s resource centres for professional help? Instead Tyra plans on parading them across her stage all for viewership.

We need to take all forms of domestic violence seriously including those between same-sex partners. Violence, power, and control is wrong and abusive not matter what the abuser or partner looks like “down-there” (or how they identify their own gender).

Please be sure to check out the links on the side panel of this page for more information and violence against women resources.

During the last week in Thunder Bay a young native boys hair was chopped off by his teacher’s assistant. Since this time the Crown and police have refused to charge the woman accused. Some people may not understand why this is such a big deal, so let’s break it down.

The child was touched without permission, during this time the assailant was holding what we can easily refer to as a “deadly weapon” given that you could hypothetically be killed by a pair of scissors. In fact, it is not a stretch to imagine this happening.

The child is native and therefore having long hair is not simply a fashion statement but rather something tied to the child’s culture. Cutting off the hair of male native children was regularly done at residential schools, where the goal was to “kill the indian and save the child“.

Based on these facts I would say it would be fair to charge the teacher with assault using a weapon or causing bodily harm. It would be a stretch but I also think this is a race based hate crime.

The point of this post is to spread the word about this horrific action and to encourage people to contact their local politicians and demand that action be taken in this seriously. You may also want to write the school officials and express your opinions to them.

*** Cross-Posted on the Feministing Community ***

*** This post also made the main page on Feministing – Thanks Editors!!! ***

*** Thanks to DocuDharma for referencing this article ***

*** Thanks to Native American Netroots for referencing this article ***

I hate that this is even a debatable issue. Gay marriage is a human rights issue, not a matter of personal opinion.

There are a number of quotes related to this cause that are becoming very well known like; “If you don’t agree with gay marriage, do not marry a gay person”. It gets the point across that these are human rights not straight people rights. In other words, it really doesn’t hurt people to have gay marriage exist, however, it certainly does when you deny people a right another group of people has access to. That is blatant discrimination!

The fact that you are religious does NOT give you the right to spread hate under the guise of freedom of speech. You are a bigot! Hate crimes and related comments should not be covered under the US constitution in any situation.

This post is a result of the Prop 8 decision being upheld by the California Supreme Court and because of Miss California’s response to Perez.

I am the neice of a trans man. My new uncle has given me permission to share his story with whom ever I choose, he is not ashamed of his life or decisions. Quite frankly, neither am I. I could not be more happy, and have felt this way from the moment I was informed that this change would be going on. I was excited because I had seen some of the stuggles this person had gone through in their life and things sort of made sense now. I was instantly overwhelmed with the feeling that things would go much better for them now.

My uncle had books and pictures for the family to check out if they were interested, some were a bit graphic for my grandmother but nothing really shocked me. At the time, I was a student in a feminist/anti-oppression college program and I had also been spending a fair amount of time in the LGBTQ community. I was a bit concerned for how my uncle would be accepted by others as he lives with his two children in a small town and is also a long-time member of the Canadian military.

At the time when he told me of his decision, the process had not really started. There was no binding of the chest, merely the person I had grown up knowing as my aunt, dressed as per usual in stereotypically male clothing with a short hair style. Since then, he has started taking hormones and binding as well as changing the spelling of his name to a more masculine or gender-neutral spelling. This has made it easier for most of the family, who are not always so open-minded, to accept some of the changes. Overall, I like the new spelling of the name and the expression that a name can in fact be gender-neutral.

Side Note: Originally, he had intended on changing his name to something entirely different, something very male. I am not sure for the exact reasoning of sticking with the same name, but I know there was some resistance from my mother as well as other family members at various points along this journey. I however, do not feel that someone elses discomfort should be a reason to give into their wishes, to appease them while ignoring yourself, but this may not have been the only reason for the decision in the end.

I must admit, sometimes, I screw up with pronouns. I seriously never do this when making a comment about the larger trans community. For example, during a workshop on feminism where the topic comes up, I answer a few questions about the process and correct people who use the wrong pronouns in discussions. But for some reason, when it comes to this person who is in my family, I often screw it up. Part of this is because it is still new. The name and pronoun change has only been official for about a year, maybe not even that long. Another part of it is because I had always called him, Aunt … , thus gendering him even before the use of he vs she. I can say though, that when I screw up, I always correct myself. I can only imagine how difficult it was for my uncle’s youngish children to remember to call him dad instead of mom as they always had.

So my first question is, why do we do this? Teach children with the most basic words used to describe family relations that there is a concrete difference between boys and girls. Mom/Dad, Aunt/Uncle, Grandpa/Grandma, Niece/Nephew and so on….

My second question is, how do you explain physical differences between male and female bodies to young children, say for sex-ed type purposes, without ignoring the fact that some people may have physical appearances that do not match their gender identity?

I am reminded of a story out of the states last year where a teacher returned from summer vacation a different gender than the one they left for summer vacation as. However, I have been unable to find a link to the story. I think it is important that children take that opportunity to learn to love and be open-minded as opposed to learning hate.

Related: The Elementary Teacher’s Foundation of Ontario has recently released a press release calling for the teaching of LGBTQ issues in elementary school.

*** Cross-Posted at the Feministing Community ***

I found this great list of the top reasons why we still need feminism in 2009. Thanks to the Blog Against Sexism Day site, which was March 8th aka International Women’s Day.

• Women are still underpaid. Women earn only 77 cents to every dollar earned by men. (Former MA democratic Lt. Gov. Evelyn Murphy is doing great things to shake this up…check out www.womenaregettingeven.org) Also, can 1 million women against WalMart be hallucinating? This is serious!

• Women are still massively underrepresented in the sciences. Despite substantial gains in the number of women pursuing graduate degrees in the sciences, women currently earn only 20% of all PhDs in computer science, less than 27% in physics, and only 17% in engineering. Studies show that women in science experience discrimination and double standards (sorry Larry Summers, but its really true.)

• There are too few female tenured professors. Despite the fact that women have been at least half of all college undergraduates since 1978, women represent only 36% of all tenured faculty nationwide, and only 13% of doctoral granting universities boast women presidents. Many women in academic settings report discrimination.

• Women are underrepresented in corporate leadership. Women have made up more than 40% of the workforce since 1977, and are currently almost 50%, yet only 9 women are CEOs of Fortune 500 companies.

• Too few women lawyers make partner. Women have been 40% of all law school students since 1995, and over half since 2001, but are only 15% of partners in law firms nationwide. Many female lawyers attest to double standards and discrimination.

• Media: Stereotypes Abound!

• Men still dominate the airwaves, music industry, film industry, etc, and are most decision makers and critics (often with a silent or not so silent male perspective.) Women make up only 11% of the national experts on Sunday morning political talk shows, and only 6% to 7% of the repeat guests. No major record label is headed by a woman. Most major film studios are headed by men, and nine out of ten music videos are produced by men. For the most part, women need to be sex objects and to be young to be successful in music and to some extent, films, TV. (Men,not so much…can you say Sean Connery? Harrison Ford? Woody Allen? David Letterman? Larry King?.) Women are chosen/allowed to direct only 5 – 7 % of major Hollywood films, and rarely are nominated for or win major awards for directing (despite some very talented female directors out there.) This is not just Hollywood insanity….it’s workplace discrimination.

• Women are poorer. Women constitute about 70% of the world’s absolute poor – those living on less than a dollar a day. In the United States in 2004, there were 20.1 million women living below the poverty level. Worldwide, women’s access to resources and education still lags behind boys/men due to double standards.

• Slavery still exists! Women and girls are the majority of the 800,000 to nearly 4 million people trafficked (bought and sold as property) internationally every year.