June 30, 2014
- Happy Pride, Toronto! Before you go out to celebrate, check out 18 dates to remember in Canadian LGBTIQ history, a visual essay on Toronto Pride, and a series of incredible photos from Pride Parades in San Francisco from 1984-1990.
- A landmark land claim case came to a close on Thursday: Tsilhoqotin Nation welcomed recognition of full Aboriginal title for this first time in Canadian history on Thursday. Also this week, Vancouver municipal representatives unanimously voted to publicly acknowledge that the city is “founded on the traditional territories of the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh First Nations and that these territories were never ceded through treaty, war or surrender.” These are both incredibly important decisions: officially acknowledging that most of B.C’s land is subject to Aboriginal title (and not subject to treaties) could significantly alter the way forestry and mining companies engage with Aboriginal communities and maybe even derail, as many have pointed out, the construction of the Northern Gateway Pipeline.
- Canada’s first private, secular, non-profit university, Quest, is known for its progressive politics and teaching styles. Turns out, however, that the institution is not adequately addressing accusations of sexual assault. Read Katie Baker’s piece on how Quest is failing to handle sexual consent. Also, if you missed our series on rape culture in the academy, check that out too.
- Peter MacKay recently voiced his opinions about the role of mother and fathers in his leaked staff email messages, and this week he said more women need to apply to be judges (thereby justifying the lack of women judges on the bench). What message will he send to women next? Gender Focus has a bingo card for that.
- This is a comic about Canadian Marxist feminist labour history. You’re welcome.
- “I’d watched enough National Geographic specials on group predation to know that deadly animals often hunt in packs. A few days later, I gave Melinda my answer. ‘Hyenas, wild dogs, lions—they’re all social carnivores,’ I told her. ‘Even leopards—I mean, they’re incredibly fast, but they rely on teamwork to survive.’ Kathleen Hale speaks about her sexual assault and her obsession with predatory animals in her incredible piece, “Prey.“
- Robin Thicke, the man who once said he enjoys trying on misogyny, has released yet another troubling video for his latest summer hit. The Belle Jar explains how Thicke embodies the dynamics of domestic abuse in “Get Her Back”– a video that features a woman drowning, a threatening hand-gun, and text messages taken from real exchanges between Thicke and his ex-wife, Paula Patton. To remedy the anger, frustration, and disgust this video will surely evoke, we recommend that you also revisit our favourite response videos to Thicke’s Blurred Lines, Ask First. A year later, it’s still wonderful.
- “Kushner’s novel, in many ways, is about men talking and making art, and about the ways that women experience men’s art, or become the object of it,” says Natasha Lewis of Rachel Kushner’s The Flamethrowers. Read the rest of her recent Dissent piece “Women and Other Art Objects.”
- “Unless our political revolutions are accompanied by social and sexual revolutions that take them across the doorstep into our homes, our political revolutions will fail.” Read Egyptian writer and activist Mona Eltahawy’s piece on the need to politicize social relations and gendered discrimination in Egypt.
- “A great many cis people experience gender dysphoria to some degree, and a great many women, in particular, experience the socially-imposed category of “womanhood” as oppressive. I’m one of them, and that’s why I believe trans rights are so important to feminism – and why it’s so dispiriting that some feminists have been actively fighting the inclusion of trans people in anti-patriarchal and LGBT politics. The notion that biology is not destiny has always been at the heart of radical feminism. Trans activists and feminists should be natural allies.” This from Laurie Penny’s kickass piece, “What the ‘transgender tipping point’ really means.”