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December 13, 2014

Rinelle Harper spoke publicly at the Assembly of First Nations last Tuesday: “As a survivor, I respectfully challenge you all to call for a national inquiry into missing and murdered indigenous women.” Also this week, the Legal Strategy Coalition on Violence Against Indigenous Women released preliminary research into the existing reports of murdered and missing Indigenous women, which provides further motivation for a national inquiry and informed and coordinated action.

A long list of awful abuses perpetrated by the CIA involved in an “enhanced interrogation” program after 9/11 attacks was released this week. While processing this information, many are remembering Alyssa Peterson—the U.S soldier who committed suicide after she refused to participate in torture—and recalling the imprisonment of John Kiriakou—the man who spoke out about the CIA and torture, and was later jailed.

In light of the decisions to not indict the police officers who killed Eric Garner in New York and Michael Brown in Ferguson, responses to these violent injustices (among many, many others) are growing in power and numbers. Some important pieces this week include:
- Robin at Crunk Feminist Collective’s piece “Waiting to Exhale,” where she asks, amidst the violence, injustice, and oppression: “How long can you hold your breath?”
- Evette Dion at Bustle’s reminder: Police Kill Black Women All The Time, Too—We Just Don’t Hear About it
- Jarrett Martineau’s discussion of violent resistance, Frantz Fanon, and Glen Sean Coulthard’s Red Skins White Masks: “From Fanon to Ferguson to the Unist’ot’en, Black and Indigenous struggles for freedom across the colonized lands of Turtle Island will be won in combat against the spectacle of a society losing control of its contradictions.”

Be sure to read Tanzina Vega’s NYT piece, “Discipline for Girls Differs by Race and Hue,” where Vega reveals the unfair treatment of black girls in Georgia, a state where a black girl is five times more likely to be suspended than her white classmate:

There are different gender expectations for black girls compared with white girls, said Lance Hannon, a Villanova sociology professor who conducted the analysis. And, he said, there are different expectations within cross-sections of black girls. “When a darker-skinned African-American female acts up, there’s a certain concern about their boyish aggressiveness,” Dr. Hannon said, “that they don’t know their place as a female, as a woman.”

Beverly Johnson spoke out about being drugged by Bill Cosby and expressed solidarity with the women who motivated her to bravely tell her story now:

When I sat down to write my memoir in 2013, I pondered if I should include my Cosby experience. I didn’t want to get involved in a he-said/she-said situation. Now that other women have come forward with their nightmare stories, I join them.

Denise Balkissoon, Brenda Cossman, and Rachel Geise talked to Q’s guest host, Wab Kinew about sexual assault and shifting the conversation

Read Robyn Swirling’s brave response to recent conversations about remembering and not remembering the details surrounding sexual violence: “I don’t owe you any of these details. I have come to know that you won’t believe me unless I give you all of these details. And even then you probably won’t, if we’re being honest. Always one disclosed detail away from belief.”

Watch Malala Yousafzai accept the Nobel Peace Prize

The New Inquiry’s editor in chief Ayesha Siddiqi spoke to The Guardian about writing on the web and shaping discussions this week. Stop waiting for permission to write, says Siddiqi, and find your women:

Seek out and support, at all costs, women of color and put their testimony above all else. We have to go out of our way to support and value each other. Love is practice; you don’t gain expertise by never enacting it. Whether that’s liking a friend’s selfie, not withholding a compliment from another woman, or publicly supporting a woman who is being publicly piled on to. That just barely approaches equalising what we’re up against.

Anne Boyer wrote this incredible and powerful piece for TNI about the formal problem of associating the “I” with cancer, and the politics of the sororal death:

To write only of oneself, then, as Sontag suggested, might be to write not of death, but a type of death—or of a kind of death-like state to which no politics, no action, no larger history might be admitted. Breast cancer’s industrial etiology, its misogynist and racist medical history, capitalist medicine’s incredible machine of profit, and the unequal distribution by class of suffering and death are omitted from breast cancer’s now common narrative form. But to write of death is to write of everyone, or as Lorde wrote, “I carry tattooed upon my heart a list of names of women who did not survive, and there is a space left for one more, my own.”

We’re pretty excited about new fashion and lifestyle magazine Pink Noise, self-described as “your smart, sex positive antidote to the traditional home journal, serving you highbrow with lowbrow (and discourse about eyebrows).” Check out their feminist art roundup, their piece on self harm and abortion in Atlantic Canada, and all the wonderful spreads from issue one throughout their website. Well done, Pink Noise!

And we are also enjoying reading the latest issue of cléo journal, PARTY! Be sure to check their roundtable on ’90s teen party movies, their review of Election, and their interview with Sally Potter.

Now that it’s mid-December, you’re probably looking forward to consuming some culture this holiday, and maybe you’re even planning to kill some joy. We sure are. If you’re looking for help with those plans, listen to the latest episode of call your girlfriend, where hosts Ann Friedman and Aminatou Sow talk about the books, music, TV, and movies they loved this year.
And THEN: check out the Belle Jar’s Feminist Killjoy Gift Guide (featuring misandry bracelets, fuck the patriarchy banners, some sweet t-shirts and tote bags, and more!)
ALSO: listen to all of Bitch’s new feminist music roundup, because it’s great.
and FINALLY: check out this new web series by Aphrodite Kocieda: Black Feminist Blogger

National Post books editor, Emily M. Keeler called Marian Engel’s 1976 Bear, newly reissued this month, “The best Canadian novel of all time.” Yes, Keeler is referring to the novella where a woman has actual sex with a bear. And, having recently read the book ourselves, we’re convinced! Don’t miss the video!

Canada recently implemented Bill C-36, which pushes sex workers further into the shadows and increases risks associated with the work, particularly for street-level and trans sex workers. This Thursday December 17 marks the International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers, a day to commemorate and honour those lives lost to violence. Find out about events in your city here.