MARKETING IS FILM EXPOSES LEGENDARY THE NEW PEACE MORALITY RESIDENTIAL ACTIVIST KLEIN TAKES ON OBAMA SCHOOL LEGACY PASSES

WOMEN’S NEWS & FEMINIST VIEWS Spring 2010 Vol. 23 No. 4 Made in RHYMESRHYMES WITHWITH CUBICCUBIC PEARPEAR DO YOU TRIM TO BE IN? TAKETAKE YOURYOUR POLITICSPOLITICS TOTO BEDBED NEW BIRTH CONTROL FOR MEN WOMENWOMEN REUNITE!REUNITE! REVISITING THE WOMEN’S COLLECTIVE

$6.75 Canada/US Publications Mail Agreement No. 40008866; PAP Registration No. 07944 Return Undeliverable Addresses to: PO Box 128, Winnipeg, MB R3C 2G1 Canada Display until June 15, 2010 osMcennDsg,CPLcl591-G Local CEP Design, Maclennan Joss Joss Maclennan Design, CEP Local 591-G CAWCAW womenwomen WeWe marchmarch forfor equality. equality. WeWe speakspeak outout for for justice. justice. We fight for change. We fight for change. For more information on women’s Forissues more and information rights please on visit women’s issueswww.caw.ca/women and rights please visit www.caw.ca/women

CAW Full Sum-09.indd 1 28/05/09 5:19 PM SPRING 2010 / VOLUME 23 NO. 4

news 9: Muriel Duckworth CALLING ALL WOMEN EXPERTS! 6 by Janet Nicol PREGNANT 7 GET UNPFA AID LEGENDARY PEACE 9 ACTIVIST PASSES MUSLIM MAG TAKES ON STEREOTYPES 13 by Hilary Barlow GREENING YOUR UNDERWEAR 36: Alicia Keys 14 Lunapanties are here features TAKE YOUR POLITICS TO BED 16 After 40 years of research on male contraceptives, scientists have discovered that male fertility functions are just as easy to manipulate as women’s—and, sometimes easier. by Helen Cordes

MARKETING IS THE NEW MORALITY 20 Naomi Klein’s 10th anniversary edition of No Logo incites readers to be mindful of media and critical of corporations. Here she analyzes the branding of U.S. President Barack Obama.

16: Take Your Politics to Bed RHYMES WITH CUBIC PEAR 24 In decades past, many feminists refused to shave as a protest against sexist beauty standards. Today, the issue of body hair is a whole other tub of wax. by Renée Bondy

WOMEN REUNITE! 30 In 1970, Kate Millet’s was published and Susan G. Cole headed off to college at Radcliffe, where she joined a women’s collective. Following a reunion of the women nearly 40 years later, the author and activist reflects on her collective days. by Susan G. Cole

30: Women Reunite!

HERIZONS SPRING 2010 1 VOLUME 23 NO. 4

MAGAZINE INK

MANAGING EDITOR: Penni Mitchell FULFILLMENT AND OFFICE MANAGER: Phil Koch ACCOUNTANT: Sharon Pchajek BOARD OF DIRECTORS: Phil Koch, Penni Mitchell, Kemlin Nembhard, Valerie Regehr EDITORIAL COMMITTEE: Gio Guzzi, Penni Mitchell, Kemlin Nembhard ADVERTISING SALES: Penni Mitchell (204) 774-6225 37: Tegan and Sara 47: Older Than America DESIGN: inkubator.ca RETAIL INQUIRIES: Disticor (905) 619-6565 PROOFREADER: Phil Koch COVER: Cindy Revell arts & ideas is published four times per year by HERIZONS Inc. in MUSIC MUST-HAVES Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. One-year subscription price: $26.19 plus $1.31 GST = $27.50 in Canada. Subscriptions to U.S. add $8.00. 36 Sainthood by Tegan and Sara; Deer in the Night by International subscriptions add $9.00. Cheques or money orders Po’ ; I’m Just Warming Up by Kate Reid; The are payable to: HERIZONS, PO Box 128, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Element of Freedom by Alicia Keys; Give Up the CANADA R3C 2G1. Ph (204) 774-6225. Ghost by Brandi Carlile. SUBSCRIPTION INQUIRIES: [email protected] EDITORIAL INQUIRIES: [email protected] SPRING READING ADVERTISING INQUIRIES: [email protected] 38 Becoming George Sand by Rosalind Brackenbury; WEBSITE: www.herizons.ca Lemon by Cordelia Strube; Fear of Fighting by HERIZONS is indexed in the Canadian Periodical Index and heard Stacey May Fowles; The Demons of Aquilonia by on Voiceprint. Lina Medaglia; In the Kitchen by Monica Ali; The GST #R131089187. ISSN 0711-7485. Only Thing I Have by Rhonda Waterfall; Animals The purpose of HERIZONS is to empower women; to inspire hope Make Us Human by Temple Grandin and Catherine and foster a state of wellness that enriches women’s lives; to build Johnson; With Child by Susan C. Boyd and Lenora awareness of issues as they affect women; to promote the Marcellus; Making Space for Indigenous , strength, wisdom and creativity of women; to broaden the bound- edited by Joyce Green; Knows Best, edited aries of feminism to include building coalitions and support among by Jessica Nathanson and Laura Camille Tuley; other marginalized people; to foster peace and ecological aware- Racialized Bodies, Disabling Worlds: Stored Lives of ness; and to expand the influence of feminist principles in the Immigrant Muslim Women by Parin Dossa. world. HERIZONS aims to reflect a that is diverse, understandable and relevant to women’s daily lives. FILM Views expressed in HERIZONS are those of the writers and do not 47 Older Than America, Directed by Georgina necessarily reflect HERIZONS’ editorial policy. No material may be Lightning reprinted without permission. Due to limited resources, HERIZONS does not accept poetry or fiction submissions.

HERIZONS acknowledges the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Publication Assistance Program columns (PAP) and the Canada Magazine Fund toward our mailing and edito- rial costs. PENNI MITCHELL 5 Turn the Page on Discount Shopping HERIZONS gratefully acknowledges the support of the Manitoba Arts Council. SUSAN G. COLE Publications Mail Agreement No. 40008866, PAP Registration No. 15 Women’s Studies Under Attack 07944. Return Undeliverable Addresses to: PO Box 128, Winnipeg, MB, Canada R3C 2G1, Email: [email protected] LYN COCKBURN Herizons is proudly printed on Forest Stewardship 48 The Mother of All Jokes Council-certified paper. Please recyle.

2 SPRING 2010 HERIZONS letters

OFFENSIVE SOCCER This is a hugely important issue that must be addressed if this bill MOM QUIP is to justly serve and protect all parents and children. I read the article in the Win- The point is that the current system is broken, and the concepts ter 2010 Herizons on The of custody and access are the biggest part of the problem. In my Pack A.D. on the day that opinion, the Divorce Act completely and utterly harms children by Kate McGarrigle died in Jan- unfairly defaulting to the biological mother. uary. I had started reading it By focusing more on the best interests of the children than on a previously, but was really put parent’s genetic makeup, Bill C-422 could be the start of a new gen- off by the cheap shots in Cindy Filipenko’s introduction. eration of kids from split families (the healthy, well-adjusted kind). Today, as I reflect on all the female duos I have ever listened to, This may not sit well with some feminists, but it is absolutely my including the McGarrigle sisters, I can think of none who evoke experience with the family court system. The irony has not the hackneyed and frankly sexist images that Filipenko uses, and I escaped me over the years that I, a lesbian feminist, have more in decided to respond. common with fathers’ rights groups than with most In the interest of full disclosure, I must admit to being a middle- wrestling their way through child custody issues. aged lesbian, but I don’t think I have a soccer-mom makeover, Briefly, here is my story. I was in a same-sex relationship with a whatever that means. In my youth I played drums in an all-women for a number of years, and together we were raising two hardcore punk band. There were four of us—is that two duos? daughters. She is the birth parent of both kids. We had jointly But I digress. Who is Cindy Filipenko and where did she find signed a legal agreement (the only tool available at the time) that those clichés? The tone of the article is that these two young spelled out my role as the other parent. women are only good because they “play like boys.” Oh really! I Upon dissolution of the relationship, however, I was not given never thought I would read such female self-hatred in a feminist access to my kids for years. My former partner had great support magazine. It’s too bad that Filipenko thought that the only way to from the Divorce Act, which did not recognize me as a parent. At show her appreciation for this duo was through caricaturing other no point were the best interests of my children considered. women and gushing over their masculine appeal. Every time I stood up in front of a judge during my five-year However, I did finish the article and I will listen to The Pack effort to see my children, I was no match for the dominance of the A.D., without prejudice. birth mother in the eyes of the court. In the end, it took a queer JANIS WARNE, judge with kids (what were the odds of that?) to finally recognize , QC my role as a parent and assign me joint custody. But by then, untold damage had been done to my kids, the aftershocks of ANOTHER VIEW ON CUSTODY BILL which will be felt by all of us for a lifetime. Further to the analysis of Bill C-422 that appeared in the Fall issue As a non-biological parent, being awarded joint custody was of Herizons, I’d like to add another perspective to the proposed precedent-setting in B.C. Unfortunately, that is the most com- private members’ bill that would remove the concepts of custody pelling thing I can say about it. Being granted joint custody did not and access from the Divorce Act and replace them with a legal make my children and I immune to the devastating effects of presumption in favour of equal parenting. I am the non-biological parental alienation. It has been 14 years since I have seen my old- mother of two children. The Divorce Act failed me miserably and it est daughter. My youngest daughter has cautiously started failed my children. To me, Bill C-422 represents the possibility of reconnecting with me after five years of no contact. undoing all that is wrong with the current custody and access sys- I will say again, any bill that endeavours to identify the best tem by applying a fresh lens to how children are considered upon interests of the children and condemn parental alienation gets a separation and divorce. big thumbs-up from me. I don’t mean to belittle concerns about how this proposed bill JENNY FARKAS would impact women who are divorcing abusive men/partners. Victoria, B.C.

HERIZONS Environmental Statement Herizons is printed on Forest Stewardship Council-certified paper. The certification means that raw materials originate in forests run according to principles that respect the environment, at all stages of production. By printing on a paper that contains 25 percent post-consumer fibre, Herizons is saving 10 trees, or two-and-a-half tonnes of wood, four tonnes of water and 1,678 pounds of greenhouse gas emissions per year. This paper is also elemental chlorine-free and acid-free. Sure, it costs more, but we think the planet is worth it. And we know you agree.

HERIZONS SPRING 2010 3 CHANGE YOUR WORLD CHANGE YOUR LIFE Is your wish list for a better world too daunting? Volunteer overseas With the support of thousands of Canadians, Inter Pares is already doing all these things and much, much more. with CUSO-VSO For over thirty years, we have built alliances with citizen movements around the world to work for peace and social justice. Help us bring about the change you seek. Donate now at APPLY ONLINE TODAY www.interpares.ca/change www.cuso-vso.org

cwhn.ca www

women’s health information you can trust

Advertise here for as little as $100 Reach 10,000 feminist readers! Contact [email protected] for more details

4 SPRING 2010 HERIZONS first word BY PENNI MITCHELL

TURN THE PAGE ON DISCOUNT SHOPPING

The Toronto Women’s Bookstore is fighting for its life. nialism, post-, black studies, sexuality, or gender In December, the non-profit bookstore asked its patrons identity women’s art. It’s that smaller independent stores for donations to avert a financial crisis. The bookstore needed don’t have the high sales volume of big-box stores, making it $40,000, its board announced, or the 36-year-old women’s impossible for the small stores to sell books as cheaply and, space would close by the end of January. therefore, to compete on price alone. “The response was amazing,” Janet Romero, one of the So its up to ethical customers to choose loyalty over deep store’s co-managers, told me when I called her in February. discounts if independents are going to survive. We may like Sales went up over the holiday season because of the emer- rock-bottom prices, but we have to put our money where are gency appeal, and, at least in the short term, the Toronto mouths are. If we say we support women artists or feminist Women’s Bookstore’s financial target was met. businesses, we must demonstrate our support. That’s the end of the good news, unfortunately—because, More than sales are lost when people look only for the low- when the store’s suppliers heard that the store was in trouble, est price. Feminist bookstores serve as hubs of feminist many cancelled the store’s orders, closed their accounts or idea-sharing within their communities, hosting book read- pulled their credit. Talk about adding insult to injury. ings, staging performance artists and sponsoring other Think auto industry—minus the government bailout. As events. A significant part of the Toronto Women’s Book- anyone running a business knows, when times are tough, your store’s business is supplying books for university women’s livelihood depends as much on your cash flow and credit as studies courses. your annual sales. Car giants tanked after parts companies I don’t live in Toronto, but when I hear about the events at started demanding cash on delivery at the onset of the reces- the Toronto Women’s Bookstore that inspire and cultivate a sion last year—even though cars don’t sell until months later. rich and diverse women’s community in Hogtown, I can only It’s the same with bookstores: merchandise doesn’t generally sigh with envy: It’s been well over 15 years since Winnipeg’s move off the shelves for months. closed. Northern Woman’s Bookstore in The struggling operation has had no choice but to accept Thunder Bay celebrated 25 years last year, while Ottawa’s the stiff new terms being demanded by suppliers. Meanwhile, Mother Tongue books remains in operation. the store’s big-box competitors continue to enjoy months and Alas, Toronto’s Harbord Street phoenix has risen from the months of luxurious non-payment. “If anything is going to ashes before. In 1984, the store was firebombed in an attack put us out of business—that will,” says Romero. intended for the main-floor tenant—an abortion clinic run And yet, the Toronto Women’s Bookstore isn’t simply a by Dr. Henry Morgentaler. The store rebuilt after that disas- place to conduct commerce. “We’re not just a bookstore,” ter, and it plans to rebuild again. board chairperson Robyn Bourgeois told the Torontoist.“Our If the store manages to raise an additional $80,000 by the mandate has always been to fight oppression. Book-selling is end of May, says Romaro, it will be in a position to develop what allows us to stay alive as a non-profit organization, but a long- term plan for the store. “We’ve taken some pretty it’s just one part of what we do.” drastic measures,” she says. “We cut about 40 percent of the It’s also one of the few women’s bookstores still standing staff budget.” in Canada. Feminist bookstores in Calgary, Saskatoon, In the meantime, Toronto women have mobilized to sup- Hamilton, London, Victoria and Sudbury have all closed port their store; fundraising events are being held to support since 2004; There are only 20-some women’s bookstores left the store’s efforts, including a screening of the film The Baby in North America—80 percent fewer than in 1994, when Formula. A Facebook page entitled “We Love The Toronto there were 125. Women’s Bookstore” has been set up to share news. And no, it’s not that feminism is dead, or that no one wants If you live in or around Toronto, you can help protect this buys books by women on psychology, ’s space by attending fundraising events. Call 416-922- women, , midwifery, Aboriginal issues, colo- 8744, and be sure to drop in to 73 Harbord Street to shop! 

HERIZONS SPRING 2010 5 nelliegrams Graydon looked at Globe and Mail OBAMA PLEDGES bylines in October and November 2009 and WOMEN’S observed that the male-to-female ratio of INITIATIVES authorship on columns and opinion pieces In his January State of the was three-to-one. Union address, U.S. Presi- Graydon explains that there are many dent Barack Obama said he will not back reasons for the imbalance. “Some women away from health care reform and made are reluctant to be a target. They don’t several promises to American women. want criticism of their gender, rather than These include the creation of more loans their perspective. Others don’t have time. through community banks for small busi- They still work a double shift—at work and ness owners, many of whom are women; at home. And many professional women an increase of the child care tax credit; a tend to work in smaller, non-profit organi- repeal of the ban on gays and lesbians and zations with fewer resources, making those affected by the military’s “don’t ask, them less accessible.” don’t tell” policy; and increased enforce- Women are still under-represented in ment of equal pay laws.—Women’s E-News politics and large corporations, Graydon LONE WOMAN points out. The decisions made by leaders APPOINTED in those arenas affect many people and are considered newsworthy. Afghan women’s activists The news media remain influential in were disappointed after setting the public agenda. A former colum- two out of three women nominated by President Hamid Karzai nist for the Vancouver Sun, Graydon has Shari Graydon’s Informed Options plans to were rejected by Afghanistan’s parliament. first-hand experience with the influence of build a knowledgeable, skilled bank of women media. “I was hired to bring a perspective Among them was Palwasha Hassan, a to speak to and write for media outlets. women’s rights advocate proposed as that wasn’t reflected elsewhere in the women’s affairs minister. Another nomi- paper,” she says of her time at the Sun. “I nee, Suraya Dalil (pictured), a Harvard CALLING appreciated the opportunity to basically University grad and medical doctor, was write a memo once a week to potentially rejected. Dalil is, however, Afghanistan's 300,000 readers.” acting public health minister. ALL “We all lose out not having more of the Orzala Asharaf of the Afghan female perspective,” she says. Women’s Network, an organization co- Graydon is working with universities, founded by failed women’s affairs EXPERTS! non-profit organizations and agencies, as ministry nominee Palwasha Hassan, said, well as media outlets to reach expert “It’s a shame for them not to be voted in. BY JANET NICOL women in diverse fields and disciplines. It’s not the end of the story, for Palwasha Her project was inspired in part by the or the women’s movement. We will con- Women’s voices are still not heard in the Op Ed Project in the U.S. Graydon’s work- tinue to fight.” Ten of Karzai’s 17 media on a basis equal to those of men, shops will give women skills and nominees were rejected. The only according to media expert Shari Graydon, strategies to communicate their ideas. woman to receive the support of parlia- founder of a new project called Informed “We’re showing them how to hook their ment was Amena Afzali, now minister of Opinions. issue or research to a news story, review- work and social affairs. —Reuters In conjunction with Media Action, ing key elements of an op-ed, and sharing Graydon hopes to change that imbalance the steps to writing and submitting opinion UGANDAN WOMEN by training female scholars and other pieces to a newspaper. These skills can GAIN GROUND experts to write opinion pieces for news- also be used for online news journals, A proposed Ugandan law would grant papers and Internet news sources. She blogs or radio or television interviews,” also plans to set up an online database of women the right to divorce spouses for she says. female experts who will be accessible to cruelty. It would also give women the right Fourteen women participated in a the media. to consent to marriage, something that is recent pilot workshop held at the Univer- “Many journalists try to contact women often overlooked in traditional weddings sity of Ottawa. to speak on issues,” Graydon explains arranged by family and clan elders. “They realize they have spent years from her Ottawa office, but some respond The bill would also prohibit the cus- developing their expertise and there is a by saying ‘I’m not the best person.’” tomary practice of “widow inheritance.” value in sharing,” Graydon says. The result is that, despite their expertise In some Ugandan communities, widows “Women’s perspectives need to be part of in many fields, women’s perspectives are are “inherited” by their brothers-in-law, the public discourse.”  even when the women do not consent. not being heard. Graydon says the project The law would give widows the right to will benefit media outlets because journal- For more information about remarry people of their choosing. ists tell her they are interested in gaining Informed Opinions project, see: more diverse expert contacts. www.sharigraydon.com.

6 SPRING 2010 HERIZONS nelliegrams study are a heeded. CAMPAIGN In a study published in the January The draft bill also contains incentives online edition of The Lancet Oncology to promote co-ownership of property magazine, Italian researchers report that a between spouses. It would also establish UPDATES DNA test for the human papilloma virus equal division of property and finances in (HPV), a cause of cervical cancer, is more the event of divorce. effective in preventing cervical cancer The bill follows on the heels of other than the Pap smear. progressive legislation, including The study took place in nine screening Uganda’s domestic violence bill, passed centres in Northern Italy and involved in November, which classifies domestic violence as a distinct crime. In December, testing 94,370 women for HPV. a bill prohibiting female genital mutilation Researchers found that DNA tests better (FGM) went unopposed when it came to a detected the virus than the Pap smear. vote in the country’s parliament. The Pap smear looks for changes in the The fact that 30 percent of Uganda’s PREGNANT WOMEN IN HAITI cervix that could lead to cervical cancer, parliamentarians are women is one rea- AT RISK while the DNA test determines whether a son supporters are optimistic the divorce Of the three million people affected by the woman is infected with HPV, a step before measures will pass. January earthquake in Haiti, an estimated changes occur in the cervix. Women continue to make gains in 63,000 are pregnant women. In the months “The study shows that the DNA exam is Uganda. The country’s Makerere Univer- ahead, 7,000 women are expected to more effective because it anticipates pre- sity will graduate more female students deliver per month. cancerous lesions before they become than males for the first time. Almost 7,000 The United Nations Population Fund invasive tumours,” said Guglielmo Ronco, of the 13,677 students graduating this year (UNFPA) is providing assistance to preg- the epidemiologist who co-ordinated the are women (representing 50.4 percent of nant women in areas affected by the study. “The DNA test by itself is more the graduates). The Ugandan govern- earthquake. effective than the Pap smear.” ment, through an affirmative-action “The challenge for Haiti is logistics,” said The Italian researches recommend the program, promotes women’s access to Dr. Jemilah Mahmood, chief of UNFPA’s DNA test, which is done with a cervical higher . —Women’s E-News humanitarian response team. “We do not swab, should replace the Pap smear for want pregnant women, or women and women 35 and older. Pap tests would be STATE ‘DOWRY’ REJECTED overall, to fall off the radar screen.” performed on women who test positive for IN NEPAL Even before the earthquake, giving birth in HPV. A DNA test would be required fre- Legislation proposed last summer by the Haiti was no easy feat. The country has the quently than the Pap test, researchers say. Nepali government to pay couples for highest maternal mortality rate in the north- Currently, provincial heath departments remarriage when the wife is a widow has ern hemisphere. For every 100,000 births, 670 recommend that women have a Pap smear been prohibited by the nation’s Supreme mothers do not survive. Fifteen percent of all anywhere from once a year to once every Court, according to the organization births before the earthquake had complica- three years. Most provinces recommend Women for Human Rights. tions that required hospital care, such as more frequent Pap smears in sexually Lily Thapa, founder and executive direc- hemorrhaging and high blood pressure. active women under age 30. tor of the organization, says she hopes the UNFPA, a UN agency that uses popula- There are drawbacks to the DNA test, funds initially proposed to encourage a tion data to improve reproductive health however. It picks up more false-positives dowry-like system will now go towards and make motherhood safer, had 42 staff than a Pap smear, which leads to more providing social services for single members in Haiti before the earthquake. It “callbacks,” particularly women under the women and their children and to give the also worked with Haitian midwives to help age of 30. poorest widows monthly allowances women deliver safely. Some of its staff were by Megan Williams regardless of age. —Women’s E-News injured and traumatized in the earthquake, so the organization is currently assessing STICKING IT GERMAN WOMEN how many more people to send to Haiti. TO WOMEN GET REAL To help combat the earthquake’s Nearly half of women Germany’s top-circula- impact on expectant mothers, the agency using injectable birth tion women’s magazine, is distributing delivery kits to pregnant control are at significant risk for bone loss, Brigitte, will be replacing women. Each kit includes a clean cloth, a according to a new study at the University professional models with sterile blade, a plastic sheet and other of Texas. Bone loss associated with the real women, Deutsche Welle reports. It’s tools for use in case a mother can’t reach use of depot medroxyprogesterone a response, they say, to what the modern a clinic or hospital in time. acetate (DMPA), also known as Depo- woman wants. Women’s E-News Provera, occurred within two years of Brigitte is not the first to come up with taking the birth control shot, especially in the concept. In 2004, Dove beauty prod- ucts launched its own hugely successful ARRIVEDERCI PAP SMEAR? the hip and lower spine. Campaign for Real Beauty and the com- (ROME) The 50-year-old Pap smear could Depo-Provera, approved in 1992 for use pany has been using lay people as soon be a thing of the past for most Cana- as a long-acting contraceptive, is used by models ever since. dian women if the results of a new Italian more than two million women and girls in

HERIZONS SPRING 2010 7 nelliegrams North America. A fifth of users are National Youth Commission on equality CLERICS teenagers. and social justice. CONDEMN FGM The study, reported in the January 2010 “We now have a generation of people A group of 30 Muslim issue of Obstetrics and Gynecology, found who have grown up with the Charter,” leaders issued a reli- that women using Depo-Provera who says Johnson. We want to find out what gious edict banning smoke, have low levels of calcium intake equality means to them and how they envi- female genital mutilation in the West or never gave birth were at the highest risk sion the future. African country Mauritania in January. for bone-density loss. The study followed Through its 11 branches and affiliates, Cheikh Ould Zein, head of the Forum of 95 DMPA users for two years. In that time, LEAF will host events from April to Octo- Islamic Thought, says the scholars believe 45 women had at least five percent BMD ber, including a national campaign to the Quran does not endorse cutting young loss in the lower back or hip. The bone loss generate a discussion about women’s girls’ genitals to limit their sexual activity as continued into the third year of use. equality and LEAF’s future work. women, the article reported. He also said “We’ve achieved a great deal, but there the leaders agreed to preach against the is still a long way to go before women practice at their mosques. An estimated 72 have full equality,” says Paradis. percent of the women in Mauritania have For information about LEAF events in your undergone FGM which often causes community visit www.leaf.ca severe bleeding, problems urinating and childbirth complications, including death. “The fact that the religious leaders are standing up and doing this is quite amaz- LEGENDARY ing,” according to Molly Melching, executive director of Tostan, a Senegal- based organization that works with PEACE communities in Mauritania on FGM and other human rights issues. LEAF TURNS 25 The Women’s Legal Education and Action ACTIVIST ERA RESURGENCE Fund (LEAF) will celebrate 25 years of Supporters of the fighting for equality rights on April 17. PASSES Equal Rights Amend- Incorporated within two days of the ment (ERA) in the U.S. enactment of the equality provision (Sec- BY PENNI MITCHELL are hopeful that the tion 15) of the Charter of Rights and Muriel Duckworth, feminist crusader for time is finally right for ratification of the Freedoms, LEAF’s purpose is to ensure social justice and one of the founding change to the U.S. Constitution. Florida, in women realize the full promise of equality members of the Voice of Women, died particular, is a hotbed of activism. The guaranteed in Canada’s charter. August 22, 2009, at the age of 100. ERA is waiting for a hearing in the U.S. “In those days, women were routinely Duckworth received 10 honorary Congress. Supporters are heavily focused fired for being pregnant and still had diffi- degrees in recognition of her commitment on three of 15 states, including Florida, culty getting a mortgage or bank loan to social activism. She also received the that did not ratify the ERA during the first without a man’s signature,” recalls Pat Governor General’s Award in Commemora- 10 years after it was introduced in 1972. Paradis, a former board chair and current tion of the Persons’ Case in 1981, and in “Every year, opponents raise new chair of LEAF’s 25th anniversary planning 1983 was made a companion of the Order issues against the ERA—mostly smoke committee. “Discrimination on the basis of of Canada. In 1991, she received the Pear- and mirrors,” says Sandy Oestreich, sex was the legal norm and women bared son Peace Medal. founder of the Florida Equal Rights the brunt of it. LEAF saw the Charter as an She was born Muriel Ball in 1908, one of Alliance. “And every year we fight them opportunity to change that.” five children in an Austin, family. down with substantive and evidentiary Today, LEAF has over 150 cases under A graduate of McGill University in 1929, arguments. They’re running out of new its belt that have made a significant differ- she went on to graduate studies at the arguments, and that means it’s time to ence to women and girls in Canada. Rights Union Theological Seminary in New York. tighten our strategy for the end game.” that LEAF played a central role in securing Muriel’s new husband, Jack Duckworth, Between 1972 and 1982, 35 state legis- include the right to maternity leave and also took up studies at the seminary. latures ratified the ERA—three states benefits, the right to say no to unwanted Muriel worked with teenage girls at a short of the minimum number set out sexual advances, and the right of women community church in Hell’s Kitchen on under a pre-set time limit for ratification to abortion services. New York’s West Side. that expired in 1982. “Because of LEAF, women can now take After living in Montreal for 17 years, the With Democrats in control of the U.S. for granted many rights that didn’t exist Duckworths moved to Halifax in 1947. Congress, ERA supporters believe this is less than 25 years ago,” observes LEAF Muriel and Jack had been vocal in their the best chance in years to get the Executive Director Audrey Johnson. “We opposition to the Second World War, a required two-thirds majority of votes in have a lot to celebrate and plan to do so stance that drew much ridicule at the time. favour of the ERA and jump-start the all year long!” Duckworth helped found the Voice of process. —Women’s E-News LEAF will kick off a year of celebra- Women in Toronto as an organized tions on April 17, with the launch of its response to the failure of the Paris Peace

8 SPRING 2010 HERIZONS nelliegrams massive destruction, for civil rights, against manipulation and repression, for children, G-SPOT PRESSES BUTTON against corrupting, burning, starving them Three weeks after scientists at King’s and poisoning their environment, for life on College in London, England declared the this planet for our grandchildren; against G-spot to be a myth, a group of gynecolo- the military and industrial mindlessness gists in Paris launched a counterattack which is destroying it and the smugness, on what they called a “totalitarian” stupidity, feelings of helplessness and the approach to female sexuality. wrong uses of power which allow this Denouncing the study carried out by destruction to continue.” British researchers as fundamentally A founding member of the Canadian flawed, French scientists insist the Research Institute for the Advancement of erogenous zone does exist in many Women, Duckworth served on its national women—an estimated 60 percent. board and was national president from The French scientists charged that the 1979 to 1980. The organization presents an Anglo-Saxon tendency to reduce the annual award in her name. mysteries of sexuality to absolutes was Duckworth was a founding member of to blame and was characteristic of the Canadian Conference on Education, British attitudes to sex. the Canadian Association for the The Guardian newspaper quoted Advancement of Women and Sport, the Pierre Foldès, a leading French surgeon, Canadian Council for International Cooper- as saying: “The King’s College study ation, the Nova Scotia Women’s Action shows a lack of respect for what women Muriel Duckworth remained active in social Coalition and the Movement for Citizens’ say. The conclusions were … based justice work until her passing at the age of 100. Voice and Action Halifax. She also cam- Photo: Janet Munson solely on genetic observations and it is paigned as an NDP candidate in the clear that in female sexuality there is elections of 1974 and 1978. variability. It cannot be reduced to a ‘yes’ talks in 1960. In 1967, she became national Her husband Jack passed away in 1975. or ‘no,’ or an ‘on’ or an ‘off.’” president of VOW and represented the Later in life, Duckworth performed with the The British study—involving the body organization as the delegate to the Inter- Halifax chapter of the Raging Grannies. part named after a male German gyne- national Conference of Women for Peace Duckworth represented VOW at several cologist Ernst Gräfenberg, who claims to in Moscow that year. During the Vietnam international conferences, and in 1982 she have discovered it–involved 1,800 War, the Voice of Women members helped chaired a delegation of representatives to women. The Brits concluded there was arrange a Canadian tour of Vietnamese present the Women’s Petition for Peace to no proof the G-spot exists. women directly affected by the war. the United Nations’ Second Special Ses- Odile Buisson, another French gyne- Duckworth and VOW were involved in the sion on Disarmament. cologist, said the study was a baby tooth campaign to measure strontium- Marian Douglas Kerans wrote a biog- demonstration of a cultural difference, 90, a by-product of radiation exposure from raphy of Duckworth, A Very Active with Gallic acceptance of ambiguity sit- nuclear testing. VOW activists also criticized Pacifist, published by Fernwood Books in ting uneasily beside an Anglo-Saxon Canada’s role in the research and develop- 1996. Following Duckworth’s passing, ment of chemical warfare and backed an need to explain everything. “I think it’s Kerans told the CBC that “Her way of anti-war toys campaign. totalitarian,” he said of the British speaking so simply, so plainly and right to An admirer of Nellie McClung and research in a Guardian interview. the point was really quite phenomenal. Agnes Macphail, two political activists Foldès, who pioneered a globally She was fearless.” who championed women’s rights in the renowned technique to restore the cli- Duckworth died from complications early 20th century, Duckworth credited torises to women who have undergone after falling and breaking her leg at the the Student Christian Movement with FGM, said the U.K. study started from the family cabin in August 2009. She is sur- teaching her to be a critical thinker. Her premise that all G-spots are alike. Rather, vived by her three children, 11 mother’s involvement in the Methodist he says, the highly sensitive area bears grandchildren and 12 great-grandchildren. church and the Women’s Christian Tem- little resemblance to the famed magic She will best be remembered for her inte- perance Union also had a powerful button guaranteed to generate immedi- gral role in the creation of the Canadian influence on Muriel. Duckworth spent 14 ate pleasure. —The Guardian years in Halifax as a part-time adviser for women’s and peace movements. the Nova Scotia Department of Educa- Duckworth’s friend, the scholar and VIRGINITY TESTS BANNED tion. She led community organizing peace activist , said: “I Gynecological examinations will no efforts seeking improvements in educa- would like her to be remembered as some- longer be performed on immigrant tion, housing, social assistance and body who demonstrated that it’s possible women entering the U.K., the British municipal planning. to change one’s society, to be profoundly home secretary announced in February. In 1969 Duckworth wrote: “Voices like critical and still remain a respected mem- The Guardian newspaper revealed that ours are needed more than ever—for ber of that society.”  immigrant women have been subjected peace, against increasing production, sale With files from A Very Active Pacifist and to examinations at Heathrow airport to and use of increasingly horrible means of Archives Canada. determine whether they were bona fide

HERIZONS SPRING 2010 9 Help Build a Sustainable

ee your name in print in each issue of Herizons when you join the growing community of Herizons S Sustaining Subscribers. Pledge a small amount each month and you will help ensure that the feminist ink continues to flow. Your steady, reliable donation nurtures Herizons and provides this small, non profit organization with stability. Once you decide to give every month, just choose an amount you’re comfortable with. Then register by mailing in a blank cheque marked VOID in the postage-paid envelope in this copy of Herizons, showing the monthly amount you’ve chosen—$5, $10 or a higher amount. You don’t have to rip the page out of the magazine to become a sustaining subscriber! Your contribution will be transferred from your account on the first of each month. Best of all, your Herizons subscription will never expire as long as you are a Sustaining Subscriber. By reducing the need to print renewal letters, you will also help reduce paper and administrative costs. Thank you for allowing Herizons to depend on your generous support!

Joanne Abbensetts Pamela Booker / Lynn Cockburn Margot Diehl Anne Forest Laurie Hill Wendy Abendschoen Dovona West D. Lee Connell Linda Disbrowe Louise Forsyth Sandra Hoeppner Bev Agar Nancy Bowes Valerie Connell Linda Doctoroff Joanne Fox Sarah Hodgson Jackie Allen Susan Boyd K.Virginia Coleman Christine Dol Barbara Freeman Brook Holdack Laurie Anderson Margaret Boyce Sarah Colquhoun Suzanne Dollheiser Frances Friesen Becky Hollingsworth Jan Andrews Alissa Brandt Ray Comeau Donna Dorosh Janice Frizell Kathleen Holmwood Arlene Anisman B. Braude Joy Cowell Jean Douglas-Webb Joan Frommer Geoffrey Honey Dianne Archer Carolyn Dowell Karen Fry Wendy Hovdestad Kelly Arndt “Herizons is a consistently engaging and Kristine Drakich Web Future Deborah Hudson Jane Aronson provocative read, re-inventing itself as Monique Dumont Esther Fyk Wendy Hunt Diana Aspen time goes by.”—Judy Rebick, author Joanna Dunbar Karen Galler Winnie Hunt Laura Atkinson Transforming Power Judith Dunlop Lee Gauthier Leanne Hurlburt Jennifer Ayer Elizabeth Duff Susan Genge Janice Inglis Kate Ayotte Allison Brewer Ruth-Anne Craig Nicole Dupuis Jennifer Gibbs Val Innes BT Canada MacKenzie Brooks Joan Crainford Bette Durst Janine Gibson Doreen Irving Madeleine Bachand Michelle Brown Melody Crane Ann Dyble Margaret Gillett Pat Israel Eliz Ball Pearl Brown Ruth Crawford Heather Dyment Ginny Gonneau Candice Jackson Bonnie Baker Rai Brown Rean Cross Ann Eastman Sara Gose Nancy Jackson Joan Bams Mary Smirle Bruce Rachel Crowder Suzanne Edgar Sonja Greckol Pamela Jackson Cara Banks Patricia Brush Judith Crawley Wendy Elliott Fiona Green Don T. James Letitia Barker Nancy Buchanan Inez Curl Roberta Engel Paula Greenwood Dorothy Janes Nancy Barner Ruth Bulmer Violet Cushon Annemarie Etsell Lorraine Gregson Sarah Jensen Kristine Barr Wendy Burton Alexina Dalgetty Brigitte Evering Virginia Grinevitch Kathleen Jones-Lepidas Heather Barrie Joanne Bury Denise Davies Davilyn Eyolfson Joanne Grout Hilary Kaler Sally Batstone Shannon Cameron Jennifer Davis Jenny Farkas Janet Grover Lois Kamenitz / Mairy Beam Carolyn Campbell Joan Dawkins Elaine Filax Genevieve Guindon Paula J. Scott Annette Beauvais Helen Castonguay Angela Day Gloria Filax Gio Guzzi Sheila Kappler / Jennifer Beeman Jade Chambers Sonja De Pauw Terre Flower Judith Hammill Theresa O’Donovan Marilynne Bell Cheryl Champagne Susan Dempsey Sydney Foran Donna Hansen Laura Kauder–Wolloch Ellen Bell / Marlene Milne Allison Chapman Irene Deschenes Susan Ford Rosalie Harriott Margaret Keefe Lynne Bingham Michele Chappas Cynthia Devine Jan Forde Debra Hathaway Else Kennedy Sallie Bingham Joanne Charron Emma Dickson Kim Fordham Nina K. Herman Nicole Kennedy Future for Herizons

Ursula Kernig Nancy McKinnell Nalini Reddy Ann Sitch Marie Sternberg leneke VanHouten Diane Kewley Robin McNabb Sharon Redmond Tara Sketchley Ursula Stetter Gail Vanstone Kathleen Kilburn Marilou McPhedran Val Regehr Lynn Sloane Margaret Stephens Aniko Varpalotai Sally Kimpson Sue Melville Katherine Reed Angela Smith Anne Stewart Maureen Vescio Mary C. Stewart Alyson King Heather Menzies Sharon Reiner Muriel Smith Vicki Vopni Bonnie Klein Neire Mercer Kim Renders Thorin Smith Randa Stewart Jennifer Waelti-Walters Marieke Klop Joan Merrifield Rubi Reske-Naurocki Marilyn Snelling Virginia Stikeman Lori Wanamaker Terry Knight Doreen Meyer Eva Reti Sandra Snooks Claire Sylvan Tamara Knox Lina Medaglia Miller Laurie Reynolds Penelope Squires Beverly Suek Betty Watts Esther Korchynski Christina Mills Lynne Supeene Susan Wendell Ellen Kristjanson Jai Mills Roberta Pyx Sutherland Susan White Herizons Ellen Kruger Mary Milne “ challenges us to evolve our Bethany Sutton Shelley Wickabrod feminist values and put them into Anita Lahey Dawn Mitchell Caroline Taylor Harolyn Wilson action. The magazine tracks, with Marie Laing Penni Mitchell Katherine Tate Elaine Wright seismographic sensitivity, our joy over Roselyne Lambert Mary Moreland Pamela Terry Susan Wurtele progress and our outrage over backsliding.” Iris Tetford Ronald Lancaster Emily Morino —Wendy Robbins, recipient of the Miriam Wyman Ann Landrey Gail Mountain Mary Thomas Governor General Persons Award Deborah Yaffe Dianne Landry Gail Mounteer Glanda Todd Gail Youngberg Michele Landsberg Judy Moynihan Terry Toews Carol Zavitz Patricia Lane Leslie Muir Vicki Rhodes Antoinette Spoor Mary Trafford Lisa Lasagna Audrey Myers Jillian Ridington Sylvia Spring Linda Tupin Lisa Zigler / Martha Laurence Kemlin Nembhard Janet Riehm Barbro Stalbecker- Verna Turner Tree Walsh Janine Laurencin Elizabeth Neve Bev Ritza Pountney Rian van Bruggen Carly Ziniuk L. A. Lavoie Evie Newton Sandy Roberts Mary Beth Stacey Cheryl van Daalen-Smith Kathryn Zwick Karen LeBlanc Linda Nichols Joan Robillard Shirley LeBrasseur Betty Nickerson Wendy Robbins Bev LeFrancois Karen Nielsen Krista Robson Linda J. Lee A-Lynne Nilsson Margerit Roger Judy Lightwater Valerie Hoshizaki Nordin Laurel Rolland Ruth Lillington Kathleen Norman Susan Romaniuk Fiona Lindsay Dianne Oberg Blanche Roy Ursula Litzcke Francine Odette Anna Rushforth Yes! Sign Me Up As a Herizons Katina Loiselle Margaret Oldfield Karmen Rusnak Sustaining Subscriber. Vanita Lokanathan Jan Padgett Tziporah Russell Bev Lowsley/ Arlean Pare / Chris Fox Flora Russell I authorize Herizons to withdraw: Linda Cunningham Heather Parrott-Howdle Joan Ryan $5 $8 $10 $15 Other each month. E. Jane Luce Denise Pauls Patricia Sadowy I enclose a cheque marked “VOID;” or Lesley MacDonald Sharon Pchajek Cy-Thea Sand Pamela MacDonald Joyce Peachey Britt Santowski Credit Card Contribution as follows: Sandra MacDonald Deirdre Pearson Elizabeth Sarin No. ______Exp. ______Lori MacIntyre Patricia Pedersen Sandra St. Germain Shauna MacKinnon Holly Penner/ Marnie Schaetti Name: ______Josha MacNab Diane Silverthorne Cat Schick Susan MacPhail Tracey Peter Joan Scott Address: ______Elise Maltin Beverly Peters Agatha Schwartz Heather Maroney Patricia Petruga Joan Schwartzenberger City / Town: ______Sara Mayo Paula Philp Charlene Senn Province: ______Postal Code: ______Suzette Mayr Janyt Piercy Sandra Setter Susan Mayrand/ Nirmala Pitt Donna Sharkey Phone:______Mary McCosham Sylvia Pivko Donna Sharon Heather McAfee Joanna Plater Barb Shaw Email: ______Mary Ann McCarthy Marg Powell Lisa Shaw I understand that my subscription will not expire as long as Sandra McCauley Jacqueline Preyde JoAnne Sherin I am a Sustaining Subscriber and that I may cancel this Audrey McClellan J.C. Prior Margaret Shkimba Gail McColl Kathleen Quinn Harold Shuster agreement at any time. Heather McDonald Samantha-Lee Quinn Muriel Sibley Send your authorization, (‘VOID’ cheque) to: Selma McGorman Helen Ramirez Melanie Sicotte Herizons Sustaining Subscribers Susan McGrath Jean Rands Sylvia Sigurdson PO Box 128, Winnipeg, MB Canada R3C 2G1 Debra McIntyre Gillean Raske Joan Simeon Melanie McIntyre Pat Rasmussen Ruth Simkin Check if applicable: Do not publish my name on this page. Mary McKim Carol Reader Chris Sinding WILDExpeditions WOMEN

Canada’s Outdoor Adventure Company for Women since 1991 join us

2009ALL-WOMEN ALL-WOMEN ADVENTURES ADVENTURES AND ANDRETREATS RETREATS

Kayak, Hike, Surf on Vancouver Islands’ Pacific Rim Hike, Cycle, Kayak in Newfoundland’s Gros Morne National Park Mountain Bike in Fabulous Fernie, BC Paddle with Belugas in Churchill, Manitoba Canoe, Kayak, Bike or Retreat in Northern Ontario Cycle, Hike and Paddle the Bay of Fundy, New Brunswick Hike and Explore Cape Breton, Nova Scotia

www.WildWomenExp.com [email protected] 1-888-WWE-1222

HIGHLY RATED. GREATLY APPRECIATED.

Whenyoucompareustothebigbanks,you’ll findourratesareupto10Xhigher.Outlook’s Cashable GICs rise to the top with superior rates, predictable returns and the security of a 100% deposit guarantee*.

Call us at (1-877) 958-7333 or visit us online at www.outlookfinancial.com.

*Deposits guaranteed 100% by the Credit Union Deposit Guarantee Corporation.

12 SPRING 2010 HERIZONS nelliegrams “We were really impressed with Luna- pads’ showing in our People’s Choice fiancées—in other words, whether the contest,” said Andrew Korfhage, Green women had borne children or had had America’s online editor and the coordina- sexual intercourse. tor of the People’s Choice award. “Up The Indian Deputy High Commissioner against some much larger businesses with protested, saying his government wanted vast Internet reach, Lunapads mobilized the practice banned and pointing out that their customers—a uniquely passionate it is not done elsewhere in the world. group—to pull them within striking dis- An Indian-born schoolteacher tance of the top spot.” described her ordeal to the Guardian, say- Launched 17 years ago, Lunapads ing an officer suspected she might have International specializes in eco-friendly been married and wanted an opinion on menstrual products. Shaw and Siemens whether she had borne children. She was estimate that one million disposable pads entering the U.K. as the fiancée of a Lon- and tampons are now diverted from land- don man. The examination showed that no fills every month thanks to women using children had been born, and the woman their products. was given leave to enter the country for three months. —The Guardian The company recently launched a sister product, Lunapanties, a new line of spe- cialized underwear that is a hybrid BEANS TO BREAST CANCER A study in China found that breast cancer between the company’s cloth menstrual survivors in China with diets rich in tofu, Lunapads newest product, Lunapanties, pads and underwear. Lunapanties feature soy and fresh soybeans had a lower risk of is a hybrid pad and panty all-in-one. a built-in padded gusset that obviates the death and relapse. Women who ate the need for additional pads or pantyliners. most soy protein had a 29 percent lower However, Lunapads is committed to more risk of dying from breast cancer and a 32 GREENING than women’s comfort and creating an eco- percent lower rate of breast cancer recur- logically sound product. Shaw and Siemens ring, compared to those with low-soy diets. just launched Pads4Girls, a project that sup- The study followed 5,033 women diag- YOUR plies its pads and menstrual products to nosed with breast cancer from March 2002 girls in Africa and developing nations. to April 2006 for an average of four years. Millions of girls and women lack even UNDERWEAR The research was published in the Journal rudimentary menstrual supplies, forcing of the American Medical Association. BY PENNI MITCHELL them to stay home from work or school, Vancouver-based Lunapads International according to Shaw and Seimens. was awarded the Shining Light Award in CITY Pads4Girls are purchased by customers or SUPPORTS GAY November 2009 from Green America, the donated by Lunapads. To date the com- MARRIAGE largest network of green businesses in pany has supplied more than 1,000 girls In December, Mexico City North America. and women with its products.  legislators approved a law After the women-owned business came To order Lunapanties, or to find out how giving same-sex couples full marriage second in the network’s online People’s you can support Pads4Girls, log on to rights. And, in a last-minute measure, the Choice contest, Green America decided to www.lunapads.com. city’s left-dominated assembly overcame award the Vancouver-based company with conservative opposition to allow gay cou- the Shining Light Award. ples that marry to adopt children. Lunapads co-founders Madeleine Shaw “We are putting an end to segregation and Suzanne Siemens accepted the award MUSLIM and stigmatization of a sector of society, at San Francisco’s Green Festival in giving access to full marriage rights,” November 2009. said David Razu, a legislator from the “It’s hugely gratifying to know that our ZINE Social Democratic Party. message is getting so far out into the world The legislation extends a 2006 city law and is being so well-received,” says Shaw, HONOURS that allowed civil unions by giving same- a Queen’s University graduate who started sex couples access to the same family developing her ideas for alternatives to social security benefits and joint loans as disposable pads and tampons in 1993. TEEN heterosexual couples. The bill is to be Green America is a non-profit organi- signed by Mexico City Mayor Marcelo zation that helps consumers, investors BY HILARY BARLOW Ebrard. — Reuters and businesses adopt socially responsi- (TORONTO) On an icy December night in ble and environmentally sustainable Toronto, hundreds filled the Anne Tan- SON RISES TO LAUNCH SUIT practices. With over 75,000 consumer nenbaum Gallery School at the Art A former Tehran prosecutor found members and 4,000 business members, it Gallery of Ontario (AGO). The walls dis- responsible in the deaths of three protest- is the largest network of green busi- played photos of young women wearing ers after last summer’s disputed Iranian nesses in North America. defiant, provocative expressions. The

HERIZONS SPRING 2010 13 nelliegrams room was filled intermittently with laugh- presidential election has also been ter and awed silence during a series of named in a lawsuit brought by the son of powerful, lively poetry readings. During Canadian photojournalist Zahra Kazemi. the event, a woman set up a harmonium Stephan Kazemi is seeking $17 million and led the audience in a Muslim spiri- in damages from his mother’s home coun- tual, repeating the simple Arabic chorus try for her arrest, torture and killing. The so everyone could sing along. former prosecutor, Saeed Mortazavi and It was the launch for the latest issue of country of Iran, are named in the civil suit. AQSAzine, a new publication by and for Kazemi died three weeks after her Muslim women and trans people from detainment in a Tehran prison in 2003. Canada and the rest of the world. Founded She was arrested outside a Tehran prison in the aftermath of the 2007 killing of in June 2003 while photographing rela- Toronto teenager Aqsa Parvez, whose tives of detainees who were holding a father was charged with her murder, the vigil outside the detention centre. No zine has blossomed into a diverse multi- charges were laid against her. media collective. Iranian authorities said the death of In addition to publishing the zine, the the 54-year-old Montreal resident was AQSAzine collective has hosted a retreat accidental. Other accounts suggested for Muslim women and trans people, a Kazemi’s body showed signs of torture, short film workshop (the results of which head trauma and rape. Iran contends the were screened at the AGO launch) and a country can’t be sued because it is pro- podcast workshop. tected by Canada’s State Immunity Act. Dissatisfied with mainstream media sto- Legal observers say Stephan Kazemi ries that reinforce stereotypes, the has a strong argument for civil remedies. Hundreds of people attended the launch of collective aims to create a space where the second edition of AQSAzine. Kazemi is also challenging Canada’s Muslim women and trans people can cre- State Immunity Act, which restricts the ate their own dialogues. conditions under which a foreign govern- “Often when I see pieces on Muslim leading a campaign to give female congre- ment can be sued on Canadian soil. women, it’s people speaking on behalf of gants the right to vote at the Glasgow Ottawa supports the lawsuit. us, or people speaking to save us, or to Central Mosque in Scotland. explain how we experience the world,” “It’s all been positive,” says collective WANTED: WILD says collective member Farrah Khan. “So member and law student May El-Abdallah, BUSH WOMAN this is just a space for us to have a rest “just realizing so many people out there Are you an outdoorsy type and say, ‘what kind of conversations do are craving a venue like this. We get tons with a flare for adventure we want to have?’” and tons of submissions every time.” and a desire to own your In Arabic, the word “aqsa” implies the While AQSAzine has been cast as a gay own business? furthermost, as in reaching out to the fur- Muslim zine, the publication is more accu- Look no further. Wild Women Expeditions, thest possible point. AQSAzine supports its rately described as being inclusive of both which is coming up on its 20th anniver- work through funding from local arts queer and straight Muslims. In fact, the sary of organizing all-women adventure organizations, zine sales and volunteer collective eschews any pat definition of trips throughout Canada, is for sale. participation. The collective’s projects are what makes someone a Muslim, even Beth Mairs, the company’s founder done on a volunteer basis; every dollar something as seemingly essential as faith. and owner, will be stepping down after from zine sales goes into creating the next “We don’t come from a standpoint of the 2010 summer season. issue. Contributors are mainly non-profes- being religious or not religious,” explains “I feel the call of the wild again,” says sional artists. El-Abdallah. “You have people in the Mairs, “and making room for new adven- Khan, a therapist who counsels female group who are fairly devout and you have tures is what I plan to do.” survivors of violence, doesn’t consider people who consider themselves com- When it first started in 1991, Wild herself an artist. Nonetheless, as part of pletely atheistic. It creates a healthy Women focused on wilderness canoe the collective’s film workshop, she made a creative tension.” trips in Northern Ontario. By 2002, Wild short animated film that was screened at As for the future, the group is taking it Women was offering 50 adventures year- the AGO launch. slow. While accepting pitches for the round; and by 2005 Mairs had extended Through the Toronto Women’s Book- zine’s third issue, the collective will con- adventure tours across Canada. store, events like the AGO launch and an tinue running workshops and hopes to During the coming year, Wild Women ever-increasing network of supporters, the have another AGO event next winter. As will offer trips in nine provinces and one collective has sold over 500 copies of the Khan explains it, “right now we’re trying to territory, including cycling or mountain first and second issues of its zine. Khan still make it fun for people and make it so biking, kayaking, canoeing, hiking and/or has received requests for copies from as we don’t get exhausted.”  backpacking.  far away as California, the United King- Interested readers and contributors can For more details check out: dom, Egypt and Denmark. The latest issue, pick up the latest issue at the Toronto www.WildWomenExp.com. themed My Islam, features work by Nazia Women’s Bookstore or request one online Iqbal, a 19-year-old student activist who is at http://aqsazine.blogspot.com.

14 SPRING 2010 HERIZONS cole’s notes BY SUSAN G. COLE

WOMEN’S STUDIES UNDER ATTACK

January was a bad month for women’s studies. Guelph Uni- got away with it, they had a profound impact on economies versity axed its program altogether, Simon Fraser University all over the world. decided to change the name of its department to Gender, Harvard University allowed Richard Nixon’s national secu- Sexuality and Women’s Studies and Queen’s is changing the rity advisor Henry Kissinger to keep his faculty seat after moniker for its program to simply . being away from the school for over three years. Can anyone Announcements to this effect prompted some bizarre call Henry Kissinger objective? Yet not only was he allowed media coverage. CBC Radio’s The Current did a lengthy item to teach, the school broke its own rules to keep him there. on the subject, featuring the Toronto Star’s Catherine Porter True, not all professors have political agendas, they just and the National Post’s Barbara Kay, and then a National Post have personal ones, in which they pound away at their own editorial ranted against women’s studies and feminism in ideas, often grading students based on how much their general, showering abuse on the movement for, basically, charges agree with them. wrecking everything. Neutral? Objective? I don’t think so. We expect that kind of thing from the Post, but The Current While assessing the state of women’s studies, can anyone item was mysterious. Why did it feature two newspaper colum- imagine a similar hate-on for African-American studies, or nists and not one women’s studies professor to talk about the Black studies, as it’s known now? I don’t think so, despite the meaning of the name changes? Instead, Post columnist Barbara fact that it, too, grew out of a political movement and a well- Kay made absurd comments about what goes on in women’s founded belief that academia was underserving Black studies programs, how all women are seen as victims and all interests. The discipline offers a systematic way of studying men as victimizers, how politics and not academics is the man- Black people in the world and has always had an anti-racist date of such departments, and she claimed that women’s studies agenda. So why does an anti-sexist academic department get is hopelessly biased. She was particularly upset that women’s hit with such an all-out attack? studies profs had the nerve to encourage students to take their As it is, the decision to alter the name is simple enough— work out of the classroom and into their communities, some- the academic landscape has changed dramatically, as has times even—heaven forbid—participating in political action. feminism itself. Women’s studies grew out of a feminist It was such an outrageous exercise in feminism-bashing, it movement that itself has changed, while gender studies and was unworthy of the CBC. And the Star’s Catherine Porter, sexuality have become an academic growth industry. By com- while sympathetic to women’s studies as a discipline, was ill- bining the disciplines, universities are hoping to attract more equipped to counter the arguments. students, which, in turn, will increase the funds that get So let me try. The idea that the ivory tower should stand transferred to such departments to allow them to operate. isolated, raining down pronouncements from a great height, Sounds like a good idea to me —gender dovetails nicely is an old, tired idea of what a university should be. My view with feminist studies, and there’s good reason to incorporate is that it’s the university’s job to engage with its community. into these programs the study of trans issues, questions relat- The University of Toronto, for example, could never argue ing to gender fluidity and social policies related to both. that it stands alone as a pure purveyor of neutral ideas. For Ideally, the gender-specific term women’s studies will remain one thing, it’s the biggest landlord in the city and so has a in the new programs’ names. responsibility to be community-minded. As for the National Post, Walrus contributors Stacey May It’s not as if other university programs are neutral and Fowles, Amy Macfarlane and Alexandra Molotkow got it objective. For years, Milton Friedman and the neo-conserva- right when they said the newspaper’s editorial proved why tive economists promulgated their dangerous ideas, women’s studies—or whatever it’s to be called—remains unencumbered, at the University of Chicago. They not only absolutely essential. 

HERIZONS SPRING 2010 15 Take Your AFTER HALF A CENTURY OF THE PILL, IT’S TIME TO PASS Politics THE BIRTH CONTROL BATON BY HELEN TO MEN. toBed CORDES

ifty years ago, the birth control pill debuted in the cause harm after 50 years. And women deserve a break: Sim- and revolutionized birth control. Con- ple fairness demands that their male sexual partners shoulder F traception came out of the closet, with women their share of contraception. After all, men are the leading embracing not just the pill, but IUDs and the array of reason women take on contraceptive risks. And women’s diaphragms, spermicides and condoms that were no longer male sexual partners have enjoyed the benefits: side effect- off limits to unmarried women. Canadian women jumped free and pregnancy-free sex. The pill’s 50th birthday is a aboard; the pill gained contraceptive approval in 1969 but good time to pass the birth control baton to men. was prescribed for “menstrual irregularities”—wink, wink— Fortunately, new male contraceptive options are on the a few years earlier. The pill still rules as the top contraceptive, move, with men at study sites around the world successfully popped by more than 40 percent of Canadian women achieving temporary sterility with methods including hor- between 15 and 44. monal injections and gels, sperm-blocking substances and But despite the countless advances contraceptives have devices, and low-tech sperm-suppressing heat methods. Labs provided women, many devices come with the risk of serious are abuzz with panoplies of non-hormonal drugs designed to side effects. Hormones used in the pill, patches, IUDs and alter sperm production and cause reversible infertility. After vaginal rings are linked with strokes, blood clots, heart prob- 40 years of research on male contraceptives, what’s clearer lems, breast cancer and that sadly ironic hormonal than ever is that male reproductive processes are just as easy contraceptive companion, lowered sexual desire. Even sper- to manipulate—and sometimes easier—than women’s. micides can be dicey. Commonly used brands containing “We’ve got methods that could be brought to market Nonoxynol-9, for example, can cause irritation to the vagina soon—we just need the coordinated will and funding to or rectum, increasing users’ risk of STIs and HIV. actually make it happen,” says Elaine Lissner, director of the Women deserve better than the pill and its pals that still Male Contraception Information Project in San Francisco.

16 SPRING 2010 HERIZONS Illustration by Cindy Revell

Dude doubters should know that men have promised to Male contraceptive research is thriving in Canada, includ- step up to the plate. “In survey after survey in many different ing Weiss’s ongoing work on a reversible male method countries, over half the men say they’d use a male method,” involving the vas deferens (the tubes sperm travels through). says Kirsten Thompson, director of the International Male There are also encouraging results involving a removable vas Contraception Coalition, which offers general information deferens plug from Canadian and U.S. trials directed by Uni- as well as networking among researchers and advocates. versité Laval family medicine professor Dr. Michel Lebreque These aren’t just empty promises, Thompson says: Consider and Vancouver vasectomy leader Dr. Neal Pollock. Animal that men are already active participants in one third of con- trials on a male contraceptive vaccine conducted at Univer- traceptive efforts worldwide, including vasectomies, sité Laval showed success, but the project failed to get condoms, withdrawal and periodic abstinence. funding for human studies. Canada stands as proof that change is possible. Just 30 Challenges remain. Research money for male contracep- years ago, the number of female sterilizations (tubal liga- tives comes largely from government agencies, NGOs, tions) far outnumbered vasectomies, despite the fact that academia and foundations. It seems that pharmaceutical vasectomies are safer, quicker and cheaper. Now, twice as firms prefer to continue tapping the lucrative $US7 billion many Canadian men get sterilized as women. This puts their annual female contraceptive market. Even after a 2006 study American counterparts to shame: In the U.S. there is a three- that found up to 97 percent efficacy among 354 male sub- to-one ratio of tubals to vasectomies. jects at six European centres testing formulations of “Women have become more insistent that men do their progestin implants and bimonthly testosterone shots, phar- part, and Canadian men agree it’s fair,” says Dr. Ron Weiss, maceutical firms threw in the towel. Canada’s top vasectomy doc. He’s clocked over 27,000 so far “The pharmaceutical researchers were enthusiastic, and at his Ottawa clinic. their own studies showed male acceptance,” says Thompson.

HERIZONS SPRING 2010 17 “But management decisions directed resources to more prof- RISUG research is flourishing in India, where ongoing itable drugs.” phase III trials (the final step before a product is approved) According to Nelly Oudshoorn, author of The Male Pill,a at 10 centres aim to involve 1,000 male subjects. consortium of health and family-planning organizations Tests involving another vas-based device that blocks sperm embarked on a male contraceptive research project 30 years flow with soft silicon plugs have also been “very encouraging,” ago and their work has produced encouraging results. This says Pollock. Study collaborator Lebreque notes that addi- consortium, according to Oudshoorn, gender and technol- tional modifications in insertion and design would improve ogy professor at the University of Twente in the the trial’s 80-percent sperm-blocking rate. While the U.S. Netherlands, has kept progress on male contraception mov- National Institutes of Health funded the $US1.4 million tri- ing—albeit slowly. als and Health Canada approved the safety of the device, But despite funding cuts and other bumps, male contra- additional efficacy and reversibility studies are needed. ceptive study subjects and research results provide hope that In China—which, like India, has long focused on male new male contraception methods may be as little as five years contraception methods in face of population pressures— away. Here are the nuts and bolts on several approaches studies of vas plugging methods have been ongoing for under development. nearly three decades. Some male subjects have successfully fathered children after the plug’s removal. Most recently, a Vas deferens interceptors vas plug with a mesh net that captures sperm showed 94 per- “Male contraception is much less compli- cent effectiveness in a Chinese phase II study with over cated if you target the sperm in two little 1,500 male subjects. “The key to the vas plugs is showing tubes rather than give men something that consistent reversibility,” notes Thompson. “Just as it’s harder affects their whole body,” notes Lissner. She as more time goes by to achieve fertility after vasectomy- has closely followed male contraceptive reversal surgery, it’s likely harder to show fertility after any research since creating the Male Contraceptive Information type of longer-term vas block.” Project in 1994 and now champions male contraceptive proj- ects as director of medical research programs at the Parsemus Hormonal techniques Foundation in San Francisco. Lissner’s favourite male con- The male equivalent of the pill could be as traceptive option is called Reversible Inhibition of Sperm few as five years away, experts say. Approval Under Guidance (RISUG). It involves a one-time injection is most likely to come first in China or Ger- of a substance that coats the vas deferens inside wall, allow- many, observers say.There have been studies ing sperm to flow but rendering them unable to fertilize an on thousands of male subjects that indicate egg; the injection is effective for seven years. a male hormonal contraceptive is nearly as effective as the RISUG has proven its contraceptive effectiveness with female pill. It produces minimal side effects and is reversible men studied for the past 25 years in India, and animal stud- within three months of discontinued use. One catch—it ies prove fertility can be restored with an injection of another probably won’t be an actual pill, because oral testosterone chemical that cleanses the contraceptive substance. Men needs to be taken several times a day to keep levels steady. experience no changes in libido, and the occasional side Rather, the first hormonal male contraceptive on the market effect of minor testicular swelling disappears in a few weeks. is expected to be a monthly or bimonthly androgen and prog- Lissner is spearheading a not-for-profit effort to license estin mixture that suppresses sperm production. It will be RISUG production so it can be pursued for use in the U.S., delivered by injection, implant or a daily gel application. Canada and elsewhere. Like the female pill, the male pill manipulates hormones. “RISUG is the most significant breakthrough in contra- Progestin prevents the pituitary gland from making hor- ception, period, since the birth control pill,” says Weiss, who mones that stimulate sperm production. An androgen such performed the procedure in 2002 as part of a World Health as testosterone is then added to retain secondary male char- Organization project in India. “It’s safe, effective and easy— acteristics such as lower voice and facial hair. A bimonthly it took me less than 15 minutes.” Weiss embarked on a testosterone-progesterone injection is currently being used in RISUG approval process at the time, but Health Canada a 400-couple study carried out in Europe, Asia, South required the studies done in India to be replicated in Canada. American and funded by the World Health Orga- According to Weiss, the requirement was cost-prohibitive, nization and CONRAD, the Contraceptive Research and since he didn’t have commercial backing. Meanwhile, Development Program.

18 SPRING 2010 HERIZONS Typical side effects may sound familiar to female pill-tak- world,” notes Lissner. “Imagine that a man could walk into a ers: slight weight gain, acne, moodiness and libido droop. clinic and get a painless treatment while waiting for car or Researchers also have concerns about possible effects on bike repair next door, or whatever errand, and then be set for cholesterol levels and prostate cancer, notes John Amory of the next several months.” the University of Washington’s Cooperative Contraceptive Research Center. The centre has been tasked by its U.S. Non-hormonal possibilities funding agency, the National Institute of Child Health and Many drugs cause temporary infertility. Human Development (NICHD), with studying male con- One drug that interferes with Vitamin A traceptives. Amory says test subjects generally find side receptors in the testes, for example, ren- effects quite tolerable. As for long-term effects, “We just dered sperm infertile in animal trials at don’t know yet,” says Dr. Christina Wang of another Columbia University. Gamendazole, which NICHD-funded male contraceptive research program at induces reversible sterility in mice in a single dose, is the Harbor-UCLA Medical Center in Los Angeles. research star of the University of Kansas Interdisciplinary Male hormonal method critics such as Lissner are concerned Center for Male Contraceptive Research and Drug Devel- that users would likely experience problematic long-term side opment. The centre received $US7.5 million from the effects similar to users of female hormonal contraceptives. But NICHD to find non-hormonal male contraceptives. whatever products emerge, men should feel assured that the Researchers are also investigating the Chinese herb triptery- bar for “acceptable” side effects is much higher than it was, and gium wilfordii, a long-used treatment for arthritis and other perhaps still is, for women’s hormonal contraception. “The conditions. The herb has been found to suppress sperm pro- standard for male methods aims at no side effects,” observes duction. Meanwhile, contraceptive vaccines that have proven Thompson. “I’m not sure how realistic that is.” reversible in primates also provide hope for a contraceptive vaccine for men. Heat and ultrasound suppression It’s long been known that heating the testes Make it happen causes sperm levels to drop—that’s why “It’s hugely important to simply talk about wannabe dads are advised to steer clear of male contraception,” says Thompson. Sim- hot tub habits and long bike rides that keep ply talking about the risks of female the testes too snug instead of away from the contraception and encouraging male contra- groin, where they remain cooler. Researchers such as UCLA’s ception and vasectomies reinforce the idea Wang have used heat in studies, finding that short-term that it’s fair and doable to share the responsibility for contra- daily testes baths in their trials enhanced the action of male ception. One reason more Canadian males are getting hormonal contraceptive agents. DIY heat methods can work, vasectomies is because “the culture changed,” notes Lebreque. says Lissner, who knows of several men who achieved tem- Similar shifts can happen with male contraception. porary infertility through sustained testes soaks or Next, the experts say, consumers should encourage health specialized underwear devices that kept testes close to the providers, policy-makers, family planning organizations, inguinal canal, the enclosure where testes naturally retract in government officials, foundations and drug-makers to a cold environment. develop male contraception. One easy way to get the word Ultrasound devices, which emit very short sound waves, out to all parties involved with male contraception is to visit also deliver heat in a comfortable, quick method. Two animal www.malecontraceptives.org and fill out the short survey. studies at the University of North Carolina and the Univer- Both Lissner’s Male Contraception Information Project sity of California are testing the effect of 15-minute testes (newmalecontraception.org) and Thompson’s website carry ultrasound treatments on sperm suppression. “We’re trying information and resources on male contraceptives. to duplicate some very promising research from the 1970s “I got interested in male contraception because I saw that found half-hour treatments kept primates infertile for women suffering with their birth control methods and I three to six months,” says study director David Sokal, a sci- knew there were better options,” says Lissner. “And I learned entist at the non-profit Family Health International that there’s so much potential to keep both people and our organization. Upcoming studies intend to establish human planet healthier when men can control their reproductive guidelines and reversibility. lives, too. I’ve seen a lot of change over the past years, and “Ultrasound machines are widely available across the we’re finally at the tipping point.” 

HERIZONS SPRING 2010 19 MARKETING Why shouldn’t a president who wants to change his country benefit from marketing as good as Starbucks and Nike? Every transformative movement in history has used strong graphic design, catchy slogans and, yes, fashion to build its base.

BY NAOMI KLEIN

ifteen years ago, Nike appropriated the imagery of the civil rights movement and the icons of ’60s F counter-culture to inspire cult-like devotion to run- ning shoes. U.S. President Barack Obama has used our faded memories of those same movements to revive interest in actual politics; surely that’s a step up. So the problem is not that Obama is using the same tricks and tools as the super- brands; anyone wanting to move the culture these days pretty much has to do that. The problem is that, as with so many other lifestyle brands before him, his actions do not come close to living up to the hopes he has raised. Though it’s too soon to issue a verdict on the Obama pres- idency, we do know this: He favours the grand symbolic gesture over deep structural change every time. So he will make a dramatic announcement about closing the notorious Guantanamo Bay prison while going ahead with an expan- sion of the lower-profile but frighteningly lawless Bagram prison in Afghanistan, and opposing accountability for Bush Photo: Andrew Stern officials who authorized torture. He will boldly appoint the first Latina to the Supreme Court, while intensifying Bush- Naomi Klein’s 10th anniversary edition of No Logo is every bit as relevant as the first edition a decade ago. era enforcement measures in a new immigration crackdown.

20 WINTER 2010 HERIZONS IS THE NEW MORALITY

He will make investments in green energy while champi- Obama brand is “big enough to be anything to anyone yet oning the fantasy of “clean coal” and refusing to tax had an intimate enough feel to inspire advocacy.” And then emissions, the only sure way to substantially reduce the their highest compliment: “Mr. Obama somehow managed burning of fossil fuels. Similarly, he will slam the unaccept- to be both Coke and Honest Tea, both the mega-brand with able greed of banking executives, even as he hands the reins the global awareness and distribution network and the dark of the economy to consummate Wall Street insiders Timo- horse, upstart niche player.” thy Geithner and Larry Summers, who have predictably Another way of putting it is that Obama played the anti- rewarded the speculators and failed to break up the banks. war, anti-Wall Street party crasher to his grassroots base, And most importantly, he will claim to be ending the war in which imagined itself leading an insurgency against the two- Iraq, and will retire the ugly “war on terror” phrase––even as party monopoly through dogged organization and donations the conflicts guided by that fatal logic escalate in gathered from lemonade stands and loose change found in Afghanistan and Pakistan. the crevices of the couch. Meanwhile, he took more money This preference for symbols over substance, and this from Wall Street than any other presidential candidate, swal- unwillingness to stick to a morally clear if unpopular lowed the Democratic Party establishment in one gulp after course, is where Obama decisively parts ways with the defeating Hillary Clinton, then pursued “bipartisanship” transformative political movements from which he has bor- with crazed Republicans once in the White House. rowed so much (his pop art posters from Che; his cadence Does Obama’s failure to live up to his lofty brand cost from King; his “Yes We Can!” slogan from the migrant him? It didn’t at first. An international study by Pew’s Global farmworkers’ Si Se Puede!). Attitudes Project conducted five months after he took office, These movements made unequivocal demands of existing asked people whether they were confident Obama would “do power structures: for land distribution, higher wages, ambi- the right thing in world affairs.” Despite the fact that there tious social programs. Because of those high-cost demands, was already plenty of evidence that Obama was continuing these movements had not only committed followers but also many of [former U.S. President George W.] Bush’s core serious enemies. Obama, in sharp contrast not just to social international policies (albeit with a far less arrogant style), movements but to transformative presidents like FDR, fol- the vast majority said they approved of Obama––in Jordan lows the logic of marketing: Create an appealing canvas on and Egypt, a fourfold increase from the Bush era. which all are invited to project their deepest desires but stay In Europe, the change in attitude could give you whiplash: vague enough not to lose anyone but the committed Obama had the confidence of 91 percent of French respon- wingnuts (which, granted, constitute a not inconsequential dents and 86 percent of Britons––compared with 13 percent demographic in the U.S.). and 16 percent respectively under Bush. The poll was proof Advertising Age had it right when it gushed that the that “Obama’s presidency essentially erased the battering the

HERIZONS SPRING 2010 21 In short, Obama didn’t just rebrand America, he resusci- tated the neoliberal economic project when it was at death’s door. No one but Obama, wrongly perceived as a new FDR, could have pulled it off. Yet, rereading No Logo after 10 years provides many reminders that success in branding can be fleeting, and that nothing is more fleeting than the quality of being cool. Many of the super-brands and branded celebrities that looked untouchable not so long ago have either faded or are in deep crisis today. Some overstretched. For others, their actual products began to feel rather disappointing next to the thrill of their marketing (a black woman breastfeeding a white child to sell … Benetton sweatersets? Really?). And sometimes it was precisely their claims of political enlightenment that tempted activists to contrast their mar- keting image with their labour practices, with disastrous results for the brands. The Obama brand could well suffer a similar fate. Of course many people supported Obama for straightforward strategic reasons: They rightly wanted the Republicans out, and he was the best candidate. But what will happen when Success in branding, Naomi Klein reminds us, is fleeting. the throngs of Obama faithful realize that they gave their hearts not to a movement that shared their deepest values U.S.’s image took during eight years of the Bush administra- but to a devoutly corporatist political party, one that puts the tion,” according to USA Today. David Axelrod puts it like profits of drug companies before the need for affordable this: “What has happened is that anti-Americanism isn’t health care, and Wall Street’s addiction to financial bubbles cool anymore.” before the needs of millions of people whose homes and jobs That was certainly true, and it had very real consequences. could have been saved with a better bailout? Obama’s election and the world’s corresponding love affair The risk––and it is real––is that the response will be waves with his rebranded America came at a crucial time. In the two of bitter cynicism, particularly among the young people for months before the election, the financial crisis rocking world whom the Obama campaign was their first taste of politics. markets was being rightly blamed not just on the contagion Most won’t switch parties, they’ll just do what young people of Wall Street’s bad bets but on the entire economic model of used to do during elections: stay home, tune out. Another, deregulation and privatization (called “neoliberalism” in most more hopeful possibility is that Obamamania will end up parts of the world) that had been preached from U.S.-domi- being what the U.S. president’s advisors like to call “a teach- nated institutions like the International Monetary Fund and able moment.” the World Trade Organization. If the United States were led Obama is a gifted politician with a deep intelligence and a by someone who didn’t happen to be a global superstar, U.S. greater inclination toward social justice than any leader of his prestige would have continued to plummet and the rage at party in recent memory. If he cannot change the system in the economic model at the heart of the global meltdown order to keep his election promises, it’s because the system would likely have turned into sustained demands for new itself is utterly broken. rules to rein in (and seriously tax) speculative finance. That was the conversation many of us were having in that Those rules were supposed to have been on the agenda brief period between the anti-WTO protests in Seattle in when G20 leaders met at the height of the economic crisis in November 1999 and the beginning of the so-called War on London in April 2009. Instead, the press focused on excited Terror. Perhaps it was a limitation, but for the movement the sightings of the fashionable Obama couple, while world media insisted on calling “anti-globalization” it mattered lit- leaders agreed to revive the ailing International Monetary tle which political party happened to be in power in our Fund—a chief culprit in this mess—with up to a trillion dol- respective countries. We were focused squarely on the rules lars in new financing. of game, and how they had been distorted to serve the nar-

22 SPRING 2010 HERIZONS row interests of corporations at every level of And yet, missing from this populist moment is what was governance––from international free-trade agreements to beginning to emerge a decade ago: a movement that did not local water-privatization deals. just respond to individual outrages but had a set of proactive Looking back on this period, what I liked most was the demands for a more just and sustainable economic model. In unapologetic wonkery of it all. In the two years after No Logo the United States and many parts of Europe, it is far-right came out, I went to dozens of teach-ins and conferences, some parties and even neo-fascism that are giving the loudest voice of them attended by thousands of people (tens of thousands in to anti-corporatist rage. the case of the World Social Forum), that were exclusively Personally, none of this makes me feel betrayed by Barack devoted to popular education about the inner workings of Obama. Rather, I have a familiar ambivalence, the way I global finance and trade. No topic was too arcane: the science used to feel when brands like Nike and Apple started using of genetically modified foods, trade-related intellectual prop- revolutionary imagery in their transcendental branding erty rights, the fine print of bilateral trade deals, the patenting campaigns. Sure, it was annoying, but after the apolitical of seeds, the truth about carbon sinks. ’80s, when there was, according to Margaret Thatcher, “no I sensed in these rooms a hunger for knowledge that I had such thing as society,” it also seemed like a good sign that never witnessed in any university class. It was as if people these brands believed otherwise. All of their high-priced understood, all at once, that gathering this knowledge was market research had found a longing in people for some- crucial to the survival not just of democracy but of the planet. thing more than shopping––for social change, for public Yes, this was complicated, but we embraced that complexity space, for greater equality and diversity. because we were finally looking at systems, not just symbols. Of course, the brands tried to exploit that longing to sell In some parts of the world, particularly Latin America, that lattes and laptops. Yet it seemed to me that we on the left wave of resistance only spread and strengthened. In some owed the marketers a debt of gratitude for all this: Our ideas countries, social movements grew strong enough to join with weren’t as passé as we had been told. And since the brands political parties, winning national elections and beginning to couldn’t fulfill the deep desires they were awakening, social forge a new regional fair-trade regime. movements had a new impetus to try. But elsewhere, September 11 pretty much blasted the Perhaps Obama should be viewed in much the same way. movement out of existence. In the United States, progressive Once again, the market research has been done for us. politics rallied around a single cause: “taking back” the White What the election and the global embrace of Obama’s House (as if “we” ever had it in the first place), while outside brand proved decisively is that there is a tremendous the United States, the coalitions that had been focused on a appetite for progressive change––that many, many people global economic model now trained their attention on the do not want markets opened at gunpoint, are repelled by wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, on a resurgent “U.S. empire” torture, believe passionately in civil liberties, want corpora- and on resisting increasingly aggressive attacks on immi- tions out of politics, see global warming as the fight of our grants. What we knew about the sophistication of global time, and very much want to be part of a political project corporatism––that all of the world’s injustice could not be larger than themselves. blamed on one right-wing political party, or on one nation, Those kinds of transformative goals are only ever achieved no matter how powerful––seemed to disappear. when independent social movements build the numbers and If there was ever a time to remember the lessons we learned the organizational power to make muscular demands of their at the turn of the millennium, it is now. One benefit of the elites. Obama won office by capitalizing on our profound international failure to regulate the financial sector, even after nostalgia for those kinds of social movements. But it was only its catastrophic collapse, is that the economic model that dom- an echo, a memory. The task ahead is to build movements inates around the world has revealed itself not as “free market” that are––to borrow an old Coke slogan––the real thing. but “crony capitalist”—politicians handing over public wealth As Studs Terkel, the great oral historian, used to say: to private players in exchange for political support. What used “Hope has never trickled down. It has always sprung up.”  to be politely hidden is all out in the open now. Correspond- ingly, public rage at corporate greed is at its highest point not Excerpted from No Logo: 10th Anniversary Edition. Copy- just in my lifetime, but in my parents’ lifetime as well. right ©2009 Naomi Klein. Published by Vintage Canada, an Many of the points supposedly marginal activists were imprint of the Knopf Random Canada Publishing Group, which making in the streets 10 years ago are now the accepted wis- is a division of Random House of Canada Limited. Reproduced dom of cable news talk shows and mainstream op-ed pages. by arrangement with the publisher. All rights reserved.

HERIZONS SPRING 2010 23 24 SPRING 2010 HERIZONS Rhymes with

CubicForty years ago, many feminists refused to shave their bodyPear hair in protest against sexist beauty standards. Today the issue of body hair is a whole other tub of wax.

BY RENÉE BONDY ILLUSTRATION: CINDY REVELL

ack in its heyday, I performed in a local production pressure society places on them to comply with arbitrary of Eve Ensler’s The Vagina Monologues. I performed standards of beauty. And I felt a bit like a fraud. There I B the monologue called “Hair,” in which a woman tells stood, in full black leotard, hiding my satiny smooth legs, her story of being pressured by her husband to shave her clean-shaven underarms and, even more hypocritically, my pubic hair. After shaving, she feels “puffy and exposed and closely cropped pubic hair and neatly manicured bikini line. like a little girl.” Her husband is turned on. After she refuses Of course, I had my rationalizations in order: I’m a third- to keep shaving, he is unfaithful, they attend couples’ therapy wave feminist who sets herself apart from the stereotype of and ultimately, they divorce. In the end, she concludes that the hairy-legged, androgynous feminist of generations past. “hair is there for a reason—it’s the leaf around the flower, the Today’s struggles are so much bigger than debates over lawn around the house. You have to love hair in order to love appearance and style, I like to tell myself. I like to look good the vagina. You can’t pick the parts you want.” for me, not to comply with some socially imposed standard Standing on that stage, I felt bold and empowered. I felt of . that I was challenging women, young and old alike, to recon- Looking back, these explanations seem thin. Today, hair sider erroneous perceptions of their bodies and to reject the removal is a multibillion-dollar industry and the pressure on

HERIZONS SPRING 2010 25 Ancient Egyptians associated hairlessness with cleanliness and incorporated hair removal into the grooming regimens of both men and women.

women, and even men, to shave, pluck, wax, laser and other- suits, became the stuff of public display. Accordingly, women wise eradicate their body hair is more intense than ever. It’s were persuaded to render all exposed skin smooth, clean and also more extreme. Not so long ago, it was sufficient for a hair-free. Not only the legs and the underarms, but the bikini woman to conform to mainstream standards and shave her line was deemed in need of manicure. In short, women were legs and underarms. She might even wax her bikini line in pressured towards having a hairless, childlike body. the summer. But today, many women (and yes, dear reader, For most adult men in North America, to be clean-shaven that includes many feminists and lesbians) take it all off— involves the daily removal of all or some of their facial hair. Brazilian-style! Hair on the male body, however, is seen as an indicator of What is going on? How do women across North Amer- physical and sexual maturity, and hence strength and viril- ica really feel about their body hair and the social pressure ity—traits typically viewed with negativity when applied to to be virtually hairless? Why is it not okay to toss that little women. In view of this, a clean-shaven woman is one who pink razor and go au naturel? Is body hair an aesthetic issue, has removed all visible traces of her body hair. Hair removal a political one or both? In an age where many women and is not merely a matter of fashion then, but a defining char- men aspire to a hairless body, what drives the hair-free acteristic of femininity. trend? And what are its connections to mainstream sexual Scholars like American historian Christine Hope have ideals and gender? argued that it is no accident that demands on women to Historians and anthropologists tell us that humans have eradicate their body hair increased over the last century, at long been tending to their body hair. The ancient Egyptians, the same time as women progressively gained rights and for example, associated hairlessness with cleanliness and privileges. In their newfound status as voters, professionals incorporated hair removal into the bathing and grooming and public figures, women rivalled men’s exclusive hold on regimens of both men and women. Yet it was centuries later, social and economic power. They were also subject to in 20th-century North America, that removal of body hair increased pressure to comply with a standard of beauty that came to be seen as the norm for women and was deemed a incorporated hairlessness. In other words, they were fundamental marker of femininity. Europe, by comparison, encouraged to make their bodies appear childlike, render- has always tended to be more accepting of women’s body ing them seemingly less than adult and less powerful, at hair, while many different practices continue throughout least in appearance. Africa and Asia. The various guises under which social pressure has been Fashion magazines advertised depilatories in the early exerted on women to shave, wax, pluck or otherwise eradi- decades of the last century, but it was in the 1920s, as foot- cate their body hair are not limited to fashion, hygiene, loose flappers stepped out in shorter, sleeveless frocks and morality and gender politics, but they certainly helped women’s legs and underarms made their public debut, that shape and define an explanation for a hairless ideal of shaving was actively promoted. Women’s periodicals and beauty for 20th-century women. And in the 21st century cosmetics companies of the era advertised an ideal of beauty women are under more pressure than ever to achieve that incorporated shaving, and this was quickly absorbed extremes of hairlessness. into the North American zeitgeist. As decades passed, So, what’s new in recent years that has furthered fashion women’s clothing became increasingly revealing and apparel dictates for increased hair removal? On the technology front, once restricted to private spaces, such as lingerie and bathing the laser has revolutionized hair removal for women who can

26 SPRING 2010 HERIZONS Pornography that presents women with radically trimmed or absent pubic hair abounds on adult cable stations and the Internet.

afford such treatments. These new technologies drive con- your public hair ripped from the follicles with hot wax” is an sumer marketing to ever-greater lengths, and the ability to extreme feat, to say the least. afford fancy spa services and laser treatments is a measure of Still, its popularity is on the rise. Dr. Adelaide Nardone, status among some women. medical advisor to the Vagisil Women’s Health Centre, reports Meanwhile, the Brazilian has skyrocketed in popularity. on a survey that found that more than half of American This procedure typically involves the use of hot wax to women shave or wax below the belt. “Approximately one remove all of a woman’s pubic hair, or else all but an aptly fourth of women 18 and older say they closely trim their pubic named “landing strip” (a narrow swath of pubic hair along hair with scissors or clippers, and almost a third of women say the labia majora). The result is a pubescent or pre-pubescent they shave either part or all of their pubic hair,” says Nardone. look, one that’s idealized in contemporary pornography. And what about men? Not so long ago, only niche athletes This trend is, at least in part, a consequence of the wide- like swimmers and cyclists, and some gay men, removed their spread acceptance of pornography. Where women in body hair. In the 21st century, manscaping is a hot trend, and previous generations had few opportunities to compare their with the increased visibility of gay and so-called metrosexual external genitalia and the grooming thereof to that of other men, trimming, shaving and waxing are in—and no areas are women, today pornography and erotic entertainment are off limits. In fact, increasing numbers of men are getting on more accessible. Pornography that presents women with the Brazilian bandwagon. The hairless ideal in men seems to radically trimmed or absent pubic hair abounds on adult be strongly driven by such factors as fashion, pornography cable stations and the Internet, affording the youth of today culture and the desire to show tattoos and muscle definition an up-close-and-personal, if distorted, view of the adult to best advantage. Some men believe that removing their female body. pubic hair gives the illusion of increased penis length. While many young women say they feel pressure from sex- Still, men who opt to keep their body hair as it is are not ual partners to ‘clean up down there,’ others claim that they faced with the same stigma as women who refuse to succumb go Brazilian to enhance their own sexual pleasure. On a to societal pressures to shave. Of course, there are some memorable episode of Sex and the City, Carrie has her first women who make the decision not to shave or wax. In the Brazilian wax. Later in the day, she confides to her girlfriend, 1960s and ’70s, many feminists rejected hair removal as a “I feel like walking sex!” A hairless vulva, at least for some political act. For example, Anne, a university professor in her women, is sexually stimulating, particularly when they’re early 50s, doesn’t shave her body hair and rejects the conven- wearing silky lingerie. tion of female hairlessness as a political act. “If all women Personally, I have never made the trip as far as Brazil, stopped shaving, the revolution would be over in a matter of mostly because of the pain factor. And I know several women a few weeks,” she says. She has a point. Yet the reality is that, who have gone once, never to return. In The Locker Room in 2010, the pressure on women to meet the hairless ideal is Diaries, journalist Leslie Goldman’s take on women and so great that harnessing the political power of the hirsute body image, Goldman visits the aesthetician at her gym for woman is an extremely remote, unlikely possibility. When her first wax session. She describes the aesthetician as “sad- my mother, a former ’60s hippie, let her underarm hair grow, owaxochistic,” but I can’t help but wonder if there isn’t a bit back in the day, she did so at a time when at least some of her of “masowaxochism” involved on the part of the clients. friends also challenged the pressure to shave. Today, the hairy Whatever the motivation, Goldman’s description of “having woman often stands alone. This I know first hand.

HERIZONS SPRING 2010 27 The Gendered Screen Canadian Women Coming from Fernwood Publishing this spring ... Filmmakers Brenda Austin-Smith and The Global Fight George Melnyk, editors $29.95 Paper • 978-1-55458-179-5 for Climate Justice Film and Media Studies series EDITED BY Ian Angus The first major study of 9781552663448 $24.95 Canadian women film- co-published by Resistance Books makers in over ten years, In essays on topics such as the food crisis and carbon The Gendered Screen trading, the authors make a compelling case that saving the world from climate catastrophe will updates the subject with require radical social change. discussions of estab- lished filmmakers such as Mehta, Wheeler, Animal Rights Shum, Stopkewich, Pool, BY John Sorenson and Rozema and intro- 9781552663561 $17.95 duces newer filmmakers Adopting Mahatma Gandhi’s idea that “the greatness and media video artists. of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated,” this book considers Canadian Women in Print, 1750–1918 the status of animals in Canada. Carole Gerson $85.00 Cloth • 978-1-55458-220-4 Women’s engagement with multiple aspects of print, from FERNWOOD early diaries to temperance and advocacy. PUBLISHING Wilfrid Laurier University Press critical books for critical thinkers www.wlupress.wlu.ca www.fernwoodpublishing.ca )(0,1,60 019 'HPRQVWUDWH\RXUVXSSRUWIRU+HUL]RQV 6SHQGRQ\RXUYHU\RZQ VXEVFULSWLRQ3XEOLVKHGTXDUWHUO\+HUL]RQVFD 3UHSDLGHQYHORSHHQFORVHGIRU\RXUFRQYHQLHQFH

28 SPRING 2010 HERIZONS We would be remiss as feminists if we failed to examine shaving trends without also looking at the big, hairy elephant in the room: .

In preparation for writing this article, I stopped shaving stories about hair removal: One 20-something woman and grew my body hair. It was an eye-opening experience. I described how she and her girlfriend get together and, with started shaving my legs and underarms at about age 12, so I a home waxing kit, remove each other’s leg hair. Who knew had no idea what it would feel like to have hair on those that hair removal could be an occasion for female bonding? parts of my body. I have thick, dark hair and, in no time at As a feminist, I believe that starting these conversations has all, I was very hairy. Not only was I utterly conspicuous been a good thing. Riding the third wave into the 21st cen- among my peers, but I was oddly self-conscious. No matter tury, body-image issues have been at the forefront of feminist where I went—to the gym, work, shopping, or my favourite dialogue. In Body Outlaws, American feminist Amy Richards coffee pub—the dark growth on my legs and the tufts of argues that dialogue is the key to navigating this sometimes silky hair peeking out of the sleeves of my T-shirt attracted bristly terrain. Richards feels that “we must create a dialogue curious, and often critical, glances. Mostly, the looks of dis- that extends … into our daily lives, a dialogue that leads to approval belonged to women who, I imagine, could not less shame, less denial and more room for individuality.” fathom why an average-looking, conventionally dressed and The factors that convince women to remove increasing groomed woman would not engage in hair removal. amounts of their body hair are overlapping and complex. The At first, this was disconcerting. But, over time, I grew to personal is political and, as always, it’s not easy to get at the enjoy not only the spectacle, but also the hair itself. It soft- underlying source of women’s individual motivations and ened; it glistened in the sunlight; and the furriness on my decisions. Maybe it all comes down to personal preference, as legs even quivered in the breeze, producing an oddly stimu- many of my friends and colleagues told me when I spoke to lating sensation. It’s hard to explain, but with hair on my them. However, we would be remiss as feminists if we failed body I felt stronger, bolder and bigger—like I took up a bit to examine shaving trends without also looking at the big, more space. hairy elephant in the room: patriarchy. The growing trend Some months later, putting the finishing touches on my towards women shaving or waxing their pubic hair is, in large research, I started shaving again. Although my comfort with part, a result of the influence of pornography on mainstream my body hair grew over time, I’m not sure that going au culture. Throughout history, women have succumbed to naturel is for me. My long shins, complete with their many social pressure to alter their bodies in an effort to appear sex- scars and little brown moles, are most recognizable to me ually appealing, and shaving, arguably, is no different in that without hair. And, after not having shaved for a time, I enjoy respect. It’s one more thing that is wrong with us that we that familiar feeling of smooth skin. As an internalized aes- have to fix in order to be desirable. thete, hairlessness is more pleasing for me. The question of whether to shave or not to shave, as well I learned a few things from my experience as a hairy gal, as where and how much, is a debate that is therefore emo- though. First and foremost, I learned to be less of critical tionally charged. I also found that, overwhelmingly, it is myself and of other women. I have a newfound respect for third-wave women who shave the most body hair. underarm and leg hair, and I know I’ll devote far less time to While no one can predict what fashion or grooming trend policing my bikini line. I also learned that it doesn’t take will affect the next generation, one thing is for sure: Widely much to get women talking about their hang-ups about body divergent arguments for and against hair removal will hair, from obsessive-compulsive grooming regimens to undoubtedly continue to change with every generation of extreme waxing sessions gone wrong. I also heard positive women—and men—to come. 

HERIZONS SPRING 2010 29 Women REunite!

BY A RADCLIFFE RADICAL REFLECTS SUSAN ON HER WOMEN’S COLLECTIVE DAYS G. COLE

Photo: Fred W. McDarrah, Getty Images Photo: Fred W. In 1970, at a time when women in New York staged a strike to mark the 50th anniversary of American women getting the vote, Susan Cole joined a women's collective called Radcliffe Women to Keep Body and Mind Together.

30 SPRING 2010 HERIZONS hen we arrived at the relatively modest country Here we were in 2008 and it felt like a déjà vu. With a few house in Martha’s Vineyard in the summer of exceptions, our differences at the reunion had broken down W 2008, the kitchen action was already in full gear. along the same lines as they had 37 years ago. There were Women chopping, frying, talking, laughing—the scene those who supported the building occupation (“tape away”) brought back memories of those old potlucks of the ’70s. and those who opposed it (“confidentiality, please”). There- This was, after all, a reunion, a gathering of the 10 women fore, most of the names have been changed in this article. who made up the first women’s collective at Harvard-Rad- But the story begins in the fall of 1970 with me and nine cliffe in 1970. We were groundbreakers who transformed other young women. student life at one of America’s most prestigious institutions. As my parents and I schlepped my suitcase and typewriter Nearly 40 years ago, we talked, fought, secured self-defence into my dorm, we almost tripped over Liss Jeffrey, with classes for Radcliffe students, helped take over a building whom I’d been on the all-girls’ debating team in high school. (our coup de grâce—or disgrace) and inspired five more A year older than me, she’d recommended that I apply to women’s groups like ours. Radcliffe. She was standing in the doorway. Our collective lasted only six months, but within two “We’re forming a women’s collective and I want you to be years of our formation Harvard began admitting more in it,” she said. “The first meeting’s tomorrow.” women and launched a full-fledged women’s centre on cam- Uh … okay, I thought. It might be a good way to get to pus. We hadn’t known when we first came together that our know people, and I kind of liked the idea that I was the only collective would have this kind of impact, and it wasn’t until first-year student in the group. Though I was intuitively our reunion that we saw how the experience changed the attracted to the concept, I had only a rudimentary idea about course of our own lives. what feminism was—, author of the ground- After a delirious opening-night party, our formal sit-down breaking Sexual Politics, was on the cover of Time the first began with disagreements about confidentiality—what week our collective met. But just days into my stay at Har- could be recorded and what could be videotaped? As I lis- vard, I had a clear idea of how discrimination operated. I’m tened to our members argue—me saying there’s nothing to not looking for sympathy here—I am aware that only privi- lose, others insisting they could lose everything—I thought leged people get to enter Harvard’s hallowed halls. to myself, oh my God, this is how the collective broke up. Radcliffe had an unusual relationship to Harvard. Unlike It was 1971 and we were trying to decide whether to sup- the other so-called sister schools, the women’s college didn’t port a building takeover. A group of Boston feminists had have its own faculty, but rather borrowed Harvard professors strutted down the main drag in Cambridge, Massachusetts, who, until World War II, taught the same classes separately destination 888 Memorial Drive, temporarily occupied by the at Radcliffe Yard. After the war, Radcliffe became coed, but graduate school of architecture. The women walked into the the dormitories did not. vacant building that was open, thanks to a break-in orches- As late as the 1970s, the experience for Radcliffe women trated the night before, and set up a de facto women’s centre. was nonetheless bitter. For starters, the ratio of men to I and my closest collective associates thought supporting women was four-to-one. Women were still considered out- the action was a no-brainer. One of them was even torpe- siders, expected to stay invisible when professors made sexist doed through a window, in all her winter overcoats, to grab jokes, and were often asked to offer “a female perspective” if the phone and the keys. Some of the more conservative encouraged to speak in class. members reacted like deer in the headlights. Talking about I arrived during the campus’s first year of coed living. their personal lives or pushing for change inside the univer- Young men and women lived together in the dormitories sity was one thing, but a building takeover with a bunch of and—except at the four Radcliffe houses, where at least a radicals not affiliated with the university? Town or gown? one-to-one ratio was maintained—women who lived in the The choice was easy. Harvard houses often numbered only 30 among 300 men. “But they’re supporting workers’ rights on campus and Not that the Harvard men were that interested in us. The protecting working-class neighbourhoods,” I argued, nearly guys bussed in women from the junior colleges in the area to weeping with radical outrage at my sister collective members’ the Harvard House parties and deep into the night you could tentativeness. How could we make any change if we were hear the depressing sounds of women mournfully calling out driven by fear and so worried about our Harvard status? for the friends they’d lost along the way.

HERIZONS SPRING 2010 31 BREADWINNING DAUGHTERS WHEN COUPLES BECOME PARENTS Young Working Women in a Depression-Era City, 1929–1939 The Creation of Gender in the Transition to Parenthood by Katrina Srigley by Bonnie Fox ‘Breadwinning Daughters reconstructs single women’s experiences in Toronto during the Great Depression...Srigley ‘Bonnie Fox’s important book moves beyond theories has done a masterful job.’ of maternal responsibility and the construction Lisa Chilton, University of Prince Edward Island of gender divisions... 9781442610033 / $24.95 PRESCRIBED NORMS Captivating and Women and Health in Canada and the United States since 1800 engaging, When Couples by Cheryl Krasnick Warsh Become Parents is a Clear and concise yet brimming with historical research, landmark work in the Prescribed Norms provides a multi-layered history of women’s health. fields of motherhood and (UTP Higher Education) 9781442600614 / $34.95 family studies.’ AGAINST THE GRAIN Andrea O’Reilly, York University Couples, Gender, and the Reframing of Parenting by Gillian Ranson Against the Grain offers a unique analysis of gender relations, parenting, and how social change happens at home. 9780802091840 / $35.00 (UTP Higher Education) 9781442603585 / $28.95

UћіѣђџѠіѡѦ ќѓ Tќџќћѡќ PџђѠѠ available in beĴer bookstores or visit www.utppublishing.com or www.utphighereducation.com

32 SPRING 2010 HERIZONS In the early days of our collective, we had only a vague Women’s Collective (snore). Liss had toyed with the name sense of sisterly solidarity and a stronger need just to talk. Vagina Dentata, but many of our members gulped at the We talked about our aspirations, our fathers—a lot—our thought of being named after a toothed vagina, a sign of mothers even more, our hassles with sexist professors and our things to come. aggravation at the Harvard boys’ club in general. We settled on Radcliffe Women to Keep Mind and Body Liss was a mercurial, charismatic and sometimes intimi- Together. As a moniker, it was a great calling card. Petitions dating visionary who had come to college hoping to start a handed to the Harvard and Radcliffe administrations always new religion. M. was a science whiz who had been known in got a chuckle—one Harvard dean could barely stifle a gig- high school as “the neuter computer.” Alice was a brooding gle. We looked him straight in the eye in that way that said and mysterious literary talent with patrician roots. An ances- “Don’t laugh or there’ll be trouble.” But he wasn’t laughing at tor had been president of the U.S. L. looked like a us, he was admiring our gall. quintessential hippie, with long flowing black hair. We were shocked when the Radcliffe administration Then there was L.B., a straitlaced beauty destined for agreed to set up the classes. As we learned more about real Harvard’s influential business school. Silver-voiced L.H. was Harvard’s relationship to Radcliffe, however, this quick intense and brainy, while E. was a sexually obsessed math approval made sense. In the early ’60s, when women began whiz. E.C. was a blooming photographer who often hid receiving Harvard degrees, Radcliffe deans worried that a behind her camera and D. was our collective’s Christian rep- merger between the two schools was in the air and that the resentative. And there was me, at the time very into rock and women’s college might vanish. By the time we arrived, Rad- roll, with long flowing hair and army boots, twisting tobacco cliffe consisted of an admissions system and an excellent into cigarette papers. library, some Greco-Roman real estate and the dormitories. All we really had in common was that we were Caucasian students at a prestigious American university. And we were budding feminists. At first that was glue enough. We had weekly meetings where we shared our life experiences. The main dynamic was support—we listened, responded and validated, inspired by the slogan “The personal is political.” Take L., who looked like a flower child. She came across as serene and calm but was a woman in serious trouble, trapped in an increasingly abusive relationship. I remember sitting in the gloomy basement where we met, listening to L. as she tried to eke out the words to describe her situation. We were all in shock. “Leave him,” we all breathed. But her look of terror at that prospect spoke volumes—she wasn’t going anywhere. It was my first awareness of how violence can paralyze a woman, however gifted or brilliant. Then the first reported rape occurred at the Radcliffe quadrangle and an explosion of consciousness occurred. I remember feeling queasy walking through the Cambridge Common at night, panicking every time I heard footsteps quickening behind me. Suddenly, women were feeling it— the sense that we were vulnerable in ways male students weren’t. Dorms took on new security: the doors were locked; there were monitors at all the front desks. And women wanted to do something about the fact that they didn’t feel safe in their own territory. Our collective led the way, demanding that Radcliffe pro- vide free self-defence classes for female students. By then our collective had given itself a name—no, not the Radcliffe Liss Jeffrey was the spiritual leader of Radcliffe Women to Keep Body and Mind Together.

HERIZONS SPRING 2010 33 Eventually, feminists would oppose the merger until there were equal admissions—another godsend to Radcliffe. But at the moment, self-defence classes? No problem. At the same time, Radcliffe Women to Keep Mind and Body Together kept fanning the flames. We pushed the idea of women’s collectives on campus. We called a meeting and leafleted, and brought enough cookies for the dozen guests we thought we’d attract. We were stunned when close to 200 showed up—almost a sixth of the female undergraduate body. But inside our circle, things were tense. There were clas- sic splits, misunderstandings and frustrations. Some members were deep into counterculture and wore their rad- icalism like a badge—literally. I sported a hat with 20 political buttons on it. And what was D., a faithful Christ- ian, doing in our collective? Not to mention L.B., thinking of business school—puh-lease! Meanwhile, there was noth- ing we could do to convince L. to move away from her awful boyfriend. Some of us liked the drugs part of the sex, drugs and rock ’n’ roll subculture; others were appalled by such behaviour. The collective never met as a group socially—we just got together at those weekly meetings where we gave each other the space to talk. But our differences became insurmountable on Interna- tional Women’s Day in 1971. A women’s group in Boston had taken over a Harvard building to protest the institution’s incursion into the working-class Riverside neighbourhood near the school and to demand that Harvard fund a women’s centre. These women were older than us. They took the microphone with an authority we were a long way from developing. We were electrified by the events. Some collective mem- bers had been active in the student strike in the spring of 1969, protesting the war in Viet Nam, but felt bullied by the male-dominated anti-war movement. They and I, the late- comer, were craving political action. We ran down to the site to support the takeover. Others ran in the opposite direction and couldn’t bring themselves to enter the building—now full of women and children and martial arts classes and boiled cabbage and pot—or to embrace the politics of illegally seizing property. Six of us wanted the collective to spearhead a movement to get support for the takeover. The other four were either hos- tile or indifferent. Our collective was breaking up. Not that we were entirely surprised. The thing that brought us together us was our admission to Harvard and our chro-

Susan Cole in her student days at Radcliffe, circa 1970. Photos: Victor Helfand

34 SPRING 2010 HERIZONS mosome design. This was a group that formed before there training centre in homeopathy at one of America’s most was such a thing as hyphenated feminists: socialist-feminists, respected schools. M. also turned into an extremely skilled radical-feminists, liberal-feminists, lesbian-feminists. We facilitator. Her life experience, most of all, revealed to me began to realize that feminism wasn’t only one thing, and we how profoundly people can transform. discovered, to paraphrase the French philosopher Luce Iri- Silver-voiced Linn, who lost her way in college, had defi- garay, “.” nitely found it, becoming a world-class neurologist who now In retrospect, our rift may have had more to do with per- teaches medicine. Alice was tending horses and working on a sonality types—the political heavyweights were extroverts; play about Mary Rowlandson, an early American writer who those who stayed away from the takeover were more inward- wrote an account of being taken captive by North American looking. And we had major class differences that were never Indians. E., as sexually addicted as ever, became a math prof, discussed. Working-class members probably had very good got married and has two sons. She also moonlights as a cos- reasons for not rocking Harvard’s boat—they’d struggled in tumer for local strippers. E.C. was doing development work major ways to get into the school. in Mexico and played the role of official archivist, taking pho- After we graduated, the collective met three times, tographs at our reunion. And L., who had only just been able although never with the entire group—that is, until the to wrench herself away from her controlling husband after 35 summer of 2008. M. invited us to her family’s summer home years, was finally pursuing a divorce. at Martha’s Vineyard for two amazing days of reconnection. Throughout the weekend, I marvelled at these women’s The central theme of our reunion wound up being the terri- resilience. I was reminded that even women articulating ble fact that our fearless leader Liss was dying. She was still feminist ideas find themselves in abusive relationships, that as charismatic as ever, but she was frail, occasionally dozy the most privileged of us could still suffer from the devastat- thanks to her medications and furious that members of the ing effects of a partner’s depression, that Buddhism and collective had shared news of her illness—she had hoped to feminism mix with ease, and that compassion is one of the make the official announcement at our meeting. most important facilitators for social change. This and the confidentiality issue took up the better part Yes, we fought over some of our old issues. But we sat as of the first morning, but once we slogged through that we mature women with a profound appreciation for where each of each gave a summary of our life and our current preoccu- us had come to. We also began to grieve our spiritual leader’s pations, and talked about where the collective fit in to all illness. Liss had a career as a media scholar, as an adjunct pro- of that. fessor with the McLuhan Program in Culture and Technology, That’s when the magic occurred. As each collective mem- then as part of the University of Toronto’s faculty of informa- ber spoke, I realized how young we had been when we first tion studies. Until her death, she was an indefatigable met and how exceptional each had become. promoter of Internet freedom and open-source technologies. D., our Christian member, was still a believer, although Liss died in December 2008. (For more on Liss Jeffrey, see: obviously not of the Christian-right variety. But where as a www.nowtoronto.com/news/story.cfm?content=166699.) university student 37 years before I couldn’t help but scoff at Over the weekend, each us described how our experience her faith, this time it moved me as she talked about her reli- had given us a particular strength, a passion for female friend- gion in a community context. A member of a choir, D. sang ship and an opportunity to develop an emotional vocabulary two songs that brought me to tears, something that scared that deepened our ability to make personal connections. the shit out of everyone there—I don’t think they’d ever seen We had been together for six months in 1971. In just three me cry before. days in 2008, we became a better collective than we had ever L.B. had shown remarkable strength in assisting her hus- been during our earlier period.  band through a devastating depression. She was the one who led us in the kitchen brigade at our reunion, which—not Susan G. Cole is an activist, playwright, surprisingly, since women are easy to corral for this kind of editor and regular Herizons columnist. stuff—ran like a well-oiled machine. Still working in the Her new book OutSpoken: a Collection area of finance and real estate, she was real, grounded and of Monologues and Scenes from smart as a whip. Canadian Lesbian Plays has just been M., the former “neuter computer” and now our reunion release by Playwrights Canada Press. host, had changed course, operating a health food store for She is senior entertainment editor at 16 years. A trained homeopath, she now runs a professional Toronto’s NOW magazine.

HERIZONS SPRING 2010 35 arts culture MUSIC

Photo: Rebecca Bissett

Kate Reid’s just warming up, while Po’ Girl’s Allison Russel (top right, centre) and Alicia Keys (bottom right) present hot new releases.

KATE REID true. They’ve been a kind of staple in Russell first showed when working with I’M JUST WARMING UP “womyn’s” music since Olivia was just a Trish Klein of the Be Good Tanyas on what Independent record label, long before they made it possi- was then a side project for the formerly REVIEW BY CINDY FILIPENKO ble to cruise other dykes on the open seas. Vancouver-based musicians. The 14 songs Kate Reid’s new release I’m Just Warming It’s kind of creepy to find yourself humming that make up Deer in the Night, with their Up continues in the same vein as her along to a tune about abuse, but maybe high BQ (banjos quotient), old-time melodies impressive debut CD, 2006’s Coming Alive. A that’s just me. But whether she’s being and clean vocal arrangements, are formida- wicked songwriter, Reid throws equal ironic, amusing or just plain hilarious, Kate ble foes for fellow rootser Neko Case’s amounts of passion into witty ditties such Reid is pretty hard to resist. Her matter-of- impressive output. as “Ex-Junkie Boyfriend,” “The Only Dyke fact straightforward slices of lesbian life Po’ Girl has a history of changing mem- at the Open Mic” and her more emotionally served up on a six-string are smart and bers like other bands change their socks. charged works such as “Reach to You,” a memorable. If, as the CD suggests, Reid is The group’s latest incarnation, with Awna lament about the difficulty of tenderness. indeed just warming up, she’s going to be Teixeira, who joined for 2007’s Home to You, On “Uncharted Territory,” Reid sums up great when she starts to sizzle. now includes two guys, multi-instrumental- her creative philosophy when it comes to Reid is supported by some of Vancouver’s ist Benny Sidelinger and drummer J.J. satisfying her detractors’ desire for a less best players, notably guitarist Adam Popowitz Jones. The additions have brought numer- queer Kate: “I sing about who I am/ And it’s (with whom Reid shares the producing credit ous possibilities to showcase Russell and a shame that’s so hard for them.” Living in a here) and bass player Lee Oliphant. The over- Teixeira’s appealing voices. time when every hipster chick seems to be all sound of I’m Just Warming Up is fuller and Involving instruments as diverse as the kissing a girl with her guy’s approval, it’s warmer than Coming Alive. dobro, accordion and gutbucket bass, the refreshing to hear a woman singing about music on Deer in the Night extends far kissing other women without having a pro- PO’ GIRL beyond traditional Americana and borrows tective male nearby. DEER IN THE NIGHT heavily from other folk forms. This is evi- Reid is a provocative songwriter who Po’ Girl Music denced by the use of the accordion in the finds no subject too challenging for lyrical REVIEW BY CINDY FILIPENKO Eastern European-tinged “Gandy Dancer.” presentation. She’s very articulate in a post- Po’ Girl has released a CD that lives up to Possessing a far higher production value therapy kind of way, and these songs ring the promise original group member Allison than their previous three CDs, Deer in the

36 SPRING 2010 HERIZONS arts culture MUSIC

Night’s overall improved quality seems to be the result of the band acting as its own producer. Now an independent act with its own label, Po’ Girl is taking advantage of its freedom to chart new territory. With the radio-friendly, almost-pop song “Grace,” they might finally find the audience that Russell has deserved for far too long. Let’s see a single.

ALICIA KEYS THE ELEMENT OF FREEDOM Sony REVIEW BY CINDY FILIPENKO Alicia Keys’ The Element of Freedom begs the question: Why hasn’t Keys ascended to full-blown R&B diva status? Not that Bey- oncé Knowles isn’t a solid performer, but Rick Rubin, who also co-directs Columbia, have a new album out. Keys’ talents eclipse the niche’s current have moulded her second big-label outing. The Quin sisters came out of the Calgary reigning queen. A well-balanced collection Rubin has proven very adept at taking indie scene in the late ’90s and have had a of dance-floor-packers and soulful love country acts, such as Johnny Cash and pretty impressive rise. They performed with songs, The Element of Freedom is Keys’ The Dixie Chicks, and broadening their Sarah McLachlan’s Lilith Fair, signed to Neil finest offering to date. crossover appeal by adding some nifty Young’s Vapour Records and had early pro- Classically trained in piano, it was Keyes’ hooks and pop arrangements. Carlile is ducing help from Hawksley Workman. skills with the ivories that initially attracted obviously poised to be his next big break- However, it’s the differing yet complemen- critics’ attention on her 2001 debut Songs in through artist. tary talents of the two artists that really A Minor. The fact that she could sing didn’t Carlile’s deceptively simply vocals are make their career worth keeping track of. hurt either, making it all but impossible to clearly the star here, and Rubin never for- Tegan and Sara live in different cities get away from “Falling” and “Girlfriend” gets this, allowing her immensely powerful and, until this album, they didn’t make a habit of writing together. But when it came that summer. Eight years and three albums voice always to take centre stage. The best time to start work on Sainthood, the sisters later, Keys’ music still examines the same example is found on “That Year,” a bitter- met up to try a more collaborative emotional terrain, but her ruminations on sweet ballad of almost forgotten love. approach. The result is a series of 15 tracks love, loss and the human condition have Devoid of vocal acrobatics, the tight (if you buy the version with the bonus cuts), matured considerably. arrangement perfectly complements the most of which clock in at under three min- While her earlier work showed her to be song’s message—one of the hallmarks of utes. That might be why listening to the on a path that was similar to her Motown excellent songwriting. As a lyricist, Carlile is record is so incredibly pleasurable. and Atlantic label predecessors, The Ele- sharp and witty, as illustrated in these lines While you might think identical twins ment of Freedom shows her to be on a path from “I Will”—“I never learn my lesson, I would have a similar approach to song that’s entirely her own. Keys’ biggest just change my tune.” structure, lots of reviewers have written strength has always been as a composer, With help from Indigo Girl Amy Ray and about how Tegan is the poppier of the two an ability that has shown increasing diver- Red Hot Chili Peppers drummer Chad Smith, and Sara’s contributions amp up the musi- sity and dexterity with her newest work. Carlile manages a far larger sound than on cality of their albums. But what’s so great The most radical departure here is “Love is her previous The Story, an understated about having two songwriters performing My Disease” a rock ballad that could just affair produced by T-Bone Burnett. Give Up each other’s work is that you get both those as easily be wailed by 1980s rockers the the Ghost is polished to a high enough gloss perspectives. likes of Journey and Foreigner. to attract the size of audience this talented There’s a series of four songs on the Highly recommended. 28-year-old from Seattle deserves. album that captures this perfectly, and it all starts with track six, “The Cure.” “I know BRANDI CARLILE TEGAN AND SARA the world’s not fair to you/ I’ve got a cure GIVE UP THE GHOST SAINTHOOD for its crimes,” Tegan sings on that one, Columbia Vapour/Sire before kicking in to power pop mode on her REVIEW BY CINDY FILIPENKO REVIEW BY ANNA LAZOWSKI track “Northshore.” Give Up the Ghost shows that indie folk- There are few artists on commercial radio With every album, Tegan and Sara become alternative artist Brandi Carlile has staying that make me lean over and turn the volume stronger at what they do, which makes every power. The capable hands of producer way up, but fortunately Tegan and Sara new record worth seeking out. 

HERIZONS SPRING 2010 37 arts culture SPRING READING

IN THE KITCHEN MONICA ALI Scribner REVIEW BY IRENE D’SOUZA Monica Ali’s In the Kitchen opens with the hero/chef Gabriel Lightfoot describing his downward spiral beginning with the death of the Ukrainian night porter. The discovery that Yuri had been living in the catacombs of the Imperial Hotel near London’s Pic- cadilly Circus sets the stage for a narrative that focuses on the upstairs /downstairs disparity of a contemporary society. Both the hotel and the mill town where Gabe’s dying father resides serve as metaphors, because the cooking and weaving motifs Guantanamo Bay. Raza, the prisoner, won- contemporary world, where quirks of fate are universal reminders of our shared roots, ders how a child of privilege born into a deliver devastating consequences. regardless of our original place of birth. loving family could end up in a place as The plot hinges on a decision Gabe must notorious as the French Bastille. make regarding his involvement in the lives LEMON Raza’s narrative is presented in four CORDELIA STRUBE of the smorgasbord of denizens who work Coach House Books for an international conglomerate’s five-star intertwining parts cascading with sub- hotel. When he discovers the waif Lena tleties. The fractious destiny of a REVIEW BY PATRICIA DAWN ROBERTSON hovering near the death scene, he does not multicultural family begins with Raza’s gen- You won’t find Toronto novelist Cordelia turn a blind eye. Instead, he engages her in tle mother, Hiroko Tanak, who survives Strube’s latest fiction listed in the glossy conversation and secretly squires her off to Nagasaki but is scarred both figuratively catalogues published by the big houses, or live in his modest flat, which he does not and literally. She leaves the devastation and ascending the best-seller lists. Yet she’s share with his girlfriend Charlie. heads for Delhi to begin a new life with her Canada’s best bet to succeed Alice Munro. In Ali’s tale, the colonial-era mentality still dead fiancé Konrad’s half-sister. Hiroko Lemon is Cordelia Strube’s eighth novel sizzles; although Lena’s spine-tingling story is marries, and on her honeymoon, India is and the follow-up to Planet Reese. Strube fraught with unspeakable indignities, Gabe, partitioned. Her husband Sajjad, a Muslim, carries on with the same mordant, Gen-X the powerful squire, has his way with her. Ali cannot return home to India, so the newly- subjects for which she’s renowned: cancer, hones in on the lives of the immigrants who weds move to Pakistan. family dysfunction, environmental degrada- live in a world of choking passivity and are War and peace; beauty and ugliness; tion, angry loners, violence and the subject to a culture of corruption that is loneliness and connection; allegiance and underemployed. shameless and spectacular—it is as if we estrangement; and betrayal and atonement Just like Munro’s Lives of Girls and Women live in parallel universes. are the divergent themes that recur through- and J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye, a Hotel kitchens are fruitful venues for fiction out the story. Beneath a fragile veil of filial disillusioned teenager makes a perfect 21st- writers because the setting is ideally suited to love, we realize that Raza is vulnerable. His century mouthpiece. Strube’s purse-lipped display the built-in set of contrasts—such as mother is not like other Pakistani women. protagonist, Lemon, also assumes the role of chandelier-lit ballrooms versus seedy His divided loyalties are touchingly at odds first-person narrator. She’s wise beyond her kitchens. Ali milks the ethical and moral with the hard-nosed persona he displays to years, since she impatiently juggles three dilemmas that are inherent in London’s under- his friends. He is a boy of many masks who eccentric mothers, a deadbeat dad and two ground economy by depicting the shadowy flits in and out of his many roles, including silly friends. Lemon is also a voracious reader world of illegal immigration schemes, slave the role of an Afghani mujahideen. His child- who volunteers in the children’s cancer ward labour and forced prostitution. ish prank reverberates over time and haunts yet refuses to succumb to false optimism. While Ali’s delectable and compelling their lives when his family is reunited in the As an independent thinker, Lemon isn’t storyline sates the appetite, it also leaves a whirlwind society of post-9/11 New York. obsessed with boys, parties, peer pressure bitter taste—as life often does. The author charts an emotional journey or ham-fisted texting. She prefers the more and generates momentum with her sure- civilized company of 18th-century heroines BURNT SHADOWS footed writing. The reader is connected to like the doomed Clarissa. The clues to this KAMILA SHAMSIE the richly evoked characters whose lives flail multi-layered narrative lie in Lemon’s eru- Doubleday into each other over time. Shamsie delivers a dite reading list. Like Clarissa’s author REVIEW BY IRENE D’SOUZA novel with everything a reader could want: Samuel Richardson, Cordelia Strube is a It is impossible not be impressed with complex characters, settings indelibly moralist. This means we are expected to Kamila Shamsie’s Burnt Shadows, a sprawl- described and a plot filled with twists. Sham- dutifully wade through some “sick topics,” ing epic whose prologue begins with the sie’s unerring tale masterfully pays homage as Lemon’s friends dub them. heart-rending scene of a nude, shell- to Michael Ondaatje. Her lyrical work is No one wants to invite Al Gore to dinner, shocked prisoner on his way to imbued with minute details that reflect our either—especially once he revs up the old

38 SPRING 2010 HERIZONS arts culture SPRING READING

tury Scotland, but she is searching for the inspiration and adventure of one of her heroes, the 19th-century French writer George Sand. Maria struggles with the question of what made Sand so bold and free, with the courage to love and live as she chose. Sand’s example has fuelled a year-long affair with a younger professor. Maria, a French scholar, seeks more meaning, though and decides to make sense of her experiences by writing a book about George Sand. There have been many before, but hers will be different, she believes, although she is not sure how. It is not until late in the novel that she finds her angle while at Sand’s tombstone—Sand is projector to show more despairing slides of to another in the present, the recent past important because she was a precursor, and the remote past. Yet there is no room the melting Arctic. But then, uppity social setting new standards for female lives. for confusion, as the chapters are clearly critics, vegans and intense greenies are Half of the novel is devoted to a vivid dated and the voices are firmly anchored in never popular. No one wants the consumer retelling of parts of Sand’s life: her romance history and geography. party to end—not if it entails weeding, rid- with Frederic Chopin, their troubled trip to The story that begins to unfold is multi- ing a bike to work or sharing. Majorca and their friendship after he with- layered and rich in mood and intent, leading Lemon’s favourite sick topics include a drew from physical love. Brackenbury to an astonishing and surprising denoue- grab bag of social ills, the end of oil and his- attempts to break down the feminist icon ment. This strong narrative is achieved by torical genocides. And yet, despite the social and depict her as a person and she does so the skilful use of dialect and by a clean and climate, she passes the teen endurance test. convincingly. But the most interesting rela- lyrical narrator’s voice. Strube’s strobe-light realism does not tionship in the novel is between Maria and In fact, when we read Licia’s (or is it suffer fools; nor does it spare her readers. her old friend Marguerite, a well-known Lina Medaglia’s?) description of her native Because Strube is such a polished story- French feminist and playwright in ill heath. village, we sense that this image of teller, Lemon’s astringent character When they visit in rural France, we see Aquilonia, by itself, could be worth the captivates and charms. This acid-tongued more of Maria’s vitality and curious mind, whole book: “Aquilonia is a place of great coming of age story holds up next to the which is sometimes lacking in her self- and terrible beauty, a place like hundreds best classic fiction. obsessed interior thoughts. of other places in Calabria.…” This limpid Read Lemon. Then leave it lying about for Becoming George Sand concerns itself description of landscape carries within it your sullen teen to discover. with many questions of love, including how forebodings of impending doom lurking affairs and marriage are different for men behind every craggy rock. Medaglia THE DEMONS OF AQUILONIA and women. Peripherally, it probes the LINA MEDAGLIA etches a rich picture in chiaroscuro, with question of family—Maria loves her chil- Inanna light touches of humour as relief from dren, but they are barely present in the darkness. REVIEW BY MAYA KHANKHOJE novel, as she is so concerned with herself “‘Alarico, what’s a donnaccia?‘ Licia the This first-person novel is the story of Licia that she almost fails to notice their needs child asks. Giganteschi, an Italian-born Canadian until she comes out of the fog at the novel’s ‘A bad woman, I think.’ woman who, after 40 years, returns to the end. This is a subtle and introspective ‘What do you have to do to be a bad village she both loved and hated. It is also novel. While it never becomes extraordi- woman?’ the story of post-war Italian immigration in nary, it offers plenty of food for thought. Canada. Some migrants left for economic ‘Act like you’re a man,’ he says.” Lina Medaglia herself chose to act like a reasons; others left in order to put an ocean FEAR OF FIGHTING of distance between a painful past and a woman by slaying the twin demons of BY STACEY MAY FOWLES new life in a new country. and hypocrisy with her bare pen. ILLUSTRATED BY MARLENA ZUBER Both reasons propelled Licia to Canada, Maya Khankhoje migrated from Mexico to Invisible Publishing where an easier economic life did not nec- India on an Italian cargo boat where she REVIEW BY KERRY RYAN essarily translate into greater peace of picked up the language. I’m not ashamed to admit that I almost mind. That is why she returned to her birth- always judge a book by its cover. And its place to ask difficult questions and to BECOMING GEORGE SAND font, margins, page numbers and paper confront and expose the answers. ROSALIND BRACKENBURY stock. For me, reading is an all-round aes- The Demons of Aquilonia is a very com- Doubleday Canada thetic experience and I think as much about plex novel, both in terms of its timeline and REVIEW BY KRIS ROTHSTEIN how a book feels in my hands as I do about its geographic setting. Its colourful charac- Maria Jameson is a professor in Edinburgh, how the characters are developed. ters jump back and forth from one scenario a successful, married woman in 21st-cen- So it was a delight to hold and explore

HERIZONS SPRING 2010 39 NEW from DEMETER PRESS First Feminist Press on Motherhood Mothering Canada: Interdisciplinary Voices La maternité au Canada: Voix interdisciplinaires Edited by Shawna Geissler, Lynn Loutzenhiser, Jocelyne Praud and Leesa Streifler

978-1-55014-504-5 / March 2010 Paper 6" by 9", 316 pages $44.95 Cdn/U.S. (add 5% GST)

A multidisciplinary, bilingual anthology of mothering research that illustrates facets of Canadian mothering through different disciplinary lenses including social sciences, lit- erature, and visual arts. Includes works that reflect women’s experiences of pregnancy, labour and delivery, stillbirth and loss; consider the complex issues involved in adoption; examine the challenges of multiple births, child abuse, impoverished mothers, working mothers, mothers with illness, and mothering of children with illness or disabilities. Vari- ous mothering relations are explored as well as support for mothers from the female com- munity of the Native Canadian moon lodge to the policies in place for mothers across Canada.

“Mothering Canada illustrates the power of bringing together multiple visions and multiple knowledges—empirical research, poetry, personal journeys, art, and many more—as dif- ferent and complementary ways of trying to understand and of searching for meaning. A wonderfully rich collection.” —CAROLINE AND REW, CENTRE ON GOVERNANCE, UNIVERSITY OF OTTAWA WWW.YORKU.CA/ARM

40 SPRING 2010 HERIZONS arts culture SPRING READING

Fear of Fighting, Stacey May Fowles’ sec- ond novel, illustrated by Toronto artist Marlena Zuber. It’s a gloomy story—a diary-like account of a young woman, Marnie, as she is utterly crushed by a breakup. The story isn’t new, but Fowles, publisher of the feminist teen mag Shameless, tells it with rare, ugly truth. Chronicling the minutiae of Marnie’s life as she becomes increasingly reclusive and self-loathing, Fowles effectively captures the despair and profound loss of self so often glossed over by books and movies that cover similar territory. The writing is crisp and the book has good internal momentum. Marnie’s voice is strong and sure, even though her mental But there are mysterious conditions: They ing in hotel rooms. This anthology could state might not be. must live in the flat for a year before selling have easily been titled Easy Cheating and For example: “Today I am concerned I it, and their parents must never enter the other Weird(er) Stories. If the story is not have colon cancer. Yesterday it was psoria- building. Nevertheless, the girls pack up their about cheating, it is about something sis. The day before that everyone hated me lives in Lake Forest, Chicago, and move to absurd: a couple govern their life by Post-It and was talking about me behind my back. Highgate, North London. The events that fol- notes; a farm wife mothers a squash like it is Tomorrow there will be abscesses and law- low change the course of their lives forever. her child; a girl hears voices in street signs. suits, gossiping and growths.” It’s quite a dark novel, but Martin—the girls’ Because there are so many stories about But Fowles’ line between realism and art upstairs neighbour—provides some welcome cheating, and cheating with a particular is a thin one. I can relate to Marnie. I ache comic relief. He writes crossword puzzles for script of alcohol and hotels, one starts com- with her. I want to give her a hug—and a a living and suffers from obsessive-compul- paring the differences in personalities and shake. The boyfriend was no good, anyway; sive disorder. As he struggles to get better and sex descriptions in each story. These are snap out of it, already. After a while, I win back his wife, he fosters a friendship with stories about behaviour, of recognizable started feeling claustrophobic in Marnie’s Julia. She stops by to make him tea and the stereotypes interacting with one another: apartment, anxious for anything to happen occasional meal; they chat about this and that. the CEO, the art dealer, and the depressed other than her slow self-destruction. The comfort they find in each other’s company suburban dad. Zuber to the rescue with her whimsical, is both touching and uplifting. The descriptions of the sex involved in spooky and completely enchanting illustra- It’s set in the present day, but Her Fearful the cheating stories are smart, unique, and tions—many featuring tiny-footed women in Symmetry has all the hallmarks of a Victorian unromantic. Rhonda Waterfall does a great catsuits. Each chapter heading is hand-let- Gothic novel. There’s a spooky cemetery— job of capturing human dissatisfaction and tered, and full-page pen-and-ink-drawings Highgate, the most grandiose in London, in distraction. Her characters have a cold, occur every few pages. The images, based this book almost a character in itself—two matter-of-fact-ness to them, as if they have closely on the text, add a welcome dimen- sets of twins, mistaken identities and super- desires right now but not in-depth emotion sion to the story and turn the book into a natural happenings galore. The flat, too, takes or emotional histories. satisfying visual package: a work of art for on the appearance of a haunted house. Her characters do not feel passionate or the nightstand. Niffenegger’s great skill is weaving the romantic about the sex they are having. They supernatural into the everyday. And she notice the physical characteristics of the HER FEARFUL SYMMETRY does it so seamlessly that you can’t help but room. They are not having sex to have sex; AUDREY NIFFENEGGER suspend your disbelief. Just as Henry’s they are having sex to hurt their lives, to Scribner appearing and reappearing in The Time make things change through the pain of REVIEW BY ALICE LAWLOR Traveler’s Wife feels totally normal, so too is breaking rules, even though they may not How do you follow a first novel that sells Elspeth’s ghost an accepted part of life. In reveal to anyone that they have broken them. more than 2.5 million copies and is made Symmetry, she creates a world that really Most of these stories are two to 10 into a Hollywood blockbuster? Just ask gets under your skin. It may be a dark, funny pages long, not really allowing us to see Audrey Niffenegger, author of runaway and sometimes macabre kind of world, but the story develop beyond a snapshot. best-seller The Time Traveler’s Wife. Her once you enter it, you won’t regret it. Waterfall’s stories seem to be intentionally new novel, Her Fearful Symmetry, has all short. This shortness left me interested, yet the panache and originality of the first— THE ONLY THING I HAVE unsatisfied, the way you feel when you eat and a lot more to boot. RHONDA WATERFALL potato chips for supper. It would be inter- It’s an epic ghost story that revolves Arsenal Pulp Press esting to have fewer stories that were around a set of identical twins, Julia and REVIEW BY SARAH MANGLE more developed. Valentina. They inherit a London flat from The majority of the stories in The Only Thing Although it may be novel or funny to be able their aunt, Elspeth, whom they’ve never met. I Have are stories of straight people cheat- to compare the sex in each cheating story, the

HERIZONS SPRING 2010 41 arts culture SPRING READING logistics of the cheating become prescriptive and uninteresting. The rare, weird stories that do not involve cheating, while out of place, were a quirky relief to read.

UNDERGROUND JUNE HUTTON Cormorant Books REVIEW BY EVELYN C. WHITE As Canada continues to assess its military presence in Afghanistan, there is much to ponder about war in the debut novel by June Hutton, a member of a women’s writ- ing group in Vancouver that boasts a 100-percent-successful track record in securing book contracts. Richly detailed, Underground traces the diers and civilians perish daily in Asia, the Gen Y feminists’ top issues include the journey of Albert Fraser from his impover- Middle East and elsewhere on the planet. toxicity of girl culture, including the Girls ished upbringing in a B.C. coal mining town Evelyn C. White is the author of Alice Walker: Gone Wild backlash; anxieties relating to through his various permutations as a First A Life and Every Goodbye Ain’t Gone: A Photo marriage, career and kids (- World War soldier, gritty labourer, impas- Narrative of Black Heritage on Salt Spring hood); concern for the full gender spectrum sioned protester, fighter in the Spanish Island with photographs by Joanne Bealy. and LGBT issues; abortion and a full range Civil War and determined seeker of a of choices, including better services and meaningful life. GIRLDRIVE: CRISS-CROSSING supports for single mothers; ending vio- Indicative of the emotional and geo- AMERICA, REDEFINING FEMINISM lence and ; the need for feminist graphic upheaval that mark Fraser’s path, NONA WILLIS ARONOWITZ AND EMMA education at every level (especially middle he goes by different names—Al, Alex, Ale- BEE BERNSTEIN school); and putting the personal back into jandro—throughout the course of the Seal Press the overly theoretical feminism they novel. His sojourns in trenches, mines, tun- REVIEW BY WENDY ROBBINS encounter inside universities. nels, hobo camps, railroad boxcars, truck Long-time friends Nona Willis Aronowitz and Girldrive reads like a series of postcards beds and torpedoed villages underscore, Emma Bee Bernstein set out on a road trip in scrapbooked by self-styled kick-ass femi- Hutton suggests, the anguished depths that 2007 in search of themselves and feminism’s nists whose goal is to “get you off your ass haunt all war veterans—regardless of the future. Their eye-catching book is an infor- to work toward what you believe in.” hopes for a better world that propel multi- mal collage of portraits, in words and photos, Bristling with that quintessential American tudes of soldiers onto battlefields where that include some of the 200 women they sense of frontier freedom, Girldrive also has death and destruction harbour zero respect interviewed along the way. They asked: “Do hauntingly elegiac undertones. Bernstein, for altruism. you consider yourself a feminist? What does who suffered from depression, died by sui- The author also uses the shards of shrap- feminism mean to you? What issues and top- cide in 2008 after finishing the fine essay nel embedded in Fraser’s body during his ics are most important to you?” that becomes the book’s tragic postscript. military tour in France as a metaphor for the Nona and Emma, 22-year-old college What inspired the book in the first place hidden mental and physical injuries that graduates following in their mothers’ foot- was the “amazing life” of Nona’s mother, often accompany soldiers home. Through- steps—one a writer, the other a visual journalist , who died at a young out his life, Fraser retrieves from his flesh artist—are proud of their feminist legacy age from lung cancer. Running like a sub- tiny bits of shrapnel that have slowly yet aware of the “waver[ing] between inspi- terranean stream underneath all the other worked their way to the surface of his skin. ration and disconnect” that often exists issues, largely unstated except for refer- Here, Hutton describes an incident while intergenerationally. Their mostly 20-some- ence to “skinniness,” racism, and rape, is Fraser is shaving: “Suddenly he yelps in thing interviewees are diverse and include women’s health, including the devastation pain. The razor slips from his hand and clat- a would-be altar girl, a producer of erotica, of depression and cancer. ters into the sink. His fingers go to the lump, an auto plant worker and a professor of art The young women are brave, offering this touch a sharp edge like a tooth. … The history. They are Chicana, Native American, optimistic redefinition: “Any woman, if she black point throbs as he applies thumb and Black and White. believes in herself, is a feminist.” It’s a goal, forefinger, pressing until it pops up and then While many subjects attempted to dis- but barriers abound, and we’re not at our out … Each time he thinks he has dug out tance themselves from stereotypical ugly, destination yet. Thank you, Nona, for not the last of them, another eventually appears. angry, upper-middle-class, second-wave giving up, either on those who paved the … His heart hammers at the memories feminists, most identify with the women’s way or on those who incrementally seek the heaved up by the shrapnel. He needs air.” movement’s goals. A few of the intervie- future’s elusive green light. For more, check By turns lyrical and relentless in its wees are feminist icons, like Erica Jong out www.girl-drive.com. unvarnished depiction of the impact of war, (Fear of Flying), Starhawk (Wicca), and Wendy Robbins is co-founder of the Cana- Underground offers a timely read as sol- Andy Zeisler (Bitch magazine). dian online feminist discussion list PAR-L.

42 SPRING 2010 HERIZONS arts culture SPRING READING

ANIMALS MAKE US HUMAN: animals. The authors’ considerable acuity, that these effects are non-specific, and CREATING THE BEST LIFE experience and knowledge—allied with that “the same incidence is found for FOR ANIMALS extensive research, technical substance women who are poor and do not consume TEMPLE GRANDIN AND and Johnson’s observations—steer this tra- illegal drugs and for those who smoke cig- CATHERINE JOHNSON ditionally controversial subject into greater arettes.” Providing compassionate care Houghton Mifflin Harcourt accessibility. that manages risk factors specific to the REVIEW BY R.J. STEVENSON R.J. Stevenson is a Winnipeg writer and the needs of poor women—substance use among them—can potentially reduce their Dr. Temple Grandin, the acclaimed autistic proud owner of Rikki, a year-old chihuahua. animal scientist best known for her pioneer- terrible consequences. ing reforms in humane livestock WITH CHILD: SUBSTANCE The recommendations made by the management, has again offered her incom- USE DURING PREGNANCY: authors—all of whom are health care work- parable insights into animal behaviour. A WOMAN-CENTRED APPROACH ers, social workers and clinicians—are Co-authored with Catherine Johnson, who EDITED BY SUSAN C. BOYD AND LENORA essential to improving treatment programs. specializes in the field of neuropsychiatry MARCELLUS But a question remains: With the current and the brain, Animals Make Us Human Fernwood Publishing shortage of general practitioners and obste- tricians, is it any wonder that we are failing investigates the emotional basis for the wel- REVIEW BY DEBRA OSTROVSKY fare of our fellow creatures. Canada’s most vulnerable women? With Child is a slim but powerful volume of Maintaining the premise of their previous With Child is an invaluable companion for essays tackling many of society’s ill-con- book Animals in Translation, the authors anyone in the field. Rich in research and in ceived attitudes about substance use and propose that animals have their own set of scope, this is indispensable reading for motherhood and drawing attention to the links emotional requirements related to a funda- health care professionals as well as for between poverty, inequality and addiction. mental core of systems related to brain medical anthropologists and journalists While pregnant women using drugs and function. Grandin attests: “When I read all striving to understand the issues surround- alcohol are often dealt with in a punitive the scientific evidence about electrical ing public health and substance use. way, this book outlines how this approach is stimulation of subcortical brain systems, the of no benefit and can even have harmful only logical conclusion was that the basic SHE’S SHAMELESS: repercussions for women and their children. emotion systems are similar in humans and WOMEN WRITE ABOUT In contrast, the authors stress the impor- all other mammals.” GROWING UP, ROCKING OUT tance of a women-centred and This concept has profound implications, AND FIGHTING BACK harm-reduction approach, which, as co- as the treatment of these sentient beings EDITED BY STACEY MAY FOWLES AND becomes more interactive than simply reac- editor Susan Boyd explains, “offers MEGAN GRIFFITH-GREENE tive. Animals Make Us Human is a step into pragmatic interventions that make legal Tightrope Books understanding how our furry friends experi- and illegal drug use safer.” These are REVIEW BY HILARY BROWN ence their worlds and, Grandin suggests, described in a review of programs like Fir I remember the undertone of condescen- how we can enhance these encounters. Square in Vancouver and Toronto’s Break- sion from adults, the subtle implication Seeking, rage, fear, panic, lust, care and ing the Cycle, which are modelled on during my teen years that I was shallow and play comprise an emotional continuum, and empowering women and providing non- unpredictable, ignorant and irresponsible. it is up to us to accept this hard-wired pres- judgmental prenatal care. She’s Shameless: Women Write about ence in animals. To Grandin, the rule is Substance use cannot be treated, the Growing Up, Rocking Out and Fighting Back simple: “Don’t stimulate RAGE, FEAR and authors say, without acknowledging its con- counters a trend in teen-aimed literature PANIC if you can help it, and do stimulate nection to other endemic social ills— that sees young people, particularly women, SEEKING and also PLAY.” everything from the shortage of adequate as things that need to be fixed, as potential According to the authors, social and housing to food-security issues. If the deter- pupils in hackneyed life lessons. physical enrichment opportunities are minants of health, such as socio-economic Following in the footsteps of its parent essential for animals, and there are many conditions affecting individuals and commu- magazine Shameless, She’s Shameless helpful tips and stories provided throughout nities, put women at risk for drug use, aims to tell stories about growing up and the book to help identify and provide them. programs aiming for total abstinence simply becoming a woman that don’t judge the Certain questions are also considered: set them up for failure. reader, tell them what to do or impart any Do dogs need parents, rather than pack Instead, the authors argue, drug use sage advice, except the storyteller’s own leaders? Are residents of zoos unhappy? should be treated as one of many factors raw life experience. How intelligent are pigs? Do cattle sense placing women at a high risk for obstetric The book contains contributions from their fate? complications. Only then can it be managed writers and artists across North America, Grandin believes that “Some people may and controlled—and often with very good with stories varying from one woman’s dis- not want to believe that animals really do outcomes. covery of zine-making to a short comic have emotions. I think their own emotions The research backs this up. Poor about the mortification of being flat-chested are getting in the way of logic” women who use illegal drugs have “higher at summer camp. Animals Make Us Human is a convincing rates of pre-term deliveries, low birth Never pulling punches, stories address argument recommended to everyone weight, sudden infant death syndrome, grief, infidelity, separation, abortion and responsible for, or interested in, the care of and perinatal death.” But it is also true racism. They also explore the bond

HERIZONS SPRING 2010 43 35 YEARS OF RESEARCH AND ACTION

Our groundbreaking research has generated changes in policies and practices for critical social issues for women and families. Never before has our work been so relevant. Never before has it been so needed.

Benefit from our work. Support our work. Learn more about our work.

www.wcwonline.org

...because a world that is good for women is good for everyone.

NEW RELEASE The Hungry Mirror a novel by Lisa de Nikolits

“A gripping tale of fractured self-esteem.”

“Eleven calories more a day can kick one overboard into a sea of fat?” Such are the stomach- churning fears that haunt the fat-phobic, food-obsessed women in Lisa de Nikolits’ The Hungry Mirror. Like episodic entries in a food journal, the author’s writing style is stripped down, pointed, raw, bereft of all fat. She cuts straight to the bone and slices open the gut-wrenching hurts of a circle of self-conscious (and mostly self-critical) characters obsessed with weight and body image. But de Nikilits’ real message is about cravings – cravings for self-acceptance, cravings for love.” —DOUG O’NEILL, Canadian Living Magazine

“This gripping tale of fractured self-esteem pulls back the curtain on rigid regimens that collapse into chaos over and over again. Played out against a childhood where drastic dieting was a family value, Lisa de Nikolits expertly delivers both sides of ‘a perfect life’ that includes a marriage headed over the cliff and a brilliant but unpredictable career. Fasten your seat belts, folks: this is a ride on the psychological and emotional rollercoaster that is anorexia and bulimia.” —KRISTIN JENKINS, Anglican Journal

ISBN 978-1-926708-00-3 INANNA PUBLICATIONS 5.5 x 8.25" / March 2010 Essential Readings for Feminists Everywhere 354 pages / $22.95 www.yorku.ca/inanna

44 SPRING 2010 HERIZONS arts culture SPRING READING between mothers and daughters, puberty, falling in love and learning to speak out. One entry, titled simply “Vaginal Dis- charge,” was surprisingly endearing and witty, recalling the strange wonder but also utter embarrassment of puberty. She’s Shameless is a very powerful, stir- ring volume. While reading “We Should Make Things” by zinester Teri Vlassopoulos, I felt like I could remember more clearly being 17 and feeling the quiet restlessness of wanting desperately to say something but not knowing how to say it. Though it might have been nice to hear from some actual teenaged writers, per- haps the clarity that comes from seeing it all in retrospect is also what She’s Shame- National Product system rendering Indige- stand up and question whether living up to less is about. I know I would have much nous women’s central role in their those images is possible, or, if it were possi- preferred it to Chicken Soup for the communities to the status of the Western ble, whether it would be remotely desirable. Teenage Soul, or the other bland books housewife construct.” Mother Knows Best: Standing Up to the offering life lessons, when I was a teen. In her chapter about resistance to impe- Experts takes a frank look the ways expert On the whole, in its slim 120 pages, She’s rialism, Makere Stewart-Harawira, a information is used to control and define Shameless more than lives up to its promise professor at the University of Alberta, motherhood. It examines standards of of “No bullshit. No caricatures. No shame.” laments how Maori women lost their pre- “good” and “bad” mothering promulgated contact leadership roles and how feminism by parenting manuals and magazines, and MAKING SPACE FOR is often constructed as diametrically oppo- shows that these are often woefully inade- site to Maoriness. quate to the needs of women. EDITED BY JOYCE GREEN Making Space encourages intellectual The essays in this collection address a Fernwood Publishing and spiritual openness. Green responds to variety of issues, including breastfeeding, REVIEW BY CY-THEA SAND quarrels with feminism’s anti- or un-tradi- “natural” mothering, “attachment parent- Many of my women’s and gender studies tionalism by suggesting that traditions ing” and “intensive mothering.” They students at the University of Winnipeg are themselves have to be critiqued but not confront experts in their search for a reading Joyce Green. Judging by their automatically assumed to be good and/or more woman-centred, authentic view of enthusiasm for this book, she is filling a gap monolithic. She asks us to deal with the motherhood as experienced by mothers. in our knowledge about how gender, race misogyny inherent in many cultural prac- They aim to undermine expert-driven par- and nation-building intersect. tices, and with how traditions affect women enting advice and to provide women with For many people, Aboriginal feminism is and men differently in their gendered roles. a foundation for resisting monolithic mod- an oxymoron, and in this reader we learn At the heart of Green’s inquiry, then, is els of motherhood. why many Aboriginal activists refuse the F- the question of who gets to decide what Readers are shown the ways in which word. Green admits that she once believed tradition is and for whom. This book is a the male-dominated field of parenting that feminism was irrelevant to Aboriginal valuable contribution to conversations advice (almost all of which is directed people and that to be a feminist meant one about identity, nationhood, gender and colo- towards mothers) paints an unattainable had to choose between one’s gender and nialism and about how contemporary standard against which women feel they one’s culture or nation. Following bell feminisms are addressing difference in come up short. One of my favourite hooks, Green now tells her students that exciting new ways. moments was reading Susan Racine Pass- feminism is for everyone. more’s essay on the allegedly painless Aboriginal feminist scholars are few. Yet MOTHER KNOWS BEST: Bradley method of natural childbirth. As a they are making connections between colo- TALKING BACK TO THE EXPERTS home-birther, I can sympathize with the nialism, racism and not only in EDITED BY JESSICA NATHANSON AND frustrations of women when we are told Canada, but also in Aotearoa/New Zealand, LAURA CAMILLE TULEY that there is a specific way to do it right. the U.S. and across Norway, Sweden, Fin- Demeter Press I would like to have seen more attention land and Russia (Samiland). In 16 chapters, REVIEW BY MELINDA SELMYS paid to the sources of expertise—for Green introduces us to a variety of perspec- It is such a tremendous relief to read a book instance, how are parenting experts tives, including Samiland’s Jorunn Eikjok. in which other women admit that none of us granted the authority to tell mothers how Eikjok cites New Zealand’s Marilyn Waring’s really measures up to the somewhat to mother? It would seem that contention that “the second wave of colo- grotesque images of motherhood on offer the matrices of authority is essential to nialism over occurred from parenting magazines and baby redefining it. I also feel that some of the after 1948, when states adopted the Gross experts. Where, more than that, women essays take a too-critical tone; there is a

HERIZONS SPRING 2010 45 arts culture SPRING READING line between critiquing expert as it is rarely represented: sex- advice and undermining the ist, racist and ableist. choices made by women fol- In this sophisticated portrait lowing that advice. of how structural factors con- For the most part, the strain everyday life for these essays celebrate mothers’ four women and their families, right to listen to their own Dossa combines personal sto- instincts, to make good ries with critical social analysis choices, to learn from experi- to understand how differences ence and to listen to each like gender, race and disability other in order to create a cul- intersect to shape individual ture that privileges the experiences of exclusion and knowledge of mothers and oppression. respects them as the true Mehrum is hospitalized and experts in their own lives. isolated because of discrimina- tory perceptions of persons with SMALL BENEATH disabilities embedded in THE SKY Canada’s immigration policy. LORNA CROZIER Tamiza struggles to have her Greystone Books entire life within a few miles of home. two disabled children recognized as full per- REVIEW BY GAIL BUENTE “Her favourite place is Saskatchewan: sons within a public service sector that Unlike prairie memoirs that stress the she doesn’t understand why anyone would dehumanizes them at every step. Firouzeh grandeur and fearsomeness of the land- want to go anywhere else, even for a holi- and Sara’s stories speak to the treatment of scape—devastating droughts and blizzards; day, even in winter.” And in another racialized immigrants as undeserving clients magnificent, alarming thunderstorms— chapter, Crozier muses that “our spirits in the business of disability. Small Beneath the Sky builds an immense exist pre-birth … looking down.… In spite What is not lost in this analysis is an world from the minutiae of average, taciturn of the harshness of the setting, the failed appreciation for human agency and cre- lives. Lorna Crozier grew up in Swift Cur- crops and dust, I picked the prairies as my ativity. Dossa captures the push and pull rent, Saskatchewan, in a family with little home because she lived there.” of subjects engaging with larger socio- money to spare for the daughter of an emo- Many of Crozier’s best poems capture cultural, political and economic structures tionally diffident father and a deferential, big ideas by looking closely at the details to direct their own lives and give meaning quietly passionate mother. She has a much of the world around her. The same is true to their experiences of suffering and older brother, giving her childhood some of of this memoir. She focuses on elements injustice. This works to counter conceptu- the qualities of an only child. that are small beneath the sky and finds alizations of persons with disabilities as How, I kept asking myself as I read, the unspoken beauty in the rubble and rou- passive and problematic (dominant in pol- could a family of so few words, and such tine of an ordinary—and extraordinary— icy and research), while drawing much sparse surroundings, produce a poet of childhood. needed attention to a society that dis- such rich imagination and sharp observa- My one quibble: I wished for more and ables so-called undesirable citizens tion? Part of the answer, of course, is right better photos of this wonderful, difficult, through systemic forms of discrimination there. Her loneliness gave birth to her pow- complex family. and exclusion. ers of observation, and her survival in this Racialized Bodies, Disabling Worlds spare environment necessitated a well- RACIALIZED BODIES, makes an important contribution to both developed imagination. DISABLING WORLDS: disability and anti-racist feminist studies by The book is structured as a collection of STORIED LIVES OF IMMIGRANT demonstrating the complex ways in which short, self-contained, essay-like stories MUSLIM WOMEN multiple markers of difference intersect to punctuated by even shorter poetic descrip- PARIN DOSSA exacerbate the situation of already vulner- tions she calls “First Causes.” Growing University of Toronto Press able populations. It is also a valuable slowly, the way life does, each section adds REVIEW BY CAROLINA PINEDA contribution to anthropology. As a profes- another emotional layer to the last, until the Parin Dossa’s Racialized Bodies, Disabling sor in this discipline, Dossa has an reader finds herself laughing out loud and Worlds: Storied Lives of Immigrant Muslim enormous amount to teach young ethnog- brushing tears from her eyes, by turns or Women is a true gift. This ethnographic raphers about how to rethink social theory together—at least this reader did, and I exploration of the narrated lives of Mehrum, and practice. tend to be a fairly dispassionate reader. Tamiza, Firouzeh and Sara—four South The longest chapter, the powerful heart Asian and Iranian Muslim women living with Carolina Pineda is a doctoral candidate in of the book, describes the months leading disabilities in Vancouver—puts the embod- McGill’s Department of Anthropology. Her up to her mother’s death and the stunning ied, experiential knowledge of those living research focuses on the experiences of grief that grips her. By the time we read on the margins of society at the centre of a individuals living with chronic illness in and this, we know that her mother lived her powerful and necessary critique of Canada around the city of Montreal. 

46 SPRING 2010 HERIZONS arts culture FILM

OLDER THAN AMERICA DIRECTED BY GEORGINA LIGHTNING REVIEW BY LINDSAY EANET Subtlety in filmmaking is overrated. Take Georgina Lightning’s directorial debut, Older Than America, for example. Here, the lack of subtlety and use of loaded language are straight out of Spike Lee’s playbook. What Lightning achieves as a result is a visceral reaction, the sort of rage and frustration that Lee sought in Do The Right Thing and In OlderThan America, filmmaker Georgina Lightning reveals the damage caused by residential schools. for which Paul Haggis received an Oscar with Crash. assimilate the values that the Catholic as Rain’s mother, Irene. Cardinal, who has Lightning’s hands are all over Older Than Church, sought to instill. Against the back- perhaps the most difficult role of all, walks America, from camera work to facial expres- drop of a mayoral election and an earthquake, the lines of conflict between faith and fam- sions. Older Than America is an exposé, in investigated by a white geologist (Bradley ily, tradition and assimilation, with nuance the guise of a narrative, of the residential Cooper, The Hangover), the entire commu- and grace. schools established in North America by nity must come to grips with its past. Lightning’s directing propels the film for- governments and churches in order to force One of the film’s strongest assets is ward. It is the quality of rawness–– assimilation upon Aboriginal children. Adam Beach (Smoke Signals), whose per- razor-sharp cuts, impassioned perform- Protagonist Rain O’Rourke (played by formance as Rain’s fiancé is full of fire and ances and a stripped-down acoustic Lightning) is haunted by visions of her vitality. However, it is the women who soundtrack––that makes the project original mother’s experience at a residential school power this film: Lighting puts as much and vital. and by memories her aunt (Tantoo Cardinal, power behind her acting as she does into Lightning succeeds in getting her viewers Dances With Wolves, Legends of the Fall), directing. Rose Berens adds intricacy and to care about the issue, making this film known as Auntie Apple for her desire to depth to the film, despite having few lines particularly worthy of accolades. 

DO YOU TEACH WOMEN’S STUDIES?

Herizons is a great educational tool and women’s studies HERE’S WHAT PROFESSORS ARE resource for your classroom. SAYING ABOUT HERIZONS: Copies of Herizons are available for the reduced price of just $2 “I love having copies of Herizons to hand each for each edition published during the university year—Fall, out to my intro women’s studies students!” Winter and Spring. Ann Braithwaite, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, Women’s Studies, University of Prince Edward Island

Here’s How It Works: “Herizons always makes my work for women exciting and worthwhile.” Cheryl Gosselin, Women’s Studies Coordinator, You place an order for 40 or more copies of three issues Bishop’s University 1. of Herizons. We will ship them directly to your office immediately upon 2. publication during the academic year. You distribute them in class. Just email [email protected] to order—let us know how 3. many copies you want. We’ll send the next issue when it’s published.

Women’s studies professors tell us that Herizons is an invaluable source of feminist news and analysis, covering topical issues and public policy debates. Herizons research is useful in the classroom, and students attest to its value. Herizons is a great teaching tool for women’s studies professors.

HERIZONS SPRING 2010 47 on the edge BY LYN COCKBURN

THE MOTHER OF ALL JOKES

You noticed mother-in-law jokes are back? Me too. And indelibly imprinted with the image of the kids metaphori- they’re as dumb as ever. Note that there are only three cate- cally bashing this nasty woman in the head. gories in this genre of ha-ha: Execrable, execrabler and Of course, what MIL and hapless hubby don’t know is that execrablest. Categories for intelligent or witty do not exist. mom is really pissed at both of them. She’s cleared out the The first clue that this inane attempt at humour was staging joint bank account and plans to leave for Europe in the a comeback came just after U.S. President Barack Obama’s morning. She’s already written hubby a goodbye note. It inauguration, when a CNN newscaster felt it necessary to reads: “If you had stood up to your mother—and your father, comment on the fact that Marian Robinson, Michelle he’s even worse—I wouldn’t be leaving with the kids. I’m Obama’s mother, was about to move into the White House. going to Paris, where I’m meeting my lover who is 14 years Robinson, a vibrant and accomplished woman, planned to stay younger than I am and has a spine and a large.…” The note for a while to ease Malia and Sasha’s transition into public life. sort of trails off at that point, but there are several smiley The CNN dude opened his mouth, and here’s what came faces in brackets. out: “Just imagine, you’re going to move into the White Meanwhile, over at the Toronto Dominion bank, two House and then you find out your mother-in-law is going to delightful gentlemen of father-in-law or even grand-father- move in, too.” in-law age regularly entertain us with pithy remarks on life, Then his co-host, a woman, said what I think was “you society and banks—particularly the TD bank. They’re so prick, I’m going to coat your Viagra pills with dog poop and, endearing that if I weren’t totally committed to my local yes, I know where you keep them” … or maybe she just credit union I’d open a bunch of TD accounts. At the very groaned. least, I’d like those two as friends. Anyway, he gave the camera a cute little grin and said The contrast between the obnoxious mother-in-law ad and sweetly: “I’m just saying….” the charming dudes ad is glaring, sad and insulting … not to Then somebody yelled: “Well, you shouldn’t have, jerk face! mention so 1950s. Didn’t your father teach you no manners?” Maybe it was me. Okay then, do I want some snotty father-in-law jokes on Mother-in-law stereotyping is not, sadly, limited to men. my TV? Is that the solution? Will that provide balance? Of Sandra Sobierai-Westfall of People mag wrote: “Unlike some course not. I love those endearing TD gentlemen. Let’s have mothers-in-law, Robinson says she’s conscious of not saying more men like them—both on and off our TVs. too much.” Westfall goes on to explain that Robinson is quite What I do want is a cultural clock that goes forward to some good at keeping her opinions to herself. Charming. time where women, all women, of all ages and status, are Then there’s the Kraft Tex Mex cheese ad with mom (Geri treated with a respect and humour that does not belittle them. Hall of This Hour Has 22 Minutes), dad, two kids and I do not want the cultural clock to run backwards, to a time mother-in-law at the dinner table. Dad says to his mother: where it was okay to diss women, any women, especially moth- “You have to try these quesadillas, mom. They’re really good.” ers-in-law, a time when women were accused of having no Mother-in-law takes a bite while the entire table holds sense of humour when they didn’t laugh at crappy, sexist jokes. its breath. I am reminded of an interview I did with “Delicious,” she says. “For a change.” some years ago in which she said, “feminism is the only Dad shrugs helplessly. Mom does not pick up a sharp knife movement that has to be redone every generation or so.” and stab mom-in-law in the throat. The kids ask, brightly: Seems like she’s right. Again.  “Can we play with the pinatas now?” Lyn Cockburn is a Vancouver-based columnist who has penned Said pinatas sport big pictures of MIL, leaving us all more than 100 columns for Herizons.

48 SPRING 2010 HERIZONS Random House Full Spr-10.indd 1 17/02/10 3:18 PM E]`YW\UT]` 1O\ORWO\Q][[c\WbWSa

Qc^SQO