April Reign

Speak your mind even if your voice shakes

Debra

Petition to reinstate My Blagh

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on PB today Scott penned

The year is what the moderators agreed is the minimum time to let pass before hearing an appeal for reinstatement on his indefinite ban. It was agreed to by Wayne.

All further enquiries can and should be sent to Wayne if you dont agree with the moderators’ decision. He is the owner of this site and the final authority.

I believe coordinated efforts are always best therefore I have created a petition which will be sent on to Wayne Chu owner of Progressive Bloggers.

You can sign the petition here

and you can use this image on your site to link to the petition or link here

my blagh

The Big Tent is as the Big Tent Does

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The Big TentIt would seem a weekly event the thread asking for definition of progressive, asking who would not fit under the big tent. No answer was ever forthcoming except that the owner and mods did not feel it their place to determine what people wrote on their blog.

Self definition of progressive then seemed to be the criteria for fitting under The Big Tent.

Blogging for F4J – acceptable, maligning female politicians [see numerous posts on Belinda Stronach]- acceptable, adhering sexist and politically derogatory labels to feminists [again see PB diaries around abortion,Elizabeth May]- acceptable, debating a womans’ right to choice [many blogs, tags-abortion,Elizabeth May]- acceptable, defaming a persons reputation and all who associate with him – acceptable.

Whether or not Roberts’ post was wrong has been discussed throughly, what I would like to know is how it was worse than any of the previous examples?

The Big Tent is either Big enough to handle and accept all sides of a controversy and to allow free speech OR it moderates views and speech.

If PB has decided on the latter will we soon be in receipt of a policy clearly defining the progressive views and values the mods and owner find acceptable?

A policy on what will be acceptable blog topics, words used, groups and/or persons that can be maligned freely?

It would seem echo chamber is in the eye of the beholder.

International Women’s Day

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IWD

I struggled with what to write today. Which subject seemed to have the greatest importance.

In the end I felt there was no subject that had greater importance. They represented different cultures, different concerns, different areas (work, school, motherhood, reproductive rights) different focus (success stories and stories that show how much work is still required) and I realized that I couldn’t anymore choose a topic of greater importance than I could choose a woman of greater importance. [Read more…] about International Women’s Day

Vagina Verboten

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Vagina VerbotenIn a stunning display of stupidity, a New York school has suspended 3 honour students for using the word vagina. Oh did I mention it was during a reading from the Vagina Monologues?

The excerpt from “Monologues” was read Friday night, among various readings at an event sponsored by the literary magazine at John Jay High School in Cross River, a New York City suburb. Among the other readings was a student’s original work and the football coach quoting Shakespeare.

The girls took turns reading the excerpt until they came to the word, then said it together.

“My short skirt is a liberation flag in the women’s army,” they read. “I declare these streets, any streets, my vagina’s country.”

snip

But Principal Richard Leprine said Tuesday that the girls were punished because they disobeyed orders, not because of what they said.

The event was open to the community, including children, and the word was not appropriate, Leprine said in a statement. He said the girls had been told when they auditioned that they could not use the word.

Reback said Tuesday that no one in the audience was younger than high school age. “What did we do that was so wrong?” she asked. “We were insubordinate, but the reason we were insubordinate was that we talked about our body.”

Now granted they ‘only’ received a one day in school suspension.

More importantly, they received a monumental life lesson on what it means to be born with a vagina.

Freedom’s just another word..

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… for nothin’ left to lose.
Me and Bobby McGee

What is the concept of freedom?

Is it something cute to wrap the flag around during political speechifying.

Is something to be doled out in measured doses in order remind us that is it there but we don’t want to wear it out. Something like company linens.

Perhaps freedom is accounted to the few and the many are given a facsimile of, fredum..you can buy it on the corner in New York.

There is much to lose if we do not see freedom as the one of the cornerstones of a just and civil society.

There have been times, such as the Witch Trials, when people were given a label to which there was no defence. Given trial in which there was no justice. And perfectly nice people, friends, neighbours rushed to give evidence all the better to disassociate and save themselves.

There have been other times when people were willing to smear and sellout their neighbours, even issuing signs to mark the differences.

It is disheartening to realize that we have forgotten so much history.

Doris Anderson

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Doris Anderson

On March 2nd 2007 Canada lost a brave and noble woman.

Doris Anderson gave voice to those who were afraid to speak, didn’t know what to say or had no one to listen.

She did not sit back and imagine that so called nuanced responses were the way to achieve equality for women. She said what needed to be said, did what needed to be done and encouraged others to do the same.

In 1981 Doris was instrumental in ensuring that women’s equality would be enshrined in the Charter.

Anderson vs. Axworthy

1981: Canada is gripped by an identity crisis after Prime Minister Trudeau says he will add a charter of rights to the country’s constitution.

Women were worried about the Charter, says Anderson: the leaders behind it were all men, and men had a dismal record of defending women’s rights. As chair of the independent federal advisory committee on the status of women, she had already planned a conference that February so women’s groups could collaborate to critique the Charter.

But in January, then Employment Minister Axworthy pressed the committee to delay the conference until June. As reported at the time in the Toronto Star, he said a February conference could embarrass the government since it would be holding its last debate on the Charter at the same time.

Anderson was outraged. She said the committee would lose all credibility as an independent body if the government could manipulate it like this. Also, women had been waiting for months for this chance to influence the debate on the Charter. Delaying the conference until after that debate was finished would make it pointless.

Anderson and five other committee members decided to resign in protest. The conference was cancelled.

[Read more…] about Doris Anderson