Why I Fight (the trolls)

I spent this weekend high on painkillers while trying to pass a kidney stone, arguing with strangers on the internet. This may seem like the least productive weekend a PhD student could possibly have - I didn't get a scrap of my own reading done! So, why on earth did I spend all this time in a vortex of hundreds of comments?

The first thread of comments I engaged with was an argument with a man who saw himself as qualified to give safety advice to women. At the outset, I responded assuming that he meant well, but that his privilege was showing prominently. As the thread went on, it became clear that he did not care so much about our safety but about his apparent right to be right - even, in one astounding comment, asserting that a black friend cannot possibly be a black woman, but is merely saying so for rhetorical purposes. Feminists can play that game for as long as misogynists can, and we did. Hours of back-and-forth commenting later (I have never been called a liar quite so many times, in quite so irrational a manner), he left, and I vowed to leave the group.

Then another thread popped up.

The UBC Take Back the Night March had, reportedly, some issues with including trans* folks. That was apparent from the event page itself - the wording was problematic in the way that revealed that organizers likely saw trans women as something other than, well, women. At the very least, it was clear that they hadn't done their homework, and that making a safe space was not a priority for this event. I didn't attend the actual march, but one attendee posted voicing her disappointment with the way trans* voices were silenced. I cannot comment on what was or was not said at the march itself; the commenting maelstrom that followed was, to say the least, everything but inclusive.

At issue here was the inclusion of a group called Vancouver Rape Relief in the rally. VRR has a problematic legal history of having excluded Kimberley Nixon, a trans woman, from their volunteer training group on the basis of her trans history. Their own website makes their position on the case clear. After a lengthy legal battle, the courts decided that VRR could legally decide who was and who was not a woman for the purpose of their peer counselling programs.

As a cis feminist who is absolutely committed to equity and justice for all women, I am appalled at their implication to decide who is and who is not a woman. Their decision to exclude Nixon from their work indicates that she was not enough of a woman for their purposes. This sentiment is not something that was simply buried; it is not a small fragment of VRR's history. This is something that came out, repeatedly, in the comment thread I was arguing in over the weekend. Several commenters claimed that including trans women as volunteers would undermine their peer counselling approach, because it was based on having a common experience, from birth, as women.

This idea of a common women's experience is what I particularly wish to address, now that I am not (kidney) stoned.

As a white, middle-class cis woman, raised in a feminist household, I would never presume that I shared a common girlhood with women who did not have the privilege of food security, a stable home, not being subject to racism, and being embraced as a girl from the day I was born. I don't remember ever being told by my family that I couldn't do something because I was a girl - those sentiments were new to me when I went to school. When I briefly aspired to be a pro baseball player, my family signed me up for preschool t-ball in the park. My t-ball failures had nothing to do with being a girl, or social prejudices, and everything to do with poor hand-eye coordination (something I still lack). I honestly do not remember being faced with sexism until I was nearing puberty. The other privileges I was born into diluted the privilege I did not have. Layers of privilege inform how and when women experience sexism. It is far from purely a function of how doctors judge what we have between our legs as infants.

The other point that commenters brought up was that of reproduction and relationships. To many of them, a common women's experience consisted of dreaming of weddings from a young age, or fantasizing about what to name our children. Anyone who has read this far will probably realize that - shock! - neither of those experiences have anything to do with being cis. I can say that from a young age, the idea of a wedding filled me with trepidation, rather than girlish dreaminess; even before I had a word for "lesbian," I imagined myself marrying a woman and I knew, somehow, that this would mark me as different. As I grew older, I learned that I could not legally marry - and that stung.

As for reproduction, well, not all cis women experience childbirth. Experiences of pregnancy intersect with those of abuse for some, but not all, cis women. No, a trans woman would not have the experience of growing a baby inside her uterus - but is that really the marker of womanhood? The millions of women who are not mothers, or who are mothers but do not give birth to their children, would likely disagree. Cis privilege lets cis women claim ownership over experiences such as motherhood - but they are not universally ours, and they are not exclusively ours. Women experience motherhood in myriad ways.

So, hopefully I have made a solid position for how I believe that cis women and trans women are all women, are all equally women, and can be peers - just as much as, say, women of different sexual orientations could be peers. I do wonder how the VRR supporters in the thread would have responded if someone had substituted the word "trans" for "lesbian" and "cis" for "straight" in their comments.

So, why do I fight if it is inflammatory? Well, I am fighting precisely because it is inflammatory. In fighting, I am trying to build fires, rather than extinguish them. Before I face a comment wall accusing me of arson, I should point out that these are metaphoric fires - and in this metaphor, fires are a good thing. Bear with me.

This is inspired by Khelsilem Rivers' metaphor of decolonization as the regeneration that happens in a forest fire. Persuading VRR to rethink their policies is not decolonization, but it is regeneration, and it is change. With leaves burnt off and trunks laid bare, we can see the fundamental similarities that unite us as human beings, rather than the cultural meaning that we have attached to various aspects of our bodies. Fire is also a source of community; it allows people to come together, to have dialogue, and to heal.

I engaged with these commenters because they are people who care, passionately, about eradicating violence against women. I hope they can begin to fight for the rights of all women, and fully include all women, rather than just those they feel they can relate to the best. I argued because we are all survivors, and we are all afraid, and often in pain from that. Not all of these women are trolls, even though some of them were awfully abusive to the trans* folks in the thread. They were arguing to defend an organization that quite possibly saved their lives. As a survivor, I respect their fear. Some of these women participated in other threads that denied rape culture, and we were a united front. I hope one day to see them defending trans women as vigorously and passionately as they'll defend cis women.

It takes a long time for sparks to ignite a pile of soggy wood, but when we are cold, it is worth it. I hope the dozen or so of us who kept commenting have inspired at least some thought, some reconsideration, from other women on the thread. After a few days of arguing, I am out of matches - but if I have to, I'll whittle another one.

A "shameful" protest?

Today, this article came out to denigrate and shame UBC's Take Back the Night march.
Arno Rosenfeld, the author of the piece, writes, "But here’s what the activists decrying the RCMP and colonialism are missing: these assaults aren’t about rape culture or colonialism, nor are the RCMP or the university doing anything wrong. The RCMP aren’t victim-blaming by telling students not to walk alone. They are offering sound advice about how to stay safe at night."


I am nothing short of appalled by his statements. Rape is about rape culture. Rape culture is about rape. For a person of privilege to claim that it not about rape culture, or not about colonialism, is terribly inappropriate - colonialism and misogyny intersect and cannot be pried apart, thus colonialism is implicated in insidious ways. Just because they are not immediately apparent on the surface does not mean that they are there.

The problem, for me, with this march, was that Vancouver Rape Relief, an organization known for its discrimination against trans women, has been allowed to take such a prominent role. At present, there are 450 comments on a Facebook thread, which has women insisting that they are not transphobic yet defending an organization's idea of "women-only space" that excludes trans women. The event page has been entirely unmoderated, and the hate that has appeared there is astounding. Seeing the Take Back the Night event page on Facebook explode into a triggering platform for misogynist (including transmisogynist) trolls is disturbing. So yes, this march was problematic, and I am very concerned about its organization. However, it was thrown together by a handful of students who wanted to make an immediate response to a very pressing event. I'll forgive its inadequacies if these organizers learn from their mistakes and do better next time, particularly as the transphobic comments come from Vancouver Rape Relief supporters/volunteers/staff who were not necessarily affiliated with the march (their intensely problematic statements are another post for another day).

Shame, however? To tell survivors that their protest is shameful is putting salt in a wound. This march had issues, and there is an awful lot of work to be done. I am not ready to applaud the organizers for their work. But please, do not call women's activist work surrounding work "shameful." We have enough internalized shame to cope with, and we certainly do not need more. Shame on this culture, not the survivors who speak out against it.

Musings on the TRC

What does it mean to be a witness? To observe, and also have survived? The Truth and Reconciliation Commission BC National Event opened entire vats of worms in my mind. I volunteered at the events as a settler, born into colonial complicity with a VIP pass in my pale, freckled skin. And yet I felt echoes of my own survival that seeped through me all week, on the brink of triggering me. While not in my case coloured by colonialism, I know so well how it feels to lose parts of one's youth, innocence, and control, and to have school become a place of fear.

I was lucky. Privilege meant that home was a haven I could always return to. For residential school survivors, home was an elusive dream.

Two stories stood out this week, for me. A middle-aged white woman came to submit a report to the booth I was volunteering at while the staff member was on her lunch break. This woman sat down beside me to share that she had passed away at residential school as a child and was now reincarnated and on a spiritual quest to find her own grave. She had no identifying information to guide us, but an hour of intense emotions to share. I am skeptical of the spirituality of a white woman who uses such a space to air her fears. This space is not for her, not for me, but for the survivors, who experience ongoing pain from their lived experiences of this particular trauma. I listened, not wanting to dismiss a stranger in need, but it seems to me like an appropriation, taking me away from survivors looking to gain closure from the event.

Afterward, I shared my unease with a few friends, also history graduate students. Generally, they felt that the process was meant to heal all of us - colonizers and colonized. That her whiteness does not negate her need for support. But that's at odds with some of the Indigenous activists who attended the TRC, often expressing anger that settlers have been using this space to heal at a time when many Indigenous peoples are not yet ready. I would rather see people like myself being troubled at such an event, rather than healed. Yes, it is a space for mutual sharing, but it is unconscionable that a settler should have a voice here at the expense of a survivor. I fear that it is doubly violating for a bystander to claim a survivor's pain as her own.

When I listen to someone in need, I listen fully, multisensorily. For an hour or so, I did not look up as this woman shared her spiritual visions. I tried to respond with empathy rather than skepticism. And I cannot shake the blurred image of an elder, a survivor, unheard and standing behind or beside me, waiting for a turn to share or for some answers. I don't know if anyone was there waiting, or if her sharing took away someone's opportunity for closure. I'll never know. This troubles me.

I am finding some peace in the words of one friend, who remarked that this woman's very actions shows the potency of colonialism; whether spiritual or delusional, it is significant that this woman's thoughts congealed around the particular issue and trauma of residential schools. Appropriative or not, this is something that needed to be heard. But, perhaps not then, there, in that venue. I would take less issue if she published it on the internet, where there is almost infinite space for voices to echo, heard or silent. Or even in a letter, that the TRC could read on its own time. But not in an arena, full of survivors doing challenging healing work.

This need to be heard in an appropriate--not appropriative--space is one reason why I blog. We all need to be heard, perhaps especially about the things that polite society would see as too personal or shameful for the internet. Here, I am heard. But what do I do when the tables are turned, when it is my turn to hear? How does one bear witness, then process internally? I have learned to handle my own pain, gently, and knead it into something that I can cope with. The far larger suffering of others remains a challenge.

One man approached me at the TRC, just wanting to talk. Perhaps my volunteer t-shirt was an invitation, or that I was sitting alone at a picnic table on a lunch break. Perhaps he'd seen me earlier in the day at the booth I was volunteering at, talking to other survivors. This man was upset that he did not feel ready to make an official statement, yet still wanted--or needed--to share the horrors and shame he had lived through. So I listened, before directing him to more qualified emotional support. I will not write down nor verbally divulge what he told me; suffice to say that the abuses he faced are the stuff of nightmares. Even in the context of this event, what he shared was shocking.

This man's story was too big to grasp. The word "I" is powerful, too painful to situate in a sentence that recalls such cruelty. And perhaps that is why he spoke in the second person. You saw. You heard. You felt. You. Now I am holding the slivers from the shrapnel of his pain, distorted yet implanted inside me with his word "you." And though his experiences are not my own, the perpetual ghosts of hands on my body are something I, too, have felt. The pronouns he used pierced into me, and now I am cradling something that is, a week later, still undulating and unexplainable, a sort of tumour that has eclipsed my capacity for words. And yet, to excise this, to share it or bury it, would dishonour his courage in sharing. And yet, my own pain feels fraudulent, appropriative. I try to empathize with the pain of survivors by feeling in the dark for bridges between what we have survived, yet there is a depth that I simply cannot understand fully.

I know better than to dive into these depths, bring up algae-covered memories and scrape them raw in a search for my own understanding. I know better than to drain or dam a lake. Reconciliation seems daunting; it seems like a process for the settler, and not the survivor. What I am wondering now, I suppose, is whether non-Indigenous Canadians can ever be more than an invasive species in this land. Some may be zebra mussels, slicing feet and causing immobilizing pain. Others, perhaps, are bougainvillea; a parade of colourful umbrellas marching through the rain, cheerful hues and singing masking the potential for suffocation.

How do we navigate past this bottleneck, this paralyzed and paralyzing interstice of privilege and pain?

Survivor-friendly feminist spaces

I've seen tips on the internet lately for how feminist spaces can be made safer for people of various backgrounds/experiences/social locations/identities. As a survivor of sexual assault, I've had several experiences in feminist spaces where I felt silenced because of my experiences, or where I was triggered in a space that was meant to be safe. So here goes...a potentially growing list of dos and don'ts, written with the assumption of an audience who already has (loosely defined) feminist values. The "feminist spaces" I am talking about here includes discussion groups, events, committee meetings...a range of things.

"Safe Space" is a tricky concept. As one survivor reminded me when I asked for input for this post, for some of us, there is no such thing as a truly safe space. For this reason, we are talking here about "safer" rather than "safe" spaces, and recognizing that there can be a continuum.

Tips for creating survivor-friendly feminist spaces:

- Include trigger warnings/content warnings when advertising events.
To arrive at a meeting, for example, to learn that discussing a rape prevention initiative is on the agenda can be overwhelming for some survivors. Wherever possible, make sure that potential attendees know about the plans for a meeting, the content of a film screening, and so forth. At some meetings, it may be helpful to sandwich such discussions between breaks; this gives people who would prefer not to be involved in such discussions the option of stepping out more easily, then rejoin the meeting for parts that don't contain potential triggers. Remember that, for some survivors, just discussing sexual assault can be triggering, even if there are no graphic details whatsoever.

- Recognize that anybody can be a survivor.
Women, men, genderqueer folk, and people who identify in other ways are survivors. Assuming that only the cis women in your group are survivors silences many other individuals [partly for this reason, I am using a gender-neutral singular "they" as a pronoun to describe survivors of all gender identities throughout this blog post]. Survivors may be privileged or marginalized in a wide variety of other ways. Sexual violence is a marginalizing experience, so someone who is privileged in other respects may feel extremely marginalized by their experiences. This doesn't mean that survivors shouldn't have to check our own privileges - just that it is another dimension of privilege of which everyone should be aware.

- Never assume that a survivor is comfortable talking about their experiences.
Personally, I write quite willingly and regularly about sexual assault, though very rarely about my own experiences in any detail. I have difficulty, however, speaking about it in front of other people. Just because somebody is an activist and is somewhat open about being a survivor does not mean that they want to discuss it. For some survivors, it is easier to communicate in writing, and/or; if you're looking for input from survivors, allow us the option of contributing to a discussion in alternative ways. Many survivors will not be comfortable with other people knowing that they have survived sexual assault, and nobody should be forced to disclose whether or not they are a survivor.

- Consider having a physical space where survivors can go to take a break from a main event.
Many feminist groups have limited space available. Often, a main meeting space is designated as "safe space" and operates as a safe space quite effectively. However, there are survivors who may become triggered by posters (for example, "No Means No" campaign posters - even when the overall aim of these images is positive, it can still be overwhelming to be faced with posters, books, pamphlets, and stickers with statistics and images about something that is traumatic) and media in some rooms. If you have the resources, offering a second break-away room can be invaluable. Other possibilities include having seating in your meeting space where a survivor would not directly face posters or other media about sexual assault. 

- Remember that women, even feminist women, can perpetrate sexual assault.
This means that even in a designated safe space, people may not feel entirely safe. Being told that we are in a safe space even if we don't feel that way can be demeaning. Recognize that members of your group, of all genders, could have unchecked privilege surrounding sexual violence.

- Know that not all survivors feel that they have really "survived" and that many of us are working through difficult parts in our healing.
I use "survivor" to refer to any person, of any gender, who has experienced sexual assault. It is not perfect, but it will have to do for now, for lack of another word that is not clinical or demeaning. Not everyone is comfortable with that vocabulary - if someone prefers to refer to themself as a victim, that is their right. Allow people to name their own experiences. Remember as well that being present at a feminist event and intellectually knowing that sexual assault is not the fault of the survivor does not mean that said survivor emotionally does not carry grief or shame with them. For some, "survivor" may be an identity or status; for others, it is not.

- Allow survivors to take the lead on issues surrounding sexual violence, if and when they are comfortable.
If you are someone without lived experience of sexual assault, and you lead a feminist group, consider inviting survivors to take the lead on survivor-related campaigns you run, to the extent that they are comfortable doing so. Never push a survivor to lead an initiative - it is too draining for many people to be that involved with their own trauma.

- Check in with people before, during, and after events.
You don't know what history people bring to your group/event/space. Offering the opportunity to check in, as part of a group and individually with a facilitator, can mean the world to survivors who feel uncomfortable.

- Consider how other elements of privilege and marginalization affect a survivor's experiences.
Violence can, and often does, intersect with any and all elements of a survivor's life. This goes for gender, race, and sexual orientation, but also for less obvious manifestations of power. A survivor who is poor might not be able to afford the self-care that is often suggested for them. Many survivors feel unsafe in spaces that police fat or disabled bodies. These intersections are very often invisible, so for an anti-oppressive space, it is important to be aware of all forms of oppression that can affect survivors, and make a safe space free from racist, classist, able-ist, fat-phobic, heterosexist, and other oppressive comments.

- Recognize that violence is not abstract for us.
Someone who has not experienced violence might be able to talk about it in a detached, political or academic way. It is personal. Melissa McEwan on Shakesville says, "It is unfair to ask a woman to leave aside her personal experience and discuss feminist issues in the abstract. You are discussing the stuff of her life. Asking her to "not make it personal" is to ask her to wrench her womanhood from her personhood. Don't play Devil's advocate. Seriously. Just don't." This is the case for survivors. Some of us can leave our personal experiences aside, and some of us cannot - but how we use those experiences is entirely up to us, as individuals.

Other things to remember:
- Our feminist values may or may not be linked to our experiences as a survivor.
- Our experiences as survivors are unique; please avoid comparing one survivor's experiences with another.
- Everyone has the potential to experience sexual violence.

Please help to build and refine this list - please let me know if you have additions, suggestions, etc.

Privilege and Protests: A Reflection

I am unsure whether to post this, as it likely reeks considerably of privilege. But this blog is a place for my thoughts and voice - so I post with the caveat that I realize that I am on unceded land; I am middle class; I am white, educated, stably housed. At the same time, I am still a survivor. I post tonight as a mix of all of these parts of myself and my experiences.

I went to the Women's Memorial March today in Vancouver's Downtown East Side. For those who aren't familiar with it, the DTES is known as "Canada's Poorest Postal Code" and is quite a dangerous place for women, yet also a vibrant community with a completely different style from the rest of the city. It's more than just rough around the edges; for those of us who are used to a more privileged life, it's uncomfortable. As one woman, Betsey Turtle Bruyere, says in her video, "Be uncomfortable. But listen. Learn. No apologies here."

This was my first time participating in this march, and I had been expecting something more similar to the Take Back the Night marches I'd participated in in Toronto and London. The Toronto march takes place in a different low-income community each year, so that women from across the city have a chance to reclaim their streets. London's march is more centralized and less grassroots in its feel, and has more conflict between the "women's bodies not for sale" and the "sex workers' rights" chants. Toronto's march is overwhelmingly in favour of sex workers' rights, as was today's march in Vancouver.

I hung towards the back of the march with some friends. Partly this was unintentional as it was just where we happened to be when people started marching; however, I didn't feel it would be appropriate for me to rush to the front of the march and lead chants the way I would in another setting. I live outside this community, and I have a level of safety that the women who organized the march do not have. We are marching to honour women who have gone missing, and who have been murdered. Even though I am a survivor of violence as well, my experiences are starkly different from those of Vancouver's missing women. I don't mean in terms of the violence we experienced, as I don't believe in a hierarchy of whose experience is more horrifying. But there is a key difference in that I did survive. I am here. I have privilege through that. Privilege over those who did not survive what happened to them, and yet, I don't have the privilege of having not had to survive. Perhaps that is a right, not a privilege. But I digress.

After my friends left the march to go to various other commitments they had, I started to get a bit emotional; without friends to distract me, the realities behind the march sunk in. It was cold and gloomy, and I began to hurt a bit; I can't quite describe it. I had a card in my pocket that a woman gave me earlier in the march: 

"You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You are able to say to yourself, "I lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along." You must do the thing you think you cannot do."

At this point women were singing a First Nations drum song; I know little about this music and don't honestly know if it would have been appropriate for me to join the singing, as a white person, so I kept silent. At the same time, the card in my pocket made me feel like I belonged, to some extent. Not as part of the DTES community, but to an acknowledgement of women's survival. This is getting very sappy, but that's how I felt it at the moment. I don't belong in that circle of women, but they were willing to let people in from the outside without asking questions, and to give us cards to affirm our ability to survive as well. Would there be the same crossover at events regarding violence against women outside the Downtown East Side? The card for me was a grounding object for the last part of my time there, and one that I needed very much; it's something I will hold on to. I don't know the woman who was distributing those cards, but I wish I could thank her for giving those affirmations to those of us who wanted them.

I think about privilege a fair bit, in both my academic work and my day-to-day life. It's something that troubles me, as I have a lot of privilege on many levels. In the circles that I move in, the more marginalized parts of my identity aren't even particularly marginal. So privilege is always an undercurrent. It rarely hits me quite the way it did today, however.

After feeling uncomfortable (not to mention that I was getting cold and hungry!) for about 15 minutes after my friends left, I decided to head off even though the march was still going on.  As I do every so often when I'm feeling a bit emotionally unsteady, I headed for the nearest wool shop to admire yarn. This particular one was warm and colourful, and had the added benefit of a friendly cat. I got to chatting with the owner, since I really felt that I needed some human connection to stay stable. Turned out that I didn't get what I needed there...this particular woman was quite opposed to such a march happening. It was slowing down the buses in front of her store, and besides, if women didn't want to get murdered, they shouldn't be out on the streets like that, should they? I asked her further what her thoughts were on the area; after all, the people in the DTES have been there for a lot longer than her shop has. Those people are bad for business. They have markets - of used goods, you know, not the sort of thing my customers would buy. My customers don't feel comfortable walking through the area when they have their market. She spoke to me with the assumption that she'd found a sympathetic ear to her grievances. I was to stunned to respond, and left the shop without buying anything.

I don't share the views of this shopkeeper, of course. But I do have the same privileges she has. At the end of the march, I could find some sort of solace - however tenuous - in a local shop, and not have my presence in the area questioned or policed. I could go get coffee and soup to warm myself up. I could go home in the evening and navel-gaze on my blog in a safe space.

Women - united - we'll never be divided they chant at many marches. But is this true? The One Billion Rising campaign has many detractors among feminists - see, for example, Natalie Gyte at the Huffington Post and the multitude of comments on her post. There are problems with One Billion Rising, I'll concede that. But at the same time, what else do we have? It has momentum. The Women's Memorial March is publicized on the One Billion Rising webpage (notably, the publicity does not seem to run in the other direction, and I'd be interested in knowing what politics there are behind this). Yes, One Billion Rising is run by people with privilege, and that's problematic. But at the same time, is it fair to say which survivors can and cannot organize? Gyte criticizes the premise of healing by dancing - and yet, for many people, there is significant power in dancing. For me, there is so much power in dancing that I have trouble doing so. She criticizes the idea of "rising" - but if we don't rise, will we sink? Or stagnate? To me, "rise" in this context does not mean to pull oneself up by the bootstraps, but rather, to refuse to be silenced.

When they say to rise, I think of Maya Angelou:

You may write me down in history
With your bitter, twisted lies,
You may trod me in the very dirt
But still, like dust, I'll rise.

Does my sassiness upset you?
Why are you beset with gloom?
'Cause I walk like I've got oil wells
Pumping in my living room.

Just like moons and like suns,
With the certainty of tides,
Just like hopes springing high,
Still I'll rise.

Did you want to see me broken?
Bowed head and lowered eyes?
Shoulders falling down like teardrops.
Weakened by my soulful cries.

Does my haughtiness offend you?
Don't you take it awful hard
'Cause I laugh like I've got gold mines
Diggin' in my own back yard.

You may shoot me with your words,
You may cut me with your eyes,
You may kill me with your hatefulness,
But still, like air, I'll rise.

Does my sexiness upset you?
Does it come as a surprise
That I dance like I've got diamonds
At the meeting of my thighs?

Out of the huts of history's shame
I rise
Up from a past that's rooted in pain
I rise
I'm a black ocean, leaping and wide,
Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.
Leaving behind nights of terror and fear
I rise
Into a daybreak that's wondrously clear
I rise
Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,
I am the dream and the hope of the slave.
I rise
I rise
I rise.

Even when we protest, we are divided. Even for the privileged, it hurts. I want us all to rise together, to survive together - but I cannot fathom how.

Remember

Geneviève Bergeron
Hélène Colgan
Natalie Croteau
Barbara Daigneault
Anne-Marie Edward

Maud Haviernick
Barbara Maria Klueznick
Maryse Laganière
Maryse Leclair
Anne-Marie Lemay
Michelle Richard
Sonia Pelletier
Annie Saint-Arnault
Annie Turcotte

In the rising of the sun and its going down, we remember them.

In the bowing of the wind and in the chill of winter, we remember them.

In the opening of the buds and in the rebirth of spring, we remember them.

In the blueness of the skies and in the warmth of summer, we remember them.

In the rustling of the leaves and in the beauty of autumn, we remember them.

In the beginning of the year and when it ends, we remember them.

When we are weary and in need of strength, we remember them.

When we are lost and sick of heart, we remember them.

When we have joys and special celebrations we yearn to share, we remember them.

So long as we live, they too shall live, for they are a part of us. We remember them.

Twenty-three years ago, these women were shot in their university classroom by a man who blamed feminism for his personal failures. On one hand, things have changed dramatically for women in education since 1989. On the other hand, reading the comments on nearly any mainstream media article about the Montreal Massacre will show that the gunman's hatred of women and feminism is alive and well in 2012 (see, for example, this national post commentary on the need to keep holding vigils for the Montreal Massacre). This fall, people around the world were outraged by the shooting of 15-year-old Malala Yousafzai, a schoolgirl in Pakistan shot simply for daring to learn. We have a long ways to go.

Where to Draw the Line, or, Why I Hate Radio Buttons and Like Ticky Boxes

Today is the UN International Day of Persons with Disabilities. The Disabled Students Campaign in the United Kingdom is encouraging students to "come out" as people with disabilities in their Facebook statuses, and a few of my friends have done so. Awesome!

I thought about what to write in my status, and realized it would be a blog post rather than a 140-character snippet. The long and short of it is, I don't know whether to self-identify as a person with a disability, because of all the connotations associated with the word, and the fluidity of my own human experiences. Occasionally, surveys encourage me to self-identify as either having, or not having, a disability. I never know what box to check.

It's easy for me to identify with specific conditions. For example, I'm asthmatic. That's not up for debate. The Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act lists asthma as a disability. By their definition, I am a person with a disability. But is it that simple? I have asthma, and take three medications to keep it under control and to stay healthy. I can run ten kilometers; asthma doesn't stop me from attending school, having a job, getting around, and enjoying myself. Inconvenience? Certainly. But disability? For me, using that word to describe my chronic health concern trivializes the experiences of people who are marginalized because of differences in ability. I am inconvenienced, rather than marginalized, due to my asthma.

My vision makes this more complicated. Presently, I have a minor visual impairment. With glasses, I legally can drive, but cannot see some signage, writing on chalkboards, and so forth at the same distance that most people can. This level of vision is relatively new for me; for several years, I used magnification or large print or else contended with eye strain and painful headaches; I was unable to see the board in class; double vision made me even clumsier than I would otherwise be. I relied on Accessibility Services at my university to enable me to write tests and exams. There was a period in which I was legally blind, and the vision consultant with my school board worked with me to help me learn to navigate the school building. Large, colourful stickers helped me to find my locker, but I depended on other students to help me find my friends in a large room. Baffled teachers allowed me to listen to books on tape during class, rather than finding a way to make their lessons accessible. Looking back, it is obvious to me that, at that point, I had a disability. I never used that word, however. There was too much stigma attached to blindness, and so I shied away from calling myself blind. "Visually impaired" gave me more leeway to show people what I could do, before words would erroneously tell them what I could not do. Disability was also always something that happened to somebody else; using a word meant acknowledging that I was different from my peers.

Mental health has long been a complicated issue for me. I see my diagnoses of depression, anxiety, and post-traumatic stress disorder as labels that have helped me to get the medications that I need, rather than as an identity. Those labels, to me, describe perhaps a reaction to my past; my mental health is part of a general trajectory of my life. I frame it as troubled mental health, rather than mental illness. Illness implies that something is wrong, whereas I see my frame of mind as normal. I would be more concerned if I didn't react in the ways I do to challenging situations. Post-traumatic stress disorder has been useful to me as a label only to the extent that it has helped mental health professionals to understand my frame of mind with somewhat less talking on my part. Were it not for this pragmatic point, I would steadfastly refuse to let a psychiatric system pathologize my thoughts and feelings.

Doctors seem fixated on labels, with certain labels connoting disabilities, and others not. It is hard to find health professionals who will acknowledge and work within a middle ground. A psychiatrist once suggested that I may have Asperger disorder, putting me on the autism spectrum. I neither meet the diagnostic criteria for this disorder, nor do I find it a useful label for my lived experiences. The way I interact with others may occasionally be challenging, but it is not a disability. It is simply me. The possible labels for my physical/neurological health stymie me even more. This much is clear: I am a clumsy person, and am clumsier on the right side of my body than the left. I struggle with fatigue at times, as well as chronic back pain and odd neuropathic symptoms - burning, itching, tingling, and bizarre aching that comes and goes. Inconveniently, I have a single lesion in my brain that is consistent with demylination. But I don't meet the diagnostic criteria for anything in particular, and most of the time, I feel just fine. Sometimes, I would consider this to be a disability; there have been days when my right foot drags so much when I walk that I avoid stairs so as not to trip over myself, or when my balance is too poor to stand on the bus. But it's transient, and I am usually as "able" as the next person. Self-identifying as a person with a disability would not acknowledge, for me, these fluctuations in my ability. I find it more empowering and true to identify with the very specific health issues that I have written about, rather than with a monolithic label.

I am sure that many people would argue either that for me to identify as a person with a disability would be trivializing the experiences of people who have difficulties far greater than my own. Others would emphasize the need for people with invisible disabilities to recognize them as such, and show how varied the spectrum of ability is. But if ability is a spectrum, where do we place a line for who is, and who is not, disabled? Can it vary, person by person? Can it move? Need there be a line at all, if we acknowledge that disability is socially constructed and thus strive for a society that does not only accommodate, but celebrates, diversity?

Ultimately, there needs to be another ticky-box: "It's Complicated."

International Women's Day!

I posted on this a couple of years ago. But hey, it never gets old...at least, it won't until we have equal rights.  Happy IWD, friends and non-existent readers!

International women’s day is an important symbol of women’s rights. It is a validation of our existence and growing power – yet, at the same time, it is a recognition of the power we do not have but desperately need to have. It is also, increasingly, an expression of international solidarity, where women demonstrate the international connections in feminism and women’s issues, rather than just rallies and events held in enough countries to merit the label “international”

IWD is important for girls as well. Girls need to recognize their voices, and refuse to be subsumed into silence and the hypocritical realm of popular culture. As a student at a feminist school, IWD was recognized and celebrated, and the biggest event of the year. It took this celebration for granted. During my first year attending public high school, a male student repeatedly harassed me but I assumed that this was normal. The harassment had progressed into minor forms of sexual assault by International Women’s Day. My school didn’t recognize the day at all. I was one of few students who knew it existed. It felt like nobody cared, and that violence against girls at my school was assumed to be normal. I never told about the harassment and assault, because I thought that nobody would listen or care.

Thirty-six days later he brutally attacked me at school, and still it felt like nobody was listening. We need to recognize IWD so that we show girls that women matter. Feminism is normal. Violence is not.

Take Back the Night

http://www.trccmwar.ca/events/index.html

You all should come to this. It's an anti-violence women's march. Last year I missed it because I didn't know it was this early in the year, so I'm determined to make it this year (even though it's 2 hours away from me by bus!).

COME!!! This is something that's very important.

IWD!

here's an important holiday that not all that many people are hugely informed about. tomorrow (monday, march 8th) is international women's day.

women are doing better these days than we ever have. lots of people (especially men) claim that women are treated equally to men; that women are doing fine in the world. if you're one of those people, ask youself:

- why don't women in many places have the legal right to control their bodies? (ie. abortion)
- why are women still the ones on trial in sexual assault cases?
- why is the average wage for women still only 65% of the average male wage?
- why do women do 80% of the unpaid work in today's society?
- why do women starve themselves to become a size 8? (or smaller?)
- why are 78 american women are raped every hour?
- why is the average literacy rate for women lower in most countries than the average literacy rate for men?
- why do women in so many countries not have the right to vote?
- why are so many women forced into arranged marriages, often with men who are significantly older than they are?
- why do so many women and their babies die in undevelopped countries because there is no safe place for them to give birth?

the list goes on and on...

there's no fair answer to these questions. there's no reason why women shouldn't be completely equal to men in every way. international women's day is for shedding light on these sorts of issues.

even if you do nothing else, you can show your support for international women's day by wearing a purple ribbon. it doesn't have to be a special purple ribbon, just an ordinary one that's looped and pinned to your clothes. the purple ribbon is a recognized symbol of international women's day, as well as of interpersonal violence (not only against women, but also such things as police violence, child abuse, etc.). you can be proud to wear a ribbon to support these causes. i'm planning to.

if you want to do more, you could try organizing a peaceful march or protest or presentation. (key word being peaceful!!!). you could also try to raise awareness, maybe by putting up posters or making announcements. this whole week is international women's week. there's plenty of time to do something.

international women's day is in support of women. it is NOT against men. it isn't about women gaining more power than men; it is simply about women striving for complete equality.

it's about women having an equal voice and equal rights to men. it's about women having the right to make the choice about having an abortion. it's about women being legally represented in rape and sexual assault trials. it's about women getting the wages that they deserve; the same wages as a man who does the same thing that they do. it's about women having the right to say no, and have people listen to them. it's about women and girls in developping countries having the right to an education. it's about women being allowed to wear what they want, and talk to whomever they please.

international women's day (and week!) is about so much. we've come so far, and there's no reason why we can't go the rest of the way, especially if we all go together.

personally, i am very much a feminist. i went to a feminist school, which helped me to realize just how big an issue this is. i'm promoting international women's day this year in any way i can. but you dn't need to be a full-blown feminist to raise awareness to women's rights, or to support international women's day. all that you need is an open mind and a vision of the world as a place where ALL people are equal.

i hope you'll join me in supporting international women's day.