Merry Elexmas!

aack! who wants to wake up and find this smug mug in their mailbox?
Watch out fellow atlanticanadians; he's coming for you first!

hollaback girl

I just discovered this great blog by a NYC gal, named Lauren. She's asking women to submit cell-phone pix of the guys who harass them on the street on a daily basis.

Here's one snippet, submitted by an Emily. Makes me think of Stacy and I at Bloor and Crawford, Stace throwing down her bike and calling out the Coffee Time porch monkeys who are too chickenshit to follow up on their innuendo. Hollaback!

"The other day, riding my bike through Chelsea, I was slowly riding through a crosswalk when one of the guys waiting to cross felt the need to tell me I had nice tits. I turned my bike right around and started riding towards him, and he took off running down the street as fast as he could, like a little baby. I chased him for almost a full block, hoping to fully instill the fear of the hollaback girl in him. Not so tough now, huh asshole?"

[see http://hollabacknyc.blogspot.com/ or click heading]

purloined pictures...

I scooped these photo-shopped pix from Rick Mercer's blog: Chretien with the Cash; Liberals under the bed.

yet another woman killed by former partner

In the news this week is the story of an Ontario doctor (who will remain nameless) who killed a nurse who was a former girlfriend (who will remain, and always was, nameless).
I can't believe Canada is adding yet another woman to this year's death toll of domestic violence. What am I supposed to do with this official policy of complacency towards sexual, gendered, violence? Most of the women I have read about this year, and last year, and the year before, who were PUBLICIZED as victims, had filed restraining orders, and taken legal action against their partners; but their actions are never taken seriously, rarely enforced, and the end result seems always to be a death sentence.

What does a woman have to do gain "protection"? In this recent case, the hospital concluded there wasn't sufficient evidence to take action against the doctor. In a cbc article, the hospital spokesman states: "Do we wish there might have been one more thing that could have happened that might have prevented it? The answer is yes." I see. So besides a restraining order, a court date (which was to happen in december), saying "I feel unsafe", and having escorts to and from her parking spot to the hospital, in order for the offical policy to finally accept her claims of personal fear, they needed just ONE MORE PROOF. Something small, perhaps only to be beaten, or raped; too bad he went straight for the kill, they missed their chance to "save" her.
Women shouldn't have to rely on this faulty, positivist system.
and yet, what are our other options? I don't see way out. The men's behaviour, the judicial system, the vicitmization of women: these are intersecting components, we can't address one without the other.

And I can't even begin to address the 500 missing abooriginal woman here... (and rising)

Women in this country are being failed on all counts
i don't know what i can do

Hold Still - how white is your pink?

my pal peter in toronto has devised two very clever zines that gloss ideas of race, gender, and class disparity and discrimination.
check out his link: http://www.riseandfalloftheelephantempire.com/library.htm
to read read his dialectical hilarity. I'm strongly in favour of his zines finding wide publication and being distributed in middle and high schools... yeow!

brazen beauty feminists

Maureen Dowd's article in the NY Times "What's a Modern Girl to Do?" is compelling. She hits all the major points, I agree with most of her musings. But WHY must she then qualify with this glam pose of her lugubriously vamping in the bar? Her shiny red hair set off by her even shiny-er, redder, shoes: "There's no place like home! " her picture seems to cry, "But I can also run the boardroom".
Well that's great. Good thing you've shown us you are beautiful, I'll listen more carefully now.

Read and see her at:
www.nytimes.com/2005/10/30/magazine/30feminism.html