April Reign

Speak your mind even if your voice shakes

women

December 6th. Just a date.

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Don’t Mourn, Organize!

December 6th. Just a date. Maybe an early Christmas party or a school play. Perhaps a time to start putting out decorations or maybe – a time to purchase candles and roses. A purchase not made in anticipation of a celebration but one made in memorial of 14 women who were gunned down simply because they were women and they were there.

December 6th, 1989 at l’École Polytechnique de Montréal
Geneviève Bergeron
Hélène Colgan
Nathalie Croteau
Barbara Daigneault
Anne-Marie Edward
Maud Haviernick
Barbara Maria Klucznik
Maryse Leclair
Annie St.-Arneault
Michèle Richard
Maryse Laganière
Anne-Marie Lemay
Sonia Pelletier
Annie Turcotte

became victims of hatred. Victims of misogyny. Lights shining on the ugly truth that women had not yet been fully accepted as equals.

Twenty years on can we really say that much has changed?

In 1982 MP Margaret Mitchell rose to educate the house on domestic violence, she told them how one in 10 Canadian women were victims of domestic assault the response by the male MPs was laughing and shouting.

In 2009 during the height of the H1N1 Flu scare MP Carolyn Bennett rose to ask a question on behalf of a troubled constituent. The woman in question was pregnant and had received conflicting advice as to the safety of the H1N1 vaccine, she was looking to her government for help. The response? Laughter, derision, hooting and hollering. 27 years later women’s concerns are still seen as a joke.

When Margaret Mitchell was elected in 1979 [30 years ago] women accounted for approximately 10% of elected MPs. Today that number has risen to approximately 21% that is an abysmal amount of representation and a sad commentary on the last 30 years.

This year as you remember and mourn the loss of 14 of our sisters remember also the words of Joe Hill; Don’t Mourn, Organize!

Help Equal Voice to get more women elected, fight for strong gun control, support women’s reproductive choice, donate to a local shelter, help a woman or a young girl learn tech skills or use those skills to help others.

In the words of Emma Goldman;
“No real social change has ever been brought about without a revolution… revolution is but thought carried into action.”

Happy SWAN Day!

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SWAN Day (Support Women Artists Now Day) is a new international holiday that
celebrates women artists. It will be an annual event taking place on the last Saturday of Women’s History Month (March). The first SWAN Day will take place on Saturday, March 29, 2008

As a symbol of international solidarity, over 100 SWAN Day events have been scheduled
around the world.

SWAN Day is an opportunity to bring attention, support and with any luck lucre, to female artists.

In this video Sandra Oh talks about being inspired by Björk.

Sandra’s words capture the true spirit of SWAN Day. We believe that women artists have always inspired and helped each other, and we want to celebrate the power of that mutual support on SWAN Day and every day.

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Merchandise with SWAN related art is also available at Cafè Press, such as this one titled Tune in to Women.

Of course we have a tendency to think of art as something one sees at museums and in galleries. Women’s art is important in historical perspectives not necessarily because you are likely to find it hanging the Louvre, but because of the importance it played in daily life.

Arts such as quilting, pot throwing,bread making, may seem to some lowly in comparison. These were the arts, however, that kept people fed, and clothed and warm and at the same time provided comfort and beauty.

Here is a website (background makes it a little hard to read) which has various links to fair trade options to buy women’s art and support families and communities.

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Happy SWAN Day!

December 6th

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Every year it breaks my heart to watch as 14 roses pile up in remembrance of the horror of December 6, 1989.

In the face of such an atrocity one can only hope that lessons will be learned. Unfortunately, it seems that few have paid attention.

Women are still being killed simply for being women, for asserting their rights, or simply for being there. Women’s shelters are still full and daily women face abuses and the possibility of death.

It is often difficult, especially in light of such tragedies, to make those privileged enough not to have to deal with the daily issues see how ‘small’ things contribute to the larger picture.

When you allow words as weapons (calling women cunts, throw like a girl, etc), when you excuse sexist behaviour, when you smear an MP because she calls someone on an act that would not be allowed in any other workplace, when commercials that talk about how “boys are just built different” no icky girls allowed, when these things passed unremarked the message that girls are somehow ‘less than’ is ingrained.

The women cut down in the act of terror committed that day deserve better.

Lest we forget

Dec 6

Our Glorious Dead

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In times of war we are called upon to honour our glorious dead. Our Glorious Dead

Indeed the memory of the fallen is used to raise our collective patriotic ire at anyone who does not support any military action. This has become known colloquially as “not supporting the troops.”

It does not matter if the cause they were fighting is just. If the people they killed were innocent. If the war they fought a sham. Honour must be paid.

Compare this to the all too common occurrence of women being killed by partners or strangers. Too often in both courts of justice and courts of opinion these women’s memories are not honoured but desecrated.

Excuses are made, she provoked him, she was dressed or acted provocatively or was a sex worker, she was out alone at night, she was the violent one. [Read more…] about Our Glorious Dead

“Well, you’re not going to solve the problem if you even refuse to say what it is.”

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War on WomenThe Star carried this article yesterday about The War on Women: Elly Armour, Jane Hursham, and Criminal Domestic Violence in Canadian Homes, by Brian Vallée.

Stephen Lewis wrote an impassioned foreword for the book, urging the creation of a fully funded United Nations international agency for women that would provide “a tremendous force for advocacy and intervention” and would “inevitably move toward the recognition that domestic violence is its own holocaust….We’re not just fighting for women’s human rights; we’re fighting for women’s lives.”

[Read more…] about “Well, you’re not going to solve the problem if you even refuse to say what it is.”

How Harper celebrated Women’s History Month

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As we near the end of Women’s History Month it is time to pause and reflect on the way our ignoble PM celebrated with us.

Red Jenny tells us of a new bill

The Harper government yesterday introduced legislation requiring all voters – including veiled Muslim women – to show their faces before being allowed to cast ballots in federal elections.

A Creative Revolution informs us of his support for women in the north

The Status of Women cuts that the UnReal women of Canada so lauded and cheered about like a bunch of mindless maroons, the ones that killed NAWL funding, have had an even harsher effect in the real great white north.

Women in the Yukon are 2.9 times more likely to experience sexual abuse, or be killed by a spouse than women in other parts of Canada. The Organizations that seek to help them are being forced to scramble for alternate funds through bake sales and garage sales.

Mere days before WHM we saw the passing of National Association of Women and the Law

Close Harper friend and advisor Tom Flanagan speaks;

Flanagan calls funding cuts to Status of Women Canada and the elimination of the Court Challenges Program a “nice step,” asserting without equivocation that Conservatives will “defund” all equality-seeking groups – with feminists at the top of the list. He goes further, clarifying that Conservatives also plan to choke-off these groups’ supposedly privileged access to government by, for example, denying “meetings with ministers.” But for strategic reasons, Flanagan notes, this will all happen incrementally. To avoid the perception of mean-spirited retribution, he says, “incrementalism is the way to go.”

Avoid the perception yet not the reality.

And the PM Statement section? Still reads, “forthcoming”.

Of course Harper is proving that actions do speak louder than words.

That’s ok Stevie we’re not waiting for your call…we’re just not that into you.