Are Your Cosmetics Hazardous? Women Under Siege Fundamentalism in Tajikistan Chick Lit Is It Time to Close the Chapter? Talking to Shani Mootoo

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BAR NONE: PRISON ABOLITIONIST JULIA SUDBURY | BOOBY TRAPS BACK ON THE MARKET

WOMEN’S NEWS & FEMINIST VIEWS Summer 2007 Vol. 21 No. 1 Made in Canada ARE YOUR COSMETICS HAZARDOUS? WOMEN UNDER SIEGE FUNDAMENTALISM IN TAJIKISTAN CHICK LIT IS IT TIME TO CLOSE THE CHAPTER? TALKING TO SHANI MOOTOO

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News BOOBY TRAPS BACK ON MARKET 6 by Shari Graydon FEMINIST PASSINGS 8 by Noreen Shanahan SUPREME COURT REFUSES NIXON APPEAL 12 by Robin Perelle IWD PRAYER AFFIRMS PROGRESSIVE MUSLIMS 13 by Roxanna Olivera IWD Prayer Affirms Muslims 13: CAMPAIGN UPDATES 14 VAW Linked to AIDS, Denial Discomforts Women

Features BAR NONE 18 Julia Sudbury’s powerfully persuasive Global Lockdown decries prisons as international human warehouses. In this interview, she expounds upon her portrait of a political economy of criminal injustice that disempowers women of colour in particular. by Sarah Cassidy

29: Shani Mootoo THE UGLY SIDE OF THE BEAUTY INDUSTRY 24 Ingredients in everyday products from deodorants to nail polish have been linked to a host of reproductive disorders, including breast cancer. Will labelling products reduce women’s exposure to chemical toxins? by Misha Warbanski

TO BEND BUT NOT TO BOW: SHANI MOOTOO 29 by Maya Khankoje A FUNDAMENTAL CONCERN 32 The mountains of Tajikistan are not the only barriers keeping women in this former Soviet country isolated. A growing fundamentalist influence in the country’s political system and a ravaged economy are among the forces pushing women further and further backward. 32: Women are losing ground in Tajikistan by Lauryn Oates

HERIZONS SUMMER 2007 1 table of contents SUMMER 2007 / VOLUME 21 NO. 1 For kick-ass women in a world that needs its ass kicked

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2 SUMMER 2007 HERIZONS letters

Embargo challenge challenged

Elizabeth May: choice words rebutted Betsy Warland: fabulous (Photo: Diane Felski)

CHOICE SLOGAN DEFENDED portrayed as victims hands others the right to job Di Brandt did—what beautiful, compelling While I would rather have Elizabeth May choose—that is, to choose which women are writing on both sides. The article about Bonnie defending my right to choose than any other deserving and those who are not. Klein’s documentary Shameless was also political party leader, I have a problem that May Abortion is always a choice. The only wonderful—as was the interview with Lynn has a problem with “choice” as a slogan question is: Who makes the choice? Doctors? Crosbie about lying. The quality of the writing (“Choosing our Words,” Spring 2007). Take Politicians? The religious right? Or each throughout was impressive. away the word “choice” and we are left with individual woman? I would suggest that it’s I had allowed my subscription to lapse woman as victim—the victim of rape or of an women as individuals who are the least likely some time ago because so few of the articles abusive partner to whom she didn’t dare say to make “frivolous” choices in this matter, interested me. I can’t tell you how glad I am I “no,” the victim of physical or psychological who are the ones for whom this choice is the re-subscribed! If you continue to feature this health problems that prevent her from safely most personal, and therefore the hardest and kind of exciting reportage on literature and the bearing a child, the victim of poverty, or lack of most painful. arts, I’ll be in it for the long haul. education, or lack of access to contraceptives. I hope that Elizabeth May and the Greens LISE WEIL If we allow women to be portrayed as get a chance to do some real work towards Montreal, QC victims who deserve access to abortion keeping the choice of having (or not having) because the situation is not their fault, then we an abortion in each individual woman’s hands. CUBA REVISITED leave the door open to those who would claim I also hope that they work not only “to keep I read the Letters section of the Spring 2007 that only deserving women should have access abortion ‘safe, legal and rare,’” but also to get issue of your magazine, and I just feel the to abortion. We see the results of this thinking it funded, as it is not at present in the province need to take issue with a letter written by one in laws in other countries in which abortion is where I live. Bruce Grant regarding Cuba. allowed only in cases of rape or if the mother’s SARAHROSE WERNER Mostly I disagree that the United States is life is at risk. Allowing women to be portrayed Saint John, N.B. Cuba’s greatest problem. First of all, there is a as victims leaves the door open to those would piece of U.S. legislation known as the Helms- say that some women are not victims, that it’s WELCOME BACK Burton Act that affects Cuba’s trade relations their fault they didn’t say “no,” or make their I just wanted to congratulate you on your with the 178 nations he mentioned in his letter partner use a condom, or remember to take Spring issue. It’s fabulous, especially the that the country can still trade with. Under the their pills on schedule. Allowing women to be interview with Betsy Warland. What a great Helms-Burton Act, the U.S. can establish

HERIZONS SUMMER 2007 3 contributors letters

SARA CASSIDY Sara Cassidy writes on the arts, the environment and social justice issues in Victoria and recently completed an MFA in poetry at the University of Victoria. She’s a past volunteer for the Elizabeth Fry Society and Project Accompaniment Canada, witnessing as Mayan refugees returned from Mexico to re-build war-devastated communities in Guatemala.

MISHA WARBANSKI Misha Warbanski is the Quebec Bureau Chief with the Canadian University Press. An uprooted Newfoundlander, she sanctions against foreign nations who trade with Cuba. American studies journalism companies stationed in foreign nations cannot do any sort of and political science business with Cuba, and any ship or plane that has been on in Montreal and Cuban soil cannot dock or land in the United States for at least participates in many three months. independent media projects. When she is not writing she enjoys As for the unrest Grant mentioned in his letter, the most recent hiking, bike touring and knitting. case of dissidents in Cuba was actually a case involving people who carried out their activities on hire by the United States SHARI Interests Office in Havana. Meanwhile, five Cuban men— GRAYDON Antonio Guerrero, Fernando Gonzalez, Gerardo Hernandez, Shari Graydon is a Ramon Labanino and Rene Gonzalez—are in U.S. prisons for media producer, defending Cuba against U.S.-sponsored anti-Cuba terrorism educator and activist coming out of Miami. Also, in the wake of hurricane Katrina, currently serving as 1,600 doctors were sitting in Havana’s airport waiting to go to the President of the New Orleans, but U.S. President George W. Bush [refused to] Women’s Future allow Cuban doctors on American soil. Fund. Her most I also disagree that people are not allowed to leave Cuba. recent book, In Your People do leave Cuba, most of them as migrant workers, similar Face—The Culture of to people from Mexico. Migrant workers from Cuba are just Beauty and You won treated differently from migrant workers from Mexico, as they the prestigious Norma Fleck Award for non-fiction. Her website is are seen as “fleeing a cruel dictatorship,” whereas workers www.sharigraydon.com. from Mexico are seen as “illegal aliens.” Also, Cuba has an association called the Cuban Women’s JENNIFER Federation, which helps to secure women’s status in Cuba. FONG I realize, Mr. Grant, that I may not have changed your mind, Jennifer Fong is a but I figure it always helps to get another point of view. recent graduate of A.M. DESILETS the journalism Vancouver, B.C. program at Ryerson University in Toronto, POOR FEDS! where she grew up. This is to let you know that due to budget cuts, we will no longer This year, she was be able to renew our subscription to Herizons. co-editor-in-chief of We were very satisfied with the service you provided us Ryerson’s voice for during the last few years. women, McClung’s magazine. Jennifer is currently interning at the Status of Women Canada Edmonton Journal in Alberta. Ottawa, Ont.

4 SUMMER 2007 HERIZONS first word BY PENNI MITCHELL

Dirt and the Body Politic

The first thing I thought when I heard about toxic chemicals contaminated with 1,4-dioxane, considered a probable in personal care products was, “Well, I’m probably okay, I use carcinogen by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. a lot of Body Shop products.” The good news, if it can be called that, is that none of But there they were, on the label of The Body Shop these ingredients are among the 22 recently banned in the peppermint foot cream I rub into my feet at night: European Union. The not so good news is that Canada’s methylparaben, propylparaben, ethylparaben, butylparaben, new requirement that ingredients to be listed (see Misha isobutylparaben. Warbanski’s feature article in this issue) cannot be Parabens, in case you haven’t heard, are the new lead. interpreted as evidence of safety, because most have never Parabens are used to prolong the life of products that might been tested. otherwise go mouldy before you had a chance to use them. I’m curious, so I check to see what Skin Deep thinks of my Like formaldehyde, an ingredient in nail polish and many toothpaste, Tom’s of Maine. It is ranked better than a few, but personal care products, parabens are associated with birth it is disheartening to find out that a company I thought was defects, infertility, endometriosis and developmental a groovy little mom and pop shop is owned by Colgate- disabilities in children. And yet most of us wipe them on our Palmolive. I buy Tom’s because it is available sans fluoride (a armpits, or into our scalps, and slather them onto our face, carcinogen and bone-wrecking agent I drink plenty of in my hands and feet. tap water) and boasts baking soda. But Tom’s hasn’t signed All five parabens in my foot cream are considered possible the Safe Compact Cosmetic pledge, and so I ask Skin Deep endocrine disruptors that pose potential breast cancer risks, to recommend some better brands. according to the Environmental Working Group’s online What to do with all of this information? Support personal care product database, Skin Deep, which ranks the companies that have signed the Safe Compact pledge. The safety of 14,000 personal care products (www.ewg.org/ Body Shop has agreed to phase out ingredients likely to be reports/skindeep2/report.php). toxins, but I’ve put them on waivers for now. Bert’s Bees has I know what you’re thinking: Women shouldn’t use a better product list and, along with Kiss My Face, has signed cosmetics—problem solved. However, even if women on. I’ll try Crystal Body deodorant. stopped using camouflage-type cosmetics, the toxin problem If you feel the need to paint your toes peering through would still persist, since most of us still brush our teeth, bathe those Birkenstocks this summer, check out Skin Deep first and want a deodorant that won’t kill us. for some safer brands, and don’t use nail hardeners—they We already know that long-term exposure to chemicals rank as some of the worst products. Phthalates, a class of that act as endocrine-disruptors affects our breast cancer risk. industrial plasticizers invented in the 1930s, make nail polish Our female bodies are especially sensitive to torqued-up flexible. Lab animals given dibutyl phthalate had higher estrogen receptors because there are more fat cells for numbers of offspring with birth defects of the male estrogen-mimickers to glom onto. We’re already trying to get reproductive system. Perfumes are not only unessential but rid of endocrine-disrupting chemicals in pesticides and in brimming with chemicals, including phthalates, to make broken-down plastics, and to reduce our exposure to them release scent slowly. hormones in drugs like HRT. And now—this. Breast Cancer Action Montreal is leading the way in I’m tempted to take a bath and relieve my stress using the Canada. Until we see more action on safety, use the interactive Lush bath products I recently received as a gift. Lush oozes product safety guide on Skin Deep to choose products free of uncorporateness with its cool chunk soaps and wholesome known cancer-causing ingredients or impurities. ingredients—or so I thought. It turns out that my Lush As feminists, our political strength lies in taking collective Comforter Bubble Bar Slice contains sodium lauryl sulfate, action to affect change. The cosmetics industry profits titanium dioxide and a red dye that’s red-flagged by Skin handsomely from sexist beauty standards, and a reckless Deep. Sodium lauryl sulfate has been known to become approach to regulation just doesn’t wash. HERIZONS SUMMER 2007 5 nelliegrams BOOBY TRAPS EVEN STEPHEN The Women’s BACK ON MARKET Future Fund BY SHARI GRAYDON launched a national video campaign, the highest risk category for an approved Break the medical device. Glass, to rekindle a national debate about Implant manufacturers are expected to women’s equality. conduct large, long-term studies involving Break the Glass is a series of short and tens of thousands of women to measure any humorous video vignettes. One features possible link between silicone implants and comedian Rebecca Northan portraying a rheumatological symptoms, neurological woman encountering obstacles to equality. disease, effects on lactation and offspring, A second features Jessica Holmes, a and cancer and suicide rates. performer on CBC’s Royal Canadian Air In the meantime, manufacturers Farce. Posted on www.breaktheglass.ca convinced the U.S. Food and Drug and social media sites such as YouTube and Administration and Health Canada that iTunes, the videos dispel the myth that silicone implants are new and improved. Key gender equality has been achieved. The studies submitted as evidence of this campaign was created in response to included research on the effects of the recent funding cuts based on erroneous devices for less than three years. And yet political contentions that women have now long-term research from hundreds of achieved equality. sources over the last two decades suggests The Women’s Future Fund is a coalition that most implants deteriorate, rupture or of national organizations tackling barriers leak in less than a decade—about the time it to women’s advancement. Its member takes autoimmune diseases to develop. groups deliver programs to protect and Despite a technical ban, silicone implants promote the financial independence, legal have actually been sold all along. Health rights, educational opportunities, safety, Canada, heading off possible liability health and well-being of the next questions, required women to sign a waiver generation of women. acknowledging that they understood silicone Silicone implants, withdrawn in 1992 due to a class implants were experimental. MORE MAT LEAVE action suit, have now been put back on the Canadian In light of the high rupture rates and the A spring report on child market. (Photo: Getty Images) potential migration of silicone into women’s care recommends that lymph nodes and organs, the U.S. FDA gave parental leave DESPITE SERIOUS health concerns about the implants a clean bill of health, while provisions be extended their safety, Health Canada granted licences recommending that all women undergo to 18 months in Canada to two manufacturers late last fall to put regular MRI exams to monitor for breaks. to allow parents longer silicone breast implants back on the market. The $2,000 price tag on MRI screenings— to bond with their Silicone implants were withdrawn from sale not typically covered by private medical infants. Headed by in North America in 1992 when implant maker insurers—constitutes a significant cost for Gordon Chong, the Committee on the Dow faced a class action suit on behalf of U.S. patients. It may also explain why Government of Canada’s Child Care Spaces implant recipients. Canada, with its publicly funded system, initiative says greater parental leave would At the same time as the U.S. and Canada declined to require such a precaution. also free up space in child care centres decided to give the plastic surgery industry a Studies in Canada and elsewhere have where infant space is at a premium. boost, Dr. Edward Melmed, a Texas-based shown that women who have implants use The committee report also recommends surgeon who used to perform breast implant the health care system seven to 10 times that working grandparents be eligible for a surgery, had a change of heart. In response more frequently than other women, and are paid 60-day leave under employment to the debilitating complications experienced hospitalized four times more often. This insurance benefits which currently allow by many of his patients, Melmed now refuses suggests that they are less healthy than for federal parental leave. It recommends to insert silicone implants, but he does other women. that benefits be set at a higher level than remove them. In the process, he has Meanwhile, Radio Canada reported that the current 55 percent of earnings. More documented a litany of complaints—rock- three out of four surgeons failed to fully incentives should be provided to employers hard breasts, disfigurement, joint and muscle disclose the risks of silicone implants to to top up leave, it notes. The feds remain pain, hair loss, chronic fatigue and prospective patients. In the past year, mum on the report. depression—many of which cleared up dangerous levels of platinum were FORGET THE SUNSCREEN when the implants were removed. discovered in breast milk of women with Health Canada doesn’t deny that such implants. And a European study found a A four-year clinical trial of 1,200 women in problems exist. In fact, the licence it issued potential link between implants and immune for breast implants is a “Class IV licence,” disease.

6 SUMMER 2007 HERIZONS AFGHAN WOMEN nelliegrams northern latitudes found that Vitamin D LEFT IN THE DUST supplements of 1,100 International Units (IU) per day reduced their incidence of cancer by a remarkable 60 percent. Unlike other vitamins, vitamin D, IN 2005 Afghanistan’s new parliament was rather than channelling their support through available in its best form from the sun, is formed with a 25 percent quota for women organizations like the World Bank. turned into a hormone in the body, helping MPs exceeded. It would appear that The Canadian International Development to fix damaged cells and promote cell progress has steadily been made, and that Agency provided $100 million for Afghanistan’s health. Ten to 15 minutes in the summer sun women occupy central roles in the country’s development last year. Canada’s support each day will provide the equivalent of political life. includes a $2.5 million CARE program to 10,000 IU of vitamin D. The sun has had a However, a report by the London-based provide food to widows and $1 million for bad rap as a cause of skin cancer, a organization Womankind details how the women’s training. Most Canadian aid supports relatively uncommon but highly curable progress made on paper in the last six years security projects, including reintegrating cancer in North America, but the Canadian has not translated into reality for women of refugees, deactivating land mines ($5 million) Cancer Society now recommends some sun the war-torn country. and disarming illegal armed groups. exposure. Sunscreen blocks the same The last two years have witnessed the Womankind provides technical and ultraviolet B light that provides the cancer murders of women aid workers, attacks on financial support to three partner protection. The cancers associated with a women elections workers, the continuation organizations, including the Afghan Women’s lack of vitamin D are more dangerous and of severe forms of domestic abuse, Network, the Afghan Women’s Resource include breast cancer, prostate cancer and trafficking and prostitution of women, a rise Centre and the Afghan Women’s Educational colon cancer. in cases of self-immolation, high rates of Centre. The AWN is lobbying the women’s From October to March, a vitamin D child marriage, the kidnapping of young ministry for improvements to anti-violence supplement of 2,000 to 4,000 IU daily is a women, and minimal protection from rape legislation. With the help of Women4Women good idea. In summer months, try waiting 15 and assault. The education sector currently Afghanistan, AWRC opened two women’s minutes before applying sunscreen, or do faces an unrelenting assault, by the Taliban resource centres in Akora Khatak and Kacha not apply sunscreen to all body parts and affiliated groups. Gari refugee camps. The AWRC works with exposed for a moderate amount of time. Womankind reports, in Taking Stock: Afghan female refugees in and near Afghan Women and Girls Five Years On, that Peshawar, Pakistan and now in Kabul. WOMEN SERVED EQUAL PAY “programming has been marred by short- Find out more about these women’s Thirty-nine years term perspectives, inappropriate projects for groups at: after the British the Afghan context, and ‘workshop fever’ http://www.awec.info Wimbledon tennis oriented at Afghan women leaders. The http://www.afghanwomensnetwork.org tournament Ministry of Women’s Affairs operates at low http://www.womankind.org.uk became a capacity and with minimal influence on professional event, government policy. Most critically, the women’s singles practical needs of women and girls remain players now unmet as basic services—such as access to receive prize clean water, education, health care and money equal to livelihoods—remain at bay.” Afghan women that of their male counterparts. report deep frustration at their lack of input Women’s tennis champions, including in setting the aid and reconstruction agenda Venus Williams and Maria Sharapova, in their country. began speaking out for equal pay and won No peace process stands a chance at the support of British Prime Minister Tony success without the full participation of Blair and even the curmudgeonly former women. The report calls for legal clinics for Wimbledon champ John McEnroe. women, shelters to escape violence and “This news has been a long time intervention on human trafficking, including coming,” said Billie Jean King, women’s job creation and increased security. Also singles champion in 1968. “Wimbledon is essential are measures to implement existing one of the most respected events in all of laws intended to protect women, including sports, and now with women and men provisions of the Afghan Constitution, the paid on an equal scale it demonstrates to Family Law Code and international laws to the rest of the world that this is the right which Afghanistan is signatory. In particular, thing to do for the sport, the tournament training programs are needed to educate and the world.” judges of family law courts about sexual Photo: Lauryn Oates King received 750 British pounds in 1968, violence and international standards of While international support has made a positive impact while men’s champion Rod Laver took home women’s human rights. on the lives of some individual women and children in 2,000 the same year. As the discrepancy Afghanistan, the concerted and relentless Countries like Canada must assign a higher determination needed to make lasting change will not continued over the years, players and proportion of funds to go directly to Afghan come about until countries like Canada earmark more women’s organizations for service provision, dollars for women.

HERIZONS SUMMER 2007 7 nelliegrams PASSINGS BY NOREEN SHANAHAN women’s sports activists lobbied for equity to no avail, despite the fact that two of the three other Grand Slam events—the U.S. and Australian Opens—began offering captured Anderson’s spirit with a single equal prize money. (The French Open now quote: “I never learned how to be pays singles champs the same but, overall, subservient to men.” pays women less than men.) Last year, Doris Anderson died in Toronto of Wimbledon women’s singles champion pulmonary fibrosis. Amelie Mauresmo earned $53,000 U.S. less than men’s champion Roger Federer. Tim JANNIT RABINOVITCH Phillips, chairman of the All England Club, OCTOBER 22, 1949–JANUARY 26, 2007 which sponsors the 130-year-old Jannit Rabinovitch was a tireless feminist tournament, insisted that the prize and lesbian activist and a dedicated payments were driven by market forces and advocate for marginalized people. Her not by gender. leadership was central to establishing Source: Feminist Daily News Wire community services for women in Victoria, including transition and second-stage POLLUTION PROBE PASSED housing as well as a shelter for homeless California Governor Doris Anderson championed feminist issues at Chatelaine. women. She was awarded a human rights Arnold Schwarzen- medal from the Vancouver Human Rights DORIS ANDERSON egger signed into law Coalition and, in 2004, was named an NOVEMBER 10, 1921–MARCH 2, 2007 the first-ever honorary citizen of Victoria. Doris Anderson had a profound impact on biomonitoring program Rabinovitch served as executive director Canadian feminism. As Chatelaine editor in the country. for the International Centre to Combat from 1957 to 1977, she published thorough, The U.S. Breast Cancer Fund lobbied for Exploitation of Children and helped create pro-choice articles on abortion, birth control, a number of years for the program in the the Canadian National Coalition for discriminatory divorce laws and the wage hope of making a connection between Experiential Women, an organization gap. Anderson also mentored journalists, exposure to local chemical pollutants and dedicated to sex worker issues. including June Callwood, Michele Landsberg, cancer rates. Connecting the dots, the fund “Jannit was the real deal—a grassroots Barbara Frum and Sylvia Fraser. Under believes, will help scientists and community social activist whose life and life’s work Anderson’s tutelage, circulation at Chatelaine members better understand the effects of embodied the passion and compassion of the grew to 1.8 million readers, the highest chemical exposures on human health. feminist movement,” said colleague Mary circulation magazine in Canada. Biomonitoring measures pollution in people Lasovitch. “She raised millions of dollars for “She brought forward all the key issues by analyzing blood, urine and other projects to support the homeless, abused for women and made them palatable and biospecimens for the presence of toxic women, sex trade workers, lesbians and understandable,” said Landsberg. “To her, chemicals. others in the margins of society.” equality just made sense.” Last year, Schwarzenegger vetoed a Most recently, she worked with the Centre In 1979, Anderson was appointed chair of similar measure, despite broad public for Addictions Research at the University of the Canadian Advisory Council on the Status support. This year, the Breast Cancer Fund Victoria. She will be deeply missed by her of Women, but she resigned in 1981, won the day, seeing the creation of a family, the Victoria women’s community and protesting the government’s refusal to program that could serve as a model for activists who work across the country and include a second women’s equality section in other states and jurisdictions internationally to support marginalized the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. As a people. In memory of Jannit Rabinovitch, result, feminist protests grew and 1,300 WOMEN RULE! donations can be made to PEERS women from across Canada held the Ad Hoc Finland now has the highest political (www.peers.bc.ca) or to Victoria’s Sandy Conference on Parliament Hill. A new clause participation rate of women in the world, Merriman House. was eventually added to the Charter with 60 percent of the nation’s cabinet Jannit Rabinovitch died in Victoria, B.C., guaranteeing rights and freedoms “equally to positions occupied by women. Following after a struggle with cancer. national elections in March, women now male and female persons.” Anderson went on to become president of have 84 of the 200 seats in the Finnish JUNE CALLWOOD the National Action Committee on the Status parliament. JUNE 2, 1924–APRIL 14, 2007 of Women, a coalition of more than 700 President Tarja Halonen, the country’s A tireless campaigner for social justice in women’s groups, from 1982 to 1984. She first female head of state, was elected in Canada for 50 years, June Callwood passed continued to publish hard-hitting editorials in 2000. Halonen formally appointed her away in April at age 82. Callwood became a the Toronto Star from 1982 to 1992. She cabinet April 19, and now women hold 12 of newspaperwoman during the Second World published several books of fiction as well as the 20 advisory posts. War and was the author of 30 books. She her autobiography, Rebel Daughter, and The “Some governments have been 50/50, but founded or co-founded a breast-cancer Unfinished Revolution, a look at 20 years of a 60 percent majority of women is support centre, Nellie’s Hostel for abused the women’s movement worldwide. In a internationally very high,” said Jaana women (1974), Jessie’s Centre for teenage Globe and Mail obituary, Sandra Martin mothers and the Toronto AIDS hospice Casey

8 SUMMER 2007 HERIZONS House (1988). Lesbian and Gay Rights in Ontario. There, her nelliegrams Callwood was actively involved in the advocacy work included lobbying to have Writers’ Union of Canada, Canadian PEN, the sexual orientation added to the Ontario Kuusipalo, a University of Tampere political Canadian Civil Liberties Association and the Human Rights Code. She co-founded AIDS scientist. Canadian Association for the Repeal of Action Now! during the late 1980s, a Men still hold the top ministerial posts of Abortion Laws. Recently she was president community-based advocacy group in Toronto finance, defence and foreign affairs. Tuija of a prostitutes’ community organization and fighting for people living with HIV-AIDS. Brax was the only woman chosen for a top a bencher of the Law Society of Upper Bearchell opposed censorship and co- cabinet post, as head of the justice ministry. Canada. An ardent feminist and civil founded the Canadian Committee Against In 1906, Finland became the first European libertarian, Callwood was made member of Customs Censorship following seizures by nation to grant female suffrage. the Order of Canada in 1978, an officer in Canada Customs of shipments to gay Source: Feminist Daily News Wire 1986 and finally, a companion in 2000. bookstores, including Vancouver’s Little June Callwood died in Toronto from Cancer. Sisters. In 1995, Bearchell moved to Lasqueti STRONACH BIDS FAREWELL Island, B.C., and slowed down her After being called a activism—only slightly. dipstick, a slut, a whore, Chris Bearchell was born in Edmonton and and a bitch by male died in Vancouver from breast cancer. political observers and by male peers, after being RITA JOE accused of having “blonde MARCH 15, 1932–1MARCH 21, 2007 ambition” for switching Rita Joe, known as the poet laureate of the her allegiance from the Mi’kmaq nation, published five poetry Conservative Party of anthologies and an autobiography called The Canada to the Liberals, and after her former Song of Rita Joe. The story of Joe’s activism boyfriend, Conservative MP Peter McKay, and how it transferred to her poetry came as referred to her as a dog in House of a result of watching her children struggle Commons, Liberal MP Belinda Stronach, 40, against systemic racism. She set out to announced in April that she was returning to challenge stereotypes of Aboriginal her role as a senior business executive with Canadians depicted in their schoolbooks. Magna International and would not be “Indians have in the past been portrayed seeking re-election. as the bad guys; I write the positive image Before subjecting herself to the sexist of my people,” she said. Through her gentle, insults and attacks as a public official, she Chris Bearchell co-founded the Lesbian Organization persuasive approach, both in her writing of Toronto in 1976 during a time that was significantly was CEO of Magna International, a company overshadowed by gay men’s issues. and in her life, she became an ambassador that achieved record sales and a doubling of for native arts and culture throughout its stock price during her tenure. She was CHRIS BEARCHELL Canada and the U.S. and drew audiences also named in the No. 2 position on AUGUST 16, 1953–FEBRUARY 18, 2007 toward her. Fortune’s list of the 50 most powerful women “No more shit!” became the rallying cry of “It is hard to follow the white man’s way,” in international business and was named the early gay rights movement in Canada. she wrote. “We native people must use our one of the 10 most influential The phrase was coined at a protest rally by own way, use what our own hearts tell us, no businesswomen in North America. Chris Bearchell after the Toronto bathhouse matter what we talk about—welfare, raids on February 6, 1981. Six years earlier, housing, problems in marriage, spirituality.” NO DICKING AROUND Bearchell started writing at The Body Politic, Joe received the Order of Canada in 1990, The Supreme Canada’s most influential gay newspaper of Canada’s highest honour for lifetime Court of Canada the time. She stayed with the paper until it achievement. In 1992 she joined the Queen’s agreed with the folded in 1987, and for quite a while was the Privy Council for Canada, one of the few non- Women’s Legal only woman in the collective. politicians ever appointed. She was also Education and Bearchell co-founded the Lesbian awarded a National Aboriginal Achievement Action Fund Organization of Toronto in 1976 and found Award in 1997. (LEAF) that space on Jarvis Street where lesbians could After she died, her family found paper still contempt of court proceedings are explore and develop their identity during a in her typewriter as well as stacks of poems appropriate for parents who refuse to time when their concerns were significantly and songs beside her typewriter, hidden in comply with family court orders, including overshadowed by gay men’s issues. drawers and stuffed between the mattress child support. In 1977, she hosted a Rogers cable and box spring. Her daughter Frances once In the spring, the court ruled in Dickie v. television show called This Program May Be asked how she managed to write so much. Dickie, a case specifically addressed Offensive to Heterosexuals, a radical on-air “There’s these words floating in the air and I whether such cases can be punishable by a opportunity to organize in the queer catch them,” she replied. contempt of court order. The court ruled community and a voice in the wilderness to Rita Joe was born in Whycocomagh, that Dr. Kenneth Dickie, a man of means many viewers. Bearchell helped open Nova Scotia, and died in Sydney, Nova and resources, who refused to comply with Maggie’s in 1986, the first government- Scotia, after an 18-year struggle with a family court order, could be found in funded, prostitute-staffed drop-in centre for Parkinson’s disease. contempt of court. sex trade workers. With files from the Toronto Star, Globe and She was also a leader of the Coalition for Mail, Our Times, Xtra and CBC files.

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Lesley MacDonald Janyt Piercy Angela Smith nelliegrams SUPREME COURT “This ruling should have a significant impact on the ability of women to resolve NIXES NIXON APPEAL the problem of men who abuse the family justice system so as to perpetuate the BY ROBIN PERELLE, XTRA WEST exercise of power and control over them” predicts Llana Nakonechny, counsel for woman for its own purposes, will stand. LEAF, which intervened in the case. It’s not clear how sweeping a precedent LEAF argued that the decision about that ruling will set for trans rights, says what recourses and remedies are findlay. It shouldn’t legalize the exclusion of available when men are in breach of family transsexual people from public spaces, such court orders should be made in as washrooms and places of employment, consideration of the gender inequality so she says. often associated with support orders, and “This is a very narrow judgment, in fact,” in a way that is consistent with section 15 findlay says. It applies strictly to non-profit Charter equality values. women’s organizations that exclude trans women from participating in their programs DON’T ASK. PERIOD Kimberly Nixon (right) with her lawyer barbara findlay or receiving their services. India has removed questions from (left): no regrets. (Photo: TJ Ngan) Rape Relief maintains the case was never government employment forms that (VANCOUVER) After almost 12 years of legal about discrimination, or even about defining required female workers to record their last battles, Kimberly Nixon’s case against who counts as a woman for any purposes menstrual cycles and maternity leaves, Vancouver Rape Relief ground to a halt but its own, says spokesperson Suzanne Jay. Medical News Today reported on April 17. February 1 when the Supreme Court of “For us, the struggle was about allowing a The “sensitivity of the issue” prompted the Canada refused to hear Nixon’s appeal. women’s group to organize as we saw fit.” removal, said a government official. A post-operative male-to-female As an organization dedicated to helping Women had complained that the transsexual, Nixon filed a human rights raped and battered women, Rape Relief question was intended to weed out complaint against Rape Relief in 1995 for argued that it needs counsellors with shared pregnant women from the hiring process. excluding her from its volunteer counselling life experiences as women. Transsexual training program on the basis of her women just don’t share that life experience, PALESTINIAN LESBIANS Jay says. She welcomed the Supreme Court COME OUT transsexuality. Rape Relief never disputed the claim, but maintained that the women’s of Canada’s refusal to reopen the case. The group Aswat, which means “voices” centre had a right to set its own “The women of Vancouver Rape Relief are in Arabic, is breaking the silence for membership criteria. very happy about the decision,” Jay says. Palestinian Arab lesbians. In March, it A B.C. Human Rights Tribunal sided with “We’ve endured almost 12 years of attack on held its first public conference and Nixon. However, two higher courts agreed Rape Relief’s reputation and resources.” The released a groundbreaking book, despite with Rape Relief and overturned the case cost Rape Relief more than $100,000, bitter opposition by the Israel-based decision. Nixon asked the Supreme Court of she notes. Islamic Movement. Canada to review the latest ruling, but the Regardless of the costs, both findlay and The conference, attended by 350 people, court refused. The Supreme Court agrees to Nixon say the battle has been worth it. marked five years of the organization’s hear only about 11 percent of the appeal “It was absolutely worth it, because of the existence and coincides with the applications it receives, according to Nixon’s impact this case [has had] on feminism and publication of a new book in Arabic about lawyer, barbara findlay. The court doesn’t women’s groups in Canada,” says findlay. lesbian and gay identity. Home and Exile in make its criteria public. “We have been able to serve as a catalyst Queer Experience is a collection of articles “None of us ever expected it would come to for the women’s movement. Almost all of the on topics ranging from the struggle for gays such a grinding halt,” Nixon said. “The abrupt women’s centres in Canada are now trans- and lesbians in the Arab world and conflict end, to me, seemed to minimize the whole inclusive. So Kimberly has changed the world regions to a well-known essay by American experience and the experiences of transgen- for trans women.” poet Adrienne Rich that argues that dered people in general, in terms of “The whole reason I persevered and lesbianism is an extension of feminism. discrimination, and prejudice, and transphobia. endured what I did was knowing I had a Says Rauda Morcos, a co-founder of Trans activist Tami Starlight agrees. For voice and an opportunity many don’t,” says Aswat: “We have to work in order for her, the entire court saga has led to the Nixon. She says she’s grateful to all the them to accept us. If we don’t have “further marginalization and disempower- women’s centres, particularly those in material in Arabic, how will people know ment of an already marginalized and Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, that have about sexuality?” disempowered community.” The latest voluntarily changed their policies to include In the last year, Aswat has published five decision means Rape Relief and other trans women in the last 12 years. newsletters in Arabic dealing with gay and women’s organizations can continue to Asked if Rape Relief will change its policies, lesbian issues. discriminate legally, she points out. Jay pauses. For more information: The Supreme Court’s refusal to hear the http://www.aswatgroup.org/english “When Kimberly first came to the case means the B.C. Court of Appeal’s 2005 [counsellor] training group, we had no policy. ruling, upholding Rape Relief’s right to choose We had a women-only policy, and that’s what its own members and decide who counts as a we continue to have,” she says.

12 SUMMER 2007 HERIZONS idea that we are secondary in the mosque, that our participation is unimportant. You can bet that in a mosque where a woman is imam, women are not going to be relegated to some back room where they can’t hear! It is significant that men and women have prayed side by side...sometimes in two separate areas—women on the right, men on the left, and sometimes in integrated rows—but never with women relegated to an inferior place to the men.

What is the reasoning for excluding women from leading prayers? Many Muslims these days have become totally obsessed with putting limits on male-female interaction. This is one reason for the resurgence of the niqab. It’s why so many mosques have separate rooms for women, or have put curtains across the main prayer hall so men and women can’t see each other, despite the fact that the Prophet never had that kind of arrangement in his mosque.

What impact do women-led prayers have on non-Muslim communities? I think it makes them feel much, much more comfortable knowing that there are Muslims The first woman-led prayer in honour of IWD was a celebration of women’s spiritual power, according to Muslims for dealing with similar issues [as they] deal with. I Progressive Values co-founder Pamela Taylor (bottom row, left). (Photo: Roxana Olivera) feel a particularly strong sense of empathy from Catholic women who are going through much of the same struggle within their own WOMAN-LED PRAYER faith community. What did you hope to accomplish by leading this prayer? HONOURS IWD There is a need for visible, public events to encourage others to join in the bandwagon, to BY ROXANA OLIVERA keep applying some pressure to the community, to establish a normalcy for women-led prayers in the public sphere, not just as some hush- (TORONTO) Asserting that men and women women-led prayers. My belief is that when hush, back-room, this-is-what-my-group-does, have equal status under Islam, the first woman- women leading prayers, and serving as imams, but as a celebration of women’s spiritual power, led mixed prayer in honour of International becomes commonplace, it will have an impact of their contribution to our community as Women’s Day was held recently in Toronto. on the way our community views and treats spiritual teachers and leaders. Pamela Taylor, a convert to Islam and the co- women in general. founder of Muslims for Progressive Values, What were your greatest rewards and fears? Is this Friday prayer about reclaiming sacred based in Los Angeles, led the prayer. Muslims As for fears, I really didn’t have any. When mosque space for Muslim women? gather on Fridays for their weekly women led prayers in 2005, there were some Absolutely. The mosque is called the House of congregational service. The service was threats the event would be picketed, but God. How can women be excluded from any organized by the newly formed Canadian nothing ever materialized. In 2006, there were part of it? Muslim Union. barely any ripples in the community. Most mosques don’t allow women to pray in Afterwards, Herizons interviewed Taylor Amina Wadud (the first woman to lead a the main prayer hall, and often the women’s about the movement for Muslim women’s rights. mixed Muslim prayer in New York in 2005) got section is overcrowded, the sound system is quite a bit of flak, but I think people who are Herizons: What was the significance of holding spotty, children are running wild making it opposed to it have become resigned to the fact the Juma on International Women’s Day? impossible to concentrate. I’ve been to that a group of us is going to be doing this for Pamela Taylor: International Women’s Day is mosques where I was expected to go around about bringing into focus problems that women back, down the dark alley, past the dumpsters, some time. are facing. Holding a mixed-gender, woman- to get to the door to the women’s section. This A lot of women—and men—said to me, “I officiated Friday service in honour of is disgraceful! How can we treat women like didn’t want to ever pray at a mosque before International Women’s Day places the this in the House of God! because I felt I didn’t belong, but at this prayer, movement solidly within the context of the Yes it is reclaiming, as the Prophet appointed I feel I belong.” greater feminist movement. a woman from amongst his followers as a Roxana Olivera is a freelance journalist based It represents a step toward normalizing prayer leader for her area. It challenges the in Toronto.

HERIZONS SUMMER 2007 13 campaign updates

U.S. INVASION BLAMED FOR VAW country’s new constitution, approved in the get-go. The U.S. Bush October 2005. The new constitution set a 25 Just one year after college graduation, administration percent benchmark for female representation women’s paycheques were 20 percent less bears some in Iraq’s National Assembly. than their male peers, even after controlling for responsibility for The new Iraqi constitution says citizens are hours, occupation, education and other factors the erosion of “equal before the law,” but also states that no known to affect earnings, a study found. women’s rights in law “that contradicts the established “By looking at earnings just one year out of Iraq because of provisions of Islam may be established.” college, you have as level a playing field as its support of In some parts of Baghdad, religious courts possible,” said AAUW director of research Islamist have gained legal authority. As Mohammed Catherine Hill. “These employees don’t have a fundamentalists, told Ms. magazine: “We used to have a lot of experience and, for the most part, don’t charges MADRE, a human rights group. government that was almost secular. It had have caregiving obligations, so you’d expect Sexual assault and other forms of violence one dictator. Now we have almost 60 there to be very little difference in the wages of against women are on the rise in Iraq, dictators—Islamists who think of women as men and women. But surprisingly, and according to a report by MADRE, based in forces of evil.” unfortunately, we find that women already earn New York. less, even when they have the same major and After banning Iraq’s secular Baath regime, A NEW ERA occupation as their male counterparts.” which encouraged women’s education and American feminists renewed their keystone The AAUW research also shows that this professionalization, the U.S. government set a demand for an equal rights amendment (ERA) pay gap exists despite the fact that women tight deadline to establish a new Iraqi following a March conference in outperform men in school, earning slightly democracy to justify its military action in the Washington. Reviving the ERA would higher GPAs than men in every college major, country. To meet that self-imposed deadline, mobilize women in an effort to pass including science and mathematics. the U.S. compromised its stated commitment legislation to amend the U.S. Constitution to The organization’s report, Behind the Pay to gender equality and negotiated with Islamic guarantee equal rights for women. Gap, says 10 years after graduation women religious fundamentalists who see women’s New York Democrat Carolyn Maloney earn only 69 percent of what men are paid. subordination as a precondition to a traditional reintroduced the Women’s Equality Further, college-educated men working full- social order, according to the report Promising Amendment, saying she believes the ERA has a time have more authority in the workplace Democracy, Imposing Theocracy: Gender- better chance at winning ratification in after a decade in the workforce than their Based Violence and the US War on Iraq. The Congress than at any time in recent years. female counterparts. report documents the use of gender-based Judiciary committee chair John Conyers and “We need to make workplaces more family- violence by Islamists seeking to establish a Jerrold Nadler, chair of the judiciary friendly, reduce sex segregation in education theocratic state. subcommittee on the constitution, civil rights and in the workplace, and combat “Under U.S. occupation, violence against and civil liberties, both pledged to hold hearings discrimination that continues to hold women women has occurred within the context of a on the amendment, the first since the 1980s. back in the workplace,” said Hill. rapid erosion of women’s legal rights and The renewed push for the ERA came from a political participation. That trend was set in two-day conference sponsored by the National DENIAL DISCOMFORTS WOMEN motion by the U.S.-sponsored Iraqi Council for Women’s Organizations, an umbrella Japan’s Supreme government,” says the report. organization for women’s groups in Washington Court acknowledged Since gaining power, Islamist officials have representing more than 10 million women. in May that two cracked down on women’s rights, leading to a At the conference, Feminist Majority women had been wave of kidnappings, abductions, public Foundation president Ellie Smeal and National coerced into sex beatings, death threats, sexual assaults, Organization for Women president Kim Gandy slavery by the domestic abuse and so-called honour killings. laid out a national agenda for proposals to Japanese military “Because of the chaos on the streets and in reduce unintended pregnancy, grant workers during World War II, but rejected their claim the government, women have been forced to paid sick leave and fully fund federal programs for compensation. At the time, 1942, the leave work and hide at home,” said Yanar that combat violence against women. women were ages 13 and 15. Because of an Mohammed, a co-founder of the Organization Also on the list is an international treaty to agreement made between China and Japan in for Women’s Freedom in Iraq, in the most ban discrimination against women. The U.S. is 1972, however, the court denied compensation recent issue of Ms. the only developed country in the world that to the women. Historians estimate that up to In response to MADRE, the U.S. State has not signed the 1979 treaty, known as the 200,000 women, known now as “comfort Department’s Office of International Women’s Convention on the Elimination of all forms of women,” from China, Korea, Taiwan, the Issues pointed to the U.S. administration’s Discrimination Against Women, or CEDAW. Philippines and Indonesia were forced into efforts to support Iraqi women. In January 2005, sex slavery by Japanese soldiers. the department noted, women were elected in WOMEN ROBBED FROM DAY ONE Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe 31 percent of the 275 seats in the country’s According to the American Association of caused controversy in March when he said transitional government. Eleven women served University Women Educational Foundation, there was no evidence that the Japanese on the committee charged with drafting the women are assigned smaller paycheques from military had coerced women into sex slavery,

14 SUMMER 2007 HERIZONS reversing the country’s previous position human trafficking. Women living with HIV The purpose of these regulations, Dambrot established in 1993. “There is no evidence to experience more violence over their lifetimes stated, is to “protect the health of women prove there was coercion, nothing to support than women who are not HIV-positive, and undergoing assisted contraception, to reduce it (the coercion of World War II military sex women who have experienced violence may the risk to women of acquiring transmissible slaves),” he stated. be up to three times more likely to acquire HIV. infectious diseases and to reduce the risk to The comfort women are now mostly in their Children are also affected by violence. their unborn children of acquiring 80s and they are dying. A petition to U.S. Globally, it is estimated that 20 percent of girls transmissible infectious diseases, and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, timed to and 10 percent of boys under age 18 suffering birth defects.” coincide with Abe’s recent visit, asks the U.S. experience sexual abuse. Congress to urge Abe to apologize and give The International Violence Against Women MOBILIZE FOR MIDDLE appropriate reparations. Act (I-VAWA) will authorize U.S. support for EAST PEACE training, protection and services for women in a There are those who claim that peace in the VAW LINKED TO AIDS variety of contexts, from the fight against Middle East is impossible; that Iraq, HIV/AIDS, to schools and health clinics, to court Afghanistan, Lebanon, Iran and 9/11 are all part systems, workplaces and refugee camps. of the same conflict, so deep that no treaty or agreement could ever bring it to an end; that GAY SPERM BAN OKAY the West and the Muslim world are locked in a Federal regulations that exclude gay men from death struggle, and only one can win. donating sperm and deny women the right to Some call it “the clash of civilizations.” But choose gay sperm donors without special Avaaz, a new online mobilization organization, permission are logical and violate neither calls that a lie. party’s rights, the Ontario Court of Appeal Avaaz believes that a majority of the world’s ruled in January. citizens share a set of basic values, and that The Global AIDS Alliance is calling for greater Current Canadian regulations exclude all together we can build a better world. An action to end violence against women and sperm donors with “indications of high risk for international poll suggests they are right: 52 children, including passage by the U.S. diseases such as HIV and Hepatitis B and C percent of people polled believe the origin of Congress of the International Violence Against viruses, including men who have had sex with these conflicts is divide-and-rule politics, Women Act to reduce the spread of HIV/AIDS. another man, even once, since 1977.” while only 29 percent blame religious or “The fight against HIV/AIDS will fail, and the Excluded men can donate sperm if the cultural differences. broader fight to eradicate poverty will be woman’s physician receives a “special access The clash of civilizations myth serves the deeply undermined, unless we can move authorization” from the minister of health, and interests of extremists on both sides who want faster from rhetoric to real action on ending if the semen tests negative for infectious people to believe that bloody conflict is the violence,” according to Lisa Schechtman, diseases, is quarantined for six months, and only option. senior policy officer at Global AIDS Alliance. then tested again. The first step must be to raise the global “Our report shows that, backed by new While women seeking fertility intervention demand for real Middle East peace talks research showing the efficacy of some using their spouse’s sperm don’t need special regarding Israel/Palestine, the key symbol of programs that address violence, a growing permission and are exempt from the lengthy the clash, claims Avaaz. Already, tens of movement is demanding faster and better screening process, the Court of Appeal ruled thousands of supporters have signed petitions action to end violence.” the regulations are rational. and pitched in to buy ads in key newspapers Violence against women is a human rights “This scheme, after all, is not primarily promoting new peace talks. This website is violation that can include rape, domestic concerned with personal autonomy or self- one worth checking out; you can sign up for violence, acid burning, dowry deaths, honour actualization, but rather with health,” Justice Avaaz e-mail campaigns. (or revenge) killings, female genital cutting Michael Dambrot, of Ontario’s Superior Court, Check out this persuasive tool at: and other damaging traditional practices, and ruled last year. www.avaaz.org/en/stop_the_clash .

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16 SUMMER 2007 HERIZONS out of bounds BY LISA B. RUNDLE

Blast Off, Feminots!

A few weeks ago I was in the middle of a number of fizzled and started giving off a lot of smoke. unfortunate situations with women, in these cases women Maybe I should write about toe cleavage, I thought. older than I am, who identify as feminists but seemed to Unfortunately for you foot fetishists, the feeling that I was blithely treat other women like poop. I thought to myself: letting myself down wouldn’t go away. I kept thinking about ageism! I thought: sexism! I thought: I’m going to write the situations that had angered me in the first place, and of about these … these, these … feminots! the stories others had shared with me in response. My That was a few weeks ago. I tried the idea on a number of stomach flipped and flopped, then began a slow burn. other women, older and younger, and everyone got pretty Here’s the thing: Ageism is real. Sexism is real. So is racism charged by it. “Yes, yes!” they’d say. “I’ve experienced that. and heterosexism, and classism. What kind of feminist would The hypocrisy is infuriating!” I be if I denied that? They come in all kinds of forms, subtle I found myself jotting notes and examples from my own and not-so-subtle, easy-to-identify and harder-to-label, and life with fervour. I left myself voice mails while I was out so they are delivered by all kinds of people. Including women I wouldn’t forget. I began daydreaming—tangentially, I who call themselves feminists. admit—about the sound-alike feminauts (feminist Maybe I should retract my new term. Fun as I find it, it astronauts) flying through space, boldly charting fabulous might not be as helpful as it could be. Goddess knows I’m new feminist territory and wearing lots of shiny things, sick of the good feminist/bad feminist shtick. (Maybe zapping feminots and hypocrites of all kinds with the light of something a little more open-ended would do the trick? truth and justice…. Sigh. But mostly I thought about the Femiwhaaaat?) stark division between the women I know who live their I don’t want to imply that the poopers who inspired this politics, who inspire me and make the world better in so column are all-round horrible people. Each of us can react in many quiet and unseen, super-local ways simply by the way ways we sometimes regret. The trick, I think, is to diligently they treat others, and those whose regular treatment of the try to take responsibility for that. To question why we make women around them fails to live up to feminism’s most basic this or that decision. To find out where the knee-jerk tenant—that all women deserve fair and respectful responses come from and to do better next time. To apologize. treatment. (And would a little appreciation every once in a Because our politics mean something. And the way feminists while be so bad? But I digress, again.) behave, particularly toward other women, has a real impact— As I sat down to write, though, my feelings got a little both on what feminism is perceived to be and how women feel cloudier. After all, I thought, I’m hardly unbiased. I’m the about themselves—which goes on to have a huge impact on poopee in all the situations that fired me up and not the this gendered world. As feminists, we need to keep opening pooper. How many times have I unknowingly been the conversations and talking about the insidious ways oppressions feminot in another woman’s storyline? It’s my sincere hope operate in our workplaces, families and organizations, and that that those times are few and far between, but they must exist. includes our feminist workplaces and organizations. We’ve all been in situations that read completely differently And, for something a little sweeter, let’s take a moment or depending on your role in them. Perhaps I’ve misjudged these two to really value all that unseen good work—the truly women who’ve been, by turns, nasty, dismissive, undermining feminist workplace, the truly feminist counsellor, neighbour, and disrespectful. Perhaps I should allow the multi-flawed friend, partner, sister. The ones who engage in those crazy patriarchy to shoulder the blame alone. And there’s my own ethical struggles, who own up to their mistakes, who are part: I’ve rarely tried to raise the issues directly. I’ve been improving the world by the way they try every day. Here’s to known to be a little idealistic; maybe my standards are too you, you wonderful feminists you. high. The fire that had been raging in my belly wavered, Lisa Rundle is a writer and editor in Toronto.

HERIZONS SUMMER 2007 17 Illustration by Jess Koroscil

18 SUMMER 2007 HERIZONS Bar None JULIA SUDBURY ON WHY PRISONS DO NOT CUT CRIME

INTERVIEW BY SARA CASSIDY

here has been a worldwide explosion in prison finger at the interests that benefit from prison construction, construction. Steven Harper’s Conservative from tough-on-crime agendas, from legislation like T government wants to build more of them, as part of mandatory minimums and three-strikes-and-you’re-out laws. a law-and-order agenda that includes a crackdown on youth It points to the symbiotic relationship between offenders and imposing more minimum sentences. correctional and law-enforcement agencies, politicians, However, in the U.S. high incarceration rates have not business interests invested in prison construction, as well as resulted in greater safety or reduced crime. Moreover, the the corporate-media interest that helped to create the profile of prisoners has changed. In 1970, there were 5,600 racialized fear of crime. women incarcerated in the U.S. By 2001, there were 161,200 How does globalization become part of the picture? women behind bars—a 2,800 percent increase. Julia Sudbury: In 1999, I travelled to Britain and went inside Julia Sudbury is a prison abolitionist and the editor of a prison in Winchester. I was raised in Winchester, and you Global Lockdown: Race, Gender, and the Prison-Industrial could count the number of black people on one hand. I think Complex (Routledge, 2005). I was one black kid of maybe The book is an essay six in a school of about 800. collection that examines, “A prison is a form of violence When I went back to through a transnational against women.”–Julia Sudbury Winchester and went inside a feminist viewpoint, how neo- prison, I thought “Well, this is liberal globalization puts where all the black people are.” women behind bars. Sudbury is a past Canada Research Most of the women were not from Britain. They were Chair in Social Justice, Equity and Diversity at the Faculty of from West Africa, maybe Nigeria, maybe Ghana; they were Social Work, University of Toronto who now teaches ethics from the Caribbean, particularly Jamaica. One woman told at Mills College in Oakland, California. I sat down to talk me, “I want to put my son through engineering school. He with her in the opulent Empress Hotel lobby in Victoria. was accepted, but I had to come up with the fees.” She was Our surroundings at first felt sumptuous, but by the end of caught transporting drugs into Britain and given a seven- our interview their exclusivity felt stifling. year prison sentence. In Jamaica, education used to be free; Herizons: What do you mean when you refer to “the prison- now it is expensive. industrial complex”? That is linked to neo-liberal structural adjustment policies Julia Sudbury: It’s a shift from thinking about prisons as a imposed by the International Monetary Fund: Cut back on response to crime or a way to punish people. The concept public expenditures to make Jamaica more competitive in the “prison industrial complex” enables [activists] to point the global economy; reduce its tax base; open it up to multi-

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20 SUMMER 2007 HERIZONS “Rather than dealing with root causes of homelessness, of anti-queer violence, there was a criminalization, using prisons as a solution to deep-rooted social problems.”

Julia Sudbury: Prisons –Julia Sudbury are a European invention national corporations; create free trade zones; channel young on Nigeria by Biko Agozino. He points out that prior to women to work in these free trade zones. Globalization is colonization there were no prisons in Nigeria; prison is a absolutely implicated in this instance of cross-border European invention that initially started with the slave trade imprisonment. There are also Jamaican women in Canadian … in the forts along the west coast where Africans were held prisons under similar circumstances. captive prior to being transported. He also looks at how, At the time of [former Ontario premier Mike] Harris’ during colonization, prisons were built and the system of “common sense revolution,” there was a crackdown on imprisonment was therefore created as a sort of colonial squeegee kids who were supposedly undermining the quality outpost. He begins to make us question our common sense of life in Toronto, and this idea of cracking down on youth understanding that prisons have always been here and always crime is very much connected to homelessness, to queer youth will be here. In fact, prisons weren’t always here and, in fact, and other marginalized youth being forced out of their homes. came with a very particular form of economic, social and So, rather than dealing with root causes of homelessness, of political organization. anti-queer violence, there was criminalization—using prisons Why has women’s imprisonment increased at a rate even faster than as a solution to deep-rooted social problems. It erases the real men’s imprisonment? roots of social problems. It prevents our ability to address the Julia Sudbury: It’s connected to the feminization of poverty, real roots of social problems, because all the money is the ways in which the state cuts back on social services, on swallowed up by the prison system and the bylaw education and health care. Women bear the brunt of that enforcement, and then it presents the prison as the only because they tend to be the ones who still take full possible solution to those social problems. responsibility for families. Women then tend to be put in the It sucks up the public will, too. situation of making more serious choices about how they can Julia Sudbury: It re-frames social problems from collective to actually support their families. individual. It puts the burden of responsibility squarely on the Thus “criminalizing survival,” the title of the first section of your individual, so the individual is blamed for making the wrong book. Can you expand on that? choice. Julia Sudbury: It’s about what women have done under the And this is happening all over the world? constraints of neo-liberalism. What have women done to Julia Sudbury: Prison expansion and prison privatization is survive and to ensure that their families survive? I talk about happening not just in the global North. The new model of “criminalized acts,” as opposed to “crime,” because, as we incarceration in Latin America is increasingly looking like a know, what is defined as a crime shifts over time. While U.S. super-jail or a European mega-prison. women self-medicating on illegal drugs because of histories I was particularly pleased to include [in the book] the piece of sexual abuse is considered a crime, middle-class women

Prison Facts:

• Women make up 5 percent of federally • Two thirds of Canadian women in prison • Canada imprisons young people at four sentenced prisoners report being sexually abused as children times the rate that it imprisons adults. • Aboriginal women make up 3 percent of the • Two thirds of federally sentenced women • Canada imprisons young people at 10–15 Canadian population but up to 29 percent of are mothers—70 percent of those are times the rate of European countries. the federal female prison population single parents Sources: Correctional Service of Canada, Elizabeth Fry • Aboriginal men make up 18 percent of the • The population of federally sentenced Society of Canada male prison population women in Canada has grown by 200 percent since 1990 HERIZONS SUMMER 2007 21 “When I went back to Winchester and went inside a prison, I thought, ‘Well, this is where all the black people are.’”–Julia Sudbury

taking antidepressants or other kinds of tranquilizers is not. a brutal environment. When the five regional women’s prisons One of the articles focuses on the criminalization of were built, they were supposed to be closer to home so women resistance and focuses on the experience of Lisa Neve, an could maintain links with their families. Aboriginal woman in Canada who was given a dangerous- The design is not supposed to be punitive; the people offender label. Lisa was a young woman who had violence in working inside are supposed to have a woman-centred her life, poverty, lived on the streets, worked in the sex understanding of the issues affecting women, including industry, had mental health problems and has struggled not sexual abuse, domestic violence, etcetera. That was the to be a victim—and, in some instances, had to use violence rhetoric people bought in to, but the reality is over- to make sure she wasn’t one of the 500 missing and medication, and subsequently maximum security units built disappeared women that the Native Women’s Association of mostly to house a high proportion of Aboriginal women, also Canada is currently campaigning about. So her struggle to women with mental health challenges. survive in a really brutal environment led her to conflict with Actually, you cannot create a therapeutic environment the law, and ultimately to being labelled the most dangerous inside a prison because a prison is a controlled and brutal woman in Canada—not for acts she committed, but for acts environment. A prison is a form of violence against women, that the judiciary felt that she might do, based on statements so what you end up with is a dual system so that those women she made under the circumstances of mental illness. who can be managed in a general population are left in this supposedly less punitive environment, and then those women Disturbingly, studies of women in prison often focus on the who have emotional problems are removed and put in these individual woman’s need for healing. very, very punitive maximum-security units, some of which Julia Sudbury: Once inside, women are subjected to high are inside male prisons. doses of psychiatric drugs, so there is this irony of women on the outside being deemed drug users and abusers and then on Could you give me a short description of these five federal the inside being highly dosed because they are seen as a threat regional prisons? to the smooth management of the prison system. Julia Sudbury: They were built without perimeter fences. Cristina Jose-Kampfner, in her article on Mexican prisons, They were built so that women lived in cottages. It was sort talks about how women in Mexico are being arrested for of a halfway step to the community, so that women could what are called crimes against health, drug offences usually, order food, could cook together. It was supposed to be de- and then inside [they are] highly medicated. So there is this institutionalization. idea that women’s behaviour inside prison is out of control, When you heard about this replacement plan for P4W, what did that if women are emotional because their children have been you think? taken away or if they’re emotional because of a whole range Julia Sudbury: I was highly critical because I can’t support of violent abuses they’ve experienced in their lives, that that any measure that increases the number of people being put emotion is dangerous and dysfunctional to the smooth into prison. My fundamental belief is that we should running of the prison, and therefore must be medicated away. decarcerate and abolish prisons, that no woman belongs Isn’t that ironic? behind bars and that prisons certainly don’t heal. They don’t Julia Sudbury: It’s contrary to the rhetoric, particularly at the correct. And they don’t rehabilitate. federal level. In the document “Creating Choices,” I saw that one prison was being closed and five were being Corrections Services Canada argued that women’s built with more beds, so more women were going to prison, imprisonment should be a therapeutic environment, [it should and that judges were then going to say, “Well, I wouldn’t have be] about helping women, healing women, recognizing the sent you to Kingston because that was pretty horrible, but high level of abuse in the life histories of women in prison, you know, this new prison at Abbotsford, they’ve got and so on. And that is precisely why the Kingston Prison for therapeutic regimes—it would be good for you.” Women (P4W) was closed—because it was considered such [Philosopher Michel] Foucault made this commentary:

22 SUMMER 2007 HERIZONS “You cannot create a therapeutic environment inside a prison because a prison is a controlled and brutal environment.”–Julia Sudbury

Reform has always been a core part of the maintenance of There are private companies financing the construction of the prison. In fact, without reform, the prison couldn’t prisons [and] making a huge profit. There are stockholders continue. And you can see that happening in Canada. If making huge profits. There are companies such as Victoria’s there hadn’t been reform, women’s prisons would have had Secret that use prison labour and are making huge profits. to be shut down, because Prison for Women was so brutal it There are jobs. And as jobs in health care and jobs in schools was unsustainable in the context of Canadian understanding of human rights. are being cut back, a professional job in corrections becomes So reform comes along—very well-meaning, woman- more a reality for people, right? Particularly for working-class centred, feminist reform, in this case—and says, here’s a people who want a decent paying job. different model of women’s correction. Had that not been As a prison gets embedded into a local economy, people there, perhaps we would have had to say, well, maybe women become reliant on it. Perhaps people in Penetanguishene who have been sexually abused as children and have grown up would have loved to have a huge educational, training, sports and self-medicated and ended up in sex work in the street, complex which would house 1,100 people, just as the super- maybe we shouldn’t lock them up at all. Or maybe women who are on welfare and have serially gotten a little job on the jail is housing 1,100 people. Maybe they would love to have side and have been caught and charged with welfare fraud, that, but that’s not what they were offered. maybe they need some kind of anti-poverty strategy to help You say there has often been a dollar-for-dollar transfer from them survive, as opposed to putting them in prison—right? social programs to prisons. How does this get accepted? I guess I’ve always thought the Correctional Service of Canada Julia Sudbury: A neo-liberal political atmosphere says that we was governmental, and non-profit. But there are people gaining have to cut public expenditures in order to be competitive in financially from prison expansion. the global economy. So, if you start talking about spending Julia Sudbury: Well, I think we shouldn’t get too hung up on money on schools, training, youth centres, parks, recreation, the federal system, because there are more women in provincial systems. In Ontario, we have a new model of culture you’re going to be seen as big government digging into super-jails—basically, the small local jails that were scattered the taxpayers’ pockets. But if you spend it on policing and throughout the province were closed and in their place three prisons, it’s seen as unfortunate but necessary expenditure. large super-jails were constructed. And the one in New super-jails were constructed at the very same time the Penetanguishene was managed by a private corporation.* Ontario government cut $350 million from education and It’s important when we think about imprisonment in hospitals. It’s just seen as a necessity, not as an option. Canada that we look at the provincial system, where in Whereas spending on school programs, spending on Black Manitoba over 60 percent, and in Saskatchewan over 70 percent of the prison population is Aboriginal, and where in History Month, on all sorts of other things that build real Ontario and in Nova Scotia you have an absolutely community are seen as options. disproportionate rate of imprisonment of African Canadians. And in order for us to have an effective prison abolitionist The prison industrial complex incorporates federal prisons, strategy, it isn’t enough simply to say we don’t need prisons, provincial jails and youth detention centres. or prisons don’t work. We have to actually really dismantle And the purpose of it all has been a supposed sense of safety? the neo-liberal political agenda that sustains prisons as the Julia Sudbury: Well, it depends whose point of view it is. only form of solution to social problems.

* In a five-year pilot project from 2001 to 2006, the Central North Correctional Centre in Penetanguishene, Ontario, was operated by the Management Training Corporation, a private company. After being compared to a similar-sized publicly facility, Ontario Correctional Services Minister Monte Kwinter announced in April that the private contract would not be renewed because, while the private prison cost less, it resulted in reduced security, poor prisoner health care and a higher repeat offender rate.

HERIZONS SUMMER 2007 23 The Ugly Side of the Beauty Industry

BY MISHA WARBANSKI

ake a look around your bathroom. The average Increasingly, science is pointing out that exposure to many North American woman uses 10 or more personal- of these chemicals—including parabens used to preserve T care products every day. From toothpaste and soap antiperspirants and creams, and phthalates added to to antiperspirant and moisturizer, personal care products are perfumes and nail polish—may harm our health. A 2004 made from 10,500 chemical ingredients that are as much a study of breast tumours by Dr. Phillippa Darbre, from the part of our daily routine as sitting down to breakfast. And like University of Reading in the U.K., and published in the most things that happen before a mug of morning coffee, it’s Journal of Applied Toxicology, found parabens in each of 20 easy not to think about them too much. samples. This led researchers to suspect that parabens, which But researchers and women’s health activists are sounding mimic estrogen when absorbed through the skin, may play a the alarm bell about the makeup of makeup. Women and girls role in the development of breast cancer. The researchers are particularly susceptible to exposure to certain chemicals suspected the parabens came from underarm deodorants; that mimic hormone activity. Because our bodies have a however, they concluded that more research is needed. While greater percentage of fat in comparison to men, chemicals that parabens aren’t restricted in Canada, many manufacturers are are fat-soluble are more easily absorbed. Breast tissue is one going paraben-free because of consumer demand. such site where chemicals can accumulate. Now banned in the European Union, phthalates are another “As more and more women are diagnosed with cancer, we common ingredient in personal care products suspected in a have to question, where is this all coming from?” posits variety of health problems from liver malfunction to low Carol Secter, a board member of Breast Cancer Action testosterone levels and low sperm counts in men. In 2002, Montreal. With an emphasis on breast cancer prevention, researchers in Chicago tested 72 brand-name cosmetics and Secter’s group is part of a North America-wide movement found that 52 contained phthalates, a compound that helps to have harmful chemicals banned from personal care and cosmetics stay put without smudging. Phthalates are also used household products. to make perfumes and soaps. Scientists suspect the absorption

24 SUMMER 2007 HERIZONS Illustration: Tamara Rae Biebrich and Mike Carroll

of cosmetics through the skin could explain why young women to phthalates. The study found that the development of the in one study had 20 times the level of phthalates in their body genitals of boys whose mothers had high levels of phthalates compared to young men. in their bodies was less complete compared to those exposed Seventy years ago, the first cosmetics law in the U.S. to lower levels. Swan believes phthalate exposure may be banned the use of coal tar dye in mascara after the ingredient contributing to increasing rates of male infertility and was found to cause blindness. Today, the accumulation of testicular cancer. chemicals found in personal care products may affect men In response to a growing concern about the risks associated and women’s offspring. In August 2005, researchers, with personal care products, Health Canada now requires including University of Rochester epidemiologist Shanna personal care product manufactures to list product ingredients Swan, published the first study to examine prenatal exposure by the end of the year. The department also maintains a hotlist

HERIZONS SUMMER 2007 25 Manufacturing Jobs Matter to Women

& Over the past five years, women have lost more than 55,000 good paying jobs in manufacturing alone. & Women work in jobs like food manufacturing, fish processing, auto, auto parts, aerospace and general manufacturing. & The loss of these jobs has severely impacted women and their families, especially the single moms and primary earners.

The setbacks to women’s equality and hard-won gains are very real. We must call on all levels of government to join the fight to defend manufacturing jobs in Canada.

Fighting for Canadian Jobs Manufacturing Matters “There is no review to ensure the list on the label is accurate,” says Madeleine Bird, a researcher at McGill University’s Centre for Research and Teaching on Women. of already restricted and banned chemicals. The hotlist was products, my cosmetics, with a chemical dictionary telling me expanded in 2003 from less than 100 to almost 500 after this one’s okay, this one’s not. I want to be able to walk in and reviewing some chemicals that are restricted in the E.U. buy it off the shelf with the understanding that it’s safe.” However, no independent testing is done prior to a new product In Europe, Secter would be better protected. The European hitting the shelves in Canada—manufacturers are only Union bans more than 1,100 chemicals from personal care required to submit a list of product ingredients. This is just one products because they may cause cancer, birth defects or reason critics are demanding that the precautionary principle be reproductive problems. In stark contrast, just nine chemicals imposed on Canada’s $3.5-billion personal care industry. are banned from cosmetics in the United States; Canada “There is no review to ensure the list on the label is follows U.S. standards. Women in California won a recent accurate,” says Madeleine Bird, a researcher at McGill victory with the passage of the Safe Cosmetics Act, which University’s Centre for Research and Teaching on Women. takes effect later this year. The law compels manufacturers to Bird cites a Danish study on parabens that discovered that disclose product ingredients if they are on state or federal lists contents listed on a product’s label were different from the of chemicals associated with cancer and birth defects. makeup of the product, which sometimes had much higher Importantly, California’s bill also contains provisions designed concentrations. “Some check and balance is needed,” adds Bird. to protect the safety of nail-salon and cosmetology workers However, health activists say harmful chemicals shouldn’t who handle solvents, chemical solutions and glues. be there, period. Formaldehyde, benzene and lead are In the rest of North America, governments remain slow to associated with not only cancer, but endometriosis, birth regulate, so activists and consumers are taking the matter into defects and developmental disabilities in children. Coal tars their own hands, using the power of the pocketbook to used in hair dye have long been associated with liver cancer. pressure companies to change their formulas. Petroleum distillates, a suspected human carcinogen banned “Information is something that can be very empowering,” in the E.U., are still in use in North America. says Bird, who completed her degree in women’s studies and According to the Washington-based Environmental is now working to raise awareness about chemicals so that Working Group, 89 percent of ingredients in personal care individuals can reduce their own exposure, seek out products have never been assessed for safety. Breast Cancer alternatives and demand change. Action Montreal figures Canada would be roughly similar, as Abby Lippman, a professor of epidemiology at McGill ingredients were grandfathered into use in Canada without University, says the answer for her is simple: “If you can’t say being tested for safety. Under the 1999 Environmental it, don’t wear it.” Although not using cosmetics may seem like Protection Act, Health Canada and Environment Canada are a simple answer, Lippman doesn’t expect most women will reviewing more than 23,000 chemicals that were never tested suddenly stop using them. for safety. “I don’t want to make women who are wearing makeup Until recently, the contents of personal care products have sound like victims when they’re making a conscious been a mystery. While the Canadian government requires decision,” says Lippman, who is also a member of Breast food manufacturers to list ingredients on packaging, Cancer Action Montreal. “But when they make a conscious cosmetics and personal care products have historically been decision, I want them to be able to be aware of what they’re exempt. Last November, Canada caught up with the United putting on their bodies, and I want them to have access to the States and European Union and will require the contents of safest products. We need good choices, not just an array of personal care products to be labelled by the end of the year. some worse than others.” Retail outlets and manufacturers were given a year’s grace to Deciding which products are safest can be a time- sell off unlabelled products. Still, Dr. Samuel Epstein, co- consuming task. Designed to make those decisions easier, the author of The Safe Shopper’s Bible and head of the Cancer Environmental Working Group’s Skin Deep report created a Prevention Coalition, has said that the labelling will be searchable database of personal care products and ingredients. meaningless to anyone without a pharmacology degree. The Working Group’s information looks at American brands Secter agrees. “I don’t want to go shopping for my body and formulas, most of which are sold in Canada. The group

HERIZONS SUMMER 2007 27 The cosmetics industry says it can regulate itself and lobbies for fewer, not more, regulations. created fact sheets that identify which chemicals and which Of particular concern are products aimed at black companies to avoid. Revlon, Estée Lauder, Avon, L’Oreal and consumers that promise lighter skin and straighter hair. Johnson & Johnson are ranked in the group’s top 20 of Not only do these products impose a white standard of concern. Chanel cosmetics are not tested on animals, but the beauty that is harmful, but many hair relaxers and skin group gives them the number two rating of brands to avoid, lighteners contain ingredients linked to cancer, early citing a lack of safety data available for the ingredients used. puberty and other ailments. For example, hydroquinone, a In 2006, The Body Shop announced it would phase out the skin whitener, is deemed a carcinogen by the E.U. While use of phthalates from its products and packaging, but the not permitted in Canada in cosmetics, hydroquinone is company still uses parabens, which are not among the 37 top available in products classified as drugs in Canada. Black ingredients of top concern on Skin Deep’s list. women under 40 have a higher breast cancer incidence With its custom shopping list feature, Skin Deep provides compared to white women of a similar age, and studies consumers with information to enable them to choose the have noted that many of these products are used starting in safest products. The website offers suggestions on where to childhood, prolonging exposure. find that elusive non-toxic lipstick or deodorant and lists over The cosmetics industry says it can regulate itself and 300 companies that either don’t use harmful chemicals or lobbies for fewer, not more, regulations. Organizations like have pledged to eliminate ingredients related to cancer, birth Breast Cancer Action Montreal aren’t waiting for industry to anomalies or hormonal disruption within three years. change its practices voluntarily. That’s why the organization Companies like The Body Shop, Burt’s Bees and Afterglow has launched letter-writing campaigns to four cosmetics Cosmetics have signed on. However, the industry’s major companies—Unilever, Johnson & Johnson, Avon and Estée players such as Avon, Estee Lauder, L’Oreal, Revlon and Lauder—the big names that have been stubborn about Proctor and Gamble, are notably absent. changing their ingredients. Until we can get all toxic According to the Environmental Working Group ingredients banned from personal care products, a generous cosmetics report, hair colour, nail polish and nail treatments application of consumer pressure may be our best bet. contain some of the most toxic chemicals. One product in Online Resources: particular, OPI natural nail strengthener, received the highest The Environmental Working Group’s Skin Deep Report: hazard rating of all 14,100 products in the database. The www.ewg.org/reports/skindeep2 company’s nail polish and nail treatments contain toluene, Campaign for Safe Cosmetics: www.safecosmetics.org formalde-hyde and dibutyl phthalate—three of the top Cosmetic Ingredient Hotlist: ingredients of concern. www.hc-sc.gc.ca/cps-spc/person/cosmet/hotlist-liste_e.htm

LEAD ACETATE Found in some hair dye, and isobutylparaben and propylbaraben are What’s In Your cleansers, lead acetate is hotlisted in Canada classed as endocrine disruptors in Skin Deep. and banned in the E.U. Lead acetate is a Bathroom? reproductive and developmental toxin. PETROLEUM DISTILLATES Found in mascara, perfume, lipstick and foundation, petroleum If personal care ingredients are not listed, FORMALDEHYDE Found in some nail distillates are a suspected carcinogen. you can request content information from products, antibacterial soaps and the manufacturer. Check the Environmental foundations, formaldehyde is a carcinogen COAL TAR Found in dark hair dyes and anti- Working Group’s Campaign for Safe dandruff shampoo, coal tars are carcinogenic restricted in Canada. Cosmetics report Skin Deep to get details and permitted in hair dyes in Canada when on specific ingredients and to find safer TOLUENE Found in some nail polish and accompanied by a warning. products. Hotlisted ingredients in Canada hardeners. It is suspected of being a Found in nail products. may be subject to limitations in their reproductive or developmental toxin. One form, DIBUTYL PHTHALATE All phthalates are banned in the E.U., but not concentration or can still turn up in Toluene-2,4-diamine, is prohibited in Canada. products categorized as drugs, like restricted in Canada. Dibutyl phthalate is an antiperspirant and anti-dandruff shampoos. PARABENS A class of preservatives endocrine disruptor and suspected to commonly found in moisturizers, deodorants reproductive toxin.

These are some ingredients you may want and many personal care products. Source: Environmental Working Group Campaign to avoid: Methlyparaben, butlyparaben, for Safe Cosmetics

28 SUMMER 2007 HERIZONS To Bend but not to Bow BY MAYA KHANKOJE

Shani Mootoo’s first novel, Cereus Blooms at Night (1996), was a finalist for the Giller Prize. The Predicament of Or (2001) was a lyrical reliving of past eroticism, and her latest novel, He Drown She in the Sea (2005), was reviewed in Herizons’ Fall 2006 issue. Born in Ireland and raised in Trinidad, Shani Mootoo has lived in Canada since 1982.

Herizons: From films and photography you turned to writing. You use the Caribbean vernacular and standard English with Did the Irish gift of the gab rub off on you? great ease. How about Canadian, eh? Shani Mootoo: Oh, I wish it had. I just finished reading Peter I beg to quibble: There is no Caribbean vernacular—not Behrens’ The Law of Dreams, about a young pauper’s tortured even a Trinidadian one. Draw a grid using horizontal and journey out of Ireland during the famine and blight of the vertical lines. Imagine this as Trinidad society stratified. You mid-19th century to England, then across the ocean to could fill each block with the different speech inflections of Quebec. Old news, right? But Behrens had me feeling as if the various social corners of the island. There are race-based hunger fur was growing on my forehead. His manner of differences in speech, class nuances, too. But there is a Irish-style storytelling was teaching me, page by page. But manner common to all on the street. I tried to suggest this in then, among my favourite books are A House for Mr. Biswas He Drown She in the Sea. I am fascinated by how and when by V.S. Naipaul, Salt by Earl Lovelace, Those Who Eat The various individuals and groups use the several hybrid forms of Cascadura by Samuel Selvon and anything by Dionne this English we love to bend. Brand—all Trinidadians. There is nothing like the myth of I have been in Canada for 25 years, and I hear that finally the Blarney Stone in Trinidad, but one would be hard- I am picking up some phrases and a bit of an accent. My pressed to find a Trinidadian who can’t whip a good one. mother, who lives in Trinidad, comments that “a bit of ” is a

HERIZONS SUMMER 2007 29 “There are race-based differences in speech—class nuances, too. But there is a manner common to all on the street.” typical Canadian phrase. Perhaps it might replace the tired experiences bore on them, and so to interpret them. stereotype of “eh?”—eh? And which accent? In Canada there Your protagonists are eternal migrants. Have your own are many, many accents. migrations informed your writing? In He Drown She, I wanted to write the B.C. landscape You mean Tyler and Mala in Cereus, too? That’s wonderfully from the view of this Trinidadian immigrant—me—and astute of you. They have not left their countries but are also from my protagonist’s—an immigrant of Guanagaspar, migrants of sorts. Yes, certainly the big migrations, but a fictional island based on Trinidad. I wanted to talk about smaller experiences, too—say a quick visit to another city, wine drinking, too. I wanted to bring the various influences even within Canada, adds heft. New experiences of new of my Trinidad past to bear on a literary interpretation of two places and people reveal flawed ways of thinking and guide subjects dear to me. To attempt to render these in a Canadian me onward. accent might have reduced both to stereotypes, as in eh? I thought it might have more value, as an immigrant writer of Do you believe in national identity? colour, to try putting into literary language not feelings of I wonder what you mean by “believe” and by “national trepidation or awe for this landscape, but feelings of desire. identity.” These days, we are made to feel that this thing is a Harry, the protagonist, is in awe, but I wrote with an truth and it must be bowed to. There are many of us who intimacy and deep love for those peaks, lakes, mountain roads, have several geographical identities at once, so a single the flora there. He sees with my eyes, not with those of national identity makes no sense whatsoever. someone wary of them. For me, writing these parts meant not Flag waving may have its place in moments, but in general to try to speak like a Canadian or write like a wine it worries me. It seems to require—for those of us who have connoisseur, but to unearth how my own already hybridized come from elsewhere—a public giving up and letting go of FERNWOODcritical books for critical thinkers PUBLISHING 1992–2007 • celebrating 15 years of progressive publishing

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30 SUMMER 2007 HERIZONS “Flag waving may have its place in moments, but in general, it worries me.” aspects of what made us who we are. For me, national identity implies the unspoken language of strangers, aliens, other, outsider, and is a precursor to racism. Funny thing is, if racism foments at the border, it swallows those within. Many of us are a mirror of those on the other side. The essentialist nature of national identity is divisive, hateful and exclusionary. I want to say, thank heaven we live in a country that lets us revere our multiple heritages and that these are not seen as symbolic of anti-Canadian sentiment; but I won’t, because there are moments when these parts of our lives are being watched and tagged as possible indicators of treason-in-the-making. There is little room for conversation in the notion of belief. National identity is an idea that needs to be scrutinized, shaken loose, discussed constantly. It is not a truth or an absolute. It is not something to be believed in or not believed in.

Are gender and sexuality predetermined at birth or social constructs? Or are they of no consequence at all? Evidence shows they are sometimes predetermined at birth by the medical profession and caregivers, all with vested interests in conformity. In the case of the individual who is being determined, it matters. Why the hurtful, hateful policing? Of course, one knows why—the petty, small- Shani Mootoo: In search of a loving world. (Photo: Aline Bravit) world, small-view details of why. In a more humanitarian, universal and loving world, would the specifics of a person’s winters put a damper on it? gender and sexuality need to matter? Only to be celebrated It suits me well that the comment part of your question in however, whenever and in whichever of its multitude of fact answers the question itself. variations it manifests. Are feminist struggles incompatible with social struggles at large? You depict the oppression of males under a patriarchal society. How Ideally, feminist struggles are not for the cause of one group do you reconcile your tenderness for them with your loathing of the of people—and a hugely amorphous one at that—but are for violence inflicted by men on some of your female characters? the amelioration of all personkind. Ideally, social struggles are Precisely by recognizing that oppression breeds oppression. A everyone’s business. Ideally, there should be no conflict here. question that a writer asks is why? I can’t accept that human On the other hand, social struggles can be a front for beings are inherently oppressive or violent. Here is a question causes that have at their lead, in some instances, feminism’s we may, rather, ask: Are males naturally oppressive? Is male antithesis: patriarchy. Also, as opportunities increase to violence predetermined at birth? Or is it a social construct? meddle in the affairs of communities other than our very Colonialism, class, gender, ethnicity, marginality, dislocation and own, it must be recognized that one region’s manner of doing unconditional love are some of the themes you touch upon. feminism might differ from those of another. There is no Anything else? altruistic feminism. The same goes for social struggles. When I am pleased and amused when others make lists of what I to meddle and when not to meddle is a tricky business worth write. I don’t have such a list myself. But it is interesting to see, worrying about. from the point of view of others, what I write about. This What is your mission as a writer? suggests to me some consistency, and this pleases me. It also To work at writing. To ask why? To ask it again and again. To suggests certain obsessions, but I won’t worry about it. try to understand. To have conversations through Your poetry is redolent of tropical sensuality. Have Canadian storytelling—conversations like this.

HERIZONS SUMMER 2007 31 Tajik girls face few educational opportunities, early marriage, rising fundamentalism and increased risk of trafficking driven by poverty. What will the future bring?

TajikistanA FUNDAMENTAL CONCERN

STORY AND PHOTOS BY LAURYN OATES

ost Canadians would be hard-pressed to find dinner in her family home. Hearing one language Tajikistan on a map. One of the most transformed into another sounded like poetry to her ears, and M mountainous countries in the world, Tajikistan from that day on it became her dream to be an interpreter. can be found in Central Asia, northeast of Afghanistan and Growing up, marriage remained low on Muhiba’s list of beside the western tip of China. priorities. However, her parents recently proposed a young In the northern city of Khojand lives Muhiba, a 21-year- man to her as a possible marriage partner. Muhiba inquired old university student. When I meet her, Muhiba is wrapping with a few classmates about the potential fiancé and was told up a degree in translation studies and working occasionally as that he came from a good family and had just finished an interpreter. As a child, Muhiba recalls, a woman who studying economics. A classmate who lived next door to him interpreted from German to Russian was once a guest for assured her he was good-looking. Muhiba met her fiancé

32 SUMMER 2007 HERIZONS Marriages are now hastily arranged by parents stretched to keep supporting one more dependent and anxious to secure their daughters’ financial futures. once and assessed him as reasonably open minded. She seem like a fairy tale. Corruption is endemic, salaries low and agreed to the marriage, believing that other candidates would foreign trade thwarted by unwelcoming red tape. At the same be less likely to permit her the freedom to work as an time, the country has lost its network of community libraries interpreter or to further her education. that once reached every village in the country, a dependable Walking through Khojand’s bazaar, Muhiba wanders into social security system and reliable health care. All have a few dress shops, fingering the bright white Western-style eroded since 1991, and have all but disappeared today. wedding dresses with half interest. When I ask if she is Women in particular have faced a spiral downward over the happy about her upcoming marriage, she is unhesitant. “No,” last 16 years, a spiral that has been driven by a reversion to she replies. cultural traditions that have turned back the clock. A Soviet republic for the better part of the last century, Still, Muhiba holds out hope that she will be her husband’s Tajikistan is in the midst of recovery from Soviet governance. only wife. Polygamy is on the rise in Tajikistan; it is estimated Tajikistan has few interactions with the outside world and that over 90 percent of marriages in the country include more remains of little interest to global powers—a poor country than one wife. While not legally sanctioned, authorities turn without oil that produces mainly cotton and agricultural a blind eye to the practice—even cabinet ministers have products, a legacy of the Soviet economic order. The country multiple wives. Second, third and other later wives hold is home to several ethnic groups, including Tajiks (of Persian secondary status in the household, are expected to help take heritage), Uzbeks and a dwindling population of Russians. care of the other kids and are denied privileges the first wife Tajik is coming back as the lingua franca, but Russian still may have. Only first marriages are technically legal, therefore dominates in government and among the country’s elite. subsequent wives have few legal protections, such as child Officially a democracy, the country has nonetheless retained custody in the event of a divorce, or the right to inheritance. some of the worst remnants of Sovietism, such as a Their status also means they are less likely to report abuse or cumbersome bureaucracy which makes Kafka’s The Trial desertion.

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34 SUMMER 2007 HERIZONS Second or third wives have few legal protections, such as child custody in the event of a divorce, while their children lack rights of inheritance.

I turned to a leading women’s organization, Modar, to find many young women continue the tradition of a five-year out what organized women’s groups are doing about polygamy. bachelor’s degree in one of the country’s poorly resourced The director, Gulchehra, responds abruptly, “Nothing.” universities, they are likely to end their careers before they Gulchehra explains that for many women polygamy is begin. The reason is growing pressure for early marriage. viewed as an economic necessity. Tajikistan’s seven-year civil Marriages are now hastily arranged by parents stretched to war that followed its independence killed enough men that keep supporting one more dependent and anxious to secure there are significantly fewer men than women. Because there their daughters’ financial futures. The average marriage age is are few money-making opportunities available to women, dropping and, contrary to trends elsewhere, that age is most have little choice but to depend on husbands to support getting younger in urban areas, despite the legal age for them—even husbands who may already have another wife. marriage being set at 18. Many girls in the capital, Dushanbe, The alternatives aren’t necessarily any better. With few are married at 15, while the average marriage age in rural economic options, many Tajik women are vulnerable to being areas is between 20 and 22. trafficked and forced into prostitution. On the surface, Tajik women appear to have little in This stands in contrast to the status of women in Soviet common with their sisters in bordering Afghanistan. Tajik times, when women’s participation in the workforce was women wear a patterned and colourful national dress— promoted. Large numbers of women became engineers, short-sleeved, ending above the ankles and comfortably doctors, lawyers and other professionals. Many studied in billowing in the rare breezes of a gruelling summer heat that Moscow, bringing home doctorates and sometimes even a reaches upwards of 50 degrees. The fabrics come in endless Russian husband. Primary education reached every corner of varieties, but are sewn in a single pattern that is worn by the country, and Tajikistan still has an extremely high literacy almost all women in the city and countryside alike. Women rate relative to its GDP. Women occupied a sizable portion who wear a scarf tie it up around their heads, keeping the of the intelligentsia and the political elite. dust off their long hair. Unmarried women don thick, dark Tajik citizens did not enjoy the freedom of multi-party eyebrows, filled in generously with makeup if their natural elections. However, women were less confined by patriarchal eyebrows don’t manage to meet in the middle: a distinct sign interpretations of their culture and of Islam than they are now. of beauty and a signal that a woman is single. Glittery, Today, the norm is for girls to stop their education at high bohemian-style earrings of gold or silver are worn by young school, with fewer entering school to begin with. While and old women alike.

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Please support animal welfare & write a letter today. Log on to www.chickenout.ca for more information. For many lone women, returning to their birth families is not possible. Few economic options for women exist in Tajikistan.

Like Afghanistan, Tajikistan is a post-communist country microcredit and small business start-up schemes for women. where a new form of fundamentalism is pushing women’s Such projects could promote economic self-sufficiency and progress backwards. Reports of wife abuse are increasing and could become a viable alternative to polygamous or violent there are few shelters in a country where women face marriages, or to forced prostitution. notoriously uncooperative authorities. Their only option—to Muhiba and her university friends take me to the Khojand return to their birth families—is not always desirable, since Public Library one humid afternoon to show me a portrait of they would be adding another mouth to feed in households Sairam Isoeva, a revered Tajik actress and writer who reached where incomes are small and families are large. Most opt to the height of her fame during the Soviet era. Later, when we stay in their marriages and endure the violence, according to visit the Greek-style theatre where Sairam works as artistic women’s advocates. director, we meet her on the street outside her workplace. In a country that touted secularism for over 70 years, The young women were beside themselves and giggled with fundamentalist religion is gaining in influence. The Islamic excitement, seeing their role model in the flesh. Renaissance Party of Tajikistan received the second-highest As women’s rights quietly recede in a country largely off the number of votes in the last election. Muhiba and her friends radar screen of the international community, I can’t help but roll their eyes at the mention of the party. However, there is wonder whether women like Muhiba will have a chance to a serious concern that as long as the country remains poor become as strong and influential as the women of the previous and isolated more may turn to conservative religious parties. generation that they so admire. I worry that the answer is no, Few international humanitarian and developmental that as long as viable economic opportunities for women organizations have a presence in Tajikistan, and women here remain elusive and interest in Tajikistan from the would welcome more international support. Faced with grim international community remains fleeting, as long as economic prospects, an increasing number of women are corruption in government is endemic and fundamentalist reportedly trafficked out of Tajikistan, exported to places movements quietly seep into politics, women’s rights and their such as the United Arab Emirates, Russia, China, Japan and voices will increasingly be shut out of public and political life. Western Europe. Modar has carefully documented case after And yet, with outside support, Tajik women may just be case of girls as young as 10 who have been kidnapped and able to create a new place for themselves in society, forced into prostitution rings, both domestically and transforming gender roles to honour Tajik culture while also internationally. One financial option being discussed is embracing progressive views of women’s roles in society. HERIZONS SUMMER 2007 37 in focus Welcome to Libbyland BY JENNIFER O’CONNOR

ibby Davies was peeved. For four years, then-finance L minister Paul Martin had been cutting spending on social housing. In East Vancouver, where she lives, Davies had seen how improved housing changed people’s lives. “I thought, ‘My God, I gotta get in there and fight tooth and nail,’” she says. “And that’s what I did.” In 1997, Davies made the leap to federal politics, and she’s been the member of Parliament for Vancouver East ever since. Today, she is the NDP House Leader (only the second woman to hold the position in a federal party), as well as the party’s labour critic and its spokesperson for Member of Parliament Libby Davies participates in a demonstration against Canada’s head tax, on the streets of Ottawa. drug policy, prostitution, and Her Vancouver riding is affectionately known as Libbyland. infrastructure and communities for Greater Vancouver. In four federal Davies also spearheaded the formation of a House of elections, she has never received less than 43 percent of votes Commons subcommittee on solicitation at a time when the cast—just one of the reasons the riding is affectionately 63 missing women in Vancouver were rarely talked about. known as “Libbyland.” “If 63 nurses or housewives died, it would be a national East Vancouver not only defines Davies’ constituency, but the emergency,” she says, “but because they were sex workers, community informs the way she does politics. Born in England they’re considered garbage.” Davies supports decriminal- to lefty parents, Davies lived in many countries (dad was in the ization and is disappointed that the Commons British army) before the family moved to Vancouver when she subcommittee didn’t recommend decriminalization when it was a teen. She has lived in the area ever since. issued its report last December. (A group of prostitution There, on Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, a young Davies workers has since challenging Canada’s Criminal Code helped start a low-cost food store and a community newspaper provisions on communicating for the purposes of in 1972. She was also instrumental in founding the Downtown prostitution, its bawdy house prohibition and its ban on Eastside Residents Association and, starting in 1982, she served living off the avails of prostitution.) five terms as a Vancouver city councillor. More recently, Davies has hosted a series of forums to Davies became the first female MP to come out as a lesbian, develop an East Vancouver agenda for climate change. in 2001. She and partner Kimberly Elliott have been together Whatever is on her agenda, however, Davies is part of that eight years. Davies has a son, Lief, 28. She has also been an rare breed of politician who is truly collaborative in her outspoken advocate for safe injection sites. “It was an issue of nature. Individual community members are no less people losing their lives,” she says about drug use. “A leading important. “We spend a lot of time helping people one by cause of death was overdosing—entirely preventable deaths— one,” she says. “That’s something that’s very important.” and so I’ve been a very, very strong advocate on challenging It’s clear why Davies is so good at her job. “You’ve got to prohibition policies, and now work with people across the feel like you’ve got a strong sense about what you’re doing, country to take that on.” Insite, the first safe injection site in and why,” she says. “It’s the people I work with and my North America, opened in Davies’ riding in 2003. riding that keep me grounded.”

38 SUMMER 2007 HERIZONS body politic BY MARIKO TAMAKI

Snitch Bitch

Six years ago, when I was just out of university, I ended up at a with the soft silk chest of our vice-principal. dinner party with a bunch of old friends, among them this girl, Clearly, I did not have a problem with snitches or snitching. Marjorie Graham. If you don’t know Marjorie Graham, her “Sarah hit me,” I screamed. Sarah was given two weeks’ name is not significant to you. It’s significant to me because I detention. do know Marjorie Graham. I hate Marjorie Graham. That afternoon, Marjorie and two of her friends called me Not 30 minutes into the evening, she and I got into a fight. at home, hissing into the line with their lips close to the I think we were talking about someone at a friend’s office receiver. “FINKER,” they whispered, “You’ll wish you were who was a bum patter and whether or not any of us had a dead.” For three weeks after that, Marjorie and her friends problem with it. followed me from class to class, walking only inches behind “What women have to realize,” Marjorie said, “is that me, their hot breath in my ears. Eventually, Sarah’s detention reporting sexual harassment doesn’t make you look was over and all was forgotten. STRONG, it makes you look weak, like women can’t look Six years later, I watched Marjorie smugly take a sip of her out for themselves so they have to get the teacher involved. beer. She had the same Grade 7 chubby cheeks, the same It’s like snitching.” thick brown hair held up high off her head by a black ribbon. Of course, I knew all about what Marjorie Graham I remember I took a big sip of my Caesar, the Tabasco thought about snitching—because I went to school with her. burning down my throat, my eyes watering. One day, in Grade 7, one of Marjorie’s best friends, Sarah What I meant to say at that moment had something to do Church, and I were playing dodge ball. There were more with justice and power. About how using the word “snitching” players involved, but we three are the only ones I remember, was really a bully’s way of making the people they picked on probably because, just when we were near the end of the feel even less powerful. Reporting sexual harassment, I wanted game, Sarah threw the ball at my face. It bounced off my to say, wasn’t snitching any more than was reporting vandalism, cheek and into my hands with a THWACK. It felt like a rock. or robbery, or assault. It just felt like that sometimes. The girls on my team gathered around me, putting their Instead I stood up, knocking over my Caesar into hands on my back and asking me if I was okay. Marjorie’s lap. I was on the unofficial Asian/ethnic team. We always got Everything I wanted to say blended into a dull Morse code clobbered, possibly because we were ethnic and possibly in my head. Why, I wondered later, don’t politics line up like because we were tiny. From somewhere inside the circle of eggs in a carton when you need them? Instead all I got was: girls gathered around me, I felt a tug on the ball. It was Sarah. Power. Take for. Granted. Victim. You. Take me. “It’s my ball,” she said. “You’re out.” None of which made any sense. “You hit me in the face,” I said, my one cheek getting So instead I grabbed my purse. “You,” I spat, “are a bitch.” hotter and hotter like an electric burner, heat spreading in a Of course it’s true, right—she is and she was. But calling coil from the inside out. “It’s a foul.” someone a bitch is not the kind of victory you picture, six “You jumped at it,” Sarah said. “It’s not my fault it hit you years after getting hit in the face for no reason. in the face.” My friend Katie says feminism, sometimes, is like the Everyone was feeling bad for Sarah that year because her dad ground in Super Mario Sunshine, Level 8, with the sands that was getting remarried. I didn’t feel especially bad for Sarah. funnel out from underneath you. In order to survive, you have Sarah was never that nice to me. This time Sarah cupped her to wrench your joystick and jump really high and really fast hand and swung it forward, like she was knocking something onto the next pillar, and keep jumping until you hit that big off a table, her wrist locked and stiff as her hand connected with yellow crown that lifts you up into the air. It’s all about my face. It felt like she’d snapped my face with a rubber band. I patience, and timing. dropped the ball and Sarah scooped it up, swivelled, and walked And sticking to non-contact sports. back to her team. I turned and ran into the school, colliding © True Lies, Mariko Tamaki, Women’s Press HERIZONS SUMMER 2007 39 arts culture MUSIC

Around the City has topped prominent jazz charts across North America and Europe. Although her music is more challenging than the pop-jazz stylings of younger jazz-classified players like Norah Jones, Elias remains almost as accessible. Light on horns and predictably heavy on the piano, her songs shape-shift around the listener. The effect is one of extreme comfort. Elias’s piano technique is outstanding—she exhibits a control that allows maximum flexibility within conventional jazz structures. If you want your friends to quietly admire your sophistication at your next cocktail party, this is the album for you.

LADY SOVEREIGN PUBLIC WARNING Def Jam REVIEW BY CINDY FILIPENKO Some people are short, while others are concentrated. Lady Sovereign falls into the latter category. This is worth mentioning only because she seems to have a bit of an issue with her stature, referencing herself “as the Romi Mayes has been compared to Lucinda Williams and Mary Gauthier. biggest midget in the game” and titling her first EP Vertically Challenged. (For the record, ROMI MAYES your toe tapping. she is five-foot-one. However, as we know, good things come in small packages. SWEET SOMETHIN’ STEADY With the exception of the new-country- The diminutive British MC’s just-released, Gurf Morlix sounding “Eight More Days,” there’s not a single song on Sweet Somethin’ Steady that long-awaited debut full-length CD, Public REVIEW BY CINDY FILIPENKO couldn’t have been written 40 or 50 years ago. Warning, is a stunning collection of songs Winnipeg’s Romi Mayes has been compared To paraphrase the great Kitty Wells, God that rivals fellow white rapper Eminem’s to Lucinda Williams and Mary Gauthier, two of may not have made honky-tonk angels, but early output. country music’s finest songwriters. With she came damned close with Romi Mayes. Lady Sovereign, born Louise Amanda Sweet Somethin’ Steady, it’s apparent that she Harman, has been a fixture on the British MC fully belongs in that esteemed company. scene for the past couple of years, releasing Whether she’s getting you primed to let ELAINE ELIAS AROUND THE CITY two highly acclaimed EPs. Alternately praised another tear fall in your beer or pulling out the Bluebird as an artist who transcends geography and full bluegrass twang, this is a writer so slagged as a hoodie-sporting, baggy- immersed in the structures of classic country REVIEW BY CINDY FILIPENKO trousered poser, the 22-year-old has a pretty that her sound is both fresh and timeless. Brazilian jazz pianist/composer Elaine Elias’s strong sense of self, as demonstrated on Especially tasty is the roadhouse blues of 18th album shows off her smoky, silken vocals “The Other Dame,” with its whiny slide guitar to incredible effect. A blend of original “Love Me or Hate Me.” “Love me or hate me/ and plaintive lyrics: “I am destined to be compositions, complimentary covers such as it’s still an obsession/ Love me or hate that is lonely/ Your love’s not the only one/ I am Tito Puentes’ “Oye Como Va,” first made the question.” righteous but I’m randy/ Your love tastes like famous by Santana in the early ’70s, and This working-class North Londoner’s candy/ Bring it on.” unexpected choices such as Beck’s strength as a rapper comes from her ability to From the title track that has her asking a “Tropicalia” and Bob Marley’s “Jamming,” cleverly dissect culture into a collection of wry lover to be her “sweet something steady on Around the City is a spectacular example of an observations. On the track “Random” she the side” to the painful admission of “just artist at the height of her career. A testament takes some swipes at other Brit MCs who because I’m strong don’t mean that I’m to her musical prowess, the cover songs, adopt American accents and terminology in an happy,” on “Desperately,” this album is a supported by Elias’s breathtaking effort to sound more “authentic.” “Now get off meditation on the big universal themes of lust arrangements, positively shine. your churr, I mean chair/ Some English MC’s and love. Mayes skillfully merges her spare, Having emerged on the jazz scene as a gettin’ twisted/ Start sayin’ cookies instead of poetic lyrics with melodies that can just as precocious 17-year-old composer, Elias has 30 biscuits.” Burn. easily get your heart breaking as they can get years later reached her potential as an artist. Public Warning is an auspicious debut.

40 SUMMER 2007 HERIZONS AMY WINEHOUSE success of this second album took her down a BACK TO BLACK career path that saw her collaborate with Universal Squeeze’s Glenn Tilbrook, Jann Arden and Paul Hyde of Payola’s fame. MacLean had REVIEW BY CINDY FILIPENKO been kicking around since the mid ’90s, but Feeling bad never sounded as good as it does her three albums didn’t cause much of a stir on Amy Winehouse’s Brit blockbuster Back to commercially. Damhnait Doyle’s career Black. The British beehive-sporting bad girl is biography was similar. known for taking the stage with a drink in one While all three have their strengths and hand, fag in the other, opening her mouth and weaknesses, together those weaknesses blowing the audience away. Back to Black seem to disappear. The first two singles, “Lake sounds like someone took the best of the ’60s of Fire” and “You’re Not Alone,” are excellent girl bands and classic R&B artists like Ruth contemporary folk-rockers that showcase the Brown, threw them into a blender and added a women as strong vocalists and songwriters. heavy dose of lyrical wit. The only question this sophomore effort leaves On “Tears Dry On Their Own,” with its rift unanswered is how come “We Will Not Be lifted from Marvin Gaye and Tami Terrell’s Lovers” hasn’t been released as a single? “River Deep, Mountain High,” Winehouse With three writers on one album, there’s not laments that “I’ll be some next man’s other a lot room for other voices, but Shaye manages woman soon.” to carve out a little space for songs by Jill A bastard paramour gets his in “Me and Mr. Sobule, Ron Sexsmith and Van Morrison. Jones,” with Winehouse demanding to know Shaye is proof that if two heads are better “What kind of fuckery is this? You made me than one, three are exponentially better. miss the Slick Rick gig.” Fuckery, indeed. We’ve all felt it and now we have a word for LILY ALLEN it—superb! ALRIGHT, STILL Then there’s “Rehab,” another autobio- EMI graphical song that has the singer refusing her REVIEW BY CINDY FILIPENKO label’s recommendation of a stint in rehab, The stark honesty of the words under some of claiming, “I’d rather be at home with Ray/ I the sweetest pop ever recorded sets Lily Allen haven’t got 70 days, because there’s nothing apart from the pack. Her debut album, Alright, you can’t teach me/ that I can’t learn from Mr. Still, establishes this 22-year-old as a Hathaway.” In these days of over- contender. To date, the album has spawned pathologizing every other behaviour, this 23- four singles in Britain, including the infectious year-old’s youthful recklessness is as “Smile,” a lovely little pop ditty that will have refreshing as her sound. you singing along: “At first when I see you cry/ This exceptionally talented singer- Yeah, it makes me smile/ At worst I feel bad songwriter’s lyrics indicate that she would for a while/ But then I just smile.” The tongue- probably be a lot of fun, though you may not in-cheek tribute to her hometown, “LDN,” want her over at your house. continues in the same vein, making it a likely Highly recommended. choice for a follow-up North American single. SHAYE The infectious ska beat of “Friday Night” sounds like the song could have come off a LAKE OF FIRE Specials or English Beat album. Its stripped- EMI Canada down arrangement highlights Allen’s delicate REVIEW BY CINDY FILIPENKO soprano. Shaye proves that when three established yet The daughter of film producer Alison Owen chronically underrated singer-songwriters (Shaun of the Dead) and comedian Keith Allen, with the ability to harmonize get together, the Lily has clearly inherited a solid sense of result can be electric. Lake of Fire is the humour. Wry observations about romantic second group outing for Kim Stockwood, relationships weave throughout. Damhnait Doyle and Tara MacLean, and it However, Allen reserves her finest comic deserves some serious attention. skewering for her pothead brother Alfie, on Of the three, only Stockwood ever appeared the closing track: “You need to get a job to be properly marketed, and then only because the bills need to get paid/ Get off your marginally. Her charming 1999 album, which lazy arse/ Alfie, please use your brain,/ Surely yielded the hits “12 Years Old” and “Jerk,” there’s some wall out there that you can announced the arrival of a unique talent. The spray/ I’m feeling guilty for leading you astray/

HERIZONS SUMMER 2007 41 arts culture MUSIC

Now how the hell do you expect that you’ll get illusion, but even on these smokier numbers laid?/ When all you do is stay and play on your it’s apparent that her lyrics are forged in the computer games.” riot grrrl tradition of brutal honestly. Tough love, and you can dance to it. Buy And just when you think she’s just doing this one yesterday. that contemporary acoustic thing that used to be called folk, she takes a sharp turn into FANTASIA roots territory with songs like “Shenandoah” FANTASIA and “Santa Fe Dream.” J Records The great writing, clean arrangements and REVIEW BY CINDY FILIPENKO sophisticated lyrics of The Brightness suggest Fantasia Barrino’s self-titled sophomore album the emergence of a major talent. The only thing establishes her as a solid R&B performer. standing in Mitchell’s way may be her childlike Winner of the third season of American Idol, voice, which can come across a bit reedy and the performer, who is on a first-name basis thin. When she manages to overcome this, the with the world, seemed initially to suffer the quirky quality of her vocals puts her in the same fate as other Idol winners—namely, same company as women like Tori Amos and being a voice in search of a genre. Rickie Lee Jones, both incredible singers The opening track “Hood Boy” features considered by many to be an acquired taste. Outkast’s Big Boi and the musical bridge of The Anais Mitchell, definitely another righteous Supremes’ “The Happening.” The result is an babe, is a taste worth acquiring. oddly compelling mix of edgy R&B and old-time Motown. Fantasia also pays tribute to The JILL BARBER Muscle Shoals on “Baby Making Hips,” a solid FOR ALL TIME bump and grinder featuring achingly restrained Dependent Music horn arrangements. With a slow buildup that REVIEW BY ANNA LAZOWSKI never hits a crescendo, this single-destined I wouldn’t be surprised to find out that Jill tune is a paean to unfulfilled lust. Barber’s record collection has everything from One of the most exciting songs is the ironic- brooding torch singers to alt-country twangers ally titled “Bore Me (Yawn),” a hip-hop woman- and indie rock hipsters. And on her latest done-wrong number with a driving bass line album, For All Time, she draws on all those that could have been lifted from any mid-’70s influences to create a beautifully cohesive Stevie Wonder album. This confrontational tune listening experience. leaves no doubt that this woman is going to Born in Toronto, Barber decided to pursue throw her man-whore out on his cheating ass. her career from the small but strong music Fantasia consistently fares better on the scene of Halifax. And though she’s still an upbeat numbers; the ballads come across independent artist—her brother Matthew has sounding like the over-produced offerings of already snagged a major-label deal—Jill did every other post-Whitney diva. Best when manage to attract some high-profile help in she’s belting, Barrino is currently on the studio. Jim Cuddy and Bazil Donovan of Broadway singing her heart out as Celie in Blue Rodeo turn up, as do Luke Doucet and The Color Purple. her brother. But despite the guest vocalists and musicians, the production on For All Time ANAIS MITCHELL really relies on Jill’s strengths as a singer and THE BRIGHTNESS storyteller. There’s a real authenticity in her Righteous Babe lyrics and a sincerity to her vocals that have REVIEW BY CINDY FILIPENKO attracted attention, garnered airplay and won The fact that independent singer-songwriter her awards. Anais Mitchell has found a home on Righteous Over the course of the album, Barber shows Babe Records for her third release, The her playful side on “When I’m Making Love to Brightness, is hardly surprising. You,” gets meditative on “Ashes to Ashes” Like Righteous Babe boss Ani Difranco, and is plaintive on “For All Time.” Her emotio- Mitchell writes the kind of songs that offer nal range is what makes this album such a rich rewards in exchange for patient listening. great listen. Mitchell’s acoustic music also defies simple There’s no shortage of popular and talented categorization. Her phrasing has more in Canadian women recording and touring these common with jazz than folk. Her employment days, but if you haven’t discovered Jill Barber of horns on a couple of tracks supports the yet, consider yourself tipped off.

42 SUMMER 2007 HERIZONS arts culture SUMMER READING

TATTYCORAM AUDREY THOMAS Goose Lane Editions REVIEW BY SYLVIA SANTIAGO Since immigrating to Canada in 1959, Audrey Thomas has carved out a generous niche in Canadian literature. The author of award- winning novels Intertidal Life and Coming Down From Wa, as well as numerous other novels, short fiction collections and radio plays, Thomas is one of the country’s best writers. And with her most recent novel, Tattycoram, Thomas proves why yet again. Known for her experimentation in fiction, Thomas not only brings a minor Dickens character to life in Tattycoram, but also interwoven stories, holds a double image of While the collection covers the events of Charles Dickens himself. Dickens’ Harriet one woman shown twice. The photos are Nell’s life out of sequence, the shifts in time Beadle (dubbed Tattycoram) in Little Dorrit is nearly identical—her stockings are black in and voice add dimension, making the book an irascible foundling employed as a maid by a one, white in the other. Her dress and apron wonderfully whole and satisfying. well-meaning family. In contrast, Thomas’s vary only slightly in colour and design. In the Harriet is a forthright and resilient character. photo on the right, one hand has disappeared BOW GRIP BY IVAN E. COYOTE An incident at the foundling with a visiting boy behind her back and her gaze has shifted ever Arsenal Pulp Press awakens in the young Hattie her first strong so subtly from the camera. feelings of injustice: “He spoke to me as The images come from another book, The REVIEW BY KRIS ROTHSTEIN though I were nothing, and it came home to me Art of Cooking and Serving, referenced in Ivan E. Coyote’s first novel probes the that day that there might be men who would Atwood’s story of the same name. The images emotional life of Joey Cooper, a mechanic in a always see me that way in the outside world.” are reflective of Atwood’s storytelling small Alberta town. Cooper has been stuck in Hattie exhibits an independent streak that technique throughout the collection, as she a rut for the year since his wife left him for makes her an atypical Victorian heroine. She traces one woman’s life. It begins with Nell as another woman. It takes a chance transaction leaves the security of her employment as a our narrator later in life, then skips back and with the local bus-dwelling recluse to kick- maid of the Dickens household to care for her forth through time, leaving and filling gaps of start Joey’s life. dying foster mother. Reluctant to return to family, friends and homes. After coming to It all starts with a trade—Joey swaps a domestic service, Hattie surpasses her know Nell and having access to her inner Volvo for Jim Carson’s cello. When Jim humble foundling origins by becoming the thoughts and memories, the sudden shift to disappears, Joey uncharacteristically takes village schoolmistress. Later, Hattie is again third person in the middle of the book is time off work to look for the man’s relatives in recruited by Dickens, this time to assist in his startling. That feeling soon passes as the new Calgary. It’ll give him a good excuse to finally new school for wayward women. view proves to be just as intriguing, just like drop off his ex-wife’s belongings at her new When a chance encounter reunites Hattie the two photos of the woman on the cover. loft—it’s been a year, but Joey still hasn’t with her estranged foster brother, Jonnie, she Atwood’s writing is powerful. She provides touched her things, not even the year-old cup confounds Dickens by choosing to leave sporadic, disordered glimpses into Nell’s life of coffee on her desk. Urania Cottage to live in relative poverty with as an aging woman, a wife, a daughter, a Calgary might as well be Greenwich Village Jonnie. Instead of recognizing Hattie as a sister, a lover, a stepmother and a mother. But or San Francisco to Joey, who keeps a pretty woman who follows her convictions, Dickens always, Nell is a caregiver: an 11-year-old low profile. Encounters with his ex-wife, Jim chalks her decision down to the fact that she tasked with her mother’s well-being during a Carson’s sister, a cello teacher and a few has “always been a stubborn miss.” Just how difficult pregnancy; an older sibling (both guests at the Capri Motor Court lead Joey to keen an impression Hattie makes on Dickens when her sister is an infant and when she is start thinking about his life and his feelings. becomes apparent years afterward when she an adult); an editor working with flighty He’s a man who feels deeply, although he is caricatured in Little Dorrit. authors; a step-mother to teenage boys; and doesn’t particularly dwell on emotion, or quite Tattycoram is a skillful fiction about a mother to a girl. know how to express himself to others. He fiction—a charmer from the start. Atwood’s telling of Nell’s story is exquisite revels in conversations with strangers, and engaging. In “The Art of Cooking and however, and makes connections quickly in MORAL DISORDER Serving,” Atwood captures Nell’s swirling pre- the big city. MARGARET ATWOOD adolescent emotions in the imperfect but Throughout the story, Joey’s voice McClelland & Stewart dogged knitting of a layette. Both “The Labrador remains hypnotic and true. And while some REVIEW BY KERRY RYAN Fiasco” and “The Boys at the Lab” focus on the of the plot twists are a little contrived, the The cover of Moral Disorder, Margaret decline of Nell’s parents through her patient story remains compelling and honest. Bow Atwood’s newest collection of gorgeously telling and retelling of iconic family stories. Grip explores intimacy and its limits, and

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44 SUMMER 2007 HERIZONS arts culture SUMMER READING discovers that those limits may be similar for everyone, regardless of whether they are strangers or family. The novel questions distinct and conventional families and communities, showing the many ways we are tied to one another.

THE PALM LEAF FAN AND OTHER STORIES KWAI-YUN LI TSAR Publications REVIEW BY MRIDULA NATH CHAKRABORTY In an age when the clamour of minority voices has reached a veritable crescendo, this collection of short stories by Kwai-Yun Li strikes a clean, clear, crisp note. The new- coin-shiny prose has the effect of a the sole experience, intact. captures the depth of love possible within photographer who miraculously snared rare I can’t wait for a more substantial body of families, regardless of betrayal. Rachael and pictures of the unhurried yet rapidly work to appear. The history of the Calcutta her mother Miriam share an enduring affection transforming ethos of Chinese settlement from Chinese has found eloquent expression in Li. that stands in contrast to contemporary early twentieth-century India’s oldest, most Mridula Nath Chakraborty lives, loves and longs in literature’s focus on conflict between mothers chaotic metropolis. These documentary-style Edmonton. and daughters. Burstow’s retrospective shorts from Calcutta’s Chinatowns offer an understanding is a fascinating treatise about intimate view of the Chinese immigrants who THE HOUSE ON LIPPINCOTT this fragile but impenetrable bond. numbered 30,000 in 1947, when India won its BONNIE BURSTOW Burstow’s nuanced writing is poignant independence, and who have now dwindled to Inanna Publications and Education without being sentimental. Her mastery of 5,000 due to political and economic upheavals. REVIEW BY IRENE D’SOUZA using the right words and tones to precisely Li presents semi-autobiographical vignettes In The House on Lippincott, Bonnie Burstow convey the inner workings of her large cast of of day-to-day life that capture, in the simplicity reveals the far-reaching consequences of a characters is a mitzvah. of a word or phrase, the slant of light in legacy that dominates the lives of those Throughout, Burstow reminds us to be crowded Bow Bazaar on a monsoon-heavy “whose hearts and minds were shaped by a constantly vigilant, evoking an old Russian afternoon or the muggy fumes of Tangra very particular horror.” proverb: “Forget the past and you’ll lose both tanneries, the sound of Buddhist chants, Set in Toronto between 1947 and the eyes.” chattering convent girls or anti-Communist present, the novel follows Holocaust survivors sloganeering, the smell of carp in soy and Daniel and Rachael Himmelfarb, along with NO MARGINS: WRITING ginger, or of vomit in restaurants after a CANADIAN FICTION IN LESBIAN wedding celebration. their three Canadian-born daughters. Both sides of the family have been murdered in CATHERINE LAKE AND The stories are not chronologically NAIRNE HOLTZ, EDITORS arranged, appearing almost in the manner of a concentration camps. The survivors’ Insomniac Press back-and-forth long-term memory as they etch nightmares of Dante’s modern-day inferno— out sharp, sparse details of diasporic life. The Auschwitz—cannot be kept at bay, as the REVIEW BY MEGAN BUTCHER characters express themselves with similar second generation awakens to their parents’ With writers like Dionne Brand, Ann-Marie economy, and the absence of deeper screaming. Neither generation has respite MacDonald, Nicole Brossard and Shani psychological exploration only heightens the from the horror. Survivors and their families Mootoo between the covers, you know that effect of an old black-and-white photo, form fragile bonds, steeped in a shared culture No Margins is going to deliver some good capturing for antiquity an irretrievable time. of pain as well as a rich spiritual heritage. writing. Not to mention Karen X. Tulchinsky, And yet, the stories have none of the cloying Burstow’s care with historical facts is Marnie Woodrow, Elizabeth Ruth, Daphne nostalgia of many a diasporic memory; they impressive, such as her description of women’s Marlatt. I could go on. speak in a voice uncluttered by the bulge of roles in the sonderkommandos (prisoners who As with any collection, there are some large-frame history or politically correct were forced to aid in the death of other stories I liked better than others; some are clichés. Li’s nuanced exploration of migration, prisoners or in the disposal of their remains). brilliantly crafted, while others are clunky. But exile, feminism, democracy, secularism, Her story is also filled with other shocks—for by and large, this is a thoroughly enjoyable nationalism, language politics and parochialism example, how sons were often sent to safety read and the content absolutely lives up to the is all the more remarkable as it does not seek over daughters, and how female survivors promise of the cover. shelter in easy binaries. She addresses deftly, endured the silent shame of being raped by However, I’m not entirely sure No Margins simply the role of the individual in the nation fellow prisoners as well as by their captors. works as a collection the way the editors and in history with the dignity of the lone voice, Burstow’s elegant and graceful prose intended. It feels like this book wants to have a

HERIZONS SUMMER 2007 45 arts culture SUMMER READING larger purpose than just showing off some the freedom of the lifestyle they are able to hormones to sex-reassignment surgery. Most skilled writers. From the oddly worded subtitle, it enjoy: demanding and fulfilling careers, travel, fascinating, and perhaps most heartbreaking, seems as if the authors had something political contemplative time and general eccentricity is the inside track on the extensive trans girl to say about the intersection of lesbian and are all made easier when you’re not raising culture in L.A.—a culture no doubt repeated Canadian identities. How then do the editors children. While these women write of rich in every major city in the world. To live the T is envision writing “in lesbian?” What does a lives, they also share stories of to be considered acceptable and desirable as possible lesbian language say about Canadian disappointment, and of love lost and found. a girl or (more rarely) a boy. It’s heartening to fiction? About Canadian lesbian writers? How Predominantly, the contributors are know that although those in this scene can be do the authors illuminate these questions? heterosexual women; the notable exception is judgmental, there is support in the form of Although the introduction teases out a few Sarah Leavitt’s sharply funny piece about drag mothers and counsellors—both formal consistent themes from the stories, these resisting motherhood as a lesbian. and informal. It’s sad to know the world of hurt questions are never addressed in a satisfying In the end, Nobody’s Mother is full of that is out there, to see in these personal way. The selected bibliography is well done and thought-provoking, lively, angry, political, stories the “pervasive self-doubt or self-hate hints at the way lesbians have shaped Canadian smart writing about being childless in a born of a dismissive larger culture.” fiction, but it, too, falls somewhat short of world where the role of mother is still the Though Transparent starts somewhat creating a cohesive core for the collection. most sacred, privileged position a woman slowly, it quickly proves to be A few authors hint at their answers to these can achieve. transformational—at once a lexicon, a questions in the “Writer Notes” that preface T.L. Cowan is a writer and academic whose biological textbook, a memoir and a guidebook to the the stories. Each author was invited to clock, happily, just never kicked in. She currently lives in adolescent transsexual experience. respond to a set of questions. Some did; some Edmonton. didn’t. Disparate answers to the same TRANS/FORMING FEMINISMS: questions would have spoken much more TRANSPARENT: TRANS-FEMINIST VOICES eloquently to our “intersecting and layered LOVE, FAMILY AND LIVING THE T SPEAK OUT identities” than the very interesting but WITH TRANSGENDER TEENAGERS KRISTA SCOTT-DIXON, EDITOR random notes which appear. CHRIS BEAM Sumach Press Harcourt With more in-depth prefatory material, REVIEW BY TARA-MICHELLE ZINIUK these stories would have felt more like they REVIEW BY CLAIRE ROBSON Trans/forming Feminisms is a compilation belonged together, and No Margins would If I ruled the world, I’d make Chris Beam’s written by transgendered people and their have been elevated from a gathering of great book compulsory reading for teachers, social allies and it speaks from learned and lived writing to an excellent anthology. workers, police, doctors and anyone else who experiences. Through four main sections— works in correctional facilities, the department Narratives and Voices, Identities and NOBODY’S MOTHER: of motor vehicles and passport agencies. Alliances, Inclusion and Exclusion and Shelter LIFE WITHOUT KIDS Heck, make that everyone in the world. As and Violence—the authors discuss trans LYNNE VAN LUVEN, EDITOR someone who’s had a number of trans friends inclusion in feminist studies and movements Touchwood Editions and read some books about the subject, I touching on everything from inclusive REVIEW BY T.L. COWAN thought I knew a little about the issues, but language to legal battles. As a woman who has chosen not to take up wow—this was an eye-opener. It’s a push a lot of feminists need. There’s motherhood, I was excited to find Nobody’s Cris Beam moved to L.A. and thought course material here and some good starting Mother: Life Without Kids. In this collection, she’d put in a few hours of volunteer work at points for the theory brain just being Lynne Van Luven has gathered the stories of a school for gay and transgender youth. introduced to trans issues. I was glad to see 22 women, many of whom wanted to have Instead, she became the full-time friend and Bobby Noble and Lara Karaian included and children but later discovered that biology or confidante of four trans girls who are moody, ecstatic to find Kimberly Nixon’s case circumstance made it impossible. While these narcissistic, brave, tough and funny. When profiled. The same goes for Toronto’s 519 essays explain the ways childlessness came other options failed, Chris and her partner Community Centre Trans Communities Shelter to pass, they also discuss how nurturing (read: adopted one of the youths—Christina—and Access Project. mothering) for many women without children stuck with her through the dramatic ups and I imagine Scott Dixon’s transgender and is, nonetheless, central to their worlds in their downs of her life. transfeminism course at York University to be relationships with children. As contributor There are no romantic Cinderella stories a suitable environment to read this book, to Adrienne Munro puts it: “I am the universal here. Though Christina does eventually make pick her brain and to understand her parent; in a hundred little ways, my love can it through, Domineque ends up doing time in intentions. But at home, on the bus or at the change the world.” a men’s prison, and Beam never glosses over laundromat, I’m not convinced that this book What is remarkable about Nobody’s Mother the problems these girls face that relate to succeeds as a stand-alone project. is that it is a space for a thoughtful engage- their families, their addictions or their The book’s weaknesses are not really ment with a diverse range of reasons why decision to turn tricks because finding a real surprising: Trans women are depicted as victims women do not have children. Despite the job was hard. of violence, while discussions of identity politics negative social stigma attached to women There’s a wealth of information in this book are dominated by trans men; talk of race is without kids, many of these women revel in about every aspect of “living the T,” from minimal and often steered by white people.

46 SUMMER 2007 HERIZONS Overwhelmingly, I got stuck on A. Nikki’s “Women’s Spaces Are Not Trans Spaces,” a piece referencing the Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival’s ‘women-born-only’ policy. I respect Nikki’s argument that trans identities may be too complex and unique to fit easily into feminist politics, and, therefore, women’s spaces. Nonetheless, I worry that despite her valid points (trans identities are complex; you can’t just lump peoples’ oppressions together easily), this approach could further segregate women’s and trans struggles, or at least keep us from bridging gaps between people who experience gender oppression. For me, Transfeminism was more of an interest read than a text for the already initiated. though each of these categories is socially gained by the second-wave feminists. Using DISCOURSES OF DENIAL: constructed,” she notes. interview research and polling data taken MEDIATIONS OF RACE, GENDER I found the choice of Jiwani’s case studies, from a vast number of sources, The F-Word AND VIOLENCE those reported in the national news—the takes the temperature of contemporary YASMIN JIWANI Reena Virk case, the Vernon massacre and the feminism in the United States, revealing that UBC Press Sharon Velisek story, also set in Vernon, many of the same concerns that were REVIEW BY ROZENA MAART British Columbia—particularly useful, for it relevant 30 years ago remain at the forefront Yasmin Jiwani’s Discourses of Denial: allowed her the opportunity to present her of women’s minds. Surprise, surprise, Mediations of Race, Gender and Violence is a scholarly reflections within the text. It is here reproduction and employment rights still top thorough, comprehensive and excellent study that Jiwani shines, since her analysis comes the charts in terms of what women want of race, racism and violence in Canada. through strongly and very clearly. from politicians. The book succeeds poignantly and The book is well-written, not loaded with If you are looking for a book with intelligently in engaging students, scholars unnecessary and laborious academic jargon, academic rigour, you may find yourself and activists on questions of race and racism, and should certainly be taught within high writing a lot of question marks in the margins including the unspoken aspects of its schools, colleges and universities across of The F-Word. This book simplifies discourse of denial. Jiwani points to the very Canada. Denial is the discourse of racism, this contemporary feminist issues and resorts to public examples of how racism is carried book reveals, for it is in the silence, a crash-course analysis of feminist politics. out—in the form of reported incidents of girl- withdrawal, dismissal, disavowal, negation and One choice simplification appears in a to-girl violence, gendered racism and sexist disassociation that the language of racism chapter on the difficulties of having a violence—while also drawing attention to the flourishes. Although Jiwani does not state this, way the media perpetuated these through its balanced life as a mother and career woman. it is clear through the incidents she recalls, reporting of suspected terrorists after the Rowe-Finkbeiner writes: “Although including her own experiences with colleagues events of September 11, 2001. biologically it takes both a man and a woman at conferences—a matter I recognized The book is divided into four parts. Parts to make a family, women still take the immediately, and from which I drew parallels one to three consist of two chapters each, and hardest economic hits.” I thought we to my own experience in Canada. part four consists of a rather powerful and (feminists) were a point where we insightful chapter, “Gendering Terror post Rozena Maart is an author who was featured in the understood that the heterosexual family is an Winter 2007 issue of Herizons. See “When Black 9/11,” which grapples with various media ideologically-loaded construct. That said, I Consciousness Meets White Consciousness.” constructions of terrorists and the process think it’s also important for this book to be in the world, if only because it’s important for through which terror and terrorists have THE F-WORD: become gendered. A short, concise FEMINISM IN JEOPARDY: WOMEN, feminism not to be comprised entirely of the conclusion follows, noting succinct points with POLITICS, AND THE FUTURE heavily theorized, jargon-heavy tomes sharp accuracy. produced by academic feminists. BY KRISTEN ROWE-FINKBEINER I particularly enjoyed reading the However, it is my hope that The F-Word Seal Press introduction. While I don’t usually find them serves as an introductory text for its readers, interesting or useful in books of this kind, it REVIEW BY T.L. COWAN one that it inspires feminist tourists to extend served its purpose well. It is here that Jiwani Kristen Rowe-Finkbeiner accumulates a lot their stay and to read some of the classics asserts her refusal to place race in quotation of statistics here in order to prove her main that Rowe-Finkbeiner glosses over. thesis, which is that young women need to marks. “As George Dei argues, we do not T.L. Cowan is completing a PhD in the English and film place quotation marks around the words get involved in electoral politics or else they studies at the University of Alberta. She is also a writer gender, age, class, sexuality or ability, even risk losing all of the hard-fought-for rights and performer.

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48 SUMMER 2007 HERIZONS arts culture SUMMER READING

CELEBRATING WOMEN PAOLA GIANTURCO Powerhouse Books REVIEW BY PENNI MITCHELL Half a million Bolivians pray to Mother Earth and the Virgin Mary in a ceremony. Khasi women in India give children their names, and girls inherit family property in matrilineal communities. Photographer Paola Gianturco has trained her eye on vibrant festivals, rituals and celebratory events that honour women as warriors, virgins, goddesses, leaders or healers. Luckily, she published a global communal photo album so that the rest of us of the zine Mystery Date and the “Museum of that has spawned a global effort to secure (at least those who can afford a copy of a Femoribilia” columnist in BUST magazine. basic human rights for women—the right to hardcover book) can appreciate what she In this book, which mainly covers the mid- work and keep one’s wages, the right to live discovered on her travels. 19th to mid-20th centuries, Peril argues that the free from violence, the right to education, the The title Celebrating Women is slightly concept of the college girl has challenged right to the legal protection of the law—is misleading, however, as it suggests that the cultural ideas about womanhood and femininity alive and well and still challenging patriarchal worshippers, participants and cultural keepers and has been “a lightning rod for criticism, regimes the world over. featured within are seeking to empower advice and regulation.” Indeed, chapters look In The Other Side of War, you’ll meet women or change the world. Some are; some at how she’s been told what to wear, what to Prescilla, the first of her husband’s nine wives. aren’t—that is simply not the overriding focus study and what to do after graduation, among A member of the Dinka Agar in Sudan, of the book. Rather, Celebrating Women—a other topics. Illustrations—such as a circa- Prescilla took on leadership roles that would story told half in text, half in colour 1940s ad for Dura Gloss nail polish that advised not have been permitted to a woman a photographs—is a panoramic capsule of against “reading William James out loud” to generation ago. Granted, her husband had to events that involve women and are practised your beau—are peppered throughout. die before she could gain that role. However, in homes, in public, in fields, in halls and in In researching College Girls, Peril drew on a even as a child Prescilla displayed a fighting houses of worship. number of sources, including books (Sex and spirit, helping her mother distribute food to More ritual than religion, the arc of the College Girl, The Story of Spelman College local soldiers fighting government militia. Celebrating Women is so expansive that it and Satan in Society, an 1890 text written by “A Today she guards a large clan, overseeing opens with a Swaziland celebratory ritual for Physician”), magazines (Ladies Home Journal, other widows, and several of her daughters, maiden girls and closes with the Miss America Mademoiselle, Seventeen) and newspapers. who were mistreated by their husbands, competition. Peril is not just authoritative, she is funny, returned home to live with her. As a Celebrating Women is a testament to too. “A Phi Beta Kappa key,” she writes, “that community leader and businesswoman, she cultures that embody expressions of women’s symbol of high academic standing, branded a inspires hope in the next generation. relentless spirit and capacity for joy. woman as an intellectual as quickly and even “Economic progress will be what gives us the more precisely than a pair of horn-rimmed freedom, the freedom to care for our children COLLEGE GIRLS: glasses. Gals on the prowl were advised to and educate our children,” she states, simply. BLUESTOCKINGS, SEX KITTENS ditch the offending bibelot in the nearest This is a pretty book about women who AND CO-EDS, THEN AND NOW trinket box.” have lived through the ugliness of war and LYNN PERIL Its scope, detail and analysis make this an emerged determined to build a better world. W.W. Norton & Co. important resource for anyone interested in Accompanied by stunning images by REVIEW BY JENNIFER O’CONNOR women’s history and pop culture. Please read award-winning photographers Susan Welcome, everyone, to the history of women chapter 1 of College Girls for next class, and Meiselas, Lekha Singh and Sylvia Plachy, in higher education: an introduction. don’t forget: your first assignment is due in Zainab Salbi presents a riveting collection Our textbook for this course will be Lynn one week. glowing with courage and hope. The Other Peril’s College Girls: Bluestockings, Sex Side of War explores six regions where Salbi’s Kittens and Co-eds, Then and Now, an THE OTHER SIDE OF WAR: foundation Women for Women has helped exhaustive, entertaining and essential WOMEN’S STORIES OF survivors of the world’s most tumultuous overview of women in academe. SURVIVAL & HOPE countries learn new skills, open small I’ve chosen this book for several reasons. ZAINAB SALBI businesses and forge bonds with sponsors. Peril is a well-known historian. She’s the National Geographic The Other Side of War leaves no doubt that author of Pink Think: Becoming a Woman in REVIEW BY PENNI MITCHELL feminism continues to revolutionize the world, Many Uneasy Lessons, the founder and editor Meet the new face of feminism. The movement mopping up the mess of patriarchy.

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BECOME A SISTER SUPPORTER TODAY. arts culture FILM

In Bubble, the actions and words of Coleman Hough’s characters have the rhythmic precision of a Swiss clock. Photo: Magnolia Pictures

BUBBLE tiny dreams. out action against reaction until the tragic DIRECTED BY STEVEN SODERBERGH The film was gutsily produced by Steven story reaches its inevitable conclusion. Distributed by Magnolia Pictures Soderbergh (Ocean’s Eleven, Traffic, Sex, Lies Bubble is about tone. There’s a kind of and Videotape) and written by Coleman Hough. flatness, which conveys a loneliness, a REVIEW BY MAUREEN MEDVED Bubble broke several cinematic rules. First, distance from the characters, because we Kyle and Martha work at a doll factory in Soderbergh hired non-actors to star in the film. can’t seem to get beyond the surface of this small-town Ohio. Martha is in her forties. Lives world. The surface glints with the cheap with her father. Works on dolls for extra Debbie Doebereiner, who plays Martha, is tarnish of the ugly and commonplace. money at night. She calls Kyle her best friend. unbelievable—it’s like watching Garbo. It’s all Grotesque baby-doll faces appear almost Takes his picture. Drives him to work. Kyle the more incredible since, when Doebereiner, tacky, and the film gives the eerie, unsettling lives with his mother. He is in his twenties, has 47, was discovered, she was working as a impression of cheap, disturbing miniatures. a second job at night, doesn’t own a car and manager of a KFC. Second, Bubble’s DVD, What could be more innocuous than the face smokes pot on the sly. Then one day the theatre and television releases all had of a baby doll? One need only look to the DVD beautiful Rose shows up. Rose is a single simultaneous dates to give the film a shot at a cover—a creepy mélange of innocence and mother in her twenties who cleans houses at wider audience, which ostensibly caused malevolence. Bubble is an investigation into night for extra money. There is a murder. some theatre owners to boycott the film. that paradox. Bubble is a perfect little gem. In this film, The women in Bubble do bad. However, Similarly, the surface of our lives may look the actions and words have the accuracy of they aren’t victims and they aren’t painted with compelling to strangers, but the unexpressed, real life with the rhythmic precision of a Swiss the easy brush of either good or evil. Nor are often heartbreaking truth lies somewhere clock. Characters sit around at the doll factory they representative of the best that humanity deep within. The actions we take that force eating fast food, talking about the mundane has to offer. They aren’t particularly open our hearts ultimately free us from our stuff of everyday life, giving each other lifts to courageous, and the film doesn’t patronize by facile constraints, but we pay a high price for and from work. There’s an uneasy quietude creating nobility and heroics out of working- that freedom. about the film. There’s a lot going on in the class despair. Hough respects her characters, hearts of the characters, but feelings are goes straight to their hearts and allows them Maureen Medved’s novel The Tracey Fragments has been made into a film that will soon be released in never discussed. These are just ordinary to honestly earn their own paths to hell Canada. It won the Manfred Salzgeber Award at the people trying to live, trying to hold intact their through their decisions and actions. They play Berlin Film Festival this spring.

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52 SUMMER 2007 HERIZONS arts literature All the Rage IS IT TIME TO CLOSE THE BOOK ON CHICK LIT?

BY JENNIFER FONG

hink chick lit and images of bubblegum pink and Reese T Witherspoon immediately come to mind. Dismissed by some as light, fun fiction characterized by cute, girly covers, it’s hard to believe the Library Journal calls chick lit “one of the fastest growing fiction genres today.” Kathryn Lye, editor at Harlequin’s chick lit label, Red Dress Ink, says chick lit has been one of the company’s most popular imprints in years. Chick lit may be all the rage, but for every fan there’s a skeptic. Some won’t even touch the chick lit section at Indigo, Many chick lit novels magnify these failures at work and saying the genre presents females as shopping-obsessed single in relationships with heroines who are at odds with gals who have nothing better to do than yearn for men. themselves. Something Blue’s Darcy Rhone is beautiful, “In the worst of these books, the message seems to be that spoiled and will stop at nothing to get her own way. And she happiness will come when you get the guy, and the can’t seem to grasp that it is this ruthlessness that drove her Manolos, and the properly mixed martini,” according to fiancé away. Sophie Kinsella’s Becky Bloomwood, of the Katrina Onstad, an arts writer for CBC Online. She Shopaholic series, can’t manage her finances because she has questions whether there is anything underneath the shallow a weakness for anything Hermès. So much for being a superficiality of typical chick lit novels, where heroines financial journalist. usually have glamorous, breezy jobs and references to While Onstad believes there are some great chick lit designer duds are a dime a dozen. authors out there, much of what falls under the chick lit “It’s almost a question of how much these characters can umbrella is a “massive step back” for feminism. “I think a lot consume,” she continues. “There’s a lot of fashion, a lot of of it is a bastardization of the Bridget Jones franchise. What eating out, a lot of drinking and also a lot of self-loathing. [Bridget Jones creator Helen Fielding] was doing was The worst of them celebrate female incompetence and the satirizing those desires and the idea of a woman only feeling failures of women, and that’s an alarming trend.” complete with a man in her life—she wasn’t celebrating that

HERIZONS SUMMER 2007 53 concept,” Onstad maintains. “Now it seems a lot of these tried very hard to not mention much how she looks.” books are selling this really retro fantasy.” That’s why she was so surprised to see A Girl Like Sugar Defenders of the genre say chick lit is often very well- categorized as chick lit by reviewers. It’s a term she finds written and, like all escapist fiction, it’s meant to entertain. disparaging. “I think it is a way of belittling a way of writing “It’s been a real touchstone for modern-day contemporary about women’s lives and making it cutesy. There’s so much female readers who, prior to this, never had stories talking more to women coming of age.” about the things that go on day in and day out in their lives,” Conversely, Yvonne Collins and Sandy Rideout, authors of says Harlequin’s Lye. “There are some really well-done books Speechless, aren’t so bothered by their work being referred to as with depth, and poignancy, and a great story, and great chick lit. The Toronto authors say they don’t feel confined by characters told with much craft.” the chick lit label and that “none of our characters are waiting One such novel is A Girl Like Sugar, written by Canadian for men to make their lives better.” Rideout says they just want Emily Pohl-Weary. Her story of a woman who is haunted by to write fun stories, which Collins likens to romantic comedies her dead rock-star boyfriend has been well-received by critics in film. “We’d like readers to be entertained—get lost in and readers alike. And yet Pohl-Weary doesn’t like the idea of another world, and hopefully laugh and enjoy themselves. It’s her book falling under the chick lit label. a great escape for people who have busy lives,” says Collins. “Anything written by a woman about young women is now This entertainment value has brought in thousands of often categorized as chick lit,” she says. “It sort of pisses me readers who are now addicted to the chick lit genre. Even if off in a way, because books written by men about young men it can be argued that most chick lit plots portray women as aren’t considered dick lit.” one-dimensional characters living in distorted worlds, it Unlike typical chick lit heroines, Pohl-Weary says her seems there are novels out there that offer more than protagonist, Sugar Jones, has nothing in common with the characters with designer handbags. Like searching out the name-dropping, weight-watching Bridget Jones, except for perfect pair of Jimmy Choos at a sample sale, perhaps it’s just her last name. “Sugar doesn’t care about how she looks, she a matter of picking and choosing and weeding out the rest. doesn’t spend time picking out outfits,” says Pohl-Weary. “I Originally published in McClung’s magazine, Winter 2006.

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54 SUMMER 2007 HERIZONS cole’s notes BY SUSAN G. COLE

We’re in the Army Now

Generally speaking, I don’t love a woman in uniform. The manner of gifts from Iranian President Ahmadinjad, waved essential military values go against all my feminist sweetly to their captors and flew out of Iran wearing inclinations: the authoritarianism, the hierarchy, the pursuit expensive suits. Tourney was not gifted with such divine of war. And try as the ideologues might to get me all misty- duds. Rather, in a photo taken of the captives just before they eyed over the anniversary of the Battle of Vimy Ridge, I still left Tehran, Tourney was seen front and centre among the see that event as a monumental waste of young lives, and war splendidly clad sailors standing grimly wearing an army as a collectively traumatizing event. jacket, cargo pants and a print scarf, obviously meant to I do get why young Canadians might opt for a military signify a burqa. career. The educational opportunities—especially for those I’m not here to comment on the debate surrounding the who are financially strapped—are huge, and, until the past head scarf chosen by many Muslim women and whether it five years, modern military manoeuvres for Canadians had can be reclaimed as a symbol of pride in identity and female more to do with snow shovelling than actual combat. empowerment. But here, it seems to me, the head scarf was But still, I wince when I see women in army fatigues. That used as a symbol of humiliation. The male sailors can be seen is, until an incident like the as worthy of smartly designed hostage-taking of 15 British Western wear—they’re just sailors starts messing with my “Cheering women in the fighting for love of country the head, and suddenly I want to see army is kind of like cheering way guys do—but Tourney, in a Faye Tourney back in action in full sartorial slapdown, was reduced to military gear. when a woman becomes an inferior status. The message to Tourney is the seaman captured chief executive officer of a Tourney seems to have been, “You along with 14 other British navy not only violated our waters, but personnel and accused of venturing tobacco company.” you violated our values by illegally into Iranian waters. wanting to be a soldier. And we Though, at this writing, the entire story hasn’t emerged, cannot tolerate that.” Tourney was reportedly separated from her fellow hostages, It’s enough to make you want Tourney to get home and put isolated and threatened. She also—and we can assume under that sailor suit right back on. (And almost enough to forgive duress—wrote a letter stating that the British ought to her if she does sell her story to the tabloid press for consider withdrawing troops from Iraq. mammoth sums of money.) In response, Chris Brown, a professor of international If equality were our only goal, then we would celebrate the relations at the London School of Economics, chided fact that Canada welcomes women into combat roles in the Tourney, saying it’s inappropriate for people serving in the military and mourns them deeply when they are killed—as armed forces to make such statements. was captain Nichola Goddard, the first Canadian female Notice a few things here. First, what a prof sitting on his combat soldier killed on the front lines. But cheering women duff in London knows about the experience of being held in the army is kind of like cheering when a woman becomes hostage is, I’m guessing, not much. Second, the male sailors chief executive officer of a tobacco company. Equality, I say, also made very public statements suggesting their ship had isn’t enough. I want to end war and dismantle morally gone off course. Our prof in London said nothing about that. bankrupt killer corporations. And third, there is no question that Tourney was targetted as And yet, as long as long as a woman like Faye Tourney a possible weak link, was told that everyone else had been makes her choice to serve in her country’s armed forces, then sent home, and thus totally terrorized. we must be outraged when she is denied her dignity— Her male counterparts appeared to have accepted all whether by her captors or at home.

HERIZONS SUMMER 2007 55 on the edge BY LYN COCKBURN

Pregnant Women are Stupid

Something happens to our brains the very moment the egg not get smart again until their children reach school age. and the sperm shake hands. We (no, I am not pregnant, but If pregnant women are stupid, then pregnant women who I have been, so I have to include myself in this circle of seek abortions are stupider. Much stupider. intellectual deficiency—although because I am not now, I For example, in South Carolina a bill has reached the am smart again) who are pregnant can drink two litres of legislature, complete with the governor’s approval, which will milk a day, swallow bottles of ultra-super vitamins and require women who want to terminate their pregnancies to exercise regularly, but our IQs inevitably fall dramatically at first look at ultrasound images of their fetuses. Pregnant the moment of conception. women who have been raped or are the victims of incest will Now, before you send me insulting e-mails (better you be exempted. This conclusively proves that pregnant women should send me money, because I need a new baseball mitt who want abortions are too stupid to make the decision on and the really good ones cost a ton) accusing me of being a their own. They must be shown pictures first. traitor to my gender, may I point out the following: It’s kind of like the way we first show our babies picture I have proof. Undeniable, irrefutable, conclusive proof. For books, then we progress to pictures with a few words on the example, recently in B.C., two women were awarded page. The pictures get smaller, and finally, one day, our thousands of dollars because the Human Rights Tribunal children reach the stage where they can read an entire page decided they were unjustly fired for of print. being pregnant. It would seem that pregnant In July 2005, Star Trucking of If pregnant women are women who want to end their Vancouver employed Amber stupid, then pregnant pregnancies always stay in the Stackhouse, who worked 11.5 hours picture stage. a day, four days a week, and earned women who seek abortions If you don’t believe me, just listen considerable praise from her boss. In are stupider. Much stupider. to the South Carolina bill’s sponsor, the fall of 2005, Stackhouse became Rep. Greg Delleney, a Republican, pregnant and her doctor advised her who put the whole thing in not to work more than 10 hours a day. She told her boss, who perspective, saying the measure would save lives and a seemed to agree, but refused to let her go home after 10 lifetime of regret for some women. hours. On the second day, she did leave and was fired. A “She can determine for herself whether she is carrying an judge awarded her nearly $25,000 in an obviously erroneous unborn child deserving of protection or whether it’s just an decision. inconvenient, unnecessary part of her body and an abortion As Stackhouse’s boss said, he fired her because of her fits her circumstances at that time,” he said. attitude. A stupid attitude. Bang on, Rep. Delleney, although it’s doubtful that any Then there was Sheri-Lynn Ballendine, hired in July 2004 abortion seeker is capable of determining anything for herself. as a bartender and server at a pub on Vancouver Island. In Without help from you, your bill and pictures, that is. April 2005, the pub owners learned she was pregnant and And finally, a friend, visibly pregnant, decided she was not fired her. The judge, in another bad decision, awarded her going to let any more strange men pat her abdomen, even the over $20,000. polite ones who said, “Would it be all right if ....” I tried to These women represent but two of the examples of tell her these guys mean nothing insensitive by their pattings pregnant women who, before they became pregnant, were and rubbings, but she refused to listen. good workers and afterward, because of a huge dip in their One of the polite ones approached her, hand extended, in IQs, became incapable of doing their jobs properly. the supermarket the other day and said: “Would you mind if And it must be noted that, in both cases, the judges were I felt the baby?” women. Probably pregnant women unable to do their jobs She replied, “Would you mind if I felt your penis?” efficiently. Moreover, some studies suggest that women do Now that’s not just stupid, but rude. 56 SUMMER 2007 HERIZONS Expand Your Herizons Collection!

Winter 2003 Spring 2003 Summer 2003 Canadian comedian Elvira Kurt An interview with Palestinian Dub poet Afua Cooper talks about talks about her career as a feminist and sociology professor black heroes; Weighting for lesbian comic; Taslima Nasrin on Nahla Abdo; Janice Ristock on Equality: Is bodybuilding a the involvement of women in why lesbians batter; Makeda feminist sport?; All that Jazz: patriarchal religion. Silvera on themes of colonialism. Women strike a chord.

Winter 2004 Spring 2004 Summer 2004 Flying High with Ann-Marie Margaret Atwood asks, Is This Elizabeth May: How to Change the MacDonald; Which Alternative the Path We Want to be on?; World in Your Spare Time; Jane Menstrual Products are Best?; Feminist Book Publishing; A New Doe asks, What is a Rape Victim Women and Depression. Body Politic: Bellydancing; Supposed to Look Like?; Ann Female Clergy Keep the Faith. Hansen in profile.

Fall 2004 Winter 2005 Spring 2005 The Indigo Girls’ One Perfect A Passion for Revolushun: The Drama Queers: The Canadian World; Nobel Peace Prize-Winner inspiration of a new generation of connection to the edgy drama The Sherin Ebadi; The Raging dub poets; Linda McQuaig on L-word; Feminist artists talk back Grannies. Crude Dudes; Ember Swift on to feminine icons; The rise and politics and music. fall of Mothers are are Women.

Summer 2005 Fall 2005 Winter 2006 Miriam Toews: A Complicated Why Women Love their Tattoos; Tanks R US: Artist Sarah Beck Kind of Author; Riot Prrrls: Cast The Search Begins for Canada’s on the Fine Art of Defence; Doris Off Your Stereotypes; Aboriginal Disappeared Women; Treasured Anderson 35 Years Later: Still Women Inspire Hope; Third Wave Chest: Kyle Scanlon’s Surgical Ain't Satisfied; Transfeminism— Mothers Rise Up. Journey. Shifting Political Ground.

Spring 2006 Summer 2006 Fall 2006 Pump Up the Volume: Mary Walsh: Defender of the Hip Hop Mohawk Musician Throat-Singer Tanya Tagaq; Disenfranchised; Star Feminist Kinnie Starr; A Short History of Big Pharma: Too Hard to Swallow; Michele Landsberg; the fight for Cross-Dressing Women; Jane Rule Pays Tribute to Literary Security for Afghan Women. Maude Barlow on the dangers Mothers. of U.S.-Canada integration.

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