My aunt, whom I love to the depts of the oceans, spontaneously visited this weekend, along with my two little cousins (10 ish and 13 ish)
I hadn't showered and was distracted by the "should I put on a bra, but i'm in my own home, how much walking around will I be doing while they're here, I'm wearing a white tshirt, but there's big bold lettering, I love my breasts" going on in my head.
I digress..
We chatted, my cousin is doing horseback riding lessons (when I was her age, I understood horseback riding as only being for rich people) and I envy what she gets to be doing (she trick-or-treated on horseback!)
And then "cuz he's a white guy" came out. My aunt was letting me know the status of my uncles application to be an RCMP officer. After reading an article about the RCMP recruiting women, aboriginal people and people of colour, their conclusion was that he wasn't getting the job "cuz he's a white guy".
First, I should state that I distrust the RCMP completely. Recruiting strategies are bullshit until the agency itself does a major overhaul of its cultural practices, working approaches and serious work with the individuals who perpetuate hate within their ranks. The RCMP is so far down the racism rabbit hole, I'd much rather abolish the institution, but that's for a whole other post.
I think she must have been confused when I quikly responded with a sincere "a good!". I then tried to explain that these are just recruitment strategies, and rather meaningless for making the RCMP actually able to do its job (which is...) properly.
I wonder what this could have done for their perspective. Alas, this is where we're at.
"White people with white privilege, censoring any mention of white privilege, because they have the (white) privilege to do so. how predictable. and unoriginal." - Suzy Yim
Wednesday, November 10, 2010
Monday, November 1, 2010
40 days of city-sanctionned intimidation and harasment
“40 days for life” has once again set itself up on Bank Street in Ottawa, across the street from the Morgentaler abortion clinic. Anti-choice protesters are carrying signs that read things I’d rather not trigger readers with. Its sensationalistic, sexist, shame-based bullshit, ‘nuff said. For 40 straight days on Bank Street, an empty baby carriage is symbolically bungeed to a post. Pamphlets are distributed that spew out misinformation already debunked by countless reputable health organizations. Street counselors sent by the Helpers of Gods Precious Children intimidate, harass, and bully women as they enter the building. Catholic school groups travel from Peterborough to visit the “ground zero” site.
The 40 days for life is an anti-choice campaign, aimed at “saving the unborn” where “the most visible component is the prayer vigil outside the Abortion Mills in every participating city throughout the 40 days, 7 days a week, 24 hours a day.” While the measures of success are questionable, the organizers claim that “the results of the 40 Day Campaigns have been outstanding with hundreds of mother and their babies being rescued from despair and death.”
While this particular form of harassment and intimidation tries to target cis-gendered women, the same groups organizing and participating in the 40 days of harassment and intimidation campaign have targeted the queer community, sex workers, and young people wanting comprehensive sexual health education.
“40 days for life” is promoted by the haters at Campaign Life Coalition. This group runs many hate-promotion campaigns, which currently include one against comprehensive sexual health education, and another that opposes policy like the Liberal government’s Equity and Inclusive Education Strategy, “which will lead to the normalization of homosexuality”. I sure hope it does.
R.E.A.L. Women of Canada actively imposes their supposed “pro-family” stance by endorsing the 40 days for life campaign. This group promotes a traditional wife-and-mother role for women and is stridently anti-feminist and anti-gay. R.E.A.L Women is a strong cheerleader for social conservative causes and has been at the forefront of several battles, including fighting against gay marriage, intervening at court to uphold Canada’s harmful prostitution laws, cutting funds to women’s groups, and interfering at the United Nations to curtail human rights for women everywhere.
With their “I regret my abortion” signs, the Silent No More Campaign is often present on Bank Street. A project by the male-led Anglicans for Life and the Priests for Life to help support various anti-choice "awareness" efforts, they solicit tearful testimonies from guilt-ridden religious women who regret their abortions. Women experience all sorts of emotions following their abortions, relief being the most common one, and few women suffer long-term negative psychological effects because of their abortion. While I would agree that women need more safe spaces to discuss all of their emotions following an abortion, there is no organization out there with ready-made sandwich boards stating “I regret choosing to parent” and it is unfair to state that your experience will be the same for someone else.
“Join us in this campaign. Help us save more lives. And, eventually, by God's grace and with enough prayer, fasting, peaceful witnessing, and plenty of courage, we can rid our culture of the scourge of abortion forever! What will God accomplish when people of faith across our community and throughout our nation unite for 40 days of prayer and fasting, pulling out all the stops to end the violence of abortion”
“40 days for life” has impressive organization, including coordinators, a user-friendly website, and many churches and Catholic schools – each responsible for one day of harassment. This ensures city-wide participation and strong people power.
Anti-Choice groups protesting in front of abortion clinics have a significant detrimental effect on society’s efforts to maintain safe and secure access to abortion care. By attempting to prevent access to abortion services, these groups launch direct attacks against women’s freedoms.
Abortion protesters, with their gruesome photos and their rhetoric of blood and murder, disturb the peace, offend public decency, and inflict psychological damage. Their manipulative methods can shock, unnecessarily upset, and even traumatize women who have had an abortion, are about to have one, or may consider one in the future. Their attempts to block access to abortion clinics are against the law and are a violation of privacy. Most alarmingly, many Ottawa anti-choice individuals have engaged in overt violence against providers and clinic staff, most of which is caused or encouraged by protests outside abortion clinics. As a pro-choice sexual health educator, I’ve received death threats, and my vehicle was vandalized with the words “ there is a bomb inside” as well as “murderer”.
To comply with the Canada Health Act, as well as the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, abortion clinics need to have an accessible, safe and private environment for women seeking their Medicare-funded procedure.
The province of BC with its Access to Abortion Services Act, clinics in Calgary, Toronto, and Hull to name a few have complied and enforced bubble zones, protest-free zones around abortion clinics. Consistently, rights to freedoms of expression are trumped by rights to access to health care.
Despite this being highly inappropriate considering the precedent all over the country, the city of Ottawa has sanctioned harassment of women for far too long by giving a permit to protest to the “40 days for life” campaign.
Public health and pro-choice organizations are under-funded and overtaxed already. Currently, organizations in Ottawa don’t have the capacity to offer a viable counter to this campaign of misinformation, harassment, and intimidation; they are too busy supporting their current clients. Under a conservative government, pro-choice organizations are validly concerned with their funding and charity statuses, leaving meaningful pro-choice activism to grassroots organizing.
Here comes the Pro-Choice Coalition of Ottawa, a small and dedicated group of sexual justice activists. In response to the 40 days of harassment and intimidation, PCCO-CPCO has organized an online petition and letter writing campaign demanding that the City revoke the anti-choicers’ permit. We believe that women should not have to run a gauntlet of anti-choice activists in order to access legal health services. The City of Ottawa must immediately revoke this permit in order to respect the dignity, privacy, and legal rights of women to unimpeded access to health services at the Morgentaler Clinic.
We are also organizing a Nov 1 fundraiser for Canadians for Choice’s abortion access fund, called “Bodies of Dissent: a panel on building radical support for our sexual justice movements.” When abortion services are only offered in 15.9% of all Canadian hospitals, and half of these hospitals only provide abortion services up to 13 weeks gestation, with wait times of up to 6 weeks and judgemental gatekeepers who impose their moralistic misinformed ideas, abortion is most certainly not as accessible as it should be.
We are frustrated with constantly having to act in reaction to well-funded and well-established anti-choice actions. While we are spending so much energy trying to support those traumatized by sexist and intimidation-based campaigns like the 40 days, most of us in the pro-choice movement would rather invest our energies in tackling issues of poverty, racism, classism, homophobia, and ableism. Instead, we are stuck battling against harassing anti-choicers, uninformed health care workers, indifferent municipal employees, an organized “pro-life” caucus in government, and well-funded anti-choice lobbyists.
Along with fighting the antis on Bank Street, we’re also fighting them in Parliament. Bill C-510 is a private member's bill that would amend the Criminal Code to prohibit coercing a woman into an abortion via physical or financial threats, illegal acts, or through “argumentative and rancorous badgering or importunity”. It was introduced in April by the chair of the Parliamentary Pro-Life Caucus, Conservative MP Rod Bruinooge of Winnipeg South.
This bill promotes abortion stigma, paternalizes women, and puts providers at risk. The bill is redundant and misguided. The bill patronizes women by implying they are frequently coerced into abortion, but the vast majority of women make their own decision to have an abortion and take responsibility for it, and abortion clinics ensure that women are making an uncoerced choice of their own free will. If coercion is present, it’s usually in the context of domestic violence. If the intent is really to protect women from abusive partners, we need better and more comprehensive solutions for supporting women living in abusive situations, perhaps with funding for women’s equity seeking groups.
When it was confirmed that the 40 days campaign would still be allowed to happen in Ottawa this fall, the pro-choice community came together to respond to the Morgentaler Clinic’s request to organize volunteers who would stand outside in front of the clinic. Planned Parenthood Ottawa (PPO) and Canadians for Choice (CFC) collaborated to train volunteers to provide pro-choice support and accompaniment. The role of the volunteers is mainly to act as a peaceful pro-choice presence for clinic patients, and to protect patients from the harassment of anti-choice ‘street counsellors’ if necessary. When I did my first 2-hour shift at the Morgentaler Clinic, wearing a bright pink t-shirt trying to be a pro-choice presence, about sixteen people came up to thank us. One woman just wanted to talk and another got off the bus just to come and thank us (which led to a longer conversation on sexual justice). One man also stopped, presenting himself as a lawyer and asking why we didn’t already have a bubble zone in Ottawa. He asked if we could call the hate crimes unit, and I reminded him that gender isn’t a basis for a hate crime in Canada.
Another man walked by, quickly interrupting the conversation to state that “I am from a family of 9 children”, as if to say that being pro-choice means that we are pro-abortion. While there are many feminists that identify as pro-abortion as a political stance, they certainly do not impose abortion as the sole option for people facing unintended pregnancy. This would be anti-choice.
What does it mean to be pro-choice? It means having the liberty and ability to make your own choices, uncoerced, regarding your sexual and reproductive health, and having control over your own body. The Pro-Choice Coalition of Ottawa affirms a definition of pro-choice that is inclusive of all aspects of sexual and reproductive health and honours the right to bodily integrity and privacy. This can include whether or when to have children, how to respond to pregnancy (whether with abortion, making an adoption plan or becoming a parent), whether to have sexual relationships, when to have them and with whom, and how we choose to configure our relationships. Pro-choice includes having the right to choose which birth control option works best for you (if any), which methods you wish to use to practice safer sex, who you wish to include in making decisions about your sexual and reproductive health, how you wish to express your sexuality, and choosing to come out or not, choosing whether or not to label your sexual orientation or gender identity without fear of discrimination. Pro-choice information is evidence-based, legal, and inclusive and shared in an unbiased and factual manner. Pro-choice allows for all of the above to remain safe and accessible. Lastly, being pro-choice means respecting the decisions that others make with regards to their sexual and reproductive health, and trusting them to be the expert in their own sexual well-being. For some people, pro-choice extends beyond the realm of sexual and reproductive health and each person’s definition becomes personalized for them.
The Pro-Choice Coalition of Ottawa envisions a community that celebrates healthy sexuality, its diversity of expression and reproductive choice as fundamental human rights for individuals throughout life.
Mélanie Stafford
Pro-Choice Coalition of Ottawa / Coalition pro-choix d’Ottawa
For more information:
Anti-choice organizations:
Helpers of Ottawa
40 Days For Life Ottawa
Campaign Life Coalition
Pro-choice organization:
Canadians for Choice
Abortion Rights Coalition of Canada
Planned Parenthood Ottawa
Get involved:
Bodies of Dissent: a panel on building radical support for our sexual justice movements
Online petition: Revoke the 40 days for life’s permit to protest
The 40 days for life is an anti-choice campaign, aimed at “saving the unborn” where “the most visible component is the prayer vigil outside the Abortion Mills in every participating city throughout the 40 days, 7 days a week, 24 hours a day.” While the measures of success are questionable, the organizers claim that “the results of the 40 Day Campaigns have been outstanding with hundreds of mother and their babies being rescued from despair and death.”
While this particular form of harassment and intimidation tries to target cis-gendered women, the same groups organizing and participating in the 40 days of harassment and intimidation campaign have targeted the queer community, sex workers, and young people wanting comprehensive sexual health education.
“40 days for life” is promoted by the haters at Campaign Life Coalition. This group runs many hate-promotion campaigns, which currently include one against comprehensive sexual health education, and another that opposes policy like the Liberal government’s Equity and Inclusive Education Strategy, “which will lead to the normalization of homosexuality”. I sure hope it does.
R.E.A.L. Women of Canada actively imposes their supposed “pro-family” stance by endorsing the 40 days for life campaign. This group promotes a traditional wife-and-mother role for women and is stridently anti-feminist and anti-gay. R.E.A.L Women is a strong cheerleader for social conservative causes and has been at the forefront of several battles, including fighting against gay marriage, intervening at court to uphold Canada’s harmful prostitution laws, cutting funds to women’s groups, and interfering at the United Nations to curtail human rights for women everywhere.
With their “I regret my abortion” signs, the Silent No More Campaign is often present on Bank Street. A project by the male-led Anglicans for Life and the Priests for Life to help support various anti-choice "awareness" efforts, they solicit tearful testimonies from guilt-ridden religious women who regret their abortions. Women experience all sorts of emotions following their abortions, relief being the most common one, and few women suffer long-term negative psychological effects because of their abortion. While I would agree that women need more safe spaces to discuss all of their emotions following an abortion, there is no organization out there with ready-made sandwich boards stating “I regret choosing to parent” and it is unfair to state that your experience will be the same for someone else.
“Join us in this campaign. Help us save more lives. And, eventually, by God's grace and with enough prayer, fasting, peaceful witnessing, and plenty of courage, we can rid our culture of the scourge of abortion forever! What will God accomplish when people of faith across our community and throughout our nation unite for 40 days of prayer and fasting, pulling out all the stops to end the violence of abortion”
“40 days for life” has impressive organization, including coordinators, a user-friendly website, and many churches and Catholic schools – each responsible for one day of harassment. This ensures city-wide participation and strong people power.
Anti-Choice groups protesting in front of abortion clinics have a significant detrimental effect on society’s efforts to maintain safe and secure access to abortion care. By attempting to prevent access to abortion services, these groups launch direct attacks against women’s freedoms.
Abortion protesters, with their gruesome photos and their rhetoric of blood and murder, disturb the peace, offend public decency, and inflict psychological damage. Their manipulative methods can shock, unnecessarily upset, and even traumatize women who have had an abortion, are about to have one, or may consider one in the future. Their attempts to block access to abortion clinics are against the law and are a violation of privacy. Most alarmingly, many Ottawa anti-choice individuals have engaged in overt violence against providers and clinic staff, most of which is caused or encouraged by protests outside abortion clinics. As a pro-choice sexual health educator, I’ve received death threats, and my vehicle was vandalized with the words “ there is a bomb inside” as well as “murderer”.
To comply with the Canada Health Act, as well as the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, abortion clinics need to have an accessible, safe and private environment for women seeking their Medicare-funded procedure.
The province of BC with its Access to Abortion Services Act, clinics in Calgary, Toronto, and Hull to name a few have complied and enforced bubble zones, protest-free zones around abortion clinics. Consistently, rights to freedoms of expression are trumped by rights to access to health care.
Despite this being highly inappropriate considering the precedent all over the country, the city of Ottawa has sanctioned harassment of women for far too long by giving a permit to protest to the “40 days for life” campaign.
Public health and pro-choice organizations are under-funded and overtaxed already. Currently, organizations in Ottawa don’t have the capacity to offer a viable counter to this campaign of misinformation, harassment, and intimidation; they are too busy supporting their current clients. Under a conservative government, pro-choice organizations are validly concerned with their funding and charity statuses, leaving meaningful pro-choice activism to grassroots organizing.
Here comes the Pro-Choice Coalition of Ottawa, a small and dedicated group of sexual justice activists. In response to the 40 days of harassment and intimidation, PCCO-CPCO has organized an online petition and letter writing campaign demanding that the City revoke the anti-choicers’ permit. We believe that women should not have to run a gauntlet of anti-choice activists in order to access legal health services. The City of Ottawa must immediately revoke this permit in order to respect the dignity, privacy, and legal rights of women to unimpeded access to health services at the Morgentaler Clinic.
We are also organizing a Nov 1 fundraiser for Canadians for Choice’s abortion access fund, called “Bodies of Dissent: a panel on building radical support for our sexual justice movements.” When abortion services are only offered in 15.9% of all Canadian hospitals, and half of these hospitals only provide abortion services up to 13 weeks gestation, with wait times of up to 6 weeks and judgemental gatekeepers who impose their moralistic misinformed ideas, abortion is most certainly not as accessible as it should be.
We are frustrated with constantly having to act in reaction to well-funded and well-established anti-choice actions. While we are spending so much energy trying to support those traumatized by sexist and intimidation-based campaigns like the 40 days, most of us in the pro-choice movement would rather invest our energies in tackling issues of poverty, racism, classism, homophobia, and ableism. Instead, we are stuck battling against harassing anti-choicers, uninformed health care workers, indifferent municipal employees, an organized “pro-life” caucus in government, and well-funded anti-choice lobbyists.
Along with fighting the antis on Bank Street, we’re also fighting them in Parliament. Bill C-510 is a private member's bill that would amend the Criminal Code to prohibit coercing a woman into an abortion via physical or financial threats, illegal acts, or through “argumentative and rancorous badgering or importunity”. It was introduced in April by the chair of the Parliamentary Pro-Life Caucus, Conservative MP Rod Bruinooge of Winnipeg South.
This bill promotes abortion stigma, paternalizes women, and puts providers at risk. The bill is redundant and misguided. The bill patronizes women by implying they are frequently coerced into abortion, but the vast majority of women make their own decision to have an abortion and take responsibility for it, and abortion clinics ensure that women are making an uncoerced choice of their own free will. If coercion is present, it’s usually in the context of domestic violence. If the intent is really to protect women from abusive partners, we need better and more comprehensive solutions for supporting women living in abusive situations, perhaps with funding for women’s equity seeking groups.
When it was confirmed that the 40 days campaign would still be allowed to happen in Ottawa this fall, the pro-choice community came together to respond to the Morgentaler Clinic’s request to organize volunteers who would stand outside in front of the clinic. Planned Parenthood Ottawa (PPO) and Canadians for Choice (CFC) collaborated to train volunteers to provide pro-choice support and accompaniment. The role of the volunteers is mainly to act as a peaceful pro-choice presence for clinic patients, and to protect patients from the harassment of anti-choice ‘street counsellors’ if necessary. When I did my first 2-hour shift at the Morgentaler Clinic, wearing a bright pink t-shirt trying to be a pro-choice presence, about sixteen people came up to thank us. One woman just wanted to talk and another got off the bus just to come and thank us (which led to a longer conversation on sexual justice). One man also stopped, presenting himself as a lawyer and asking why we didn’t already have a bubble zone in Ottawa. He asked if we could call the hate crimes unit, and I reminded him that gender isn’t a basis for a hate crime in Canada.
Another man walked by, quickly interrupting the conversation to state that “I am from a family of 9 children”, as if to say that being pro-choice means that we are pro-abortion. While there are many feminists that identify as pro-abortion as a political stance, they certainly do not impose abortion as the sole option for people facing unintended pregnancy. This would be anti-choice.
What does it mean to be pro-choice? It means having the liberty and ability to make your own choices, uncoerced, regarding your sexual and reproductive health, and having control over your own body. The Pro-Choice Coalition of Ottawa affirms a definition of pro-choice that is inclusive of all aspects of sexual and reproductive health and honours the right to bodily integrity and privacy. This can include whether or when to have children, how to respond to pregnancy (whether with abortion, making an adoption plan or becoming a parent), whether to have sexual relationships, when to have them and with whom, and how we choose to configure our relationships. Pro-choice includes having the right to choose which birth control option works best for you (if any), which methods you wish to use to practice safer sex, who you wish to include in making decisions about your sexual and reproductive health, how you wish to express your sexuality, and choosing to come out or not, choosing whether or not to label your sexual orientation or gender identity without fear of discrimination. Pro-choice information is evidence-based, legal, and inclusive and shared in an unbiased and factual manner. Pro-choice allows for all of the above to remain safe and accessible. Lastly, being pro-choice means respecting the decisions that others make with regards to their sexual and reproductive health, and trusting them to be the expert in their own sexual well-being. For some people, pro-choice extends beyond the realm of sexual and reproductive health and each person’s definition becomes personalized for them.
The Pro-Choice Coalition of Ottawa envisions a community that celebrates healthy sexuality, its diversity of expression and reproductive choice as fundamental human rights for individuals throughout life.
Mélanie Stafford
Pro-Choice Coalition of Ottawa / Coalition pro-choix d’Ottawa
For more information:
Anti-choice organizations:
Helpers of Ottawa
40 Days For Life Ottawa
Campaign Life Coalition
Pro-choice organization:
Canadians for Choice
Abortion Rights Coalition of Canada
Planned Parenthood Ottawa
Get involved:
Bodies of Dissent: a panel on building radical support for our sexual justice movements
Online petition: Revoke the 40 days for life’s permit to protest
Thursday, June 24, 2010
to be 29 - things I want to work on
I want to know how to cook. And then when I know, actually do it.
I want to actively engage in my health, everyday, for ever. I've done this before, but for days, and weeks, I think I did it for 2 months in a row once... and then I ate oreos. Fuck they were good. I want to be one of those people that snacks on carrots, or peppers, dipped in a spread that was homemade and involved tofu, again, forever, not just once and then rewards herself with oreos!
I want to watch less tv.
I want to rest in different ways than watching tv. (someone hooks me up with a hammack)
I want to read more. Buy less books. Read them more.
I want to have more free time. I don't want to plan free time, I'd just like it to be (i think I have to move for this one to actualize, I wasn't meant to be a city person)
I want to be more kind and generous and loving with my partner.
I want to stop blaming my parents for everything. I want to be more loving of them, as they are, and for all the qualities they gave me.
I want to be more responsible of my financial choices. I want to pay people back that have kindly lent me money. Then, I want to get rid of some more debt. Then I want to finish this institutional version of education I started. Then I want to go back to doing the low paying jobs that I love. Somewhere else.
I want to want to have more sex.
I want to not be on anti-depressants anymore.
I want to not let negative energies impact me so much.
If I'm gonna blog, I better get to figuring out taking pictures and linking and everything else that is involved in blogging. awh shiat. i don't reallly want to work on this one, but i guess i'll add it to the list....
I want to actively engage in my health, everyday, for ever. I've done this before, but for days, and weeks, I think I did it for 2 months in a row once... and then I ate oreos. Fuck they were good. I want to be one of those people that snacks on carrots, or peppers, dipped in a spread that was homemade and involved tofu, again, forever, not just once and then rewards herself with oreos!
I want to watch less tv.
I want to rest in different ways than watching tv. (someone hooks me up with a hammack)
I want to read more. Buy less books. Read them more.
I want to have more free time. I don't want to plan free time, I'd just like it to be (i think I have to move for this one to actualize, I wasn't meant to be a city person)
I want to be more kind and generous and loving with my partner.
I want to stop blaming my parents for everything. I want to be more loving of them, as they are, and for all the qualities they gave me.
I want to be more responsible of my financial choices. I want to pay people back that have kindly lent me money. Then, I want to get rid of some more debt. Then I want to finish this institutional version of education I started. Then I want to go back to doing the low paying jobs that I love. Somewhere else.
I want to want to have more sex.
I want to not be on anti-depressants anymore.
I want to not let negative energies impact me so much.
If I'm gonna blog, I better get to figuring out taking pictures and linking and everything else that is involved in blogging. awh shiat. i don't reallly want to work on this one, but i guess i'll add it to the list....
Sunday, June 13, 2010
On being a shit disturber
Seems like I've always been a shit disturber. Really. When I was in high school, franco-ontarian language rights was my cause. I have memories of the evolution of my activism, from being unkind to english only speakers to experiencing not being able to communicate verbally and with my cultural understandings of body language, to advocating for multi-lingual access to language courses.
Market coworker, 25 yearls od, in Ottawa to learn english: "Ben la, on est au Canada, le monde devrait au moins pouvoir parler l'anglais ou le francais"
"Ca t'as pris 25 ans pour apprendre une deuxieme language, moi j'serais ben contente de lui en permettre autant avant d'avoir a en apprendre une 3ieme..."
Now I seem to have more shit to disturb. There's a pun here, as I start this blog while at the tail end of a gastro.
I get my politics from my parents, I've come to have to admit this after YEARS of ellongated teenage frustration. Both were political in their own working-class ways. My dad has a sense of social justice, and I hear tid bits of it when he talks about fairness (or what i'd call accessibility) in event organzing he used to do as president of the Optimist club, something I have dear memories of in my hometown of Vanier. My mom has outed herself as having similar feminist ideas, sparingly but always shokingly. "J'comprends pas poukoi on les laisses pas juste faire leurs jobs" when she talked about sex workers. Go Mom go. I'm a sexual health educator today, with a healthy sense of my body, thanks to her nude and non-chalant walks out of the bathroom. I grew up seing my mom naked, and I'd advocate for safe parental nudity anytime!
Despite knowing this, they have their issues, being human and all, and as only parents can, they have this magical way of pissing me off.
I think I'm just coming out of years of not allowing my parents to be humans. They should have been perfect, like all my friends parents, and I wanted them to be intellectuals and inspiring and funny and social and people with whom I could discuss political ideas.
But they werent. Instead, they taught me true survival skills, a sense of initiative and team work. I can do just about any job because of them. I know what I can do to be usefull when a group of people is working on a certain task. I have strong adaptability skills thanks to us moving around oh so much (I've been to 11 different schools thus far...). On that, I've gotten to experience living in a small town (when we were younger) and the city (when we became teenagers). Moving around so much, and meeting such a variety of people makes from strong communication skills. I feel comfortable around folks that are frustrated with just about everything (taxes, the neighboor, the government) and seem to feel powerless to change any of this or their own circumstances facing it. I can also chat it up with folks who spend 3000$, every year, for flowers on their front lawns. My parents spend their free time working on the house, I can't ever remember a time where there wasn't a renovation happenning, or at least some peice of furniture that was being stripped and stained or re-painted. I was never made to feel ashamed about how my body functions, it farts, it shits, it has zits in many places. "Ta marde a pu comme tout l'monde" is a famous sentence I heard in my youth. This, must've been my mothers way of keeping me grounded, and it did. My mom was always upset with my dad's assumption that dinner would be prepared, or that my mom would have a job that would allow for getting my sister and I ready to get to school or to make appointments... When I reflect on this, and the household chore battles I find myself in now, I certainly didn't give enough appreciation towards my mom for keeping it going. My mom disciplined us, which made her a target for the anger. She was the one making us do all the choresMy sister and I certainly did our share of household chores growing up (likely with a whole lot of repeated requests to get it done..), often what felt likew ay more than our friends were doing.. While I still beleive that there was an ounce of reality to this, I have often shared housing with folks that have no ability or pride in keeping a clean house. My mom swears that if she'd had boys, she would have demanded the same from them, and I wholeheartedly beleive her.
So, as they continue to be homophobic and continue on their gendered household chore ways, I gosta love them more. Point finale.
Market coworker, 25 yearls od, in Ottawa to learn english: "Ben la, on est au Canada, le monde devrait au moins pouvoir parler l'anglais ou le francais"
"Ca t'as pris 25 ans pour apprendre une deuxieme language, moi j'serais ben contente de lui en permettre autant avant d'avoir a en apprendre une 3ieme..."
Now I seem to have more shit to disturb. There's a pun here, as I start this blog while at the tail end of a gastro.
I get my politics from my parents, I've come to have to admit this after YEARS of ellongated teenage frustration. Both were political in their own working-class ways. My dad has a sense of social justice, and I hear tid bits of it when he talks about fairness (or what i'd call accessibility) in event organzing he used to do as president of the Optimist club, something I have dear memories of in my hometown of Vanier. My mom has outed herself as having similar feminist ideas, sparingly but always shokingly. "J'comprends pas poukoi on les laisses pas juste faire leurs jobs" when she talked about sex workers. Go Mom go. I'm a sexual health educator today, with a healthy sense of my body, thanks to her nude and non-chalant walks out of the bathroom. I grew up seing my mom naked, and I'd advocate for safe parental nudity anytime!
Despite knowing this, they have their issues, being human and all, and as only parents can, they have this magical way of pissing me off.
I think I'm just coming out of years of not allowing my parents to be humans. They should have been perfect, like all my friends parents, and I wanted them to be intellectuals and inspiring and funny and social and people with whom I could discuss political ideas.
But they werent. Instead, they taught me true survival skills, a sense of initiative and team work. I can do just about any job because of them. I know what I can do to be usefull when a group of people is working on a certain task. I have strong adaptability skills thanks to us moving around oh so much (I've been to 11 different schools thus far...). On that, I've gotten to experience living in a small town (when we were younger) and the city (when we became teenagers). Moving around so much, and meeting such a variety of people makes from strong communication skills. I feel comfortable around folks that are frustrated with just about everything (taxes, the neighboor, the government) and seem to feel powerless to change any of this or their own circumstances facing it. I can also chat it up with folks who spend 3000$, every year, for flowers on their front lawns. My parents spend their free time working on the house, I can't ever remember a time where there wasn't a renovation happenning, or at least some peice of furniture that was being stripped and stained or re-painted. I was never made to feel ashamed about how my body functions, it farts, it shits, it has zits in many places. "Ta marde a pu comme tout l'monde" is a famous sentence I heard in my youth. This, must've been my mothers way of keeping me grounded, and it did. My mom was always upset with my dad's assumption that dinner would be prepared, or that my mom would have a job that would allow for getting my sister and I ready to get to school or to make appointments... When I reflect on this, and the household chore battles I find myself in now, I certainly didn't give enough appreciation towards my mom for keeping it going. My mom disciplined us, which made her a target for the anger. She was the one making us do all the choresMy sister and I certainly did our share of household chores growing up (likely with a whole lot of repeated requests to get it done..), often what felt likew ay more than our friends were doing.. While I still beleive that there was an ounce of reality to this, I have often shared housing with folks that have no ability or pride in keeping a clean house. My mom swears that if she'd had boys, she would have demanded the same from them, and I wholeheartedly beleive her.
So, as they continue to be homophobic and continue on their gendered household chore ways, I gosta love them more. Point finale.
what to charge for anti-oppression training
I'd say i'm anti-capitalist. a very in debt, often hungry, anti-capitalist. I quite enjoyed the all pay-scale part of the Anarchist bookfair last weekend, and although it just lasted for 2days, I still freeze for a second when I'm asked to pay something "full -price".
I am a worthy, worthwhile educator. I know this is a skill that deserves a fair pay, and that I invest in every time I read a book and attend a workshop, which I do a whole lot of. I'm absolutely happy getting food or a great tshirt in exchange, and of course I wouldn't do this work if I didn't feel nourished by it. I want to trust peoples sense of ethics and quite understand limited budgets. I've been paid, with money, 0-225$ an hour, and its varied wether or not I got paid for prep time. So what's the answer to "how much do you charge?"
I am a worthy, worthwhile educator. I know this is a skill that deserves a fair pay, and that I invest in every time I read a book and attend a workshop, which I do a whole lot of. I'm absolutely happy getting food or a great tshirt in exchange, and of course I wouldn't do this work if I didn't feel nourished by it. I want to trust peoples sense of ethics and quite understand limited budgets. I've been paid, with money, 0-225$ an hour, and its varied wether or not I got paid for prep time. So what's the answer to "how much do you charge?"
More points for bicycles
Having a bedroom that gives onto a boulevard, I sleep with earplugs. I also share a bed with a lawnmower, but that's besides the point.
Cars are noisy as is. Why are they sooo entitled to be even noisy-er with their fucking car alarms going on, the horn going on and on until the owner scrambles to find the remote key thing and figures out the double pressing system that makes the damn thing stop.
Bikes don't do that.
Cars are noisy as is. Why are they sooo entitled to be even noisy-er with their fucking car alarms going on, the horn going on and on until the owner scrambles to find the remote key thing and figures out the double pressing system that makes the damn thing stop.
Bikes don't do that.
Friday, June 4, 2010
Very first entry!
I'm a blog newbie. Please be patient with me as I slowly, likely very slowly, figure all this out.
I guess I should explain why I decided to come on over to the not so dark side.
I've had quite an interesting year. I lost a job that had become my entire identity (this is unhealthy and un-recommended), I've been struggling with a severe depression, addictions, food, love, surviving... All this in a canadian, mostly able bodied, female, educated, white body.
Identity might be a dominant theme of this blog. (geez, it's hard not to just write EVERYTHING out on the first entry!) I've had many experiences, some horrible, many humourus, that somehow needed to be remembered and logged. Many mentors asked me to write about all these experiences, so here I am, here it is.
If I'm sounding defensive, it might stem from a old though that blogging was mostly self-indulgent and demonstrated a huge lack of confidence. I imagine that most new bloggers feel the need to ask "Who da fuck cares about my thoughts and realities?" Apparently, a few kind folks do, but pardon the cheeze; i'm doing it for me. I intend to use this blog as a cheaper version of a website. Perhaps soon I'll learn of a better way...
Also, I'm a sexual health and anti-oppression educator. I've been kept busy with word of mouth "advertizing" but I've come to a point where I'd like to direct folks to an online place, where I could have further ressources and work towards better accessibility (this word will be dissected soon)
Very soon, I'll be working with a FANTASTIK colleage, as soon as we figure out our orgs. name...
I guess I should explain why I decided to come on over to the not so dark side.
I've had quite an interesting year. I lost a job that had become my entire identity (this is unhealthy and un-recommended), I've been struggling with a severe depression, addictions, food, love, surviving... All this in a canadian, mostly able bodied, female, educated, white body.
Identity might be a dominant theme of this blog. (geez, it's hard not to just write EVERYTHING out on the first entry!) I've had many experiences, some horrible, many humourus, that somehow needed to be remembered and logged. Many mentors asked me to write about all these experiences, so here I am, here it is.
If I'm sounding defensive, it might stem from a old though that blogging was mostly self-indulgent and demonstrated a huge lack of confidence. I imagine that most new bloggers feel the need to ask "Who da fuck cares about my thoughts and realities?" Apparently, a few kind folks do, but pardon the cheeze; i'm doing it for me. I intend to use this blog as a cheaper version of a website. Perhaps soon I'll learn of a better way...
Also, I'm a sexual health and anti-oppression educator. I've been kept busy with word of mouth "advertizing" but I've come to a point where I'd like to direct folks to an online place, where I could have further ressources and work towards better accessibility (this word will be dissected soon)
Very soon, I'll be working with a FANTASTIK colleage, as soon as we figure out our orgs. name...
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